Food for thought…….
Some of the kids who are learning how to cook by helping me prepare a big nutritious lunch and dessert at the youth building on Wednesdays have to read Fahrenheit 451. These particular kids are in Honors English and headed in to the ninth grade. Most of them are finished and we’ve had some lovely discussions. One girl has not even started and with my offer of reading it with her on Wednesdays still out there, I anticipate a reread sooner than later.
A lot is said and reported about childhood nutrition and obesity. Childhood hunger continues to raise. I personally see the numbers of free breakfast and lunch and summer offerings rise yearly. I see varying incomes represented at the youth building. One thing that is always amazing to others, and even catches me off guard, is the fact that when offered healthy food……95 percent will take it over junk food. I personally don’t allow chips and candy etc to be setting out while we are cooking and waiting for lunch to be served. You may eat as we cook. Bonus to helping prepare the food, you get to be first in line when it is time to eat. Milk is a huge hit, and when offered over pop it gets picked 98 percent of the time. Milk at our current Aldi is 99 cents. Even at its highest price of 4.99 I prefer to offer milk. Juice is another huge treat. I have cooked various dishes, many vegetables, different fruits and have found that once you explain what the food or dish is, what it tastes like: hot, sweet, spicy; the majority of the kids present will at least try it. Non processed food does take longer to cook and prepare at times, but even the kids remark on how much more full they feel and how much longer they stay full. I’ve been compiling recipes and will be handing out little recipe books to those who want them at the end of the summer. My hope is that I have shown them that healthy food can taste good. Good for you food doesn’t always cost so much AND it makes you feel so much better. At the very least they know the food is made with love and that I always want them to be fed well. I fully understand when you have so much money or food stamps for food and when pop, mac and cheese in a box and frozen pizza are so much cheaper, you need to do what you need to do to feed your family. I just wish fresh fruits and vegetables weren’t so expensive and sometimes out of reach for so many. Trying to find inexpensive non processed food is a chore. Trying to teach little by little will hopefully start a change.
Peace.
FAHRENHEIT 451
Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.
Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.
This Cookbook has wonderful recipes and ideas
By showing that kitchen skill, and not budget, is the key to great food, Good and Cheap will help you eat well—really well—on the strictest of budgets.
Created for people who have to watch every dollar—but particularly those living on the U.S. food stamp allotment of $4.00 a day—Good and Cheap is a cookbook filled with delicious, healthful recipes backed by ideas that will make everyone who uses it a better cook. From Spicy Pulled Pork to Barley Risotto with Peas, and from Chorizo and White Bean Ragù to Vegetable Jambalaya, the more than 100 recipes maximize every ingredient and teach economical cooking methods. There are recipes for breakfasts, soups and salads, lunches, snacks, big batch meals—and even desserts, like crispy, gooey Caramelized Bananas. Plus there are tips on shopping smartly and the minimal equipment needed to cook successfully.
