Response to "Industrial Food"

After looking over some of the suggested websites reviewing Industrialized food and its cost, it helped me to better understand how everything we eat and/or purchase having to do with food is only apart of a huge chain of costs that we as americans suffer through once again just by being citizens of this great country. before, when i would go food-shopping with my mother i would look at the price of the fresh meat and see that each was different only by a couple of cents. i thought that was only because of weight of the animal, not because of its shipping, its packaging, its corporation costs etc.

I watched the "animal cruelty" video and watched some of the actions that the workers do to the chickens, turkeys, hens, cows, and pigs. I always knew that they suffered and were killed for our own eating habits but i didnt reallythink of the other debatable things that they do, such as skinning them alive, or branding them w/o painkillers, or stuffing them into enclosed boxes and etc. The way they treat them is just plain wrong i thought, and all i could think about during, besides the killing, was how can those workers do they're job for 8 hours a day 7 days a week without being bothered by the squeling and fighting of the dying animals.

1.) http://www.alternet.org/story/13904/
2.) http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp

Food Assignment 7

Find a simple and delicious sounding recipe using one of your favorite foods - one with easy-to-find and not-that-many ingredients. Could be a dessert, appetizer, soup, or main course. Post it up online now, and then gather the materials and make it. Post a picture of how it turned out and your (and friends) response to it. Bring it in to class and share it with a few people for a couple points of extra credit on the assignment.

Upside Down Pineapple Cake
2/3 cup butter - 3/4 cup brown sugar - 1 can pineapple slices - maraschino cherries
...(if not using regular yellow cake, recipe for scratch cake)
1 cup flour - 1 teaspoon baking powder - 1/2 teaspoon salt - 2 eggs - 2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk

Grocery store and Habitual Food

Whenever my mom goes food shopping and i accompany her, i notice that she starts off at the fruit and vegetables section, mostly because it is the first section you see in the Trade-Fair entrance that we go to. She'll buy both bananas and plaintains, both having sales that usually look like "10 for $1". we also buy mangos, which is mainly for my Macaw Bird. W get grapefruits that is meant for my Brother's new diet, but i eat them too. We buy lettuce, tomatoes, and many more that is listed from my in-class list. Most of these vegetables go into our dinner meals as my mother includes them into her cooked meal. We eat alot of vegetables and fruits throughout the week. In my job, we have asparagus so i eat asparagus maybe 4 times a week. fruits i eat maybe every other day. I eat alot of side vegetables as well in my meals, corn, beets, lettuce, w.e. I also eat alot of salad.

Response to 'Mayday'

After reading up about Mayday, and hearing Andy's short version in class, i thought it was silly of how they came up with Laborday. As Andy compared it, to Mayday, a day where people would rome the streets with they're fists in the air for something that is seen as a huge accomplishment towards the average worker, to Laborday, a day where people celebrate a three day weekend with barbeques and days spent at home or ordering out for lunch and dinner. The event that occured in 1915 celebrating Mayday is remembered and mourned rather then celebrated to this day in other countries Except the one in which the event had occured in. i think thats very interesting and for that to happen so close and near times where people in New York and other places were becoming victims of unemployment. Only question is why were there police present at a rally that has been happening for the last 20 years then. If no incidents had occured then why show after? if my research is correct that is...

Food Journal

Please post a 24 hour food journal (beginning Tuesday night's dinner) of all the food and drink you consume. Do not post anything you don't want others to read.

Tuesday night, i had fried chicken breast, with homemade frenchfries. I then had some ice-cream like i always do. Wednesday morning i had two pancakes, sausages, and sweet bananas with a cup of coffee. Lunchtime i had Mexican food, the "F-3" meal, including cut up chicken mixed with frenchfries (really good) with an Arizona bottle of Sweet Tea flavor. Dinner i had a lot of junkfood because i dont remember having any dinner prepared. I had some of my stepfather's bought chinese food and some soda and some ice-cream and maybe some chocolate milk. The tuesday night dinner and wednesday breakfast my mother had cooked. The mexican food was made by asians behind the back of a "mexican restaurant". The ice-cream is store bought icecream that comes in a little pint size for one person. Coffee was also made by my mother using our coffee-maker.

Food Culture

Compared to my family's eating techniques, Americans when seen through Movies and other Models of the perfect American image, we eat normally. In movies, a huge dinner is prepared and takes a short amount of time to be cooked, which always seems like a thanksgiving meal. The next day the same steps are taken. In my home, My mother cooks the food just as the average housewife seen would, and she cooks a different concept of food every other day. I say every other day because unlike films my mother would cook alot of food sure, but its not always wasteful, we either save some for tomorrow's dinner, or if no one doesnt want it the next day, we will cook something else, but the food is either refrigerated till someone decides to eat it or we give it to our pets such as my fat male cat and my two dogs. If we do that then we give them that food instead of they're regular cat/dog food. That is another expense we have buying they're food so if food is given to them we save money this way (i guess). My mother also tries to bake all of her food, such as chicken or things in that area, supposedly it is better for people. She also cooks everything at the same time, whether it is rice and beans with chicken (example), the rice is being cooked in a pot, the beans in a separate smaller pot, and the chicken underneath the stove top and inside being baked. My mother when bakng them also uses water i believe and not oil because it is unhealthy. Not saying that we always do it this way, not being a hypocrite but yes.

Internet research

From the questions that others and i have come up with in class, i decided to answer only one, "how much food do americans actually waste? i did some research and found a very valuable source from the "http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/weekinreview/18martin.html".

"In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste. An update is under way."

When thinking about it, Grocery stores and restaurants are all over the place, and each play a role when being wasteful. Grocery stores throw away food or gallons of milk over small blemishes or dents on the product. Restaurants throw away food in the end of the day or whatever they do not use. And the comsumers, being us, throw away "anything from a banana turned brown to last week's chinese leftovers". Americans are extremely wasteful and evereything we throw away ends up in our landfills. According to the NewYork TImes, Americans waste 27% of the food that can be consumed.