A week or two of a healthy vegetarian and musical diet

After all that meat, all that butter and cheese, I'm focussing on vegetables for the next few weeks. It's getting warmer, more farm stands are open, our little local farmers' market actually has some locally raised edible produce, and so our kitchen here at Flintstone Manor is knee-deep in things that need to be washed, peeled, rinsed, scraped, hulled, stemmed, cored, bagged... that, of course, is a major reason why people on a vegetarian diet tend to be slender. All that work has to burn calories, right?

And to take it to the next level, I must have vegetables playing a larger role in my life, must be more connected to growing things. Or to things that other people grow, more accurately. Must connect with things that come from the earth. Let's see. My summer tees and pants are cotton, which comes from a plant. And the rubber on my shoes dripped off a tree. So far so good. I'm going to table the question of cosmetics and hair products until completely unscented versions of "natural" products are invented. Can't stand the idea of going around smelling like a fruit bowl. This time of year, could easily draw flies or other wildlife, which I would mercilessly swat. Of course I could add the tiny corpses to the compost pile, along with all those peels and scrapings, but that means I would have to have a compost pile and a fenced and tended plot of veggie plants to spread the compost on. This sounds like two nasty things: work for me and
cannibalism for the plants.

So in seeking to surround self and loved ones with the magically soothing spirits of vegetables, I turned to the geniuses of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. This is their latest album:


They are serious musicians, with a serious concert schedule. When they arrive in town, they go to a market and purchase an assortment of fresh vegetables, from which they create the musical instruments for the evening' s performance. Then they create the instruments.


Then they perform classical music on them.


Then they cut up the instruments into little pieces, make vegetable soup, and eat it. Here is a link to their website http://www.vegetableorchestra.org/videos.php
which includes some videos of them in action.
How do you surround yourself with magically soothing spirits?