Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value. Breeding to increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability. Bizarre as it seems, we've accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: "Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self."
Barbara Kingsolvermy own relationships with the animals in my life are absurdly complex: Some I love, some I eat, and the scraps left over from the ones I eat, I feed to the ones I love.
Barbara KingsolverIt's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise, ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life.
Barbara Kingsolver