The Face of Grain

two pictures from the drive between Detroit and Milwaukee

This grain elevator in Chelsea, Michigan reminded me of my first apartment in New York, my bad cooking, my first efforts from the "Joy of Cooking" (that brownie recipe was wrong I tell you!) I started using simple boxed foods like this corn muffin package, luckily, I've moved on to making things from scratch, growing fresh vegetables when I have access to a garden, and so forth.













I took this second image at the Oasis on the Illinois tollway north of Chicago. Ritz has really snapped up its graphics!

I feel conflicted: if corn is the source of our fast-food obesity, why haven't we outlawed it, controlled it, regulated it? Nature is just doing what she does; it's up to us to be mindful of it.

Although there is so much high and low-level dissension over farm subsidies and the calories in packaged food, we must remember how important advanced food distribution and preservatives have been to preventing widespread hunger in the US. The bounty that faces us now needs to be recalibrated. Farming has been an honorable and critically important job to every society; how can we encourage organic, local farming practices while feeding the country? I suspect I'll learn more about this living back in the mid-west.