Au Naturel

I know that it is healthier for me and my family to eat locally grown foods fresh from the garden. That's why I stopped by our pitiful excuse for a Farmer's Market yesterday where there are two vegetable stands and two homemade soap stands, along with some fresh-baked goods.
I bought some peppermint, tea tree hand soap and then got down to the business of buying vegetables.
Not a lot is ready to be harvested here in Ohio. I bought two zucchini with shiny green peels, two tomatoes that need a little more time on the window sill to ripen, some small red potatoes and a big green cabbage.
When I got home, I pulled off a few of the showy outer leaves of the cabbage and flushed it with water to get rid of the dirt that gathers around the stalk. Then I set it upside down beside the sink where it stayed until I got home about 8 p.m. from a marathon swim meet.
Around 9:30, when I thought I had the energy to get up and eat something, I decided a few slices of cabbage would be a healthy snack. I pulled off another outer leaf of the cabbage and it felt a little slimy underneath. How many of the outer leaves are you supposed to pull off, I wondered. Then I saw a couple of tiny, quarter-inch slugs. They really were too small even to be considered slugs, more like snail wannabes.
So I pulled off their leaves and a few more then a few more just to be sure.
At this point, having dealt with dirt and slugs, I really didn't want to eat the cabbage. I was feeling a little queasy.
I reminded myself that the reason cabbage in the grocery store doeosn't have slugs is that it is sprayed with toxic chemicals to kill things, which is probably much worse for me than anything left behind by the slugs.
I forced myself to eat a wedge of cabbage sprinkled with salt.
I guess it's a good thing I didn't grow up on a farm. Then again, I'd probably be much thinner if it were down to picking off bugs and slaughtering chickens.