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Hungry Planet Supper Night
April 15, 2008
Recently a friend loaned us a copy of Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. An essay and photo journal featuring a breakdown of what 30 families around the world eat in a week.
The kids and I used the book as a world study curriculum for a couple weeks. Then recently Damien proposed we take the "study" a step farther and suggested our family eat simply for one day each week, following a diet similar to impoverished people around the world.
We decided we weren't ready for a whole day of beans, rice, gruel and weak vegetable broths but we were ready for supper once a week.
Tonight was the first night of the experiment. From a cook's perspective I like this experiment. With modern conveniences of electric stoves and pressure cookers I can cook beans very quickly so unlike many women around the world I don't spend all day gathering and cooking food. But a very simple meal of beans, rice and onions, for seasoning, is a life lesson for all of us in simplicity and empathy.
We're hoping our kids will grow in compassion and a desire for justice and not grow up to think their parents were wacko deprivation freaks.
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Granola Girl on Dec. 19, 2009, 5:29 a.m.
All children grow up to think their parents are wacko deprivation freaks. It still bothers me that my mother wouldn't let me ride standing on the front of the supermarket cart. I don't know why. I'm 26 and realize it is dangerous, but it still bothers me. It is so stupid.
My son will most likely always feel massively deprived that we don't have a T.V., don't celebrate Christmas, and won't allow video games in the house.
My son's dad is still sore about his father never teaching him the rules of football so that he could accurately discuss the matters of first-and-ten with his middle/high school friends. There are much greater atrocities, but that one is the one that sticks out to him.
None of us are really all that horrifically mistreated, but massively deprived by our parents for something :) The funny thing is, you probably have no idea what thing will come up in twenty years which was so devastatingly horrific upon their psyche.