Here in Alaska, road kill is harvested and usually goes to government or charitable institutions. Just like everywhere else, the majority of the jail population is the minority ethnic group. We have a lot of natives, partly because of prejudice and partly because they are not fully acculturated. They are especially grateful to have wild meat. And an old AA buddy runs a halfway house, and harvests the meat too. Usually when a half ton moose is hit on the road, the moose will walk away, and the driver and passengers are injured and killed. However, often the animal will sustain broken legs, or will die later of injuries. I can see how game meat could end up as government surplus.
Well, it's nice for her that she could afford to turn up her nose at that food, but it's a good part of the reason that I'm here today and for that I'm thankful.
I don't think the surplus bison meat was game or road kill. :-) Buffalo is raised on farms and ranches even here in New England, and the meat is sold in the local grocery stores at $6.00 a pound and up. (This is rather surprising to me since bison are raised on grass rather than grain and theoretically are cheaper to raise than beef cattle.)
But, the buffalo sold in the store is in choice cuts. That the buffalo we got was ground up suggests that the meat was that chewy, less desirable stuff -- like the beef that goes into hamburger.
On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:18:52 -0400, Christina Peterson wrote (in message ):
In New Hampshire, the same takes place if the meat is still edible. If you hit a deer or a moose, you get the right of first refusal. (Maybe that's to make up for the fact that your car has been totalled and you're in the hospital - at best) If the animal is no longer able to be used for food, the pelt is frozen, and the state auctions off the pelts in the spring.
As a kid, I thought that was nasty. Now I've come to appreciate the thought process behind it. It's too bad that the animal was killed, but at least the tragedy isn't compounded by waste.
On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:55:28 -0400, Kalera Stratton wrote (in message ):
There was a time in my life I'd have been delighted to have lumpy milk or odd tasting macaroni. I hate to say that she must not be hungry enough, but if the choice is nothing or government food, I'd be delighted to have government food.
BTW, the city used to give away surplus cheese to the elderly back in the day, and in such huge quantities that there was no way they could eat it all. We got the overage from some of our neighbors when we were first married, and thought it tasted terrific. I wouldn't turn my nose up at it today, that's for sure. Pity you can't buy it anywhere.
This is a lot different than the previous govt. program of USDA surplus stuff. The USDA surplus was what the govt. bought up to keep market prices from collapsing-- that and paying farmers NOT to grow crops/raise livestock. Some did get used for school lunches and military dining halls, as well as the welfare distributions.
The previous program also differs from a current welfare type food distribution program that my girlfriend's mother was on. It was something for low income seniors, and the food was brought to their residences. No choices in what you got-- even to decline items, though, so again there was a waste problem-- old Chinese ladies (Taiwan born and raised) do not eat milk products... and I don't know who goes through a whole pound of butter a week by themselves. She also was not much of a bread eater, and the large jars of jam and peanut butter were rather much. She did like the fruit, eggs and salad vegies they gave her, and liked most of the lunchmeat. The rice, though... she bought rice at the Chinese market instead. My girlfriend's kids got the cheese, butter and milk (although they didn't care much for 2%), and the rice and canned items mostly went to a church "pantry". Kaytee "Simplexities" on
To use it, it had to be ground to a powder first.... It was SUPPOSED to be powdered, but usually was firmly caked.
I don't think she had time to be creative-- essentially a single mom and a waitress working evening shift. What I remember most about her was how thin and tired she always seemed to be. She was married, but her husband was rarely "home", and when he was, she wore long sleeves and high collars.... Kaytee "Simplexities" on
Like I said, she was very thin.... But I think this may have been before you were even in your current existance-- like late '50s/early '60s.... I did taste the milk powder-- my mom made herself skim milk from powder, and I used to like to eat that dry. The govt. issue stuff was NOT the same. Didn't taste like milk at all. You could write on a blackboard with the chunks. Kaytee "Simplexities" on
After listening to all the discussion on this subject......I bought me a Mash's ham slice last night to grind up and fix a batch of ham salad for lunch. Sometimes if I have some Sargento shredded cheddar cheese, I'll throw some in and have ham and cheese salad. When I was in the Navy stationed at Lemoore, California they had a "Roach Coach" that came around the barracks and hangers several times a day. It had the best ham salad.
