What's bugging you? (2015)

[jerichoholicninja]

The new CNN.com is absolute garbage. I only went there for news because their site was the easiest to navigate. Now I need to find a new place.

 

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[Invader3K]

The new CNN.com is absolute garbage. I only went there for news because their site was the easiest to navigate. Now I need to find a new place.

 

Looks like it's been "optimized" for a mobile or tablet view, but I agree it looks bad.

[hawing]

People who hug first, then disclose that they're sick. The SO and I caught a real bully of a cold after such an encounter on Christmas Eve, and we're just now emerging from it. Because of the placement of the holidays, I only had to take two days' unexpected leave, but the SO's Christmas vacation was totally wiped out by this virus.

 

(For those of you who enjoy following the hawing "relish tray" legend, the director/hostess of Christmas Eve was the hugger described above.)

 

I'll take responsibility for not being a "huggy" person, but if you're sick, give people the choice of hugging or not.

[1992casey]

It seems that the majority of orange juice is now being sold without pulp. I don't get why that would be a better option. I would think that no pulp would appeal to a small minority and that there's a place for it, but I can't fathom why there's so much of it.

 

If you want pulp, you have to choose between low pulp, medium pulp, high pulp, or whatever. I want orange juice with the amount of pulp that would normally come out of the orange. With the way things are labeled, I don't know which option that might be.

 

The part that sucks is that all of these choices make it difficult to take advantage of the other things that might matter, such as price and expiration date. I'd love to simply look for the best price and check to make sure that what I buy will last for a while.

[ewitkows]

I hate pulp

[pete]

Pulp is your friend. High pulp is "country style."

 

I guess haters prefer city style.

 

No comment: http://gizmodo.com/5825909/orange-juice-is-artificially-flavored-to-taste-like-oranges

[1992casey]

I'll comment. Yuck.

 

Back to the topic of pulp, if I were running a restaurant, I'd be embarrassed to serve orange juice without pulp unless it were specifically requested.

[fondybrewfan]

At this point is there really anything not in the produce section at the grocery store that isn't artificially flavored with something. The wife and I switched to organic foods as much as possible a long time ago. Financially we can't do everything organic but we try to avoid those processed and packaged foods as much as possible. Maybe we are being paranoid, maybe not, but I all the crap they put in food nowadays can't possibly be in your health's best interests.

[1992casey]

Nothing beats vegetables that you grow yourself.

 

With some exceptions, packaged and frozen foods are almost universally horrible. They tend to be loaded with salt, sugar, and fat. Salt is probably the worst simply because people don't realize that it's lurking in mass quantities in so many products. I think there's a vague awareness of the presence of sugar and fat.

[pete]

Ironically... sadly... the "organic" label was watered down. We buy as much as possible regardless. So much of it actually tastes like something.

[fondybrewfan]

What I would kill for a big backyard. I would love to put in a huge garden and do a bunch of canning as such. For now farmers markets in the summer are great. In the winter it is just really hard to eat healthy and find good foods.

[RobDeer 45]

Pete - well said! That's one huge reason my wife and I are on the organic train. I think it actually tastes like what it is supposed to be. It's kind of amazing. I agree on the garden as well. A tomato tastes like a tomato when it comes from your garden or the farmers market. That is actually my theory on why so many people hate tomatoes, because they've only had terrible grocery and restaurant ones that were grown indoors and then refrigerated. Gross!

[GAME05]

Here's a list of pick-your-own farms in Wisconsin: http://www.pickyourown.org/WI.htm. It may not be a home garden, and it can be hard to find something that's anything but strawberries, but maybe some places will have beans/raspberries/peas that aren't entirely picked over in season.

 

Last time I had an apartment with a balcony I put out about eight pots and tried to grow green beans, letting the stalks run up the railings. They'll grow pretty crowded, so you can get a good amount from it all.

[Patrick425]

Geez..this all seems like a huge hassle and headache. Who has time to grow and maintain a garden (not to mention ward off critters from stealing from your garden) or go to farmers markets on Saturday mornings? If packaged carrots, strawberries, and non-organic apples and oranges are not good enough, then I guess I will just die at an earlier age than the rest of you. Is an organic apple really that much better for you (and worth the extra cost) than a non-organic apple? Is this really where we are? You can't even eat a normal apple without feeling like you are doing something unhealthy?

