This afternoon, I whipped up the greenest lunch in my culinary history to date. Seriously, it was squeaky green with an extra side of leaves. By happy coincidence, it involved no meat, the production of which takes an enormous toll on the environment. On occasion, I must admit that I enjoy a bit of lean flesh (well-done, thank you very much) but my increasing eco-consciousness and recession-deflated finances have largely contributed to my willingness to find alternate protein sources. I think that Greenwala’s own Jonathan Good previously referred to this phenomenon as recessionitarianism. I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself, though – I’m just “not into” grilled animals as much as I used to be. I’d prefer them to frolic on hills and dales…but that’s a whole ‘nother topic for a rainy day.
Anyway, let’s get back to my remarkably green lunch. Aren’t you kind of curious what I could have possibly thrown together to make me feel so cockle-doodley-doo cheerful? Well, for one thing, the final ingredients were sourced entirely locally…so local, in fact, that I never even had to leave my house. Hey, that means that no fossil fuels were used – and that’s pretty good, right? It was purely veggie-tiferous and yet surprisingly stick-to-my-ribs mmmm-mmmm-good. I think I might have even experienced a bounce in my step shortly after eating my super awesome green-to-the-max lunch.
And to think, it all started with a big glass jar perched on my windowsill. I’ve been doting over this simple jar filled with room temperature water and organic alfalfa seeds for the better part of a week, and — hurrah!—I was finally able to reap the home-grown sprouts of my relatively passive labors. Wow, if you’ve never tried it, it’s kind of a thrill (I suppose I’m a bit of a plant geek for that reason alone). Now, for naysayers who are thinking at this very moment that I had to torch a certain amount of energy in order to obtain those seeds (unless they were bestowed upon me by some otherworldly act of immaculate possession) – haaa! If you count personal calories burned when I biked to my local seed supplier, then you’d be correct.
Shall we proceed to my greentastic menu? Brace yourself. All I did was yank a fistful of fully sprouted alfalfa out of the aforementioned jar and shove the wad directly into my mouth (not exactly lady-like) — and then I repeated the process over and over again until I wiped out my entire harvest. And you know what? It was the most delicious meal that I’ve had in a long time – not once during my chomping did I think that I should spruce things up by incorporating additional ingredients. Okay, so I may be just a little weird – I mean, who REALLY eats one ingredient for lunch? A pile ‘o bread? A bowlful of apples?? A bucket ‘o chicken??? (Hmmm, maybe that wasn’t such a good example.) While I may have resembled a happy-go-lucky cow chewing unceremoniously on huge tufts of grass, for a small moment in time (at least), life was blissfully simple and as good as it gets.
Print This Post
