annabelle

This is true. It is part of the backlash thirty years ago against Home Economics being "women's work". Our high school in town does have a kitchen, but learning to make nachos does not a family feed.

I agree with you about the pompousness. I think his heart may be in the right place, but his manner is off-putting. My problem with him and some others who seek to reform the school lunch programs or just food choices in general, is that their goals are either utopian, unattainable due to costs or both. Stir in a healthy dose of the fact that Oliver is neither a dietician nor an accountant and doesn't seem to have a team of either he is working with, and you have a recipe for unintended consequences.

A lot of kids will not drink unflavored milk. It ends up in the bin. If chocolate 2% milk gets some milk in them, so be it.

The only restaurant that I can recall giving anything away, other than pillow shaped mints and mint toothpicks, is Eat 'n' Park that gives children large frosted sugar cookies decorated with a smiley face.

Sixteen inches.

We're old school and say grace at supper, the "Bless us, Oh Lord..." I've also had our house blessed and keep a statue of St. Francis in my garden. St. Francis was the patron of my college and his feast day is also my youngest son's birthday. Traditions keep me grounded. My grandmother used to make the sign of the cross over the loaves of bread before she put them in the oven. Mom kissed us on the forehead and made a sign of the cross with her thumb, sometimes in an absent-minded manner. I've caught myself doing the same with my children.

I don't think those of us who use sanitizers on our sinks and counters (don't forget refrigerator and microwave door handles) are being "over the top." I've worked in hospital laboratories and we saw many cases of food poisonings, especially in the summer season. It's always alarming to me that people who won't have their children vacinated or get flu shots think nothing of buying and eating produce and produce from Farmer's Markets nor taking necessary precautions when preparing those food items. Just because some may have grown up when there were iceboxes and pump water (Hi, Mom and Dad!)doesn't mean that for all those who survived the bad old days didn't have friends or family who did not.

Yes, Lisa is right that salmonella is but one of the food-borne poathogens that can be brought into the kitchen. E. coli is flora of the gut. I think that you may be thinking of staph on the face and hands, also normal (S. epidermidis). Our nasal pasages and the throat also naturally contain haemophilus (not the influenza kind). So, yes, you are right to presume that our food is not necessarily very clean when we bring it into our homes. People are quite slip-shod about washing after using the bathroom, cough into their hands, etc. I wash just about everything.

I scrub my sink with Barkeeper's Friend after I do the final dishes of the day, each day. I also use a capful of household bleach in my dishwater each night. It removes any tannin traces from coffee pots and glassware. It also sluices out the garbage disposal when I let the water out and run the disposal prior to starting the dishwasher. I don't wash our dishes in the kitchen sink. I wash them in the dishwasher, but I do wash our pots and pans and knives in the sink. Anyway, I wash fruits and veg in the sink as I need them. If anyone here is thinking it is possible to build up a tolerence to salmonella or that it is no big deal, that is wrong and potentially quite dangerous. E. coli, as we have recently seen in Europe, while normal flora in our colons, it is not the same E. coli that can kill you. Poor sanitation is usually at the root of food poisonings.

We don't have any ethnic markets or farmer's markets in our town. We do, however have two Dollar-type stores. I haven't been in either of them since my middle son went off to college a few years ago and I stocked him up with shower shoes and a few other dorm related items. Be glad you don't buy cereals since they are priced at up to $5 a box if you are buying Kashi-type cereals. I generally buy what my youngest calls "homeless cereal", the malt-o-meal kind that comes in the plastic bags, for myself, and raisin bran for him, usually priced at about $3.50-$4.00. I miss the ethnic markets in California. I lived there most of my life.

heidi, milk has increased hugely. Last summer $3.32 for a gallon of whole milk. This summer the same is $4.34. However, if you shop around, Braum's (an ice cream/dairy chain) has milk for around $3.79. Also, Walgreen's will have milk on sale for $2.99 (it was $2.79 last month) with a limit of 2 per customer. Breads are higher, as well. A loaf of w/w bread is nearly $3.00. Flour tortillas are high at $2.89 for 10. Sugar is now sold in 4 pound sacks, but priced at the same rate as a 5 pound sack. Ground beef is up 32% since last summer. Cooking oil is 30% higher. Nuts have nearly doubled in price. Many of the stores have nearly bare bones inventory, as well.

