Will I ever learn?

I've eaten a fresh diet for almost 10  years now -- and mostly so for much longer than that. By fresh, I mean not processed or minimally processed. Organic from my own garden or when available/affordable elsewhere. I'm not a purist -- I eat things like chips, and occasional packaged or canned items, but they are not a large part of my diet and many of those are also 'natural' and/or organic products. No artificial flavors or coatings for me. Just chips, mostly corn and rice, canned beans that are drained and rinsed to get rid of the chemical taste.

What this has done for me is make me really sensitive and aware to the taste of chemical crap in my food. So, I should have known better. I wanted to make my favorite senate bean soup, and instead of a ham hock that's mostly bone, I thought a thick slice of bone-in ham would make a good substitute. I saw, but ignored, words on the package, where the word ham was followed in fine print by the words and water product. OK, I get that they put water in it. I didn't want to read the ingredient label -- nothing of this kind, including ham hocks, is any kind of health food. I'm not a total fool.

But  -- I didn't expect the flavor, which is industrial and bitter, has an awful after taste and tastes like a whole lot of canned soups mixed together in a recipe (tried that a number of years ago, yuk!), or the smell, which is awful (from the perspective of someone whose life doesn't include those smells). Chemicals, preservatives, smoked 'flavor'. It ruined this beautiful soup, and I couldn't afford to throw it away, but in the end, I did. I was also ticked off because it used a pound of my wonderful  Rancho Gordo yellow-eye beans, which are pricey and unobtainable around here. Grrrrrrr!

I had a bowl of it, and while it wasn't awful, the chemical flavor overrode everything else and it wasn't the soup I am used to. I won't make that mistake again -- I don't like chemicals on or in my body. I really should know better by now, but it was only ham and water! How bad could it really be? Worse....

I was in a really good mood today before this happened. And I will be again. Soon.