Russ knows his TV remote and I know Parkinson's! I know too much about Parkinson's and at the same time not enough! I know PD drives our days in just about every moment. I know PD alters plans on the 'off' days and encourages adventures away from home on the 'on' days.
It seems easy for me to follow our emotional truths and write about our first-hand personal experiences. At my simplest level that means I write about Parkinson's. It means my words are a reflection of my days connecting my living actions and thoughts to the page. It has purpose beyond writing an experience. It gives me focus and a subliminal ability to process it all. Sometimes, with PD, it is about reacting to a moment. Sometimes that reaction can be less than admirable and by writing it down I am able to make sense of it and live with the reality.
I find reading those truths again and again can be both insightful and depressing. Reflections shine truth on our life and sometimes, as with a mole, darkness is preferred. That's when I come up with some inane memory to write about, like my last post about S & H Green Stamps. And yesterday... Russ was watching TV, navigating his choices with his remote, and a commercial about Kentucky Fried Chicken came on. At first glance I had no clue what the picture was showing, masses of brown crunchy blobs...of what?
But is the food of KFC today still the same as KFC in the 50s. I think not! The recipe is the same, but the ingredients are now highly processed, just about everything you buy in a grocery store has some processing. There are hormones, additives, preservatives, vitamins added in and fortified in some way, more calories than nutrients, artificial colors, or emulsifiers. It's endless. Obviously the flour of today used in the recipe is not the same as the flour of the 50s.
Though I proudly say I have not eaten at a fast food restaurant in a very long time, I can do a drive by, smell the air surrounding the restaurant and 'want' what they deliver. I want the salt, the sweet, and the fat... the companies have it down, the smell drives me. But KFC is new and different, even with the same recipe. Though I would probably love it I know it is drastically different than it was in the 50s and I know it has more to do with the agricultural industry than my habits.
Perhaps that memory has driven me to watch a few food documentaries like "Fork Over Knvies", "Food, Inc.", and "King Corn". Perhaps it's time to get "100 Days of Real Food" by Lisa Leake (Procrastination-2/15/15) out from the library again and do a second round of 100 days. It's great to write about what you know...