Ray
OK Mash's and Sargento.......I expect a case of products on my doorstep by the end of next week. O:-)
Yep, I wasn't around then... but I was raised on government commodity food in the 70's, and as much as indians talk about commodity food I never heard anyone say "it's a lot better than it used to be", LOL! I also remember, in the 80's, going to the commodity food store (I think it was attached to the Post Office) in the village we were living in then (I was born in Portland but we moved up to WA state when I was 11 or 12) and they had ICE CREAM! That was the first and only time I'd seen that.
Anyway, it might have been repulsive to an adult who was used to better, but to a kid it was just food. It was what we had and my mom made some killer enchiladas out of the canned chicken- we were always excited when there was canned chicken- and mixed the dry milk with peanut butter to make peanut butter balls, which I considered candy.
Beans are beans, no matter where you get them. I like beans, always have, and still do.
Sometimes the butter was rancid. I think that was a storage issue.
I did not like the cheese. I won't say I liked the cheese, but a lot of people did, including old-timers (my friend John is 75 and he liked the cheese). A lot of people talk about that cheese like it was the best thing in the world, and bemoan its current unavailability. I think that if they go to WinCo and get the "American Cheese" in the five-pound brick they might find it similar. I might have liked the cheese if we had white bread to make grilled cheese sandwiches on but my mom made her own brown bread, in retrospect the best bread in the world, but the cheese never tasted right on it, and of course the block of cheese they give you is so big you have to eat it every day, day in and day out, or it will go moldy on you. It's not bad with eggs though.
The macaroni and cheese, which we rarely ate because my mom said it had no nutritional value, was pretty comparable to the cheap generic grocery-store mac and cheese, which I don't eat today but then I don't HAVE to eat it. When I was poor and I could get it ten for a dollar I certainly did eat it, and was happy to have it too. I felt clever about being able to make a dollar last a week, even if it meant I got scurvy and rickets! ;) (No, I never had scurvy or rickets, though if I'd kept it up I'm sure I would have.)
I used to literally daydream about being able to buy "fresh groceries" for every day, and cook an actual full meal every night of the week. That, to me, sounded like the height of luxury. I knew that when I could buy fresh food every day, I'd be rich.
LOL, once when my first husband was in chemo, we were so poor I sold the wedding rings to feed my kids. When his disability money finally came in, I went shopping for anything that didn't resemble 'generic' boxes of mac'n'chees or tins of beans and the like.
To this day, I still feel sometimes like Scarlett O'Hara when she's in the field with those raw turnips.... It's probably why I'm overweight and have problems giving up things that I know are bad for me to eat, somewhere it's lurking that I may end up back in the 'bad old days'. Today, when the reality of worrying about Mike's being off work for so long really got to me, I dug out all the comfort foods I could find and had one of those days... fortunately there wasn't much in the way of comfort food in the house but it wasn't till later that I realized _why_ I'd gone on the binge.
When we were kids we were stone broke too, and a big treat was having fish fingers on Friday.
Our Friday night meal was Mrs. Paul fish sticks, a vegetable and Franco-American canned macaroni and cheese. I looked forward to it. With the exception of switching to Kraft macaroni and cheese we haven't changed the Friday menu.
Ray (Oh, goodie more cases of products.............. :-P )
OH MYY!!! I love canned Franco-American mac and cheese. And I can't find it anywhere! Did they stop making it. Even my husband, bless his heart, still looks for it because he knows it's one of my guilty food pleasures.
If not F-A, then I want homemade. I used to make KILLER mac and cheese but then Kraft dumped their Casino brand Muenster cheese. Haven't found a suitable replacement. And now Keith is on a lower carb diet for his cholesterol. Life sucks.
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