ozarque: Recommended links; food troubles...

ozarque (

ozarque) wrote,
@ 2008-04-24 07:57:00

Recommended links; food troubles...
Thanks to Cindy Brown for alerting me to two relevant articles that are at cross purposes:

1. "Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World," by John Gerstein, at
http://www2.nysun.com/article/74994

2. A Wall Street Journal piece -- "Load Up the Pantry," by Brett Arends -- at
http://tinyurl.com/4wylrb .

Arends suggests that "maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food"; Gerstein reports that "major retailers" in the U.S. have started "limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil..."

==================
Nonfiction online: "How Verbal Self-Defense Works" at http://people.howstuffworks.com/vsd.htm ; "Why Are Old Women Older Than Old Men And How Can We Fix That?" at http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesElginOld.html ; Religious Language Newsletter archive at http://www.forlovingkindness.org ; Fiction online: "We Have Always Spoken Panglish" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Story-Panglish.html ; "What The EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/epa.htm ; "Weather Bulletin" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Weather.html ; "A Quorum Of Grandmothers" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/QuorumOfGrandmothers.html ; The Communipaths at http://www.jackiepowers.com/SuzetteHadenElgin/TheCommunipaths.html . More stuff at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/SiteMap.html ; LiveJournal blog index at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque .

(Post a new comment)

	fatcook 2008-04-24 02:22 pm UTC (link)
	I already have hoarding tendencies. I got them from both my mother and grandmother. If my pantry gets too low, I start to get anxious and stressed. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	karenkay 2008-04-24 02:27 pm UTC (link)
	A moth infestation from something I bought at Costco cured me of that. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	turbogrrl 2008-04-24 03:17 pm UTC (link)
	four limit on bags of moths! moths too powerful! (yeah, rice from costco caused me a huge moth problem.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	fatcook 2008-04-24 03:44 pm UTC (link)
	I've never had a problem with bugs in my pantry. Then again I store dry goods in either air-tight containers or in my second fridge. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(Anonymous)
2008-04-24 05:11 pm UTC (link)

I store grains and beans in half-gallon glass jars, tightly closed but not airtight. I've had only one bug, at least that I've seen. The easy way to take care of that is to put the whole jar in the freezer overnight, and the next day scoop out the dead frozen bug.

The thought of hoarding is scary because of the possibilities of violence/theft. (Aren't I the cheery one today?) I do buy in largish quantities because it's less expensive, both in money and in earth-resources. On the other hand, it's less interesting than impulse-buying.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

indefatigable42
2008-04-24 07:40 pm UTC (link)

Argh, pantry moths! We had good old 1970s tupperware to store cereal and grains in, and it would still end up all wormy and webby. The only way to protect such things was to keep them in the freezer.

Since I've been living on my own, I've had a couple of small outbreaks of bugs such as pantry beetles, and they never get into my dry goods, which I keep in glass jars that have silicone seals and those lock-down metal latches. I got them from Ikea.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Response about bugs in pantries....

ozarque
2008-04-25 01:26 pm UTC (link)

I'm all for keeping cornmeal (and similar items) in the refrigerator; I learned to do that when I lived in the tropics, where it was the only effective way to deal with the problem. But something that helps a lot, especially if you don't live in the tropics, is to put a few whole bay leaves on your pantry shelves and inside your opened food packages. It's not a foolproof solution -- nothing is -- but the bugs that are attracted to things like cornmeal have a powerful dislike for bay leaves.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Response about bugs in pantries....

ziactrice
2008-04-25 02:32 pm UTC (link)

Do bay leaves actually work?

I've found several state food departments that seem to feel bay leaves are an old-wive's-tale that do not actually help. I always put one on the top of my flour jar, but that's just tradition I have from my grandmother.

I have had very tiny bugs get into my flour, even in a closed metal contained - probably where in the package when I purchased it. Now I put all my new-purchased grains through 48-hours of freezing, then store in clean gallon-glass ex-pickle jars.

There are instructions on several web sites I've read about fumigating grains with dry ice, but that seems a trifle on the dangerous side for most home purposes to me.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Response about bugs in pantries.... danaseilhan 2008-04-25 04:58 pm UTC (link)
	They'll work if you get fresh ones. I had a bay tree for a little while in the nineties (sob... I want another one!) and I tell ya, the difference between freshly dried bay leaves and the sad, faded, little dinky things in the grocery store is night and day. Just pruning that tree made me ten shades of happy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	writerwench 2008-04-24 04:46 pm UTC (link)
	So maybe the Mormons have a point, with their year's worth of groceries stored in each household? I have pretty full cupboards, enough I suppose for a month of frugal eating. The dishes would get fairly bizarre after a couple of weeks, though. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	danaseilhan 2008-04-25 04:58 pm UTC (link)
	Ha! I was gonna say, the Mormons must be feeling pretty smug right now! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ethesis 2008-04-27 08:38 pm UTC (link)
	Not really. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

danaseilhan
2008-04-28 03:32 am UTC (link)

Hm, you're probably right. I suppose the less-evolved amongst them might be, but everybody else is probably going, "Damn, I wish I hadn't been right."

