I wonder is Jains have a visceral distaste for root vegetables? I ask this because I have developed one for eggs, and I might be moving in that direction with cheese. I consoled myself with the self-adjudication that, while I may be a thief (that is, happy to eat eggs and milk taken from the chicken and cow, respectively), I am no murderer. But eggs are now starting to seem to be too fleshy for me these days, and so I find myself avoiding them during my daily shopping trips (yes, I know, I have the greatest luxury of all, that of ample time). I gave up fresh milk long ago, and now only cheese remains in the stolen items category.
But what of bread made from wheat and even cauliflower? They are not root vegetables, but in the modern industrial mode of their cultivation and harvest, are not the entire plants destroyed? I hazard to guess that even the tomatoes and cucumbers I just ate came from a similarly destructive process. One of Hugh Grant's potential dates in the film, Notting Hill, a typically effete and overeducated Londoner, describes herself in some eccentric way, I cannot remember what she says exactly, explaining that she eats only apples that have fallen from the tree of their own accord.
But I wonder, going back to my opening sentence, if I will eventually develop a sensitivity to, for example, carrots, but not, plums, the harvest of the first requiring the destruction of the entire plant while that of the second does not.
Given that I have developed an almost Buddhist view of life, at least as it regards plants, as being more a force that enters and leaves bodies but never disappears or is destroyed, much like the scientific understanding of energy, rather than as a discrete quality that inhabits an organism at that organism's inception until its death, (I mean, come on now, who is winning, me or the weeds?), I am not sure that I will ever develop a visceral appreciation for a carrot as a living thing, in the same way that I have generated such a feeling for a chicken. This is a concern I addressed in a previous post.
What vegetables do I avoid, and why? Artichokes - simply too much trouble (well played, artie). Potatoes, generally, but not because they are rooters. I actually never buy or consumer carrots, but not because the idea of eating them seems distasteful in the same way that meat and now eggs and even dairy seem distasteful. I wonder if our prehistoric gatherer forebears were as likely to dig tubers as to pick fruit. Maybe there is something about picking a piece of fruit off of a tree, (Book of Genesis, noted), that is essentially human, more so than digging for potatoes. Our nimble digits seem to be more adept at the former mode of harvest than the latter, which would seem to call for claws and paws more than hands.
And yet, there is something perceptibly odd about the piled root vegetables in the market, mounded like a heap of fish hauled up from the sea, taken as they were from underground rather than from underwater, rather than snatched from the air: pomme de terre, as the French say so evocatively on this point: apple of (the) earth. Like they say about the oyster: It must have taken a brave person to be the first to try it.
But what of bread made from wheat and even cauliflower? They are not root vegetables, but in the modern industrial mode of their cultivation and harvest, are not the entire plants destroyed? I hazard to guess that even the tomatoes and cucumbers I just ate came from a similarly destructive process. One of Hugh Grant's potential dates in the film, Notting Hill, a typically effete and overeducated Londoner, describes herself in some eccentric way, I cannot remember what she says exactly, explaining that she eats only apples that have fallen from the tree of their own accord.
But I wonder, going back to my opening sentence, if I will eventually develop a sensitivity to, for example, carrots, but not, plums, the harvest of the first requiring the destruction of the entire plant while that of the second does not.
Given that I have developed an almost Buddhist view of life, at least as it regards plants, as being more a force that enters and leaves bodies but never disappears or is destroyed, much like the scientific understanding of energy, rather than as a discrete quality that inhabits an organism at that organism's inception until its death, (I mean, come on now, who is winning, me or the weeds?), I am not sure that I will ever develop a visceral appreciation for a carrot as a living thing, in the same way that I have generated such a feeling for a chicken. This is a concern I addressed in a previous post.
What vegetables do I avoid, and why? Artichokes - simply too much trouble (well played, artie). Potatoes, generally, but not because they are rooters. I actually never buy or consumer carrots, but not because the idea of eating them seems distasteful in the same way that meat and now eggs and even dairy seem distasteful. I wonder if our prehistoric gatherer forebears were as likely to dig tubers as to pick fruit. Maybe there is something about picking a piece of fruit off of a tree, (Book of Genesis, noted), that is essentially human, more so than digging for potatoes. Our nimble digits seem to be more adept at the former mode of harvest than the latter, which would seem to call for claws and paws more than hands.
And yet, there is something perceptibly odd about the piled root vegetables in the market, mounded like a heap of fish hauled up from the sea, taken as they were from underground rather than from underwater, rather than snatched from the air: pomme de terre, as the French say so evocatively on this point: apple of (the) earth. Like they say about the oyster: It must have taken a brave person to be the first to try it.
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