What's Your Plan for Higher Food Prices?

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article last week and here are some of the excerpts: " Helen Li is helping fuel apple fever in China, and it isn't of the iPhone variety.  The 30-year-old administrative assistant said she has been buying more apples since she moved from a small eastern Chinese city two years ago to Shanghai to work for a U.S. company.  "Chinese people are eating more and more fruit...as our lives get better"...Fresh apple consumption in China, which produces more than half of the global supply of the fruit, has soared 80% from the 2007-2008 crop year to the crop year ending in June 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture...The U.S. imports about two-thirds of its supply from China."  Who knew that China supplies most of the apples in this country?  Our apple and other food costs are rising due to people in Asia having more money to eat more in quantity and quality. In fact the WSJ says the average price of Chinese apple-juice concentrate in August was $10.25 a gallon.  I know this first hand because I went and paid $7.25 for Fuji apples on Friday (about $1.25 each) and even the check out clerk questioned if that was right.  We all need to rethink and come up with a plan to keep our food costs down.  The reasons that cooking co-op works is by cooking in quantity, you save time, lower your purchase costs because you can buy in  bulk, and you save more money with fewer trips to the grocery store(fuel costs) and you save money since your weekly meals are more planned and have less waste.  You save also by having less temptation to eat out or grab expensive fast food since you have a cooking co-op answer to what's for dinner and ready to eat in 5 minutes.  If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, cooking co-op can be an answer to how to manage higher food costs.  So "what's in your wallet?"  It could be more money.

A New School Year- Stability Matters

"Marriage Haves and Have-Nots", an article written by W. Bradford Wilcox (director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia) highlights such facts as : "In the nation's affluent and educated precincts...the future of marriage is bright.  After succumbing temporarily to the marital tumult of the 1970's, college-educated Americans have been getting their marital act together in recent years... divorce is down, infidelity is down...and the vast majority of children are fortunate to grow up with both their mother and father...But in poor and working-class communities...the future of marriage is bleak...For the majority of Americans who do not hold college degrees, divorce rates remain high, infidelity is up, nonmarital childbearing is way up...The privileged reap the benefits of stable marriages, whereas poor and ordinary families are burdened by growing instability and conflict in their lives."

So it is a new school year and where and how can we start to stabilize an instable environment?  We can start by bringing back the family dinnertime.  Many years ago, Reader's Digest did a study on Rhode Scholars- what was the determining factor in these students excelling?  No, it was not whether they had two vs. one parent, female vs. male etc.  The one common thread among Rhode Scholars was they regularly ate dinner with their family.  I was sharing this fact with a recent college graduate in my company's marketing department.  She said that was absolutely true.  She was a Rhode Scholar and her family always ate dinner together.

Studies show that eating 4 or more meals together/week leads to better grades, better health and less risky behavior.  It is a time for parent/parents and children to celebrate the day, discuss the trials and successes, and a time just to enjoy each other.  We are human beings- not animals or cars- and mealtime is so much more than just filling our stomach or tank.  What if the privileged were the families who despite all challenges regularly had dinnertime together?  What would result from more stability and   less conflict in their lives?  What if dinnertime was celebrated and lifted up as a status symbol in America?  What obesity, fitness, and educational barriers could be broken?  It is a new year full of new possibilities!

Waste Not, Want Not

This report just out by the Natural Resources Defense Council: "Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of It's Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill."  As one radio announcer described it- we drop 1 out of 3 grocery bags and don't bother to pick it up.  And Americans are wasting 50% more food than they did in the 1970s.  The cost of this food waste is $165 billion per year.  All this in a country where 1 in 6 Americans do not have enough to eat (U.S. Department of Agriculture).   I am guilty of throwing away old fruits and vegetables that I had the best intention of using.  I recently found
canned foods out of date- the list goes on and on.  When I have the least waste is when I am planning my weekly menus and one big benefit of cooking co-op is the cost savings of buying in bulk but having very little wasted.  By planning meals Monday through Thursday, that gives me Friday through Sunday to use my left overs.  One of my favorite organizations here in Richmond, VA is the Good Samaritan Inn.  Their motto is "Offering a hand up, not a hand out."  What a better use of resources to give to these type of organizations rather than throwing the wasted food money out with the trash.  In these times when money is tight, less food dollars wasted means more dollars targeted to good causes!

