Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

With so many families working two jobs, and so many single parent families,
so much fast food and microwaveable food, basic cooking skills have been
lost. It doesn't help that extended families hardly exist where elders can
teach the young. Who'll teach the children basic cooking, housekeeping, and
how to work? My partner was telling my daughter in law that she ought to
stock up on basics like flour - who then asked, but what can you do with
flour??? And something important has been lost when so many youngsters have
no way to learn and practice basic work skills. You don't get this in
school. Esp not with a Piled Higher & Deeper degree. Anything that needs
fixing around the house, people call a plumber or electrician or landscaper
or whatever. I grew up using hand tools. My partner grew up cooking Italian
and helping her father garden. We find the grandkids eager to help in our
garden but their parents know nothing about it. Maybe there's still hope
for the next generation. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/7/2007 at 6:31 AM three feathers wrote:

>Yes, it does take a bit more effort and planning to be creative, using
>the basics like spuds, rice, bread and pasta while staying withing the
>budgetary boundary.  I like the challenge of making menu schedules, seeing
>how well we can eat with the budget i have to work with.  
>
>However, spuds, white rice, white breads, white pastas---that are most
>affordable to lower income families---are all foods that are detrimental
>to people who have to watch their "glycemic numbers," due to blood sugar
>count and blood pressure.....the "white foods" 
>
>Which is why lower income families have a higher rate of diabetes, high BP
>and weight problems......because of the "white foods".......because that's
>what they can afford
>
>Whole wheat/whole grain breads and pastas are best, as is brown rice, but
>those are still outside some budgets, especially if the family is large
>and the incoming income is not. Sweet potatoes are affordable---and highly
>nutritious, but how many folks eat them outside the holidays?  
>
>I have my own family to look after, but i worry over the "dietary plight"
>of the growing number of families who are finding it more difficult to buy
>healthy foods.......what will they do, as food prices soar even higher? 
>Buy the family size bag of Cheetos?  :-0)
>
>threefeathers
>
>"E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net> wrote:      Virtually every
>generation, at some  point, has had to learn how to "get by" on potatoes,
>rice, bread, pasta,  vegetables, cheap cuts of meat (occasionally).  It
>takes a bit more effort,  but it is worth doing.
>
>