Having worked at one, I can tell you this. Starbucks is not a coffee shop. it is a sugary steamed milk junk food shop.

Ever wondered why the salad at a fast food joint is more expensive than the giant size combo burger and fries with a soda?



Because the government pays farmer to grow corn for feed and high fructose corn syrup, soybeans that get reconstituted into stuff that barely qualifies as food, cotton, wheat, and tobacco (?!).

It's almost enough to make one think the libertarians might not be THAT scary crazy.

There's a lot of talk about how corn ethanol subsidies are "responsible" for part of the way food prices have run up lately. And there's some truth to that, and besides, corn ethanol is pretty much a boondoggle anyway. But it's hardly the end of the story, it's just an easy target, especially for politicians who're opposed to sustainability.

But you know what consumes a lot more grain than biofuels?

Growing corn and wheat and so on to feed concentrated grain to livestock which are grown for their meat. That's not touching on any of the other problems that come with modern factory farming methods, such as the waste, spread of diseases, breeding of antibiotic resistant bacteria, mad cow, and the ethical issues with the way many of the animals are raised.

Plus, if America cut back on meat by about 20%, it'd save as much CO2 as if we all drove cars that got 50+ miles to the gallon.

We have so many systems in our civilization that need complete overhauls, or just to be junked and replaced with something better.

I need to learn to make yogurt. Either that or to put it in a separate bowl instead of eating it right from the tub, because I will totally eat half of one of the big two pound tubs of yogurt.

Yes, I'll get back to real updates here at some point, really. I promise.

So the FDA is testing all sorts of food we get from China to make sure it wasn't shipped over in bags that used to hold pesticides and that sort of thing now, after the pet food and reports from South Africa and so on.

The question is though, why are we importing so much food from China? Especially things like wheat, which grows perfectly fine in the US. I can see importing foods that grow better elsewhere, but why stuff like wheat and corn where we grow so much the government pays farmers to throw it out?

Can anybody recommender a good stir fry sauce, or a good recipe for it? I've got this stuff called "Kikoman Stir-Fry" sauce I got at the grocery store, but it's very meh. It's nowhere near as good as the kind of stuff they have at Chinese restaraunts. I'd like something better.

I've learned at least one thing from my classes. Maybe it's just because I've been trying to eat healthier in general lately, or maybe I've just started to notice it more, but things with too much sugar seem to crash my brain. Especially on an emptyish stomach. I'm not sure if it's the sugar rush shorting out my neurons, or just the "crap, all gone" crash afterward, but it makes me end up feeling stupid and unable to recall things I knew before. Maybe my general swearing off of caffeine and soda and trying to eat healthier has ruined my body's defenses to sugar. Or maybe it's just time for me to start weaning myself off sugar, too.

Apparently, at Ruby Tuesday's, they do something a bit unusual.

Everywhere else I've gone, when they sell cheese sticks, they are basically chunks of mozzarella string cheese, chopped into lengths, then breaded and deep fried. Also, delicious.

However, at Ruby Tuesday's apparently, they make their cheese sticks out of cream cheese. Yeah, I have no idea why either. And no, they're not particularly good. Especially when you're expecting Mozzarella. A word to the wise.