granola with extra fruit

California is called the Golden State, but it would rather be called the Green State. There may very well be more vegans than Republicans in the Bay Area, and people say "organic produce" and "locally grown" as if they were holy words. I admit that I have some green tendencies -- I bring my own bags to the grocery store, and I drive a Prius, but I draw the line well short of growing my own vegetables to feed to the chickens I'm raising in my backyard in order to be 100% sure that they produce organic, cruelty-free eggs. (Yes, people actually do that. It's commendable but insane, especially if the people have jobs and kids. Who has time to tend to chickens?)

I've met many people who are at various crunchy stages on the granola continuum (see chicken owners, above), but I met my first completely, ridiculously over-the-top one recently. Oddly enough, she is originally from Texas, not a state I really associate with crunchy granola types.

Over dinner, this self-proclaimed "free spirit" informed us that:

(1) She and her husband still "co-sleep" with their two kids (ages 7 and 10) in one bed.

(2) She is a recent subscriber to the "raw food" movement, and will be getting her very own food dehydrator soon.

(3) She only gives her children raw milk, because heating the milk during pasteurization kills all the good stuff (presumably she meant something other than dangerous bacteria), leaving nothing but "cow pus." (Is "cow pus" more nutritious if it hasn't been heated? If she thinks milk is basically just pus, why drink it at all, heated or unheated?)

She spouted a lot more entertaining fruitcake dogma that I won't go into. What I love, though, and what she doesn't know, is that her husband secretly gorges himself on chicken wings and pizza when he's at work. I don't blame him, if the food he gets at home is not only raw, but dehydrated. Yum.