 

I'm not sure how health care costs are so high when, compared to the 50's, 60's, and 70's, there are so many people that are completely insane about their health and what they put in their bodies. Usually when I see a list on the internet titled something like "Healthy things you should be eating". I end up thinking well, there is absolutely nothing on that list that sounds tasteful or appetizing.

[1992casey]

Tomatoes are really easy to grow and don't take much effort. If you're going to pick one thing, I'd say that tomatoes have the biggest payoff. You can get a pretty big yield out of a couple of plants, and they need little care beyond watering.

 

More than health, I think that the payoff with growing produce or finding a good source for it is the fact that you have stuff that's much more appetizing. It's tastier, jucier, isn't coated with wax, etc.

 

The really nasty stuff that actually can have a negative health effect tends to come in boxes, cans, or jars. Restaurant food is generally bad too.

 

The best thing is to make food from as close to scratch as possible. In some cases, that's really easy, and in other cases, it's a ton of work. A happy medium would seem to make the most sense. It's worthwhile to read labels to understand what you're getting. That way, you can choose shortcuts that minimize the nasties. As an example, I've seen pre-made pizza crusts with 300mg of sodium (in the whole crust) and others with 1500mg or more.

 

A quick and fairly unwelcome way to become familiar with how bad certain foods can be is to have a family member become subject to dietary restrictions. More often than not, these restrictions involve either sugar or salt. And more often than not, it seems that these restrictions necessitate a major change in eating habits.

 

I kind of figure that if I can develop at least a few good habits now, the transition will be easier when it's my turn to be restricted. That's not to say that you have to totally avoid everything bad all the time; "treats" are definitely permissible for most people as long as they're not an everyday thing. I tend to eat whatever I please when I go to Miller Park, for instance.

[logan82]

The best tasting vegetables in the grocery store will be the canned or frozen ones. All the "fresh" vegetables are all picked before they are ripe and ripen on the way to the store. Frozen and canned are picked closer to ripe then processed.

 

Canning at home can be a huge pain. For tomatoes I prefer to cook them down to sauce. Takes a good part if the day but I am usually going to use them for sauce anyway. Either that or make salsa. Love homemade salsa.

[JimH5]

In the Milwaukee area, there is a winter farmers market every Saturday at the Mitchell Park Domes. You can get great stuff there and support small local farms.

 

I am a food snob, so I'll seek out good and interesting food. The produce at Outpost Natural Foods is the best (in my opinion). Better than Whole Foods, even in the smaller space.

 

I'm not as crunchy and fervent as some in the anti-GMO community, though I respect what they're doing in their fight against agrichemicals and modified seeds. Typical produce in today's groceries and restaurants have so many fewer nutrients than in earlier generations. Crops are developed to travel long distances and to maintain uniformity and beauty, and that comes at a nutritional price.

 

For gardeners, I recommend Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and the Seed Savers Exchange catalogs. It's cool to grow tomato varieties that were brought to the US from exotic places generations ago. Both catalogs have tons of varieties of vegetables and flowers.

[pete]

I'd add that going to farmer's market can be fun, particularly the domes. Tasty snacks, some interesting food choices and although the domes are struggling in my opinion, its good to give them a boost and well, I like plants. although I didn't when I was younger.

[1992casey]

As an option to canning, tomato sauces can be frozen. And actually, the tomatoes themselves can be frozen if the intention is to use them for cooking. Freezing makes it very easy to remove the skin. Hold the frozen tomato under running water and rub a little. It's been a while since I've done this; I don't recall the preferred water temperature.

 

Canned veggies have a pretty high sodium content, but you can lessen that by rinsing them before you use them. Better, most come in a "no salt added" variety. Most stores carry "no salt added" in only one brand, so you have to be flexible that way.

 

I like to use frozen veggies for meals. I think they qualify as a convenient shortcut that tastes good. Canned veggies work well in recipes that call for them. I freeze leftover veggies and potatoes from crock pot meals. That's a handy option.

