Making Dinner

It’s an ordinary meal with simple ingredients.

A pork chop, some roasted veggies, and a honeycrisp apple with almond butter.

The entire meal was made with a dozen ingredients.

Before I could sit down to enjoy this meal

I had to cook all the ingredients that needed cooking.

Before I could cook the food

Someone had to deliver a stove, An air fryer,

Pots and pans,

And kitchen utensils to an assortment of stores.

Before the cutting board where I so carefully chopped my vegetables could become a daily tool,

An entire tree had to grow tall,

Be felled by nature or man,

And get carefully carved

And sanded.

Before they could even roll out the steel,

They had to combine iron and carbon to create the steel itself.

And before that, someone had to mine the iron.

And before that, someone had to figure out where the iron sleeps in the earth.

And before that, the right combination of molecules and pressure had to come together to create the ancient ore that would one day become my purple kitchen knife.

I can’t even begin to fathom all that had to come together to create kitchen appliances.

And then there are the ingredients themselves.

Before I could enjoy a delicious pork chop,

A pig had to die.

Before that, someone at Rineer Family Farms in Pequea had to guide it from its pasture and into a truck.

Long before that,

Fences were built,

Land was designated as a pasture,

Water was poured,

And so was sweat - of humans and animals alike.

Before I could season any of my food,

People in factories all over the globe

Made plastic containers,

Filled them,

Sealed them,

And packaged them for shipping.

Before there was ground black pepper to add to a shaker,

The drupe of a pepper plant had to be

Harvested before it ripened,

Boiled,

Dried over a period of time longer than you’d think,

And ground down to an even, fine grain.

Before the paprika I love so much arrived in my hand,

A farmer in South America had to harvest the red plants from which it is made.

More boiling,

Smoking,

Drying,

Grinding.

The cayenne pepper, salt, and cumin all underwent their own journeys

That were similar to the pepper and paprika,

But also different.

Before I could peel the carrots,

Someone came up with a cheap and convenient way to make a plastic handle for a peeler.

Someone else perfected the angle of the blade.

Someone else had to pack it for distribution.

Someone else had to unload it off a truck at a store.

Someone else had to stock the shelves.

Someone else had to run the register at the store the day I bought it.

At least one other person had to transport it from Point A to Point B, and probably Points C, D, and E.

Before I could rinse the last of the dirt from the orange roots,

Plumbers and contractors and construction workers and city planners

All did their part to ensure I have clean, running water with the twist of a knob.

Before I bought the carrots to wash,

A worker at Wild Fox Farm made sure they were ripe,

Plucked them from the ground,

Gave them a shake or two,

And a rinse or two,

Sorted them into manageable bundles, Wrestled a rubber band around their stems,

Loaded them into a crate,

And loaded that crate onto a truck.

Before they were ripe,

They were watered,

Watched,

And fed so much sunlight they couldn’t help but become fat and sweet.

Before they were planted,

The field was tilled,

The soil prepared,

And a decision was made about which crops to rotate where in this year’s growing season.

Because farmers know: Plants take what the soil has to offer,

And they offer it something different in return.

It’s all about playing matchmaker with foliage and seeds.

Before any of the ground at Wild Fox Farm became food for crops,

Ben and Karah Davies saved up money and credit,

And finally, at long last, bought the 41 acres in Barto

After nurturing a dream

To nurture the earth,

That, in turn, nurtures me.

And while the carrots were becoming carrots at Wild Fox Farm,

Back over at Rineer

A bulb of garlic and a potato that would make their way to my kitchen

Were growing alongside the pig.

More farm laborers,

More life savings,

More dreams nurtured,

More nutrition for me.

Now, the broccoli is perhaps the most complicated in all of this.

Its path has been kept secret from me.

Because, you see, broccoli -

A contrarian of the vegetable world that insists on ripening in winter -

Is not in season.

Which means I don’t know what farm it came from.

I don’t know how many miles it traveled.

I don’t know where it was processed and chopped into perfect, evenly sized, florets.

I don’t know what became of its stalk.

I don’t know how many different inventions and machines it takes to create a sealed plastic bag with a barcode that gets stocked by a worker at Mom’s Organic Market.

I don’t know whether it was grown in manufactured winter conditions,

Or if it was manufactured in real winter conditions and flown from the Southern Hemisphere.

How it got from seed to plate is a mystery

That leaves me feeling troubled and grateful.

Before I could slice into the sweetness of the true-to-its-name honeycrisp apple,

A tree had to be planted in one of the neat rows of Beechwood Orchards in Carlisle.

The person who planted that seed did so knowing that it would be years

Before a single apple would adorn its branches.

And now that the apples are growing,

Plump and colorful and sweet and tangy and crisp and decadent as honey,

With the help of the bees that pollinate them,

Hands water.

Hands test for ripeness.

Hands harvest.

Hands rinse.

Hands pack.

Hands carry.

Hands load and unload.

The almond trees to make the almond butter were planted with just as much patience in another part of the world.

The olives for the olive oil, too.

Different languages gossiped around the different trees as different communities Underwent the same rituals of watering, pruning, worrying, and waiting.

And every single ingredient,

Whether I know the name of the farm where it came from or not,

Had to be driven to my city by a driver

Who stopped at a gas station

That is supplied by a chain of events

That involves oil rigs

And decomposing dinosaurs.

This simple, common meal,

Made with simple, common ingredients,

Took me less than an hour to make.

But it has been millennia in the making.

This simple, common meal,

Is a product of thousands and thousands of hands,

Years of labor and caring for plants and seeds and soil,

And some force in the universe creating an atmosphere

Where the weather was right enough

And conditions were good enough

To grow something as life-giving as food.

This simple, common meal,

Is a mind-blowing

Miracle.