Next week CLEAN FOOD author Terry Walters and I will be cooking together at one of the homes featured in Not So Big Remodeling (JOIN US). Terry inspires me. Terry has a message that we are all eager to hear. Like this call to action from her blog:

We sit on the sidelines, watching, waiting and criticizing. We want change, but we hesitate to give up convenience. We want better meals, but we struggle to find the time or motivation to return to the kitchen. We want fresh and clean food, but we don’t know where to find it or how to make it accessible and affordable to all. We spend hours watching reality TV, but we are leaving our own realities – our health and the health of our families, communities and land – in the hands of strangers.

The time for reform is now and no individual holds the key to your future more than you. Our country’s policies may be changing around us, but we are the greatest conduits of reform. Only you can hold the intention to heal in your heart. Only you can reallocate your time to create more time for cooking, shopping and nourishing your unique constitution. Only you can set the example that your children, your friends and your community can follow. Only you can create the demand for the foods and farms that you want at the top of your food chain. Don’t wait for change to be handed down. Create the change you want to see, one choice at a time, and pass it on to all those around you.

Eat Clean and Live Well!

Somebody say “Amen!”

Here are a couple responses. The first is about this:

“Create the change you want to see, one choice at a time, and pass it on to all those around you.”

A recent article in the NY Times magazine called attention to “Social Contagion”. It turns out that the choices we make directly effect those we are connected to (and get this, even those two connections away). You are likely to smoke, if your friends smoke – and vice versa. Same goes for how you eat.

When I find Terry’s book in many of the homes I visit (I’m a residential designer) I recognize that the “choice” to eat clean and live well is “catching”. When social conversations inevitably turn to the topic of food and I describe how Terry’s book lives open on my counter, and why, the response is often “I’d like to eat like that.” It’s catching.

Next thing you know there is ume plum vinegar and sesame oil in the pantry and deep greens coming home from the market (farmers hopefully). Things change. And we change. And so do those around us. Terry reminds us, and my experience reinforces this, that change happens one choice at a time, one day a time, but is magnified, for good or ill, every time we break bread.

We need to make good choices, and pass them on.

The second thing is about this:

“Only you can reallocate your time to create more time for cooking, shopping and nourishing your unique constitution.”

This is the other choice, and maybe the harder one. I just watched a video titled “Workers of the World: Relax”. It described how global prosperity was used by Americans to acquire things, but in Western Europe they acquired time. We work to have more. They work to do more. At the conclusion one man exclaimed, “Happiness is not having more, but being more.”

I think Terry is issuing us the same invitation.

Watch this short video from CPTV’s “All Things Connecticut” to get a “taste” of Terry and her message.