Color Me Beautiful Foods

I went to a consultant a number of years ago to learn which colors looked best on me and why.  If you have not done this, watch the YouTube presentation.  I can now go into a clothing store and quickly gravitate to my colors.  Color me beautiful also helps you clean out your closet and give away those clothes you never wear- probably because it is not your color.  So I listened this morning to a few minutes of Color Me Beautiful on YouTube and heard these words: "... makes you look great and feel wonderful...comes from nature...season's colors...the secret to the natural, beautiful you...helps you find a more beautiful you."  So at our church,  we have lunch afterwards.   Those who can stay bring food and we all share.  Yesterday "color me beautiful" foods were in abundance.  Our lunch was visibly beautiful to look at and delicious to the taste.  We had a large salad with Hanover tomatoes, red peppers, Napa cabbage, celery, cucumbers, cauliflower.  We had a vegetable salad of green beans, bakes sweet potatos, and white shoe peg corn with a 3-2-1 dressing (3 parts balsamic vinegar, 2 parts mustard and 1 part maple syrup).  We had a big tray of cut up watermelon.  Then bowls of cantelope, strawberries and blueberries.  A slow-cooker dish of green beans, potatos, and sausage and a platter of chicken.  For desert, a home-made diabetic chocolate pie and a non-diabetic butter pecan cake.  These seasonal fruits and vegetables make you look and feel great.  Eating this way (filling 3/4ths of your plate with color me beautiful foods) is the secret to a natural and more beautiful you.  Go to your local produce stand today and enjoy these last days of summer!

How Dinnertime Could Reinvent the Modern World 2

There is much competition for jobs today.  And the deciding factor in being hired can be education and social skills.  There is much discussion about education but little talk about how to acquire social skills.
In the 1700's, a Scottish intellectual, Lord Shaftesbury, raised "politeness" to the top of the list of human virtues.  He described "politeness" as "... a polishing and refining of the self through friendly social interaction with others...All politeness is owing to Liberty.  We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision.  To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Men's understanding.  'Tis a destroying of Civility, Good Breeding, and even Charity itself..."  Dinnertime is the perfect setting to sharpen our minds by listening, interacting and talking about the events of the day and thus teach and learn needed social skills.  No social skills can be picked up watching the TV or playing video games during the meal.  Dinnertime teaches us about obligations to others- planning, shopping, cooking, coming up with new healthy creations, and cleaning up.  Lord Shaftesbury believed we served others, not because we had to, but because we felt a "sense of well-being and pleasure" by helping and serving others.  "Man was born to be with others, and born to make their lives more pleasant."  What better place to be with others than at dinnertime and what a way to make our lives more pleasant, polite, and polished- 3 P's.  So dinnertime could reinvent the modern world by raising up employees with the 3 P's.  What employer could resist such a worker?

How Dinnertime Could Reinvent the Modern World

O.K., so I am reading "How the Scots Invented the Modern World " by Arthur Herman.  Listen to this- pg. 72:"As human beings living in society,we have certain rights that we bring to the TABLE with us from our natural state, such as the right to our own life and our property.  But there are certain obligations we have to observe.  One of the most obvious of these is obeying the laws established through common consent.  But the other is the moral law governing our private conduct towards others.  Without a moral law, no community is possible.  Without community,  there is no protection for ourselves and the things we need to survive, i.e., our property.  When we realize...that our self-interest dictates that we treat others as ourselves, we are ready to live among our fellow men."  This came from the Scottish intellectuals in the early 1700's setting the stage for our Declaration of Independence.  They talked of rights that come with obligations.  They talked of a moral law directing our "private"(everyday) actions toward and for others.  They talked of the need for community for our very survival.  So dinnertime, regularly sitting at your own table, with the TV off perhaps is one of those obligations and actions you can take for your family,even if it is just 2, that cements the family as a small unified community discussing the joys and trials of the day, checking everybody's schedules, making plans for future events, bringing new words to the table( Katie Couric's parents did that), discussing articles, finding out where your teenager has been driving etc.  "When we realize...that our self-interest dictates that we treat others as ourselves,  we are ready to LIVE..."  and reinvent and reenergize the modern world!

"... For the Happy Heart, Life is a Continual Feast."

Yesterday was Father's Day and the restaurants were jammed with families celebrating with food a special day.  I have been quiet as a blogger as I regroup from my daughter's wedding 3 weeks ago.  I never teared up once because the whole week-end, I felt pure happiness.  The same happiness I felt at my wedding 32 years ago.  It was a time to escape the problems of the world, a time to talk with and enjoy the presence of family and friends, a time to enjoy a beautiful setting enjoying the views of gently rolling mountains and beautiful arrangements of flowers, and a time to sit around various tables at breakfast, lunch and dinner to savor carefully planned and prepared food.  The wedding dinner was especially memorable and just a taste of what the banquet in heaven must be like.  That taste of happiness which we enjoy at weddings and Father's Day is described above in Proverbs 15:15.  To have a happier heart, perhaps our lives need to sup on continual feasts which can be enjoyed by planning and cooking your family dinners.  Make it creative and fun.  Don't worry, instead be happy!