Snacks

As I sit here and try to think of something to blog about I decide that I should get something to eat for a snack. I’ve been good all day, why not? This gave me an idea to blog about all of the different option that you have to eat…so I figured to would write about it.

The first option that is always a good one is the classic M&M. I was watching a National Geographic thing on TV, because I am that cool, and for whatever reason they were talking about M&Ms. They started out as a snack for soldiers in WWII, because there was a problem with original chocolate and that problem was that chocolate has a melting point just under your body temperature. This means that they melt in your hand, what just causes all sorts of problems. So the smart people over at M&M decided to add a delicious candy shell to the outside and thus the M&M was born. Other than trying to keep your hands clean so you can kill people more efficiently, they have many practical uses in the home. For example, if you are trying to write a blog and eat, you no longer get chocolate all over the key board, or you can use your phone without getting it all nasty, the possibilities are truly endless.

The next one I take a lot of crap for eating. That would be the cold hotdog. According to every member of my family, this is gross. I do not understand why because they are precooked, and back in the good old days my ancestors would have eaten cold meat strait off of the loin that they just killed with their bare hands. The cold hotdog is quick and healthyish, I am not sure what else you would want in a snack.

Something else that always satisfies is the chunky peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you prefer creamy you might be a woman. This is a lot healthier than most people give it credit for and it is awlays good, it is pretty hard to mess up making. The only thing about this delicacy that make me hesitant to put it is the assembly, while pretty easy, does take time more so than M&Ms or a cold hotdog

If you have not been able to tell already, the best snack is so easy that even with someone with a negative IQ can figure out how to make it, good enough that you want to make it, and hopefully clean enough that you can be productive while you enjoy it. (436 words)

Tacos and Burritos

In my mind there is no question that this generation is one that will be remembered for its mass consumption of fast food tacos and burritos, why is this? I will conduct an in depth investigation in this blog to uncover what is driving this lust for quick Mexican food.

One of the main reasons is how fast and easy it is to eat there. Let’s face it, unless you are trying to have a sit down meal at a nice restaurant eating it kind of an inconvenience. If we didn’t have to eat we would have, by my calculations, we would have like an hour more to do things. That is not to say that I don’t like the taste of food, so if I could get a quick meal that also tastes good that would be awesome. Well I can with tacos and burritos. Another down side to eating is that it tends to cost money, money that someone with a low paying dead end job doesn’t really want to spend on food. Tacos that cost under a dollar are perfect, and for the amount of food you get with a burrito the prices for one of them is not too bad either.

Another great thing about them is that both of the establishments that they are served in are open pretty late, this means that if you are up late doing whatever it is you do and you want to go somewhere to hang out, you almost always have a place. But then that begs the question why do young people flock there rather than to places like Wendy’s that are also known for being open late? While people still go to other places like Wendy’s, I think that it is the same as the reasons that I listed above like the cost and the taste, but I think that a main reason is that it is just what everyone is eating.

I am by no means trying to say that the kids of this generation do not eat any other foods, lots of people love places like Perkins, McDonalds and other fast food places like McDonald’s, I only feel as though kids flock in more numbers to places that sell tacos and burritos. (377 words) 

Food Day

Today in one of my classes we got to bring in food. We got to on this day because it was a special occasion, and now I would like to take some time to tell you fine people why this is such a good idea.

The first of many reasons is because it helps to develop team work skill, a skill that will help you more in life than the particular class that we got to bring food into. This was kind of like a potluck in that everyone brought food and then put it all together then people got to just go up and get what they wanted. To coordinate something like this takes team work and leadership. To get twenty something teenagers to all remember to bring something to eat is no small task.

The second plus to this is that, as simple as it may seem, it helps to teach responsibility, the whole thing doesn’t really work unless everyone is responsible enough to bring everything. I get that it is not too hard to remember to bring one thing, but every little bit helps.

Another great benefit to this is that is gives the students something to look forward to. Other than knowing that your year is basically over a month early when you take AP classes there really is not anything to look forward to. That is where snack day comes in. I had been looking forward to a day of not doing anything but eating other people’s food for a week and when it finally came it was wonderful. During this day with no learning my class mates and I discussed all that we had learned over the past year and all of the fun tikes that we had had.

So just to conclude this argument, snack days after AP tests are a good thing for a number of reasons. For one it helps to develop real word skills like team work, leadership, and responsibility. Having a snack day also helps to give students something to look forward to, because let’s face it, there is not much to look forward to in school these days. Also just for the relaxation it provides, after a long couple of weeks dealing with AP test and worrying about how poorly you did on them, it is nice to just have an hour to eat and relax. (398 words)

Bugs

Why do we not eat bugs? We eat plants, we eat just about every animal that we can legally, but we do not eat bugs. Most people all around the world eat bugs as a part of their daily lives, both because they are prepared in the right way and the taste is pleasurable and because it is a necessity to survive. In Japan flies are prepared using soy sauce and sugar, in Mexico people mix worms with alcohol and in places like these all around the world people enjoy bugs everyday, so why in America is it so taboo to eat them? It is certainly not because they are not healthy, in fact they are grasshopper is a better alternative than hamburger. Hamburger is about 18 percent fat and 18 percent protein while grasshopper is around 60 percent protein and only 6 percent fat. Not only is it healthier, but it is more efficient to farm. 100 pounds of food can produce about 45 pounds of insect flesh but the same amount can only produce 15 pounds of animal flesh. This leads me to believe that people not wanting to eat insects is purely a cultural thing. If you were to see an insect on the menu at restaurant you are not going to be thinking about how much better it would be for you or how much more efficient it is to raise them, the only thing that is going to be in your mind is that it is a bug and that eating bugs is gross. 

