State of Independence

By now I am sure most of you are working off the Fourth of July Barbecue – or at least I hope you are.  While I was walking Remington this morning, it occurred to me how little independence we have when it comes to food.  It’s something I have been thinking about a lot lately as I just returned from my favorite Caribbean destination –Montserrat where my friend Heidi and I formulated a new diet that I may turn into a book soon.

It’s not a new concept and it is one that I have been writing about for years but have always been forcing the issue – and that is one of eating what is around you regardless of carbohydrate content; as long as it is not man made, it should be healthy for you if you caught it, or grew it or it fell from a tree.  It was mango season and let me tell you, the streets were overfloweth.

Do you know what else is overflowing – Teresa’s boobs from her dress in last weeks episode of RHONJ.  Her hair was crazy (new stylist perhaps) and I have honestly never seen a dress quite like that – it literally stunned me and I don’t scare easily especially when it comes to fashion.

Back to my new eating concept.  Eating in the way I just described is sort of a locavore notion yet it goes further because on an island like Montserrat (small, where everyone knows your name – just like Cheers) you know where to get fresh eggs, who is growing the best lettuce or cucumbers; where to find the fisherman who just brought in the fresh fish.  So, I did an experiment and allowed myself to eat papaya and mangoes fresh from the tree.

For those who know me, I never eat fruit because I don’t really like them and tropical fruit are especially filled with sugar.  So despite eating fruit, I didn’t gain any weight.  I am not suggesting that you should add fruit back into the diet because I haven’t yet figured this out but being independent about the food you eat is definitely something that can be done in Montserrat and perhaps island dieting is the way to go if I can figure out how to do that here.

We are so divorced from where we get our food, how it is delivered to us; how long it has been picked before we eat it – all of which determines how healthy that food is for us.  I can tell you this quick story.  Two weeks ago, I was in East Hampton and bought lettuce and broccoli that had just been in the ground that morning.  The following day I went to my local farmers market in Manhattan and bought some bok choy, and zucchini.  The bok choy was almost bad by the next day that I had to use that and the zucchini was going bad the following day. Four days into this, the stuff picked from the ground in East Hampton was still as fresh as the day I picked it.

We are victims of the way our food is supplied to us and it is near impossible to be independent of this system and still eat – unless I want to pick fresh dandelion greens from the side of the road like my grandmother used to make me do when I was a child – I would be starving however by October.

Anyway, food for thought – HA – here is more food for thought. Teen Wolf has been fantastic this season if you haven’t seen it.  I couldn’t love the new RHONY with one leg any more than I already do.  The Radziwill on that show is turning out to be a bit of a dirty girl – see, the socialites aren’t too different than you and me (but I guess with Kennedy blood in her, it was bound to turn up sooner or later)

Thanks for helping to make my friends show, Baby Daddy a big hit on ABC Family and please tune into Awkward and watch my friend Barret turn it out.  And The Glee Project may actually be better than Glee.

I may not be able to be independent in gathering my own food but I can be independent in what I choose to eat and what I choose to watch.