The sad part is I've known about this particular Mormon teaching for years, and actually thought it was a decent idea--OK, maybe a year's worth of provisions wouldn't have been practical, but several months would have been good. And yet I never went ahead and tried it.

On the plus side I need to cut grain mostly out of my diet anyway, and grain seems to be the most affected by all the foolishness going on. (It is more about commodity speculation at this point than about supply, from what I hear.) But I would still be an idiot to not take this seriously and start putting together a long-term pantry anyway.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

rosalux
2008-04-24 05:01 pm UTC (link)

Greenpa over at Little Blog in the Big Woods has an action plan for attacking food prices at their source, BTW. It's unlikely to affect the US because we are so much richer than most of the world, but it would make huge changes for the people in Haiti and Bangladesh who are starving because of high food prices driven by the developed world.

The plan is to demand that the US Commodities Futures Trading Commission keep speculators, especially hedge funds, out of food & farm commodities markets. The Commission is small and appointed, so pressure on Congress and the administration could change their policies pretty quickly.

He has written a lot about it on his blog:
http://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	Thank you... ysabetwordsmith 2008-04-25 12:27 am UTC (link)
	... for the reference. This looks useful. I also have a post on my blog about sensible pantry-stocking: http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/175920.html (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Response to rosalux... ozarque 2008-04-25 01:32 pm UTC (link)
	Many thanks for the link to Little Blog in the Big Woods. Now I have to figure out a way to persuade my browser not to show it to me in Very Pale Green Type, so that I can read it more easily.... (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Response to rosalux... ziactrice 2008-04-25 02:37 pm UTC (link)
	Quickie fix - highlight the text with the mouse. There is also an 'override this site's format' option buried somewhere in Internet Explorer's Preferences drop-down list, if you're using that browser. You can also make the type show LARGER. Why, yes, I do have vision acuity problems, why do you ask? Grin. (Reply to this)(Parent)

retooned
2008-04-24 07:13 pm UTC (link)

The articles are not at cross-purposes. They are more an example of cause-and-effect. The Wall Street Journal article advises readers to do short-term investment in consumable food; The New York Sun article shows the result of people doing such hoarding investment.

The stereotype would be that a Wall Street Journal reader would have more disposable income to put into buying 10 50-pound bags of rice at Costco. So that when stereotype Joan & Bud Six-Pack go to Costco, they find the rice pallet empty.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	magdalene1 2008-04-25 03:55 pm UTC (link)
	Well, and if "investors" buy up large quantities of food, food prices go up for everyone, and the Quaker Strategic Mutual Fund also does pretty well, right? I am skeptical of this article. I can see making sure you have some staples on hold, but it seems mighty self-serving. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	patknuth 2008-04-25 12:57 am UTC (link)
	Someplace I heard/read (can't remember which) that many small food places buy their flour/rice/oil at Costco and Sam's Club. So I thought that they were the ones wanting to buy large quantities and the stores were limiting so that there was something left for the other customers. Perhaps I misunderstood. (Reply to this)(Thread)

ethesis
2008-04-27 08:37 pm UTC (link)

Ok, the shortage is of a very specific type of rice, not rice in general.

If you are a restaurant who buys rice from SAMS or Costco and are in the specific trade, it is an important limit. No exports of rice from India for a while, until things calm down.

But if you are "rice and beans" sort of cook, who doesn't insist on rice from India, it won't matter.

The entire thing was aimed at keeping the rice available for the other customers.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	idiotgrrl 2008-04-26 12:31 am UTC (link)
	I know at least one of the local Mexican restaurants buys their rice at one of those stores and was discussing on the news what to do about the shortages. (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2008-04-26 12:31 am UTC (link)
	Here's an article about the non-shortage of rice in the USA: http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/24/news/companies/rice_issues/?postversion=2008042418 "NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Although warehouse retailers are limiting specialty rice sales, industry experts say U.S. consumers shouldn't worry that there's a shortage in the making. . . ." (Reply to this)

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