American Food

I just ate a hamburger and that got me thinking about what foods are the most American, and I had to think of something to write about so I figured that I would just write about that….so here goes.

First on the list (in no particular order) we have that classic hamburger, or if you are truly American the cheeseburger. Like much of the food we call American, it doesn’t actually originate from the United States. As the name suggests, they originally came to us from Hamburg Germany via German immigrants where they truly became American. By this I mean that no one just orders a plain hamburger, you always end up getting a burger loaded with bacon, or deep fat fried onion rings, or something else that takes any hint of it German heritage out of it and turns it into what ever it is that you want it to be.

Next is a personal favorite of mine, the Twinkie. This little guy has become so popular over its life time that even as I write this Microsoft Word corrected my spelling of it and told me that I should capitalize it. However, one thing that makes me question just how American it is, is the people who make them. I am talking about the Hostess strike that left the world in a Twinkie shortage and even prompted people to sell their existing Hostess products on the internet for crazy amounts of money. Striking is un-American because striking is for socialist, and by default if you are a socialist you are fundamentally un-American. Sorry socialists.

I think that I would be pretty hard to argue that French Fries are un-American despite the fact that the name of another country is in the name of them. Much like the Hamburger, we Americans stole this delicacy from another culture and called it our own. We simply could not resist not having a food that requires a deep fat fryer to prepare and not calling it American.

Another prime example of American cuisine is a hotdog. As I have shown you, America steals food from the little guys and calls it our own and the hotdog is no exception. As with its brother, the hamburger, it was “borrowed” from Germany, but two other things help, in my opinion, to make it more patriotic. The first being it prevalence in baseball, pretty American if you ask me, and the second being the ideology of lets make as much money as we can. As you may know, hotdogs more so than other meats are made up of all of the left over animal parts that companies cannot use in their other products, so rather then throwing it away they but the meat into eatable plastic sock type things and sell it to the American people knowing that as long as it tastes good and is cheap the consumers of American would care what is in it.

Bringing up the rear of the list we have the “taco”. Same as everything besides the Twinkie, the taco was stolen and then Americanized. If you ask any real Mexican (person from Mexico) they will be discussed to know that the items sold to us by companies like Taco Bell and Taco John’s (whether or not Taco John’s is still a thing I do not know) are marketed as tacos. The tacos that are sold in American are basically hamburgers in a shell, meat, cheese, lettuce, and if you are feeling adventurous you might even add a Mexican inspired topping to your taco such as salsa. Another thing that may anger a true Mexican is that according to Taco bell’s new breakfast menu any thing that is wrapped in anything is a taco, like their waffle taco.   

I hope that in this I have been able to demonstrate that hardly any food is truly American. Nearly ever food that you eat is the American version of some food from some there country, even of you think you are eating the authentic version…you’re not. Take spaghetti for example, hardly anyone that I know eats it with out meat sauce, but that’s how they do it in Italy, despite that fact people will still say that they are eating Italian. I’m not trying to prove a point or anything like that by writing this, I am just talking about foods that I think, and the majority of American’s think to be American. (743 words)

Look Good

With the summer months quickly approaching I was reminded of a problem that many people have while they are trying to enjoy a day on the river or lake or at the pool. That is the problem of eating too much during a meal and looking fat. What most people will do is just eat one big meal at around noon, eat until they are full, then spend the next couple of hours trying hid their food babies from the ever judgeful eyes of the rest of the people. I have a simple solution to this problem that has been plaguing people ever since Eve ate the fruit. This solution is to simply eat less, but eat more often. Not only will this help you look better for bikini season, but it is actually healthier than eating the way that we do nowadays. Back in the good old days when people were hunter/gathers the wouldn’t just sit down three times a day and eat, they would eat when ever the opportunity presented its self. This meant eating little and often, and this is how our bodies were evolved to function. So by using this simple little trick you can not only look better shirtless, buy you can feed your body the way that millions of years of evolution have designed it to eat. (224 words)

Survival

Recently I was trekking through the wilderness with a close acquaintance of mine and the topic of what we would bring to survive in the out doors to survive with. The reason that I felt like this should be on a food blog was because almost everything that I said I would bring had to do with obtaining or preparing food. I would like to point out at this point that I am not any survivalist so if I say something stupid, it is because as I was thinking about this it seemed like a god idea.

1.)    A scoped .22 rifle with ammunition. For me this one is a no brainer because I will provide food and entertainment. Having this weapon will allow you to make a meal out of any small game that you see, but not completely blow their brains off. By this I mean that it is not too much gun for squire as lets say a 12 gauge. The 12 gauge was suggested by my acquaintance, but I pointed out to him that you will see more small game that large game and even if you take down a buck you would have no way to keep the meat so you would only get one or two meals out of it.

2.)    Matches. This is another one that came pretty easily to me. The guy I was with was trying to sound tough and suggested flint and steal, but I am not that manly and I am not trying to impress anyone so matches suit my needs. These will come in handy for preparing meals and also making water safe to drink. That leads into number three…

3.)    A pot. I feel like this would get over looked by most people, but having a fire and water does not do you much good if you do not have anything to boil it in.

4.)    A knife. This one also seems pretty obvious, it would come in handy for cleaning game and fish.

5.)    Rod and reel. If you are not having a great day of hunting them you could always throw a line into the water and hope that you get lucky. For bait you can just use a bug that you find of if you catch a little fish you can chop him up (using you handy knife) and put some pieces of him of the other end of your line.

So there you have it. With your rifle, rod and reel, knife, matches and pot you should have all you need to feed your self in the woods. You may even eat pretty well if you know how to cook over a fire. (442 words)