By John Matonich
I stuck my head in the refrigerator the other day (big surprise, I know) and reached for some milk and pulled my hand back when I saw the gallon jug I was about to glom onto had the word “organic” in big print on several spots on the jug. I almost started to scream before I saw my normal jug of 2% milk was wedged behind it. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I happily removed my milk jug and enjoyed not 1 but 2 glasses of my favorite white stuff. I asked my bride later about the foreign jug and she calmly answered that it was hers and my “inorganic” slop was safe and she would continue to buy it and support my bad lifestyle.
I have been dealing with Steph’s healthy eating habits for a long time and was just glad she was going back to drinking milk rather than some concoction that was green in color and came out of a blender. I was even happier that I wasn’t going to have to sneak normal milk in the house at midnight when I wanted something to go along with the store-bought oatmeal raisin cookies I snuck in the night before. I know Steph will live longer than I will, but I will go out with a smile and a cookie crumbs on my chest.
I do think this whole “organic” movement is a little much. At our house we don’t eat any kind of chicken that isn’t free-ranging (whatever that means) and Heaven forbid I should ask for pasta that isn’t whole wheat in nature or hand tossed in some home kitchen in Outer Pastolia. One good aspect is that we only have real butter on hand so toast is much better than before except I couldn’t identify the bread without a score card on the grain matter.
Job one this coming year once the snow melts sometime in July is to put up the greenhouse I bought Steph so she can raise her own produce. This will insure that we won’t be eating the chemically treated green stuff that lines the cooler shelves in the stores currently. I didn’t realize that tomatoes really aren’t red until the chemical dye is injected into the plants at the corporate farm where they are grown. I grew up in a house with a garden and I haven’t noticed any difference in look or taste between the ones I ate from my dad’s garden or the ones bought at the den of chemical iniquity called a grocery store, but obviously I have been brainwashed from years of eating potato chips out of a bag.
I enjoy teasing Steph about her choices, but I am proud of her research and regard for her health. She takes this very seriously and I am always impressed by what she learns, and of course if it’s on the internet, it has to be true.
This came to a head the other evening when I was watching a show called the “Billion Dollar Buyer.” The star of the show owns a ton of restaurants and hotels and looks for folks who he can buy supplies from and help them be successful. I keep watching it and trying to think of some wooden item I could make 2 million of and sell to his businesses. The last episode was about two gentlemen who owned a frozen drink business. Not any kind of frozen drinks, but ones made with alcohol. In other words, a booze slushy.
I really didn’t see this as anything novel and neither did the show’s star. He was even more unimpressed when he found out the cost of their product was about twice what he was currently paying. When he asked why the difference, he was told they used only organic items in their product. I guess organic ice and organic booze justified the difference in cost to these gents, but not to me and more importantly not to the star of the show. He sent them packing with their organic booze filled slushies under their arms. I chalked it up to a win for those of us in the same camp as the gi-normous company Archer Daniels Midland whose company slogan was and may still be “Better living through chemistry.”
After the show was over, I couldn’t help but raise my glass of inorganic bourbon mixed with fake sweetened coke zero and make a toast. I then went looking for some store-bought cookies.
And that’s the situation as I survey it …
After a 35-year career downstate amongst da trolls, during which he built a successful engineering and surveying business, John Matonich is back home in da U.P. His column will appear here occasionally, don’tcha know. His book “Surveyin’ Da Situation” is available on Amazon.com.
Image credit: Martin Bishop
Steph, you’re a saint to put up with this guy, although he gets major points for that greenhouse.
John, all I’ll say is that if you can’t notice the difference in taste between a home grown and a store bought tomato…..well, I guess I don’t know WHAT to say. If I were Steph, though, I’d use that as a rationale for keeping all the home grown for myself!
I just like tomatoes no matter where they came from 🙂 …
As I look around at shelves as I go grocery shopping and I see the words organically grown produce of whatever, I just shake my head and I will not buy it.
How does one know that it is really “organically” grown? There is known way to tell.
I do plant a small garden and have tomatoes and some other veggies in it.
When I grew up in the 1950’s my parents rented a house from people who had about 80 acres of land and a barn on it.
My dad was allowed to keep a cow in the barn. We got our milk from the cow.
I remember my mom or dad milking the cow ,by hand, and bringing it to house where they would skim off the cream and we drank the milk. I know my mother used to churn the cream into butter. That is not a fun thing to do.
Nowadays you cannot drink milk straight from a cow. Even if you own it and feed with hay and oats from your own property. According to the FDA and the USDA it has to go through processing at a dairy plant. Even if it is organic.
I remember my mother buying milk from a dairy farmer for $1 a gallon. It came right from the cow and was the best milk ever. The FDA and the USDA need to lighten up and drink some milk right from a cow. They may change their mind….
I wonder if you took an empty milk jug and filled it with Oreo-innards scrapings, a pat of butter and a pinch of salt, and mixed that all up with just the right amount of virgin snow from the back yard, not the side where the dog goes, but the back yard snow … I wonder if I’d have a selling product?
As long as it was listed as organic, I am sure you would…
I love Steph’s ideas about organic but just can’t bring myself to pay the outrageous prices. If I could grow my own I would because I was raised from a garden and love good, fresh produce. I have an unproven theory that the reason people live so long today is because of all the preservatives and chemicals in our food supply. Just sayin…….
My thoughts exactly…. Better living through chemistry !!
I agree, Judith. It really freaks me out: I bought a can of soup at Christmas time (which was December 2016) and the “use by” date is November 2018. Now those are some powerful preservatives!
P.S: Andy, Why haven’t we heard from Brenda Brissette Mata in a while?
Actually Linda Ann that isn’t much different than those folks who can there own stuff… it can last for years and doesn’t have much in the way of preservatives… we have a pantry with many jars of canned items…