Legumes
Geoffrey C Porter
Growing up, kids would call me fat and fatty. As I aged, I’d encounter members of the opposite sex, and they’d call me fat. Sometimes behind my back, but other times to my face before they’d walk away.
They all said the same thing regardless of my charms or skills in bed. “We’d have fat kids if we procreate.”
Over the years, I have learned to manage. I love the food you see, all foods, it wouldn’t matter if it was healthy or poison. Alcohol was a problem for a while, technically speaking alcohol is food. It got out of hand. Rehab was no freedom and over the top structure.
I saw a new doctor. My old doctor retired, quite ancient. Never called me fat.
The new doctor seemed just out of med school, and the first words out of their mouth, “You fat.”
Like they couldn’t even be bothered to toss in an ‘are’ just you fat.
I had aches and pains. I had metabolic problems with my body. All that seemed to matter to them was the number on the scale.
I’ve tried every, “Eat This” “Eat That”, diet. Nothing worked. One friend tried to convince me I could be guaranteed to lose weight if I ate only broccoli.
Guess what? This body I’m in can gain weight just eating steamed broccoli.
Broccoli gets expensive too if you eat enough of it, and I rent a little apartment. I can’t start a farm.
The doctor looked me in the eyes. “You so fat, you need a dietary restriction on food purchases.”
A while back, grocery stores began to require ID with the purpose of limiting consumption and enforcing restrictions. I never thought it’d be used against me. I never stood up or protested.
Supposedly, a window existed when you could protest this government action, but a short window, and many love big government.
Law. Grocery stores, restaurants, ID.
This of course creates a black market, but I’ve always been a lone wolf, and I didn’t have a lot of friends who would break laws for me and sneak me food.
Supposedly, the right neighborhoods, guys on street corners selling food, cocaine, and heroin.
I didn’t want to go there.
The doctor put the restriction on the ID. I figured 2500 calories a day, at my mass and activity levels, the weight would come off.
No, the doctor put me down for 1200 to 1500 a day, but it couldn’t be 1500 every day, and this was sold to me as a flexible diet program. Low sugar. I could purchase almost any staples I wanted without above five percent of calories from added sugar. Everything with this distinction on sugar percent has a little red laser dot.
The hard part involved limiting my daily calories was forever controlled by my own willpower, and if I overate, I had less later in the cycle. God forbid, I let a food go bad or get moldy, this would have a direct impact on the rest of my intake.
If I used cooking oil, or fat cooked out of meat, I’d lick that pan. The hunger gnawing on my bones was dire for sure.
I started researching. It seemed growing legumes was extremely easy, and a well-documented process. I ordered the seeds. Apparently, they were chemically treated for better germination. Do not eat.
The dirt was cheap and locally acquired. Organic fertilizer seemed ideal on many levels, but chemical fertilizers were about two dollars a kilogram. I started with small pots in a windowsill, but soon I added some super bright one-tenth watt high intensity discharge LED bulbs. These lights weren’t bad. I put them on a timer synced with sunrise and sunset.
The seedlings did well, but I was obviously thinking on too small a scale. Bigger pots, more lights. Bigger plants.
I had my first harvest. How the flowers were pollinated, I’ll never know, but fruit formed. A tasty little snack, and the plants produced for weeks. The right fertilizers were pivotal to getting tasty edible specimens.
Keep the soil just moist enough, but not dry for too long a period.
Soon I was running with 10-liter buckets of soil, burning half watt bulbs that you definitely should never look at, for fear of burning your retinas. Daily legumes.
Armed men with badges smashed down my door.
I tried to explain I wasn’t growing marijuana, but either they didn’t speak English or simply were not talkative.
As they were processing me at the station, I tried again to explain no marijuana.
Dude looked up from his computer. “We’re not booking you for growing weed. We’re booking you for growing food on a medical restriction.”
Ouch.
