Dispatch from a (Fruit)Basket Case

Posted @ Dec. 14 2011 05:25AM by Bob Carey - home-garden

I have no fear at all of dying during Surgery. I also have no fear of being targeted by an asteroid the size of Strawberry Square (after all, if I need to get hit by an asteroid, it might as well be a big one!) or any other quick, abrupt and final end to my questionably valuable life. Coversely, the thought of starving, or having to watch my family suffer the same slow demise feels like a thousand deaths to me. So much in fact, it wakes me with a start in the middle of the night sometimes.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I'd bridge a bad patch of poor cash flow; a hunker down strategy, if you will, to see me through the tribulation.

For those who garden or are outdoorsmen, there's living off the land or the stores from our produce plots. However, the fat squirrels eating my expensive bird seed would be an ample feast for all of three meals... and then what? The garden has been a great place to produce extra salad fixings and pick-it-fresh treats during the growing season, but realistically, there's no surplus for winter sustenance.

I've often wondered how a dollar a day can possibly feed a child in some suffering land. Perhaps, many of you are even wondering why I am so preoccupied with the topic. Never mind!

I haven't worked out the menu and Lord knows I don't know how to break the news to my wife and kids, but I just figured out how to provide about 50 pounds of fresh, nutritious sustenance for about $25.00 a week.

Hey, Thanks for your attention. It was great to see you all. Have a safe drive home.

"What?!"

Oh, you have just one question.

Well, the answer is bananas. Yes. Bananas.

Look, much of the world, and particularly the parts many of us have no interest in visiting, subsist on bananas. More importantly, here in the United States, they're cheap! Just compare how many apples you can get for a dollar versus bananas. A good price for loose apples is about a buck forty nine a pound. Bananas on the other hand, top out at about $.49 per pound. Twenty-five bucks gets ya fifty pounds of banana.

Okay?

To further my point, I defy you to find any food that is that inexpensive on a per pound basis. Maybe, potatoes... sometimes. Rice perhaps. But to me, the banana still looks like the best portable, ready-to-eat, most-of-what-your-body-needs-anyway food that'll get us through the crisis. I'll, of course, leave it to you. I'm just sayin'.

Oh, by the way, if you're also challenged with a social conscience, you might just hope that asteroid finds you before the humiliation of starvation has you in its grasp. More people seem to be injured, repressed and exploited in the service of cheap bananas than is savory to consider. But look, you're starving here. Deal with the social stuff when your happy days are here again.

In the meantime, an excellent distraction (and the source of my sustenance living idea) is a great book on the subject published right in the middle of our hell-in-a-handbasket economy. "Banana"; I love one word titles. Written by science/nature writer Dan Koeppel, it just might be the brain diet you desperately need.