Perhaps it was serendipity that led me to read Caleb Stegall's essay on food and politics while biting into a tasteless apple. And is it the case that salmonella actually carries the flavor in tomatoes, because ever since that scare, every tomato I've had the misfortune to bite into has the flavor of stale air. Just a thought. Here's a money quote from Stegall's piece:

"To bridge this chasm requires a firm recognition that self-provisioning is dirty work done by sun hardened men who obtain not the rarefied sophistication of the credentialed witch-doctors and their organic brews but membership in the rarefied league of freemen who can pretty much tell anyone and everyone, as circumstances may require, to go to hell without concern for the consequences (taxman excepted).

That's the feed store definition of freedom in Jefferson (yes, that Jefferson) County, Kansas, though it's not taught much in social studies textbooks."