There are realistically two ways of getting by in life; one is by earning enough to pay for everything, and the other is having the ability to make everything from scratch. If you do the math, it all boils down to the same thing: obtaining the basic necessities (at least) for our survival. Upon visiting a rural household, I realised how much we urban souls don’t know. We haven't as much to be proud of, as far as making ends meet from the bottom up, considering that all we can actually do is go to a supermarket and buy stuff off the shelf. At the house I visited, I noticed household items that I didn’t relate to, things I'd never touched, tools I wasn't even sure I could use if I had to. There was the mortar and pestle in place of a food processor, huge sacks full of unprocessed paddy and wheat which I later learned would be converted into rice and flour, and even cows and chickens to provide milk, curd, butter, cheese, and eggs. For dinner that day, we had fish from the nearby river, too. Talk about fresh food, for those who eat frozen meat all the time.
I don’t want to judge the folks who don't live in the cities, saying they are backward or old-fashioned while we are modernized and educated. But there is one thing I do know and can speculate on: that left in the most hostile environments, they will be the ones making it through to the other end. And trust me--with food, it’s best to know where things come from and exactly how they get to your table. For a long time I believed that rice sprouted into existence as the rice as I know it (white, long, puffy)--not the brownish red grain. Fancy that. There's knowledge, for you.
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