Farmhouse Cheddar and Apple Pie

There are few things that fire me up more than food.  I mean fake food versus real food.  I follow a blog called Auburn Meadow Farm.  This week her blog brought me to this informative pdf called Food Stamps, Follow the Money by Michele Simon.  Take some time to read it.  Or you could be like me and be soo angry after the first page that you have to put it down for a little while and come back to it.  Do come back to it though because in the interest of being informed on so many levels it is an excellent read.

I’m dating myself here but when I grew up we still had home economics required in high school, cooking and sewing.  I also belonged to a number of 4-H clubs including cooking, sewing, knitting, etc.  Over the years all of these opportunities for education have gone away.  I think some of it has to do with the women’s movement, some has to do with budget cuts in schools and some with the perception that this sort of thing is just old fashioned – why knit yourself a sweater when you can go to a store and buy it right now at half the cost.  Home Arts has gone out of style.

As I age in this land of consumerism I fear for my children – all of them – sons, daughters, nieces, nephews.  They have grown up in a society that values nothing but money and instant gratification.  Instead of going to a market to buy the ingredients for a meal they buy fast food.  It has little nutritional value, contains GMO’s, huge amounts of sodium, and a whole lot of things I can’t even pronounce.  My daughters do go “shopping” in Rowe from time to time and raid the canned goods shelves.  I take satisfaction in knowing when they take that jar of spaghetti sauce off of the shelf it contains grass fed beef and vegatables that I have grown.  I am blessed to have that ability and am willing to teach anyone how to do anything from gardening to canning to handwork. They just have to want to learn it.