Passion

I recently went to see Maggie Beer, our great South Australian icon, talk about good food for all, about everyone having access to fresh, home cooked, nutritious food.  Maggie's focus was on providing food that not only looks good, but tastes good, is fresh and nutritious for people in elderly or dementia care homes or receiving meals on wheels.  It was her passion for this that infected her audience and I'm sure inspired most to go home and research a little more on this topic, because let's face it, if we haven't got family or friends needing care, we may one day need it ourselves and the thought of spending my last years eating grey, tasteless mush doesn't fill me with much joy!
It was Maggie's passion for her subject that was so inspiring.  It got me thinking about my passions and what drives me.  In the description of my blog above I used the word passion to describe how I feel about gardening for my own culinary purposes and baking for my family.

Then my train of thought progressed to where this passion came from.  It probably amuses most of my family that I would describe myself as having a passion for any part of the kitchen, except for eating!  You see, I used to despise cooking.  Cooking and baking is something that chose me rather than I chose it as a focus for my current life.  It is my passion to put good, nutritious food into our bodies.  Food that has been grown in my garden without chemicals and cooked from scratch. 

I know what is in my food.  Again we had food withdrawn from our supermarket shelves this weekend due to a risk of contamination.  This isn't our first scare of contaminated food and I'm sure it won't be our last.  So it gives me satisfaction that I have been able to provide my family with some of our own fruit & veg from our garden.  It's passion in life that can drive what we do and bring us so much satisfaction.  It's not only the end result, a healthy home grown meal, but its the process in learning, trying, our thirst for knowledge that inspires us to continue to learn, keeps our drive and satisfies us.  Having a passion in life is so important, it gives us a sense of purpose and hopefully a little happiness that we are achieving something personal to us.  It delights me when I harvest from my garden,

but sometimes things don't grow as I had expected (I have no corn on my corn for a second year in a row!).  And once I have eaten a delicious meal cooked in my kitchen, from scratch with family and friends I couldn't be happier.
Love
Emma
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