Today I ate a sandwich.
The bread, which I had baked yesterday and had proofed overnight, began before I mixed the flour water salt and yeast. We'll have to go back earlier than the long day in the fields when the farmers harvested and threshed the wheat, and before they sowed the seeds. I would claim too, this bread would not have exited the oven with its spongey chewy center and crispy crust, before the cultivars of wheat were naturally selected and bred into those which we enjoy. Its inception does not predate beginningless time, though when the evolution of the homo sapiens discovered fermentation and the breaking down of substances to synthesize into new forms of life, thus growing enough food to support more of its kind. Many thanks for all those conditions to occur, I love a good sandwich.
On the bread was a spread of hummus, which I also made the day before. After refining many recipes of friends, tastings at multiple recommendations of those on a life long journey to find the ‘world’s best hummus,' and experimenting on my own, I can now make hummus. This occurred through the many stories and meals shared during travels with Israelis in both Nepal in Israel. This adds a great list of places and people to be grateful for besides the farmers, and associate many memories with the sandwich on my plate.
The beans were purchased from the local co-op, with the most impressive bulk section I have come across in the North East (though I am not well traveled in this region of the world). Members bring their own bags and containers to minimize the packaging and ecological harm plastic creates with its inability to be ‘re’cycled or ‘up’cycled. Many more people in proximity of being apart of and responsible for the creation of the co-op to express my gratitude to.
Of course I will have to thank the neighbors, for they raised the chickens that popped out what is now the hard boiled eggs that I am currently digesting. And then there is the cheese. From another neighboring farm, whose goats are as happy as the grass that they fertilize, and the family farm who is nourished (economically, socially, culturally and spiritually) through the act of nourishing others.
I do not consider each facet every time I consume a sandwich. But this is an attitude of the integrated nature as opposed to the segregated nature of our culture that I am in the process of cultivating. Food and all design systems would do best to consider the producers, consumers, the communities and the planet, as they all effect each other.
Why gratitude? Gratitude -> Compassion -> Kindness -> Happiness
But the real reason…
Pausing for a second, and taking a deep breath, I find myself enjoying a better tasting sandwich!
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