Food for thought

A story from my youth has been kicking around my head for a few days since we are now entering 2013.It was my introduction to how artificial food could be.

Back in the dark ages, when I was still in high school, my family moved across the country. And for some long forgotten reason it seemed like a good idea to mail my best friend from our old town some Oat meal cream pies by one of the hostess style "bakery" companies. I slipped 6 into an envelope and mailed them off. That left six of them sitting around in a box in my new bed room. Fast forward several months.....

Some of my good friends in my new town come over to my house to hang out. There was much excitement over the presence of the oatmeal cream pies. But once I mentioned that they where from Xmas a few people thought they might have gone bad. So I checked out the box.
Manufacture Date: 05/1988
Expiration Date: 05/2013

We were all dumbfounded. I was probably luckier than most in the healthy food department at home while growing up. My family was the right combination of poor enough to necessitate and earth conscious enough want to garden much of our own food. I remember canning, freezing, and drying the summer and fall harvest. We would bargain for extra TV time by shelling peas,snapping beans, or shucking corn. This led to my childhood diet being fruit and veggie heavy. 

My partner and I are fairly food conscious but could be better. We have started making a weekly menu on which to base our grocery shopping. This helps us to avoid the "I am hungry & grumpy & do not want to think about coming up with tonight's menu so lets order pizza,or Chinese, or Mexican, etc... instead" scenario Unfortunately, I realized that scenario reared its ugly head almost 3 times a week at our house this summer. This little step is helping me better control what is going in my body since we are buying the groceries and cooking the food to our standards and it saves us money to boot.