It's Been a While...Time to Change the Game

It' s been a while. See what working full-time and coming home to a second full-time job (raising a family) will do to ya. I'm not complaining...well maybe just a little, but I love my family so much that it's really unfortunate that they have to be on the other end of a grumpy mama coming home from a long day's work. The last time I wrote something here was a year ago. Is this going to be a yearly blog? I think not. I feel that there needs to be more dialogue on what is going on in the world and the bay area so that we can do something about it. People have been running around in such a stupor that no one stops to think about the big picture. Everyday it becomes more clear that people are suffering financially and people want to work, but Washington is controlling us. Think REAL hard about what needs to be done because we've got a lot of people power and a lot of folks with time on their hands.

Today the topics are:

• The Organic Divide
• Edible Candied Flowers?

The Organic Divide

So I work for an organic produce distributor. We are fortunate enough to be doing fairly well amidst the economic downturn. We are also fortunate enough to get training on important issues pertaining to our business and of course promoting organic agriculture. It strikes me that many of our customers are of the affluent white middle class type and (I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this) that kind of bugs me. I am white, but definitely not affluent and growing up in the city I see something innately wrong with a system that only caters to one group. Naturally organic produce is of the most wholesome kind & because we support many small farms (we rock for doing this, by the way) prices are higher than product from a large distributor who sells conventional produce and can get a higher yield due to all the pesticides they have knowingly infected our fruits and veggies with. Why should poor people have to put up with this? Why should companies prosper from poisoning the people? I'm not just talking about consumers, I'm talking about farm workers. Someone once asked me "why do you care about eating organic?" and I replied, "because I don't want crap in my food. Who wants crap in their food when they can have crap-free food?". Now I'm neurotic (well I was a tinsy bit neurotic before). I check labels religiously and turn my nose up at conventional offerings as if they were tainted...what a snob & I hate snobs. I've had to grapple with the preference of being a snob over excepting cut rate faire. I want to give my kid organic milk even though it is 4 times more expensive than conventional milk. She's my baby, she is still pure and she deserves it, but doesn't every kid deserve this? My kid isn't any better or more loved than anyone else's kid just because she's mine. I went to the local big Asian supermarket the other day and the only organic thing there was soy sauce. I found that amusing. I can't really say why, but it was. I bought some produce and it was damn cheap. I wanted to put my neurosis in check. I brought home a package of small pale green zucchini on a Styrofoam plate covered in plastic wrap for a buck fifty. Yuck....they tasted so horrible. Maybe because I have been blessed by the bounty my work has to offer I can now taste the pesticides. This did not taste right and I let my daughter hurl them at the compost bin one by one. Well the organic divide is not right and if I can find the time to write one more blog post, I can find the time to work a little harder at improving this issue. There will definitely be more posts on this matter in the future.

Some articles I've been reading about the organic divide, aka the vegetable divide, aka the green divide:

Walmart Saves the Day (hahahahah)
The Poor Get Diabetes, the Rich Get Local and Organic

Well this is a start anyway. I mean how much can you research at a time when you have some one screaming in your ear "what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?what are you doing?"...ahhh the lovely 2's.

Edible Candied Flowers?

I just want to pay a short tribute to edible candied flowers because I think it is a really cool idea. We sell edible flowers at my work, pansies and marigolds and some others I believe. I would really love to candy some and place them on top of cakes and pastries. How fanciful of me! Even a poor mama can think of pretty and elegant projects. I thought about it and then I thought about my daughter thinking that all flowers are edible and not knowing the difference. That would be bad. This goes on my list of things to try when the kid gets older. After doing a bit of research I found a pretty picture I would like to share here:



Here's a How To on Making Them

Well, I can't believe that I've gotten away for this long. I've gotta go cook some pork & truffles (from work again, see how spoiled I am) and plan an Easter egg hunt. Sionara (if that's how you spell it).