Straight from the Scullery

a blog about life, love, and the pursuit of food and happiness...

Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Shamrock Shake-Worthy

While I most certainly will never proclaim to be the most healthy eater you've ever met, there actually are some standards I do like to maintain. I love to eat whole foods and I love to cook from scratch. While I have been known to eat chocolate chip cookies and leftover pizza for breakfast (on more occasion than one), I have also countered that with broccoli quiche and oatmeal with blueberries and cream. Two superfoods in one meal, I'd like to point out (broccoli and blueberries).

I also like to think of myself as a person who "gets along with others," in most cases, although on occasion, I have admittedly crossed paths with a certain number of (up to this point) folks who had yet to be assigned a category in my mind. Irritating, perhaps. Obnoxious. Self-absorbed. Certainly those could be category titles, but until now, there has never been an all-encompassing adjective that was quite fitting enough.

And so I'll take a brief moment to thank McDonald's for providing me with a list of 54 ingredients (complete with nitrous oxide and other additives that the World Health Organization has warned to be carcinogenic) that provides not only a standard that I hold for my personal well being, but also a new title to the select few people I hope to never run across again in my life. The Shamrock Shake-Worthy. Who else but your arch-enemies would you actually feed this to?

Monday, March 18, 2013

Capitol Hill Bake Sale

I am trying to determine if the US government has finally come up with a viable plan to raise funds in a way that does NOT involve raising taxes (or that silly notion of actually paying attention to where all of the billions of dollars are being spent).

I think they are gearing up for the mother of all bake sales. I mean, really...there must be a good idea SOMEWHERE within all this madness. 

You see, the USDA is debating whether or not to purchase 400,000 tons of sugar in order to limit the available supply, in turn, boosting the dollar amount made by sugar producers. 

I'll give you three guesses as to why the government is actually involved in this sweet deal. It's really not the bake sale idea (brilliant as it may be), nor does it have anything to do with our nation's dramatic increase in waistline measurements (though a sugar tax has been proposed in order to combat our nation's obesity problem, but the idea was fairly short-lived. What would we eat, for crying out loud??) And if your third guess is anything beyond self-serving, well, think again. We're talking about politicians, after all. It's the government.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

What So Proudly We What?

I am finding great entertainment value in creating a new Top Ten List for myself, and although it is not yet completed, I am going to share the beginnings of it with you.  I am titling it "Top Ten Things Every American Should Know." Or you may hear it referred to periodically as "What Exactly Is America Thinking About?"

In pondering the contents of this list, I remembered (probably from Jeopardy!) that March 3 marks the anniversary of the date that Herbert Hoover signed the congressional resolution stating that "The Star Spangled Banner" is our official national anthem. 

As is the case for most everything that is done on a wide scale, of course there were (and are still) grumblings and disagreements surrounding the musical selection. I suppose everyone needs a cause to believe in or a bandwagon to jump on.