e.Coli in Cookie Dough... NEVER Happened at Grandma's House

I laughed when I heard about the Nestle’s Cookie Dough Re-call on the news, yesterday. Is this what we’ve come to – all for the sake of – convenience? Ya’ think??? Just one more business venture luring in sheep – depending on the fact that nobody really knows just exactly what is in the recipe. Anybody that does real baking can almost tell you – just by opening the package. Right off the bat – no butter – just grease. Ohhhh…. Yummmm! All these years of growing up have carried the memory of my own realization about the change in a Hershey chocolate bar. It’s the first thought that has come to mind when I even think about the treat. I was just a kid. It was back in the 1960’s. I remember hearing about the company making changes to the candy bar on the news. Reason given was due to cocoa and sugar prices going up in the economy back then. That candy bar left its original form that gave you reason to smile – almost overnight. I remember my first bite of the new version. My response was no smile – more like a verbal, “ewwwww.” The smoothness of the chocolate was gone. There was a grit to the texture. Every kid born after the 1960’s is totally ignorant and unknowing to what a Hershey chocolate bar really tasted like when Milton Hershey had control over his own creation. Best way to describe it is by using candle wax for example. You know how you can take a flat piece of melted candle wax and snap it into two or more pieces? You could open up a Hershey bar and get the very same effect before they ruined the recipe. Since then – it’s more like snapping that same piece of melted wax while it’s still warm. You could freeze the original version and have a fight on your hands when trying to snap off a piece! Today – you have to freeze it just to get that memorable snap of the original. Who remembers what the very first package of instant or processed food was to come out on the market? And Jello does not count. I think it’s safe to say – everybody knows the difference between the two versions of the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. One has the powdery crap and the smaller pasta. The other has the pack of soft cheese and elbow macaroni. Yeah – well… the taste and texture of the box with the powdery crap even went south. Hard to believe, but – that stuff actually tasted better when it came out, originally. And I won’t even start on Hamburger Helper. I haven’t bought a box of that junk for over twenty years. I once wondered with concern over why it just seemed like so many people were coming down with cancer. The medical community and the FDA blame it on certain foods. The irony of that is – they blame it on whole foods. For a person who does math about everything in life – things have never jived with me. My grandparents lived long lives. My great-grandparents lived even longer. And I was very well aware of their eating habits. My Grandpa Casteel was born and raised on a Dairy farm. They ate a lot of cheese – real butter – whole milk – buttermilk. It was used in a LOT of their baked and cooked foods. So was bacon grease! People in his generation and earlier weren’t coming down with all the cancer that’s killing people today. Now some in the family will remind me of the conditions that took my Grandpa’s life. He ended up having open-heart surgery that included six by-passes. He was over-weight and had cancer when he past away in his sixties. Very true. But his parents lived into their eighties and nineties after living on the Dairy farm with the same eating habits he experienced during his childhood - for much longer than him. And they both passed due to nothing more than natural causes. The difference between my Grandpa and his parents – Grandpa was an excessive beer drinker up until about the last ten or fifteen years of his life. He smoked TWO cartons of non-filter Camel cigarettes every week until the last five years of his life. His eating habits consisted mainly of one big meal at the end of the day during his adulthood. And I remember the consistency of those meals. That man would sit in his recliner in front of the television that was only about three feet away and eat on a tv tray. He always had two large plates of food that were just piled. He drank one or the other with every meal – beer, milk or buttermilk. He would put down a quart of canned jalapeno peppers – at the least – with every meal. And before he would go to bed – he would do in half of a half-gallon tub of Bluebell Vanilla ice cream - or - two 16oz. glasses of buttermilk and cornbread. This went on every night of his life for as long as I can remember – until he went through that open-heart surgery. All the convenience of buying packaged instant foods today is the killer. I can even remember when all the ingredient labels began changing. I can remember when we started seeing all the “artificial ingredients” showing up on the labels. And when you choose to throw your money away by buying it and bringing it into your home – you are responsible for your cancer just as much as all those product manufacturers. You pay more for less than what it would cost to make it by scratch. But then – paying more and getting less has been the trend for quite a while with everything – period. The reality is only becoming worse and the practice has reached the Full Monte. There is not one food or cleaning product you can think of that sits on the shelves in WalMart today that hasn’t become minimized to the extent with the ingredients. And they have learned that sheep just reach and throw their money away on anything with the right kind of slogan on the package to make you think you’re getting something fabulous! What do they care that so many now die from cancer? Look at the jobs it creates in the medical field! And that just keeps the colleges fed. Taking control over your own life and how long you wish to live is very simple. Remember back to what your elders ate way back when. If you were born after the sixties – go ask your elders. Go to the web or the library and do your research! Learn about history of life back in the early days. There is a reason why certain folks live to reach 100 years old and die of natural causes – even those that smoke that last cigarette the day before they pass away in their sleep the next night. You just have to close your eyes and ears to all the crap being put out there by all the wolves long enough to focus on that fact. And then you take control of your own shelves in your house.