So yesterday my post was about memory. Today it's about recall. Not the memory-kind, the "another product pulled from the shelves" kind. There were two Southeastern recalls in just the last week. One, Castleberry canned foods including 90 types of meat products and 4 types of dog food, because of botulism found in the cans. FYI, botulism has not been found in commercial canned foods since the 1970s. Two, Sara Lee recalled whole wheat bread packaged under the brand names Publix, EarthGrains and Sara Lee and dsitributed in west Georgia, the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi, parts of Tennessee, Louisianna, Arkansas and Missouri, because it may contain small pieces of metal. Not traces of metal, pieces of metal.
Add these recalls to the massive dog food saga, the spinach contamination, the peanut butter (from a Georgia plant, no less), and the general shocking daily findings about the amounts of food and additives we import from China, much of which we can't even trace to its source, and we have troubles, gang.
On the other hand, as I drove up in the North Georgia mountains earlier this week, I noticed not just some but most of the houses I passed had a nice-sized family garden. By nice-sized, I don't mean a few tomato plants. I mean about a quarter-acre, at minimum. Enough to have rows and rows of corn. Enough to can the surplus to last through the winter. Without botulism. Have these families always had these gardens and never stopped? Or is there a surge in home gardening this year, perhaps because of the constant barrage of news about the insecurity of our nation's food supply?
Maybe soil got tilled and seeds got planted in old, forgotten plots when the desire grew too strong for just-picked corn so sweet that you eat it right there, in the field or on the white porch steps, its Barbie-hair tassles still hanging from the end. Not worrying about where it comes from. Because you know.
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