Even though I just got an awesome new ice cream maker and could be using my food blog to write about the transcendent all-local ice cream we made from peak-of-season Stillman’s strawberries and Maine MooMilk, I’m in a complaining mood instead. And there’s just one reason why.
Mrs. Brady had crabs and she got them from Mayor Lindseed. So with that news, there’s officially nothing from my childhood worth remembering. How could you find something even more disturbing than singing about your “Wessonality” and rocking that sea monkey-inspired hairdo and bellbottoms to drill into our collective conciousness? The Mrs. Brady I knew was a little boring, but she didn’t go around getting all bunga-bunga with the Mayor of New York like Snookie or some Real Housewife. She was better than that. Geez. Okay, lets move on. . . Alice better not have any funny business about her and Sam that she’s planning to reveal in her memoir. Aw forget it, my childhood’s already ruined.
When I was a kid they virtually assured us us that our TV moms would be venereal disease-free and that we would have all kind of cool stuff in the future. Which brings up the question, where’s my goddammed flying car? Instead of things like flying cars we get Kindles. As I was reading over the shoulders of two different Kindle readers on the subway last night all I could think of was the calculator I got for Christmas in 1974. It was pretty exciting, but if the best we can do 40 years later is reading John Grisham novels on an oversized calculator, the future is no better than our polyester- and vermin-infested past.
Now that The Brady Bunch and the good 60s Batman have been forever Weinerized by you, Florence Henderson, (and the present pretty much sucks), maybe there’s redemption to be found in a new role model. How about a talented lady like Norma Lyons who carves cows out of butter at the state fair? She looks nice and clean and she got a request for support from Barack Obama in the last election. Why Norma appeared on the Tonight Show and David Letterman yet never once sang about her “Butterality.” How about we turn to her for some inspiration? Oh wait, she’s dead.
Maybe it was just old age and a lot of butter that did Norma in. Or maybe she tried asking Trader Joe’s for an extra penny like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Florida and they old her to ‘drop dead’ too. But since it’s those nice dudes at Trader Joes I’m sure they did it in a palsie way and gave her some stickers. Or maybe not. Maybe they got all weird and corporate like they did in their announcement about refusing to sign the fair food agreement that gives people who pick tomatoes in the Florida heat an extra penny a pound. Those pinkos at Pizza Hut and McDonalds might be ready to sign something that is “overreaching, ambiguous and improper” — and gives really poor people an extra penny — but our Hawaiian-shirt loving buds know when enough is enough.
If only Mrs. Brady could’ve done the same.
floreakeats 
Have you heard this Fresh Air interview with the author of Tomatoland? It was broadcast yesterday–makes me wonder why anyone would eat those red-colored orbs — http://www.npr.org/2011/06/28/137371975/how-industrial-farming-destroyed-the-tasty-tomato
Shame on Trader Joe’s, an on Mrs. Brady— that’s just tmi
I haven’t heard the Fresh Air yet. Thanks for sending the link. But I have read a bunch of articles about the book. I agree about the weird off-season tomatoes. There’s a restaurant here that says on its menu “no tomatoes until August” and I think that’s a pretty good rule. All the farmer’s markets seem to have tomatoes now which I find a little odd.
It especially seems odd that the markets in New England would be selling tomatoes now–obviously they aren’t local. Our local farmer just put out green tomatoes (he doesn’t use chemicals and people around here eat fried green tomatoes), so we should be getting red ones some time in July.
More depressing tomato info — http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=TO
We’ve been eating Campari tomatoes — they taste like tomatoes and based on what info I can find, are not grown using pesticides or herbicides.
My dear husband dislikes tomatoes and when dining out he will try to stick his tasteless, pink, out of season tomato slice on my plate! They aren’t tomatoes. That’s the only veg I grow in my yard, in my earthbox. Have you read the book The $64 Tomato? I think the first year I had the earthbox, that figure was accurate for me.
The first year I built our raised beds, I would think our tomatoes were running in the $60 range too. It is a little funny how ecstatic people get about their home-grown tomatoes. No one ever gets quite that emotional over their cucumbers or squash.