The confusing reality

I've been thinking recently about what one can possibly eat in a typical restaurant that doesn't fall afoul of the newest conventional wisdom on food.

Beef: It's produced by feeding grass eaters corn. So, no.

Chicken: Most chickens are raised in horrific batteries and doused constantly in antibiotics.

Pork: Pigs raised in small pens, rife with disease, and tasteless anyway.

Milk: From those corn cows, and also rife with chemicals.

Shrimp: Raised in cesspools of chemicals in China.

Tuna, both fresh and canned: Mercury, mercury, mercury.

Cod: Your next fish stick might be the last cod there is.

Vegetables: Not local, so massive environmental damage, and also doused in chemicals, and also totally tasteless (see "not local").

Tofu: GMO.

So what are we supposed to eat? Short of using places like Blue Hill as a cafeteria, that is?

The silver lining

The upside of sleeping on a pillow made of your suit coat under your office desk: I've still got enough money on my subway card for tomorrow.

Take that, MTA!

Citizen

My mother (finally) became a US citizen yesterday.  In November, she'll vote in an election for the first time in her life (Syria is not especially big on contested elections).  As with most things in my family, her celebrations here revolved around food.  A little after the ceremony, her and my father found themselves nibbling through some ribs at Red, Hot and Blue.

Thinking back to when I became a citizen about ten years ago, I remember finding the entire process extremely moving, both the image of all people of all nationalities coming together in the conference room we'd been herded into united in their desire for citizenship, and the exercise of putting into words by way of the citizenship oath what it means to become an American.  I am so so lucky to have become a citizen that day, and I'm delighted my mom has joined our ranks.