Safe In Our Sweet Mama’s Arms

The other day I made a lasagna.  I got some fresh spices, some 90% lean ground beef, some Bob Evans spicy pork sausage, some onions, some bell pep­pers, some of the last fresh zuc­chini, ital­ian toma­toes, reg­u­lar toma­toes, fresh mush­rooms, tomato paste, fresh gar­lic, fresh-​​ground pep­per, some salt, some skim moz­zarella, some whole-​​milk moz­zarella, some cot­tage cheese (fat free and 4%), some fresh pars­ley, an egg, and some dried lasagna noo­dles. The red sauce gets left in a slow-​​cooker overnight so all the fla­vors can blend. This is one bad red lasagna sauce!

My friend takes a fork­ful, pauses before eat­ing it, looks at me sus­pi­ciously, and says So — what’s in it?  This is a per­son who hap­pily gets a frozen brick which has on its pack­ag­ing a pic­ture of lasagna on it, put it in the oven for a half-​​hour, and eats it.

So — when it comes from the store, sold by peo­ple she doesn’t know, who bought it from peo­ple they don’t know, who bought the ingre­di­ents from peo­ple they don’t know, which were han­dled by peo­ple they don’t know, it’s all OK.

But me? When I make it it’s sus­pect. I don’t have a seal. And she looks at it espe­cially closely and sniffs it.  What did I put in it? If it came in a pack­age they would tell you, right?  Might be made in a place which once had a peanut. And they never lie!

Every kid I knew when I was one too put bak­ing soda into the back of a plas­tic frog­man, put him into the bath tub, and expected him to go whizzing around, as Jack Kennedy used to say, “with great vigah.”  Maybe even grab a sponge and pol­ish the chrome. But, no, frog­gie went to the bot­tom and lay there. Every time.  And we knew that it had to be our fault BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T SAY IT ON TV IF IT WEREN’T TRUE.  The Fed­eral gov­ern­ment had an army of peo­ple watch­ing Stau­r­day morn­ing TV and read­ing all the pop­u­lar comic books and GOD HELP THE MISCREANT who fibbed about what we were sup­posed to send our money in for.

Just like they put it on the label of the 400,000 pack­ages of let­tuce con­t­a­m­i­nated with sal­mo­nella: Con­t­a­m­i­nated With Sal­mo­nella! Right? Oh, wait — they sell the 400,00 pack­ages and then say, Oh, by the way…

We seem to have this idea that the peo­ple we buy stuff from are out to kill us and the only thing stand­ing between THEM and us is the government.

Really think so?  Then let the gov­ern­ment tell you how good, how much, how often, and how high. That’s what they think they’re there for.

Copy­right secured by Digiprove © 2009

Tags: reality