Feb 20, 2010 16:09
Today was an AM half-day for work. Instead of cherry turnovers and a Coke, I had a pack of strawberry Pop-Tarts and caffeine-free Coke ..... but from what I read last night in The Omnivore's Dilemma, I actually had: pastry dough flavored corn, strawberry jam flavored corn, and caffeine-free flavored high fructose corn syrup.
I actually knew that a lot of our processed foods were high in corn content, I just didn't know that our proteins were being fed the corn, too. I even read where they're trying to genetically modify salmon (who are carnivores) to tolerate a corn diet. I'm thinking that they're talking about farmed salmon and not wild sockeye. If that happens, then our dietary source of salmon will remain unchanged because farmed salmon tastes like crap! (On the plus side, farmed shrimp would become kosher.)
On the way home from work, I was thinking about what we were going to have for lunch and what should be planned for dinner. The whole corn thing kept bouncing around my skull the entire time. Then, I realized that my veggie patch (which I started getting ready for my Spring planting) would also contain some bits of corn. I would have corn enhanced tomatoes, strawberries, green beans, and onions. Why? Because I use cow manure as a soil additive.
That's pretty messed up.
I'm actually writing this post while I'm waiting for my lunch to digest a little more, before I head back out into the veggie patch. M made lunch, which was slightly lower in corn. We had quesodillas. He uses an 8 grain tortilla, chicken, cheese, and balsamic vinegar in his recipe. Tonight's dinner will be BLTs on white bread ... so another meal slightly lower in corn.
Because I've posted so early today, I'll probably end up posting again later tonight.
In The Early Evening
I managed to add mushroom compost, manure and top soil to 3 different plots in the veggie patch. As an extra bonus, I found that two tiny little onions had survived not only a dreadful summer, but an unseasonably cold winter. Woo hoo!
I dressed lightly for the garden work because I knew I was going to warm up with the physical labor. Turned out that my heavy pullover wasn't light enough. I ended up breaking out into a good sweat. Then I couldn't take off the pullover because I'd probably catch a chill in the cool air wearing a sweaty shirt.
Usually when I start my late winter soil addition, my mind often wanders back to gardening experiences from previous years and farming stuff my maternal grandmother used to talk about. Grandma's family were primarily vegetable farmers, but there were a few animals, too. Her father, Grandpa Roy, raised harness racing horses and prize bulls. (Perhaps a little later, I'll write up the story about how Mom and one of my aunts forced Grandpa Roy into killing his prize bull.)
Anyway .... it was Grandma who taught me how to till in the additives to the planting beds. Sometimes when I'm working the soil, I can still hear Grandma telling me how to flip the cultivator and comment on how the soil looks. The tomato patch has some very nice soil this season. The sweet pea patch is looking better than last year. The green bean patch still has a lot of clay in it. And the corn patch has more of the same weeds growing as it did when I wrote off the corn crop last year. (I ran out of additives, so the corn patch is still uncultivated.)
I'm not going to try corn this year. The past few years have been such miserable failures. I think part of the reason is because I still need to build up the soil on that side of the veggie patch. For some reason, there's still more sand and clay than soil. I don't know what I'm going to plant there yet, but it sure won't be corn.
meals,
the omnivore's dilemma,
food for thought,
1st week of lent,
veggie patch,
menu,
corn-holio,
kosher shrimp