For Your Convenience

Last night was sitting on the couch eating dinner, as I usually do since I don't have a dining table. What can I say? I'm a guy who lives alone, it never occurred to me that I should get a dining table. Still hasn't. Anyway, I tried to eat healthy, so I had some baby carrots, apple slices, dried cherries, walnuts, and a whole wheat English muffin with a little peanut butter on it. Proud of my dietary restraint, as I munched away I realized that I had spent a total of two or three minutes arranging my meal, because all of the food preparation had been done for me.
   The carrots came already peeled and washed and in a bag, the apple slices too, the cherries had the pits and stems removed and the walnuts were already shelled. The English muffin came pre-sliced. I did have to stir up the peanut butter - I get the kind that separates - but that was the only real effort I had to expend, aside from plugging the toaster in.
   Wasn't this a Twilight Zone episode? The one where modern man becomes so dependent on others to do menial tasks like peeling and slicing carrots that in the end he becomes irrelevant? When did I become so busy that I can't cut up an apple? Or slice my own English muffin?
   And what about the packages these things come in? When I slice my own apple the only thing left is the core, which could become compost. If I did that sort of thing. Carrots would leave tips and stems and peels. But when I'm done with my pre-sliced apples, and carrots, and cherries, and walnuts, I have four plastic bags. Thick sturdy things with zip-tops, that don't biodegrade in the least. I hope hermit crabs find a nice home in them when they wash back up on the beach.
   I'm not advocating a return to the 19th Century or anything - I'm not really down with the idea of eating what I kill - but, jeez, what is consuming all this convenience food freeing me up to do? Watch more TV? I do enough of that already, thank you very much.
   Time to make my own sourdough starter, churn my own butter, and smoke a ham. Or maybe I'll just hit Jack-in-the-Box, COPS is on tonight...