rivettingKateTaylor

We’re still cooking meat over fire like the cavemen.

This comment from my brother-in-law tonight made me laugh. It’s so true! Thank you barbecue for taking me back a few thousand years (sorry I liked history but not science – is that back far enough?! If Jesus was born 2008 years ago then one must assume I’m way off base but this is not the time or place for a theology evolution debate!)

We’re doing an extension on the house to replace a bedroom with a bathroom and build on a new master bedroom. The budget should extent to a new kitchen as well if there are no hidden issues once work starts.

So here we are sitting in the current kitchen trying to dream up options for the new one (phoning local Mitre 10 kitchen consultant in the morning) when we get sidetracked into appliances, gas versus electric etc. Using an electric oven but gas hobbs is a distinct possibility when you think we could hook up the barbie to the same cylinder.

This is where the caveman comment came in. It made me laugh. It’s so true!

We have made huge gains over the past hundred years or so when it comes to communication, travel, entertainment… but not really the fact we still have to put food in our mouths and …. the other end. The fact that most food now comes out of boxes and packets is perhaps considered an advance, although the planet wouldn’t think so.

The kids got a couple of global issue-type books out of the library at the last visit (well okay they were my choices and I’ve spent more time looking at them than they have). They make sobering reading. Amazonian rain forest, mining tailings in South Africa, rubbish in Greece etc etc.

They’re only case studies but they show that we should be doing more every day in little ways to go back to the cavemen ways. Hunter gatherer ways. Growing our food. Only eating with the means of the environment around us.

Hey, I’m no saint. But we’re growing our own tomatoes and veges, our chooks give us eggs every day, we’re planting trees, we try to buy recycled packaging, I take my own cartons to the supermarket and say no to plastic bags in shops. We use eco-light bulbs and turn off appliances at the wall. We have a solar panel for our hot water. We turn sunshine and grass into mutton, beef and pork. My children don’t have a play station. And yet here I am, sitting on a sofa manufactured probably in some Asian sweatshop using vital energy sources to watch Grey’s Anatomy.

Not a battle I’m going to fight tonight.

Guess what we had for tea. Home grown lamb chops cooked with fire.