Is This Organic?

Do you ever think some people take the organic food trend too far?

I started buying predominantly organic food for my family about seven years ago. When I first had my girls, I bought organic milk because I was concerned about the added hormones. I didn’t want my daughters to start first grade and their periods at the same time or fatten up for slaughter. As our household income went up, I started adding more organic and local foods to our weekly grocery shopping because we could afford it, gradually replacing most of the conventional food we ate. That organic shit ain’t cheap, my friends.

Nowadays, my weekly grocery shopping has turned into an almost every day errand. I rotate between three to five stores, depending on what’s on sale and what I am planning to cook. With the amount of fresh produce I buy, I do have go shopping more frequently because we either finish it all or it spoils without all those chemicals to keep it in pristine condition past its prime. It’s practically a full-time job, all the grocery shopping and cooking. I don’t mind really, unless something goes wrong, like when the free-range chicken is spoiled or when I crack open an avocado and find a giant pit surrounded by dark brown bruises mocking me.

Sometimes, it’s something worse.

Last night, I made what I hoped was a healthy and tasty meal for my people. I had vegetarian Italian sausage, which I happen to love because it doesn’t contain gristle or indeterminate white hunks, and a large bunch of green kale. I sliced the “sausage” and sautéed it with chopped onions and red pepper strips. After I stripped the kale from the thick stems, I rinsed the leaves in a colander, shook off the excess water, and chopped them before adding them and minced garlic to the pan. Salt, pepper, a splash of chicken broth, also organic, went into the pan to simmer while whole wheat rigatoni boiled in a pot of kosher sea-salted water.

I made up dinner like I usually do, pretending I am on “Chopped” or some other cooking show where you have a few random ingredients and have to make a tasty entrée to present to the judges. In my case, the judges are my family, none of whom particularly like any of the same foods. One hates the fake sausage. One detests kale. One thinks rigatoni is stupid. My goal isn’t so much to impress my panel, but rather to see if I can create a dish that none of them thoroughly enjoy, except for me, because I pretty much love everything I put in it. That’s the benefit of doing the cooking. If they don’t like it, they can take a turn at the stove.

I do get some comments, usually in the form of a backhanded compliment, like “this sausage doesn’t have a funny aftertaste” or “the kale doesn’t taste as bad as I expected.” You can imagine how motivating the feedback is.

Three of us sat down to eat the rigatoni with Italian vegan sausage and kale, presented in lovely porcelain pasta bowls, with a sprinkle of chopped parsley and shredded parmesan. The missing person, S, was at her dance class, but rest assured there would be plenty for her to sample when she got home. Everyone enjoyed it.

My husband devoured all of his, even though he doesn’t really care for any of the foods individually, including the pasta. I am married to the only man I know who hates noodles of all shapes.

I was attempting to mindfully eat my food, enjoying the contrast of textures and flavors, taking time to chew thoroughly and really taste it.

My oldest daughter, E, tends to unhinge her jaw and swallow whatever is on her plate in one breath. The pasta was no different, except she left a small pile of vegetables at the bottom of the bowl, which she moved around with her fork. We chatted about our days, and she sat, listening to or ignoring us, playing with the few leaves of kale.

Then she freaked out.

She threw her fork down and stood up, open mouthed, hands on either side of her face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” my husband, her father, asked.

“Bug! Oh my god, there’s a bug in my bowl! There’s a bug! I almost ate a bug!” She paced around the kitchen sink, open mouthed, not really gagging, but you could tell she wanted to. “I’m gonna be sick! I almost ate a bug! Didn’t you wash it? What if I ate its eggs? I’m going to die!” E was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.

“Of course I washed the kale! I washed it and dried it and then chopped it. Are you sure it’s a bug?” I defended myself, feebly, because it really didn’t matter what I said. She was already over the edge.

“Look at it! It’s got legs and eyes! I know what a bug looks like! I almost ate it! I’m going to be sick!”

“Just calm down,” my husband said. “Lots of cultures eat bugs all the time. Protein. We have a certain allotted amount of insects and feces in all of our processed foods. You don’t think you eat bugs in every bowl of cereal, anything that contains flour?”

“You’re not helping,” I said. I picked up her bowl and took a peek. All I saw were chopped leaves of kale. Except one of them had an interloper, a small oddly shaped insect with its legs compactly folded against its exoskeleton. “Yep. It’s a bug. I think it’s a stink bug.”

“I’m going to be sick!” she shrieked and ran upstairs.

I showed the bowl to my husband, who pushed it away. “I don’t want to see that,” he said.

“I kind of wish she ate it, She would have never know it was there,” I said, looking at my own bowl, which contained the rest of my dinner. “I really liked that. I guess we have to throw the rest away.”

“Well, I’m not eating it,” he said.

“So, I guess I can’t really save some for S when she gets home from dance, huh?”

He gave me a look.

I got up and dumped the rest of the meal into the garbage. Then I went upstairs to soothe E, who was in her bed, looking at her phone.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I could have eaten that. I probably ate its eggs. It’s probably infesting my intestines as we speak. I’ll be dead before breakfast.”

“Seriously?” I said. “There are no eggs implanting in your digestive tract.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because I cooked it. No eggs would still be viable. I suppose that’s the end of kale for a while, huh?”

“Six months at least. No leafy greens for at least six months,” E declared.

“But it’s salad season,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“At least you know it was organic,” I said before gently closing her bedroom door and going back downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes and mourn the rest of the meal, lying in the top of the trash can.

When S got home from dance, she ate a frozen dinner, but it was also organic.