by Arlene Wright-Correll

Created on: March 20, 2009

Just When We Thought We Were Winning

As an avid gardener, as a senior citizen on limited income, as a survivor of "the Great Depression", what we are dealing with today with our crumbling economy gives me a great deal to think about.

As a gardener, a supporter of local farmers markets, roadside stands and an advocate of bring back the Victory garden I find it really hard to control my anger at the immoral idiots in Congress who "feed" at the trough of the big corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM and others. These corporate giants are trying very hard to stop us from winning against inflation and the current economic crisis with our organic gardens, local farmers markets and roadside stands.

The current bills in Congress are basically all opposed to food safety and are all written by these giant corporations and supported by them because their bottom line is really important to them. There are two sides to each story as we are all aware of and many of these giant corporations support many local economies in this country. However, just s many of them have taken their businesses to countries where they can hire people at a lot less per hour than Americans will now work for and these are the companies that need looking at and looking at hard for many other reasons such as cleanliness and human rights. But that is another article at another time.

Anyone who looks at TV today will see that more and more of our food is prepared by large corporations and are deemed fast food. The latest is a whole meal of meat and veggies in a frozen packet and just put it in your microwave and "zap" it quickly to have a healthy, nutritious steamed dinner. Oh yeah? Forgetaboutit! It shows two people dining, so to me it indicates it feeds two. What about a family of four? Then I guess you need two packets. At what price? $4.95 a packet in our area and you do the math.

How about buying 1 chicken breast, some fresh veggies and slow cooking it yourself in a steamer? For $10.00 I can do that with 1 chicken breast, perhaps 2 or more if I hit the meat counter at the right time and find a sale with a use by or freeze date expiring the same day I am shopping, a bag of carrots, a head of cauliflower and broccoli and make that meal in less than 30 minutes and have enough veggies left over for 3 other meals and still serve 4 people! I have the pleasure of picking out what I want, washing it clean, the pleasure of creating the meal while enjoying a glass of wine, the joy of serving it

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