Pricing Convenience

This is my 1,000th post on this blog, despite not being my original information. I'm looking forward to starting seeds as the weather begins to warm and melt the snow cover, and plan on a larger garden than I intended this due to what I fear is more rising food costs. Growing more food and cooking from scratch also means looking at what others do as short-cuts in convenience.

Today everything is convenient. You cook your meals by pushing a microwave button. Your car shifts itself, and your GPS tells you where to go. If you go to a  public restroom, you don't even have to flush the toilet! This tedious chore is a thing of the past because the toilet now has a small electronic "eye" connected to the Central Restroom Command Post, located deep underground somewhere near Omaha, Neb., where highly trained workers watch you on high-definition TV screens and make the flush decision for you. ("I say we push the button." "Wait, not yet!")

So we have it pretty easy. But we have paid a price for all this convenience: We don't know how to do anything anymore. We're helpless without our technology. Have you ever been standing in line to pay a cashier when something went wrong with the electronic cash register? Suddenly your safe, comfortable, modern world crumbles and you are plunged into a terrifying nightmare postapocalyptic hell where people might have to do math USING ONLY THEIR BRAINS.

Regular American adults are no more capable of doing math than they are of photosynthesis. If you hand a cashier a $20 bill for an item costing $13.47, both you and the cashier are going to look at the cash register to see how much you get back and both of you will unquestioningly accept the cash register's decision. It may say $6.53; it may say $5.89; it may be in a generous mood and say $8.41. But whatever it says, that's how much change you will get because both you and the cashier know the machine is WAY smarter than you.

I tried for several painful minutes to show a neighbor’s granddaughter how to do long division, at which point she gently told me I should go back to watching "Storage Wars" and she would figure out long division on her own. And she did. I don't know where she got the information. Probably from the Internet.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304675504579391143240721978

Affording groceries

With the severity of this winter across much of the US, coming food prices are starting to worry me. I had planned only a small garden this summer due to my health issues but I need to re-think that plan because I NEED to eat healthy foods.

I just paid almost $17 for two grass-fed beef shanks which are usually a cheap cut of meat, and lemons (not even organic) were just barely under a dollar each.

Here are a few sites with information, although I don't agree with some of them that are merely cost-cutting without addressing healthier foods. No doubt bulk fills our stomachs, but does it make or keep us healthy?

Affording groceries duringtimes of rapid price increases

During the past two years alone, the price of some household staples such as bread, milk, and eggs have increased in price by as much as 69%, while the median household income has only increased 1%.

YouTube

Food prices soar as incomes stand still

Soaring Food Prices: CompareCost Increases

Money Saving Tip: Rice, theUltimate Budget Extender

•In Soups and Stews that call for diced potatoes, use uncooked rice instead. Allow half an hour for soup or stew to simmer so rice can cook.

•Use cooked rice in place of oats or bread crumbs in meatloaf and hamburger patties to make them go further.

•This is not food related... BUT keep a rice hot pack around the house for those aches, pains, and headaches that arise from time to time. Take a clean tube sock, fill halfway with rice, and tie a knot in the end. When you need a good hot pack, just heat in the microwave for about a minute or so. Be careful because it gives off a moist heat and can burn skin if too hot when placed directly on it. This is a long lasting heat source that can be made in a jiff!

Junk DNA and Hope

A different kind of post for me... "junk DNA".

We all carry what is called junk DNA, which is our DNA for which no discernible function has been identified.

There have been a few books written in the last few years about Indigo Children, and those traits are very much like the Star Children in a recent history channel story. Star Children, like Indigo Children, are said to possess psychic, spiritual, and other extra sensory abilities to bring about peace and topple corrupt systems. 

Could this just be activation of some of our junk DNA? 

If it's true, does all this indicate Hope for this lovely blue planet we inhabit?

Weather takes its toll

The weather takes its toll... we've gone days/weeks with frozen pipes and loss of electric power, not to mention the apathy that sets in when nothing works.

Here's a couple of links you may find interesting. I know I have posted before about the adulteration of extra virgin olive oil, and here's an update. The second link is good news on the food front.

Extra Virgin Suicide

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/24/opinion/food-chains-extra-virgin-suicide.html?_r=1&smid=tw-share

California Legalized Selling Food Made At Home And Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses

http://www.forbes.com/sites/instituteforjustice/2014/01/29/california-legalized-selling-food-made-at-home-and-created-over-a-thousand-local-businesses/