emphasized that fy. Something can be found in mine tailings and be necessary for life. Consider sulphur, which can be highly toxic, yet is one of the most common elements found in life.
True that. No need to get defensive.
Just pointing out that âthing good for youâ and âthing bad for youâ are rarely true, rather, a balance of things is that which people should pursue.
Yeah, Iâve seen my grandmotherâs old recipes, and they often include gelatin, Velveeta, âoleo,â Crisco etc. And the ones that Iâm willing to use have arcane measurements such as âNo. 2 can.â
There are other reasons. Economies of scale, quality of ingredients, as well as amount of direct human handling (labor) involved in each. Mass-produced food containing field-grown products, oils and sugars are harvested in bulk, separated mechanically, and processed in an industrial setting at unimaginably large scales, then packaged, never having been touched by human hands. This type of food possibly went through QC with computerized optical recognition, meaning that human eyes never even saw the product.
Compare that to broccoli, apples, peaches, bananas, potatoes, rice, etc., which may have been mechanically harvested, but most likely were hand-picked by migrant or cheap indigenous labor, since their eyes and experience are necessary to determining ripeness and first-pass quality. Then, this type of produce is sorted again for uniformity, boxed by hand, then distributed in a manner that requires more bulk and care to light, temperature and moisture. Once in the supermarket, there is an unbelievable amount of daily culling waste generated by the Capitalist requirements of supermarkets to display only produce in uniform perfection. Anything that is slightly off-shape, overripe, underripe, differently colored, or in any way nonconforming to a so-called âstandardâ is discarded.
This is why I like shopping at Asian grocery stores. Green onions (scallions) are a perfect example. In regular American supermarkets, green onions are bundled into little groups of about 12 stalks that have been decapitated to precisely 8", double-banded with blue rubber bands or secured with a branded paper-wrapped twist-tie or plastic binding tape. This sucks for a big reason. Cut stalks are hollow and hollow stems trap dirt inside and make them significantly harder to wash, if they came from a dirty field. Sometimes, I get lucky and they arenât dirty. But they are still hollow and the problem is always there.
Contrast that with green onions purchased from an Asian grocery store. The onions have the full 18" to 24" top, right down to the pointy point of each leaf, like alliums are naturally. No dirt gets in. Plus, more of the green stuff, which is delish.
So, what gives? Why so much care and attention to the form and length of the green onion, but no consideration given to the amount of dirt that gets inside them?!?! It is NUTS what Americans do to and expect of their vegetables. And if you think Iâm being stupid, this stuff goes back to at least 1947. Here, see for yourself.
https://ag.purdue.edu/hla/fruitveg/Documents/pdf/veg%20standards/onioncg.pdf
âWhen all the tops of the onions have been evenly clipped back in accordance with good
commercial practice, they shall be specified as âClipped Topsâ in connection with the grade.â
What? âGood commercial practiceâ? Why clip them at all? Just make sure they are fresh and spray washed and in my grocery basket and I would be perfectly happy. Methinks consumer demand is nonexistent on that topic and the USDA has a bushel of arcane rules and regs with no basis in reality. Which, penultimately, may be why produce and natural foods are so much more expensive than mass-produced food: bureaucracy. And ultimately: American stupidity.
Oh god. Now Iâm remembering jello dishes with random stuff suspended in the jello.
They will find one of those things in a landfill in 20,000,000 years and mistake it for amber.
Thank you! I personally would like to be as self-sustaining as possible. I try to grow only what my family will eat. Not always possible with all the environmental factors involved, but we do okay.
Also the USDA should ban the sale of alfalfa sprouts for human consumption, as they contain canavanine, which has no place at all in a human diet.
Youâre doing better than we are. I am so busy with work that all I have time to tend are basil, thyme and rosemary. Oh and screwing around on boing boing bbs when I should be working⊠la la la.
I traded making a living (?) wage for being a live-in caregiver to my 89-year-old mother, so the stress of working in an office environment has just changed to the somewhat more-or-less relaxed home environment, blah blah blah. Having a home garden to me, though, gives me a tiny idea of what early American farmers had to go through, since I use no powered tools to cultivate or plant. I donât have to drag water from a well, which is fine by me. And I donât use pesticides and I try to save the seeds from as many plants as I can to use next season.
And I too screw around on BoingBoing when I should be doing something, so itâs cool.
The color photos of those things should be used as crime deterrents. Or something like that.
Mmmmmmm meat jello!
Last night I was really tweaky and heartbeaty and thought, maybe all this bacon is giving me the blood pressure?
nope I remembered I had just eaten a massive coconut white chocolate cake for cheat day and it was basically my first processed sugar in ages
Thank you, now I am craving a white chocolate cake with coconut.
ARRRRGH!
What a foodbabe-level platitude.
Yes, THOSE! I found tons of pamphlets from the 1950s with those, and cookbooks too, in my momâs garage. Yikes!
Oh god I hate her with the passion of a thousand suns!!! UGH!! @#$#$%#$%@$%#
GIVE THEM TO MEEEEEEE!
I collect cookbooks, its a thing, I want them all, scan them and post them please!
