Peer Response to Matt's Post: Prepare a Meal

Matt recently published a post about his experience with preparing a meal and how he felt about Michael Pollen's ideas about the circumstances that lead to the American public's acceptance of a "flood of damaging innovations...such as low-fat processed food".

In his post, he describes how he went about gathering necessary ingredients, preparing, eating, and cleaning up after his meal of an egg white sandwich, oatmeal, fruit, and toast. He did a good job of painting a picture of how he went around his kitchen doing all of the necessary things to prepare this meal and describing how he felt during and after eating this meal.

After talking about his meal, he described how he felt after eating. He was amazed that his meal was actually as healthy as he was told that it was and although it wasn't originally what he had planned on preparing, he was very satisfied with how it had turned out and was proud that he had prepared such a healthy meal, or so he thought. He goes on to describe how he felt about the ideas presented in Chapter 1, section 7 in Michael Pollen's In Defense of Food. Although he believed that he had just eaten a really healthy breakfast, he realized that some of the foods he had eaten weren't as healthy as he had thought. For instance, the fruit that he had eaten had been exposed to various chemicals while they were being grown. He believed that after reading this chapter, he better understood what Pollen had said about Americans and food, and felt that he realized that he wasn't eating as healthy as he should be most of the time, and that he could make a better effort to eat healthier on a more consistent basis.

Additionally, he linked his post to an article entitled "Take a Look at the Chemicals in Processed Foods". As the title suggests, it talks about all of the chemicals involved in the processing of foods. I believe that this was a good article to include in his blog post and enhanced the overall quality of his post.

Post 5: Prepare a Meal

For this blog post, we were required to plan and prepare a meal for ourselves, along with other people if we chose to. I decided that I would prepare spaghetti with meat sauce, a salad, and some garlic bread for my family when I was home one weekend recently. The first thing that I had to do was go to the store to get all of the ingredients that I needed. I made a list of the ingredients before I left to go to the store. The list included: spaghetti noodles, canned sauce, ground beef, lettuce, dressing, bread, butter and garlic salt. When I arrived at the store, it was relatively easy to find all of the things that I needed because I shop at the grocery store near my house often.

Once I was home, it was time to start preparing the meal. I started to brown the ground beef on the stove in a large pan, and started to boil a large pot of water for the noodles. While the meat was browning and the water was starting to boil, I melted butter and mixed in some garlic salt to put onto the bread before I put it into the oven to cook. By the time I had finished with the garlic bread and put it in the oven, my water was boiling and my meat was brown. I put the noodles in the water to cook, and stirred the canned tomato sauce into the browned meat to simmer and warm up on the stove. While the noodles were cooking, I washed and chopped the lettuce for the salad, and placed it in a large bowl. When the noodles were done, I strained them, put them back into the pot, and took the garlic bread out of the oven. Then we were ready to eat!

We all grabbed our plates and piled them up with food, then headed to the kitchen table. We all sat down, said grace together, and enjoyed a family meal. We always have great conversation at the dinner table as a family, and I always have a great time when my entire family gets a chance to sit down and eat all together. Since my brother and I are both away at college, we don't get to do it very often, so it was fun to be able to prepare a meal for everyone when we were all home.

After we had finished eating, everyone rinsed their dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher. My mom helped me clean the pans and everything, and we put them back where we had gotten them from in the kitchen. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal and thought that it was delicious! I was thoroughly satiated, and it seemed as though the rest of my family was as well.

I think that every step of the process made the entire thing much more fun! I really enjoy going to the store and buying ingredients for a dinner, and even though it wasn't anything special, it makes the meal feel more personal than going out and buying a pizza or going through a drive-thru to pick up the food. The fact that my entire family was able to sit and eat together also made the dinner much more enjoyable. It is always a great time when we all get together and have time to catch up with each other.

I definitely agree with Michael Pollan's statement that the acceptance of "a flood of damaging innovations...such a low fat processed food"has affected the eating habits of Americans today. Many of us are looking more for convenience and quick dining rather than spending the time to prepare and sit down and enjoy a meal, especially when we are dining alone. I believe that this over-emphasis on convenience and easy to eat processed foods has had an effect on the amount of people that are spending time to sit and eat with their family. I grew up eating a family dinner together almost every night of the week, no matter how busy everyone was, and I believe that it was a really important part of my childhood. Eating dinner together as a family is very important. As stated in an article entitled Family dinner: The value of sharing meals, it is stated that "sharing family dinners sets the stage for us to value our family relationships, rather than take them for granted," and this is the perfect way to describe why family dinners are so important. More Americans feel they need to spend more time with their families, and eating dinner together is a great way to start.