#1160 Soy-Ganic

Yesterday I wrote about why we say “not to mention” in our conversation and then go ahead and mention it anyhow. “The rain is coming down hard, not to mention the creek's rising.”
Obviously, the perpetrator of that sentence did mention the creek was rising. My friend Rick pointed out how perceptive my observation was.
How did I reply? I said, “Don’t mention it.”
Fortunately for my ego he already had.
But here’s something I will mention. It’s what I found out when I read the ingredients list on my “Organic Soymilk” carton, which I had acquired to make vegan fudge.
Organic soymilk sounded good, because I’m all for things without artificial additives and suchlike. Turns out I have no idea what organic means.
The top ingredient said the box contained organic soymilk, which it said (in parentheses) included organic soybeans and filtered water.
That’s my idea of organic. Unfortunately, then it went on to list 10 other ingredients. When I tasted the organic soymilk, I noticed it was very sweet. Sweeter than I remember soybeans tasting. The second ingredient on the list explained that. It was “organic evaporated cane juice.”
If you were to, say, take a chunk of sugar cane, wring it out, and let it dry, you would have evaporated organic cane juice. You would also have a pile of sugar.
Which can be sticky, so you need to add the next ingredient on the list, tri-calcium citrate. Not an organic day goes by that I don’t wish I had some tri-calcium citrate.
The next ingredient was sea salt, one hopes evaporated from seas not near major industrial or sewage outfalls.
After that was my favorite food additive, second only to guar gum, carrageenan. Always sounds like that Kung Fu guy David.
Then there were two ingredients in succession that perplexed me. One was “organic vanilla flavor,” the next was “natural flavors.” Couldn’t they have included organic vanilla under natural flavors? Or is there something un-organic about natural they’re not telling?
The final four ingredients were vitamins. I suppose to make organic soymilk more like milk from an organic, um, cow.
America, ya gotta love it.

#1159 Mention Hunger

I was reading some articles the other day and I was struck by how strange we humans are. The first article cited the statistic that one out of every four Americans is now dependent on food stamps.
That’s so sad.
It’s certainly a step up from one out of every four children dying of hunger like some countries but it’s still not good.
On a separate but related note, this holiday season some Salvation Army bucket minders will be offering an alternative if you supposedly don’t have any cash. They’ll be taking credit cards. I imagine it will be tough to hold a bell, stand in the cold at a supermarket entrance, and wield a little card swiper machine...
Speaking of giving, that’s another article I read. One of those “polls” said that 52% of the nation’s pet owners plan to buy their animal a gift for the holidays. Up from 43% last year.
That’s great, not to mention, it’s a sure way to give your little pussy something other than the Christmas balls to play with.
By the way, why do we always say “not to mention” right before we mention whatever it is we preface with saying not to mention it? You can always be sure someone is about to mention something right after they say “not to mention.”
“Not to mention, it’s colder than a witch in a coal mine out there.” “Not to mention, I’ve been busier than a one-armed guy at an alligator kicking party.”
I don’t get it. Just mention it and move on.
Where was I? Oh yeah, people and their pet toys. Here we have one in four people on food stamps, people so desperate for cash that the Salvation Army is taking credit cards, and 52% of pet owners are giving a toy to Fluffy or Fido.
So, not to mention the other aspects of the poverty, but do you think those food stamp families might need a warm coat for their three-year-old?
I guess the good sign is that pet toy spending is up from 43% to 52%. Maybe the economy’s turning around.
I hear cat food sales are up too, and not just at Senior communities...
America, ya gotta love it.

#1158 Wet Honey

Recently I’ve been confronted with a couple of food challenges. Like I was driving down the road and I saw a readerboard in front of a Mexican restaurant that said, “Wet Burritos.”
Is it just me or does that sound especially unappetizing. Wet food just sounds weird. I’m going out for a wet hamburger. Would you like to try my wet chicken?
It just doesn’t trigger the old mouth-watering glands. Maybe because your subconscious is thinking, “Why water what’s already wet?”
Or maybe it’s because we got used to burrito sounding like burro and were okay with that, but now that we’re calling it a wet burrito it sounds like a wet burro and there’s nothing more unappetizing than a wet donkey. Unless we’re talking wet dog, or a wet weasel...
The other food challenge I had was when I was making fudge for folks who were vegans and I wasn’t sure about some of the ingredients. The vegan info I read said that vegans don’t eat animals or animal products. Hmm...
It’s like with vegetarians. They don’t eat animals, so you got to wonder if they eat yogurt. Yogurt often advertises that it contains live acidophilus bacteria. Bacteria, although small, are animals.
So are you still a vegetarian if you eat really really small animals?
The problem I had with vegans was honey. Honey is a natural sweetener and vegans, at least some of them, are vegans because they’d like to be healthier. Are vegans condemned to unhealthy white sugar because they can’t eat honey?
Because honey is an animal product, as it is essentially bee puke. So if it’s wrong to squeeze milk from a modified sweat gland from a cow, wouldn’t it be equally morally suspect to eat the sweet modified pollen regurgitated from a insect?
You can’t even use a non-cruel “free range” justification as most of today’s bees are loaded in factory hives that are trucked all over the fifty states.
Luckily, I’m an omnivore, but still, if I had to choose between forgoing honey or snarfing down a wet burrito, being a vegan would be easy.
Although I still think Vegan sounds like one of the alien races on Star Trek...
America, ya gotta love it.