Thursday, March 25, 2010

Sieves and blueberries and warm, soapy water

Although I don't post photos of my breakfast any longer, I still eat it every day. Doing the photos really created a habit, so now I start the day with my poached egg whites and fruit. I've stopped the orange juice, but still have my huge latte. Life is good.

Our markets are full of ripe, beautiful blueberries from Chile. For years I boycotted Chilean products because of the country's miserable human rights policies and Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, las madres de los desaparecidos. Photos of those women made me weep. But I believe that the present goverments in Chile and Argentina are better than the old, and it's good policy to support South American farmers who aren't growing drugs, so I now buy blueberries from Chile.

This morning I rinsed the blueberries as usual, using an old aluminum sieve that came from my parents' house, rinsed them in running cold water to get them clean, shook the sieve to remove any excess water, and dumped the berries into two blue and white bowls. If I were still taking photos, today's would have been a pretty one.

I dumped the sieve into a sink of warm, soapy water, and wondered why I had done so. If rinsing the berries in cold water was sufficient for something that I was going to ingest, why did I feel the need to wash the sieve with soap? Wasn't water good enough? Wasn't it already clean?

I do this with measuring cups too, glass cups that measure water go into the dishwasher, and I don't know why. As water supplies dwindle, perhaps I need to start examining what I wash that really doesn't need washing.

The blueberries were lovely, crisp and sweet.

1 comment:

Irene said...

You've come to your senses. I never wash anything that only has been in touch with water, except a glass I drank from. We're a wasteful society, let's not deny that. All that water that needs to be won and cleansed and purified. It all goes down the drain.