Will I Ever be Satisfied Again?

No, not another post about China. Well, only sort of.

For anyone that knows me well, you know that I'm a creature acutely ruled by my belly. I LOVE good food. Since arriving in Southeast Asia I've enjoyed fruit + veggies the likes of which I haven't dared hope of having such access to again, or have even had the pleasure of tasting... Tomatoes, fava beans, herbs like pak chi falang, fresh bamboo shoots + baby corn, durian, lychees... All available in season and in abundance, because they don't pick stuff out of season here and store it AND because it's grown locally, not shipped halfway around the world.

Some of my best childhood memories are of eating astoundingly flavorful tomatoes + peaches straight from my grandparents garden + orchard. At the time, those store-bought really were pretty tasty too. As I've grown up though (I know my memory isn't failing me, yet) produce really HAS gone downhill in quality + flavor. As some of you may or may not know, over recent years the evolution of corporate agriculture has moved decisely towards improving the look + storage of the produce we eat, not the flavor. Hence those pretty, but flavorless globes we now have year-round in our supermarkets.

Don't get me wrong, there are LOTS of culinary treats that I miss from home. If you're a foodie, there's just about no other place in the World than the San Francisco/Bay Area where you can enjoy such a wealth of culinary styles from around the globe, either cooked by folks actually FROM that country or by chef's who dare to take those cuisines to entirely new levels. BUT, unless you're willing to pay an arm + a leg for it (and sometimes not even then) it's really hard to find a tomato that tastes like... well, a tomato.

There's even more disturbing news on the food front. Monsanto Corporation's "Terminator Seed" should give us all pause as to what the future of food (check out the film by the same name) on this planet will be and whether that power should be put into the hand of a single corporation. On the bright side, the Slow Food Foundation is but one group that is working to improve agricultural biodiversity. Some things YOU can do are to grow your own produce (I know, not so easy in San Francisco), buy organic (check this fairly unbiased report of when it's worth the cost), become a WOOFer (Willing Worker on Organic Farm) or support education through school garden projects or community gardens.

We're looking into taking our own turn as WOOFer's in the coming months, so hopefully I'll be able to give a better account of this first-hand.

Check the "link" for photos from Guangxi Province and the remainder of our time in China.