 

Outpost is a nice store with four locations (plus a hospital café). It's a co-op if you prefer to go the membership route, but it's not required. If you're headed to the Bay View (Kinnickinnic Avenue) location from the north via the Lake Parkway, be aware that your GPS is likely to announce that you've reached your destination before you leave the highway, so it's good to take a peek at a map first if you haven't been there before.

[fondybrewfan]

In the 50's, 60's, and 70's I don't think as much of the mainstream produce was using pesticides, herbicides, GMO's, etc. With advancement in technologies the giant food companies have a adopted a slew of ways to increase yield and profit. Most of these technologies have absolutely reduced the flavor of produce; the effects on our health are a bit more debatable though. Some people claim all this crap the companies are using is what is making this country so sick; I am not quite that far but just think if you can afford to pay for organic you should do it.

 

I love cherry tomatoes to munch on; I plan on putting some pots out this year; my problem has always been darn rabbits. I need to put my pots in such high places to avoid the rabbits that they don't get as much sun as they should.

[1992casey]

I don't recall rabbits or other animals eating my tomatoes, but they definitely like peppers. Maybe I shouldn't blame rabbits; it might have been deer doing the eating, although they're less apt to come into the yard when there's an ample food supply in the woods.

[pete]

In the 50's, 60's, and 70's I don't think as much of the mainstream produce was using pesticides, herbicides, GMO's, etc. With advancement in technologies the giant food companies have a adopted a slew of ways to increase yield and profit.

 

AT&T Uverse had one of their weekends where most everything is free and I was checking out all sorts of stuff and came across a farm or rural channel, RFD I think. They had a show on with a feature called "Weed of the Week." They had a couple guys standing in a field discussing a crop more than the weed. They went through about a dozen or more chemicals that you might put on a crop depending on how wet it was what stage the weeds were at, etc. I got the impression that a farmer may use 6 or 7 in a season. Anti-fungals was another category. It was kind of freaky.

 

I think their company was GAF. Somewhere I still have slides I took on GAF film. I know they're big in roof shingles. The plants looked perfect though.

[RobDeer 45]

1992casey- that's pretty much how I feel about food. The more something is pre made, the less nutritional value it will have, and honestly, the less taste it will have. Taking the time to make the same dish from scratch will taste much better and be better for you. The less you have to do to the food, the better it will be too.

 

Patrick, how is going to a neighborhood farmer's market more of a trouble then going to the grocery store? Just curious. The produce (if truly local - I think you have to watch out for some people who buy things and then sell them at the farmer's market, like tomatoes in may) is so much better to the taste! Even if it's not organic, it was grown nearby and probably picked that day or the day before. That leads me to another point on farmer's markets that I think is important. You are buying from a local farmer and helping them out. You aren't buying something from South America that needed to be shipped all the way up here. There are a lot of things that aren't great about that. I enjoy supporting local farmers, talking with them, hearing what they say is good that week, and giving it a try. They remember you and treat you well. Most of all, again, it just tastes so much better!

 

Ok, off my high horse.

[1992casey]

If you take the time to make something good, you can always freeze the leftovers. I make two crock pots of chili at a time. There's one mess and several easy meals afterward.

 

The only problem I have at the farmer's market is that I buy too much because everything looks so good.

[Patrick425]

Patrick, how is going to a neighborhood farmer's market more of a trouble then going to the grocery store?

 

A) Because they are generally only open during certain days and certain hours. These are usually Saturday mornings. If you have kids that are involved in sports and other activities then you will understand that Saturday mornings are usually occupied. Even without kids, I usually have better things to do on a Saturday morning than go grocery shopping. Yard Work, Golfing, and sleeping in are 3 things that come to mind that would rank above shopping for fruits and vegetables.

 

B) The Farmers market is an extra trip. There are still other groceries that need to be purchased.....meat, cereal, milk, toothpaste, bread, hygienic products, cleaning products, etc.

 

I would say that there are 2 or 3 times during the summer that my wife and I have the time to venture down to the Farmers market in Waukesha on a Saturday morning. Last summer we only went once. It doesn't have the appeal to me that it does to others and the "extra quality" isn't really something that entices me make sure I somehow get there on a weekly basis.