I'm just curious here. But do you feel the same about this if say a family invites other family members to travel two days by car to spend the holidays with them bringing all their 6 children and luggage? We have family who does this. They invite us to travel a huge exhausting distance to visit them. And despite knowing our dietary needs they make no effort to even incorporate dishes for us. So it's a long two day drive there and back and then when we get there we need to try and make alternate dishes for every meal. They'd be pretty ticked if they traveled to OUR house and we deliberately only fed them my son's strict diet. Because for them holidays and travel are very much about enjoying extra pleasurable foods. Is it really truly unreasonable to invite family over and make the effort to make dishes they can enjoy as well? It just seems to me that traveling with kids is way more exhausting than staying in your own home with easy access to the grocery stores you are used to. And I am honestly baffled at my in laws total inconsideration of our needs. I'm to the point of just refusing to even go to anyone else's house for the holidays because I'm sick of having to drag an assortment of dishes along with us or making a whole range of dishes on our own when we can squeeze in some stove time between others after traveling for two days. I just thought it was basic manners to consider the needs of guests you invite to your home? I really just thought they were super rude so I'm surprised to be reading the idea in this thread that it really is totally normal and acceptable to invite people to your home knowing full well that they can't for spiritual, ethical or health reasons eat certain foods and then make no effort to accommodate them.

I'm digging swales and building hugelkulture beds in my front yard. I've only got one acre though and the neighbors all know I'm a freak. They just don't know what permaculture is.

I'm not saying that at all personally. In my opinion there is a huge difference between using boxed pasta and canned tomatoes in a sauce as part of a complete meal vs opening a can of ravioli. There is a difference between using some convenience and processes foods vs a life where almost everything is premade. We do buy boxed pasta. We do buy canned tomatoes and canned coconut milk. But for the most part my kids eat whole fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy and meat that are made into snacks and meals. My kids snack on things like fruit and peanut butter. Don't get me wrong. I love my sister but am using her as an example here. My sisters kids snack on things that all come in a package. Fruit is in the form of boxed juice and fruit flavored shapes. Instead of cheese and bread/crackers it's cheese flavored crackers. They eat out all the time and at home live off boxed macaroni, cereal, frozen breakfast/lunch/dinner dishes etc. I'm not saying they never eat a fruit or vegetable but it's really not all that common. My bil likes that canned green bean casserole at Christmas. LOL It's one of only two dishes his mother makes. She doesn't even cook for the holidays now. I've been totally grossed out shopping with my sister because she'd basically buy nothing in the produce dept. My niece at 6yo asked me what an ONION was at our house one day. No one lives a life without some processed foods. It's hardly possible! But when I personally am talking about a processed food diet I'm talking about basically almost all foods coming out of a box, bag or can. Growing up my mom cooked at least dinner. Now she rarely does. My dad cooks a fair amount but it's only meat on the grill and it's served with canned baked beans and microwave potatoes. They eat out or eat presliced and packaged food for the overwhelming majority of their meals. My fil cooks and my mil doesn't. He makes wonderful dinners frequently but every breakfast and lunch will come out of a package except for holidays. I see a lot of people that eat that way. I personally can not eat that way. It literally makes me physically sick. I have to eat real whole foods and not processed ones. I probably sound like a real jerk here. I don't mean to. I know it's fairly common though. Everywhere we go someone wants to give my kids candy, sugary drinks and a packaged snack it seems. And that's what I see most people serving each other. But I just want to at least clarify what I mean in this thread talking about a processed food diet.

Exactly!!

This is a huge issue for us! My grandmother died at 72 and had the same blender for decades. I am constantly reading reviews and trying to buy the best item but so often it's garbage. My $2,000 washing machine and dryer set were a horrible buy in the long run. Every repair requires spending hundreds of dollars to replace whole panels. The last time it broke we went and bought a 40 yo Maytag off Craigslist. My husband can open the thing up now and order individual parts and fix it all himself. It doesn't require $400 for a new whoozy whatsit and $200 for a repair man to install the whoozy whatsit. Things are built badly and deliberately to force us to constantly buy more and more. I love the things I get that last. But they are hard to find and usually expensive. The problem is expensive can be a good item that will last decades or crap that lasts a year or two. It's really hard to tell ahead of time with a lot of things. And it's almost impossible to find good customer service. If you hit 0 often enough you might get a real live person who barely speaks and English and really doesn't care about what you purchased from that company.

"I disagree. I think it should be offered as a course for credit (I think it still is) but not required. I had to take home ec for 6 weeks and it was idiotic. "This is boiling, this is frying, this is how you make a pizza out of a box. This is how you sift flour." Really? What a waste of time if you have other life plans besides homemaking. I very rarely cook. My kids eat. If I needed to figure out how to cook, I would. Necessity is the mother of invention. But nobody needs to cook produce, bread, milk, etc. And you don't need a class to heat up canned or frozen veggies, soups, ravioli, and a million other things. It takes about five minutes to learn how to cook eggs, boxed pasta, rice, and potatoes. (OK, maybe 10 minutes for some kinds of potatoes.) Everything else is gravy (no pun intended). That's what they invented cookbooks for. A better solution might be to get some of these people working in a "soup kitchen" where they can learn the basics while helping others." I think people were thrown off then by comments like "What a waste of time if you have other life plans beside homemaking." And then following it up with how you rarely cook, and how nobody actually needs to cook and that beyond a few basics everything is gravy. How on earth is that not to be taken as a criticism of cooking in and of itself? Your main complaint was not the class but cooking. And you did proceed to argue that cooking itself was not a necessity in our society in further posts. I really think you are just back pedaling here. I don't see people putting words in your mouth. Just because you also said you didn't think the class should be required doesn't negate all the other negative remarks regarding cooking.

