Smells Candies

On La Cienega Boulevard, just south of Jefferson, a large white building houses the See's Candies factory/plant/calorie cloud from heaven. I assume this building also serves as a distribution center, watering the West Coast malls and airport stands with their milk and dark chocolate bits.

They're making minty chocolates today, the scent of menthol puffing out of a vent somewhere. I can usually smell the day's work when I drive by every morning and you can imagine, for me, how amazing this opportunity is. I probably eat See's Candies twice a year but the yummy smells on La Cienega make dodging LAX-bound taxis every day infinitely less annoying.

Epilogue

Today, I write from a gardening workshop in Little Tokyo. Not knowing that the workshop would be conducted almost entirely in Japanese, I'm quietly typing away as the room of Japanese speakers takes notes on handouts. I've heard a few words I know; "soil", "loam", "mulching", "tomato"; but without the context of their usage, they are just gardening basics that will be Wikipedia'ed later.

Yesterday afternoon, behind a bowl of leftover ramen with its slices of fatty pork, I sat down to watch "Food, Inc.", lent to me by a co-worker. We both love food and gardens and we both work for a grocery store. At the end of the film, this last similarity would affect a sentiment in me that would not have existed 6 months ago.

I own "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and I haven't read it. Most of my "big food" information is gleaned from Chef Dong Choi's nighttime rants about corn or diabetes or from the fan postings on the grocery store's Facebook fan page wall. It's interesting that supposed fans wander by their own free will onto the pages of companies of which they clearly are not fans. It's so un-American (read broadly: socialist).

The film's chapters take you through the costs, secrets, consequences and coersions of the food industry. Nevermind the visuals of chickens who can't walk, their swiftly fattened bodies outpacing the maturity of their bones. Forget the image of a cow with a rubber stent into one of its stomachs and the scientist happily digging around to test the E. Coli it the ruminant (the verb of and after which this blog is named). Forget the shock value. The most disconcerting statistic I learned is that 4-5 companies in the United States produce about 80% of its beef. And the largest customer of beef (and potatoes) here is the McDonald's corporation.

It's nothing we haven't heard piecemeal or assumed. The scope of this continuity of supply and demand makes me lose my appetite. I don't eat a lot of meat and now, I can't look at the steaks and chops and thighs at the grocery store, at my place of employment, in the same, salivating way. I was lucky that I had already finished my ramen.

In an act of precognition, the producers of the film evaded the sense of helplessness pervading the bulk of the film and included a literal epilogue. In it, reminders and suggestions were typed onto the screen. Shop at farmer's markets...plant a garden...change the world with every bite. Stop working for a grocery store that sells questionably raised meat was not among them.

While I didn't understand the lecture, like any good student, I'm still taking my homework seriously. I'm about to pay for thyme, basil and tomato seedlings that will hopefully flourish in the indirect sunlight that finds the top of my air conditioning unit. In size and distance, it's far from a field but it holds my dreams of being a honorable and informed food enthusiast. Delicious.