There’s a mustache in my drink.

Well well well.. I just thought I would touch base on our fabulous house warming party.  Before the grande event the roommates and myself made a big grocery shop at Lydl. Lydl is this super cheap store with low low priced and quality alcohol.. Perfect for me being always broke and all.  The theme, stashes and lashes.

 

It all started out with an old fashioned BBQ with a few friends.  We are sat around the candle lit dinner table nice prim and proper.  Started eating with forks and knives as civilized people do.   But then the French people came.  Now if you don’t know French culture I’ll explain to you it’s kind of like the Spanish culture, when you see one there are probably 10 more to follow.    Suddenly my beautiful tiny two bedroom townhouse was crammed with 70 people!!  My nice English dinner guests felt suddenly claustrophobic and made their way to the exit. People started eating steak with their hands, dancing, spilling alcohol all over the place and making loud hooting noises!  Love it!

 

Finally those darn Frenchies really know and like their quality alcohol and despite the fact that we did not retire to our respectable beds until 11am all of the cheap disgusting Lydl alcohol remained, along with many fuzzy memories.

The all organic farse

I just came back from a winter holiday in Canada.  I left with nice happy thoughts of icicles and snowmen but came back feeling jaded and cheated.  You see I discovered the fragility of our system and it's ability to misguide our beliefs that we are making the world a better place with our small actions.

It all started when I went to the Jean-Talon market.  It is supposed to be a farmers market supporting organic and all natural products etc.  My boyfriend and I had the idea to cook a shepherd's pie for our friend who was hosting us during our stay in Montreal.
We decided to use lamb and pork meat because lamb was 12 dollars for a half pound!  We found some pork meat marked organic, no hormones, steroids or antibiotics. The problem was the meat was marked from a town where my boyfriends parents are pig farmers. In fact they are the only pig farmers in that town and they give antibiotics to their pigs.
We bought it.  Afterwards we talked to my boyfriends dad who said that the meat probably came from the local butcher and it's not really sure where he gets his meat most likely it was from their farm.  What a mess.  Plus just a little side fact, pig farmers don't use growth hormones or steroids on pigs.  This was just useless information added to sell a product for a higher price.

Later on that week we had dinner with my boyfriends uncles who laughed about our little story and told us another.  They sell grain by the tons to a baker who sells organic baked goods.   The BF's uncle mentioned that his grain wasn't organic but the baker just laughed and said 'this is the best grain I have ever seen.  I sell what the people want and that's quality.'

Hmmmmm is there no control checks on these people?
Guess not.

How do we really know what we're buying.  It's sad that we can only buy things on good faith to faceless people who probably don't give a hoot about our good intentions and care more about making a buck.

It's the same with fair trade. I think it's pretty easy to figure out that fair trade really means that the wage of the bean pickers is 3 cents higher then the rest of the bean pickers.  But is that really fair?  Especially when the coffee is coming to the consumer for a dollar higher?

I want to meet my meat.  I want to know more about where my food is coming from and know what has been done to it.  Food prices seem to be getting higher and I seem to be getting farther away from understanding the real meaning of a carrot.

Any thoughts on this? I am all ears.

<3