Just because you thrive on processed foods you don't cook yourself doesn't mean that most people do though. We have serious health problems in this country. Skyrocketing rates of obesity in childhood. And rampant disease that's mostly preventable through diet. Being able to enjoy good healthy food that's not highly processed is not just a fun thing for those who enjoy it. And otherwise everyone else who doesn't cook enjoys good health and thrives without it. That's simply not the case.

With all due respect you're just being hypocritical in this thread. You can't reasonably argue that something should be optional because a parent can teach it. And then argue that just because a parent can teach it it should not be optional because one thing takes longer to learn or is more useful in your opinion. You don't have a real argument here other than you hate cooking, think your family is healthier than others subsisting on canned and frozen foods for decades at a time and since you think it's stupid by golly NO ONE should ever be forced to learn it in school!

Argumentative? Seriously? Aren't you the one who compared teaching children basic cooking schools to going ahead and jailing everyone preemptively?

Most parents could teach their children to read and write too. Maybe that should be optional in school as well.

Well, most people can avoid doing most anything because there is always someone else you could pay to do it for you. But cooking is a practical skill and would help the overwhelming majority of students. Isn't this the childhood hunger thread still? Cooking skills would allow many people to save money and make their budget stretch further. And I would think it would help students whose parents can't or won't do it for them instead of having to rely on schools.

You can pick a zucchini with a blossom still on the end and it should be ripe. I love small zucchini too and just pick them small. I have to admit I'm confused by the idea of it needing to ripen? In my experience it's much like growing greens. You can pick them as soon as you want and they are ready just small yet in size.

I love fennel! We have a long growing season but I can never get it to bulb up. It grows like a weed in my garden now. I never need to replant it. My 5yog munches on raw fennel fronds most of the year now. lol

Dh and I try and get in a big shopping trip at the farmer's market together periodically. It takes hours. It's a long drive and we are buying bushels boxes of fruit and veg and 25 lb to 50 lb sacks of this. I prefer not to do that alone. And I prefer not to take more than the toddler or my preteen. Otherwise dh tends to make frequent trips to the store closest to our house. And we have our weekly trip to meet up with our farmer and get our milk.

Amen to that! There is something seriously seriously wrong when you can be fined or penalized for giving food and water to the hungry.

I definitely think that's the way things are heading. Things are simply not the way they were decades ago. Everything is more expensive from food to school. Most people do not have the options of pensions, health care benefits are declining for most people etc. I don't see it getting better any time soon. The conditions leading to this situation haven't changed for the better and aren't likely to. We technically make a lot more than we did a few years ago but being self employed we have no benefits. We pay more in income tax, we have worse health care options and we have no retirement pension or matching 401k. We do not have the options our parents had. Greece is not in the situation they are in JUST because a lot of people were avoiding taxes. I think Greece is more like the canary in the coal mine. The decline in population growth alone in western nations, ignoring all the other factors, will make it that much harder for economies to thrive. There are simply less workers supporting everyone. And then factor in the enormous debts that all western nations have. Who is going to pay that? The shrinking segment of the populations who are still employed while also making less money?

Same here. It was a lifesaver when my dh lost his job in 2008.

Our town was spreading non stop for a long time. Everywhere you looked there was new development. It's one of the wealthiest counties in the US. It basically stopped in 2008 though. There are still pockets with buildings that were never finished. And while most restaurants and stores are busy there are many restaurants and stores that folded and sit empty. Some things might have been built some where but neither dh or I can think of anything off the top off our heads.

The camera angle I see is never quite aimed downwards in that direction. Or do male giraffes have some protrusion on their heads I'm not aware of?

I'm really baffled as to why things like the internet are considered a "luxury". Just because it didn't exist in our parents generation doesn't make it a luxury now. I'm confident it would cost me more in gas money and wear and tear to drive to our library to use the internet. That said my husband works online full time and it's as required in my house as running water and electricity. It would be as ludicrous as considering paint brushes and a ladder as a luxury for someone who paints houses for a living.

I've seen the anime girl. As someone else said, "sad". But I thought I read she kept her weight down which I presume means semi starve herself. :/

I just realized that if you click on the picture below the screen that says "Giraffe Paddock" you can see them outside. It looks like Walter pacing in a circle with no signs of a kiddie pool or cigars.

I think Walter's outside frantically blowing up a giant inflatable pool right about now.

Unfortunately from everything I've read the price of food is only going to go up in price even more over the next year, especially meat. I think it's a combination of drought, inflation and demand for gas. But if some get their wish and we end up in yet another war in the ME it's only going to get far worse. I'm buying ahead to save on food costs personally.

Lots of thrashing. It reminds me of being in transition and wanting to knock my head against something and lose consciousness. Whatever is going on she is acting VERY weird and this has not been normal behavior over the last week or so I've been watching.