From commercials on television, to a walk down a grocery store aisle, our culture puts a premium on food, supplements, and medicines that emphasize "instant, "quick", "fast-acting",and "cooks in just five minutes."
We want what we ingest to be fast, or to work instantly in our bodies and allow us to proceed with the multitude of tasks and responsibilities we have with a minimum of time wasted.
The nature of food, however, is anything but instant. The metamorphis of seed to plant, of flower to fruit is a slow dance with earthworms and honeybees, with sun and moisture.
My Italian friends can wax eloguent about their mothers and grandmothers day long process of making sauce for pasta, how the kitchen swells with the aromas of herbs and tomatoes slowly simmering for hours and hours.
I think about a cold winter's day soup over a low flame, stirred and seasoned and nurtured for hours.
Several years ago I was preparing dinner for a Cherokee friend of mine named Michael Raven Horse. I dashed around the kitchen trying to make sure everything came out at the right time. He came over and touched my arm and said, "slow down, take your time, you are making medicine. Every meal you prepare is medicine."
The holiday season is a celebration of food: a turkey basted all day, fresh pies,steamed green beans, and real mash potatoes. My mother and sister spend the entire day of Christmas Eve preparing dinner for that evening, while my Dad and I take the opportunity to sample the home-made cookies, fudge, and little lemon cakes while my sister isn't looking. This for me is soul food, food that is prepared within the nature of food itself: over time. This is the food that feeds our entire being, that is the best kind of medicine.
Last night I was on the phone with my good friend, Sallie, and we were talking about food as it relates to horses. Her seventeen year old grand prix dressage horse has been on whole food supplements for 23 months. She choose to go the whole food supplement route after her horse suffered from a serious ligament injury, and the vets questioned whether he would ever return to competition.
In the almost two years her horse, Chamberlain, has been on whole food supplements he is been champion or reserve champion at the grand prix and the freestyle in two prestigious regional finals.
She said, "you know the thing about whole food supplements is that the longer the horse is on them, the better the horse gets. Just when I think Chamberlain can't get any better, he gets to a new level of fitness and overall health. I used to use regular vitamin supplements and they would work for a short time, and then I didn't see results anymore, so I'd change brands. Whole food doesn't work in an instant, but it keeps on helping the horse. I mean Chamberlain is almost 18 years old and he's still blooming."
There is an old horseman's saying, "it takes a tincture of time."
1 comment:
This really makes me think more critically about the intrinsic value of time. Though it may not be a tangible ingredient on its own, when one thinks about what makes organic and whole foods special, the "tincture" of time that is fundamental to natural processes is often understood but left out.
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