Exactly. Well said, BadRabbit. Add to all that the fact that we are at debt ceiling and Congress will surely monetize our debt. I hope everyone is prepared for the inflation that is going to hit us right around the holidays. Tolliver: I apologize if I mislead. I was last in Tulare a year ago and it was dry and hot.

I said no such thing. I am referring to wholesale costs over the last fiscal year for all foodstuffs, in the aggregate. My theory is that it is due to energy costs driving the costs of transportation and storage, as well as a poor growing season and natural disasters.

Market speculators are not, in my opinion, driving food prices. It's been rather a perfect storm of natural disasters, the refusal to produce our own energy and the cost to buy it from others that is driving the increasing price of food. Hell, Paul Krugman isn't even on board with the speculators are evil argument. And believe me, taxes are a big part of it. Our small rural town has nested taxation that adds up to over 9% on food purchases alone. Properties have been reassessed at a huge increase. Our dock fees alone increased 300% in the last couple of years. As always, energy prices are the root cause.

To the tune of 2 million dollars. I find it rather insulting. It looks like a colorforms board. It only needs stick on cherries, slices of bread, &c, to make it complete.

Prices are up wholesale across the board nearly 30%. Corn is up 110% from last year, for example. Over half of the corn grown is tagged for ethanol production and not for feed. It's only going to get worse, too, what with all of the natural disasters in our nation's bread basket. Millions of acres of grain crops have been washed away and can't be replanted in time for harvest. Rice is already high and keeps climbing. Where my mother lives in the San Joaquin Valley, dairy cattle have been being sent to slaughter since it is too expensive to feed them out now that the farmers are not allowed to irrigate their fields any longer. It is sad and depressing to see what I remember as verdant farmland turned to dry dustbowl. Dead grapevines, both raisin grapes and wine grapes. Parched puny fields of alfalfa and stunted cotton. Beef prices will be huge later this year. Cotton fabric will be priced like silk. Our government is trying to tax and regulate us into starving to death in the dark. I don't know what my friends on the East Coast who heat their homes with heating oil are going to do this winter. My mom is not allowed to heat her home with her woodburning fireplace. I've never been afraid of what the future holds in my life, but I am now.

Catchy? Okay. I have a bunch of divided plates that my children used when they were very small. At least they have modes of transportation printed on them.

Don't say we didn't try to tell you so, Dave.

Eh, I'll watch it. I keep hoping FN will do something really daring and have one of these shows that is cast of a bunch of middle aged grannies and grandpas who can throwdown and tell great anecdotes. I guess we'll get more tattoos, cleavage and mohawks.

I don't care for this practice. Many years ago when I was in my 20s, I worked at an Italian restuarant that was under the impression that this was an upscale way of doing business. We were to take the order at the table and then transcribe it in the galley and hand it over to the kitchen. I was pretty good at it since I have a good memory, but some of the other servers were just awful and many mistakes were made. The owners were stubborn bastards and dug in their heels that we were going to keep using their system even though it was obviously flawed.

The back of the Swanson's Chicken Broth box (I know, I know) has a recipe for low-fat mashed potatoes. It is usually on the boxes that are out around the holidays. I can't remember exactly how the recipe goes, but it isn't bad. Try their website: www.swansonbroth.com for more information.

I knew it! I'll bet the Masons are involved somehow, too.

I forget. I have actually gone back in and paid when I remembered.

Come sit by me, Chris. I usually let my son select a donut from the bakery case when he goes shopping with me and half the time I forget to pay for it.

Rice cookers are on sale at Walgreens Drugstores for $9.99 with a $3 mail-in rebate (originally priced at $12). I don't call that luxurious. I looked at them while I was shopping there the other day and the cookers feature a "keep warm" feature and look like just the deal for most purposes.