This one will be a cookbook; it won't be specifically vegetarian, dairy-free, or gluten-free, but it will emphasize healthier home-cooked meals and present organic, vegetarian, kosher/halal, nondairy, and gluten-free options for an energy-boosting diet. That is, I'll be writing up recipes the client has tested, and also variations GBP and I have used...I expect at least a few gluten-free "organic" foods to be contaminated enough that we'll probably get sick, this weekend, as farmers use up their supplies of blank-blank bleep-bleep glyphosate, but apart from that it'll be fun.
But my health-maintaining gluten-free diet is going into free fall this autumn. I know the most recent batches of naturally gluten-free General Mills cereal, naturally gluten-free Planters peanuts, and several other things I should be able to enjoy eating safely, are contaminated with enough glyphosate to make me sick. I'm not sure what else is; I know I'm having to buy inferior-quality, off-brand, foreign-grown nuts because good Virginia peanuts have recently been toxic to me. It's insane. I know that taking charcoal to flush out the poison also flushes out any nutrients my glyphosate-poisoned body might be absorbing from food, and I'm not confident that the charcoal will even adsorb enough of the chemical residues to stop the ongoing damage to my digestive organs, but I've been losing enough blood for long enough that I have to try something...the basic celiac sprue reaction displays surface damage to fast-healing internal tissues, but when it goes on over months the damage does get down below the surface.
I hate to hear people babble about being thankful when the news is less bad than it might have been...yes, it's something of a relief that eating nothing but off-brand nuts for a few days slowed down the loss of blood enough to show that I don't (yet) have (acute) cancer forming in this damaged tissue, but no, that's not something for which to give thanks. A total ban on glyphosate, and a strong movement away from the whole idea of poisoning nuisance species found in or near food crops, would be something for which to give thanks. Let's all pray that that happens this winter.
In theory I've been paid for the Bible study, and I'm celebrating with a hot meal in the cafe today (on Wednesdays they do a delicious, naturally gluten-free corn soup, which I expect will make me sick, but it won't be the Roberts' fault). In practice the payment has fouled up somewhere in the detestable money-handling industry, but I expect to collect the cash soon.
In actual cash, my income so far this week has been US$26. If your income for the week has been higher than that, you ought to support this web site, and here again are the links you can use to be sure of getting something in return for your financial support:
* Use the "donate" button in the Greeting post if it works for you (it should be visible at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com , always, but it won't work with some servers).
* https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
* https://www.guru.com/freelancers/priscilla-king (This is the site processing these e-book projects.)
* https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking (Yes, I'm still there, and so is +Lyn Lomasi Rowell , and so far as I can see it's a safe, efficient site for processing payments to writers or other types of online workers...but the system has been streamlined for cell phone users in a way that I find bizarre and alarming. Apparently it now allows job proposals to get into the system as actual orders, which then have to be cancelled, at inconvenience to all concerned, before a writer even sees them...and has time to mention that, as happened when someone actually used the Fiverr link earlier this week, I don't know that I even have the device the client wanted to use. I know Grandma Bonnie Peters bought this laptop complete with a lot of gadgets I've never even seen, including the audio and visual features I always disable when working from public places, but I think the one the client wanted was invented after this laptop was built. Anyway the Fiverr system is now set up for buyers who don't want to wait even overnight to negotiate jobs, and now, as it was explained to me this week, requires sellers to set our pages to "vacation mode" when we go home for the night. I don't imagine this will last long; I hope the system can be fixed back before this change destroys Fiverr. If Fiverr works for you, please leave a message.)
* https://www.iwriter.com/priscillaking
* https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing
* https://www.wordclerks.com/user/PriscillaKing
* You can also mail a U.S. postal money order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322.
Now for the actual post...Friends of the Earth e-mailed out one of those editable form letters for everyone to add to a blitz aimed at the Kroger's supermarket chain. Since I like to stop at the Kroger store when I'm on the far side of Kingsport, and my mother considers a Kroger store to be a significant reason for wanting to live in Kingsport, I had enough to say to this store to make a blog post, so thought I might as well post it. You can read the original form letter, sign it, and/or use it to compose your own letter to Kroger's at this link; what I wrote is below the link.
https://us.e-activist.com/page/3967/action/1
"
Dear Rodney McMullen,
Happy Thanksgiving! This is not just another Friends of the Earth form letter, although Friends are prompting us to tell you...I'm thankful for bees, butterflies and other pollinators. They’re responsible for many of the Thanksgiving staples we enjoy like pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, apples and potatoes.
I'm also thankful for...an alarmingly shrinking list of things that, as a celiac, I can still eat. With farmers spraying glyphosate (which causes pseudo-celiac reactions even in people who don't have the celiac gene!) on many foods as if it were a safe preservative like salt, sugar, or rosemary, this autumn many things that are naturally gluten-free have made me sick. I've adhered to my strict wheat-free, cheese-free diet for many years and been thankful for a graceful, largely unnoticed, midlife transition, for the ability to keep up with the younger generation on jobs and be mistaken for one of them in a bad light. But at the time of writing...I'm confident about one snack sold in the store across the street from work, not confident about much of anything I'll be eating over the holiday weekend! Can I trust Kroger to help keep me healthy by providing a reasonable selection of food I can safely eat in winter?
At Thanksgiving I expect to be particularly thankful for the chance to check in with nieces and nephews, several of whom are also celiacs, and with my mother, from whom we inherited the celiac gene. Mother is an active, healthy Kroger senior shopper and so thankful to have got the "with glasses" restriction removed from her drivers' license this year. (I remember her wanting to visit the Kroger store in Kingsport, Tennessee, every time we went there, from back in the 1970s. Now that she's retired from farm life, she lives in Kingsport and likes to drive to the Kroger store every week or two, despite living three blocks from the Wal-Mart grocery store.) Due to known sensitivity to beet sugar, Mother likes to cook with honey--which I now know is largely poisonous to us celiacs too. Will Kroger help keep her cooking Thanksgiving dinners and watching her grandchildren grow up strong and healthy, in spite of the celiac gene?
This Thanksgiving, I urge Kroger to help protect the pollinators--and your loyal shoppers!--by committing to help your farmers phase out toxic pesticides, including neonicotinoids, chlorpyrifos, dicamba, and especially glyphosate, in your company’s supply chain and encourage suppliers to employ alternative, least-toxic pest management strategies. It’s important that Kroger take this step as quickly as possible and not wait for direction from the EPA.
The science is clear (I'm sure you've seen a barrage of full-length form letters already!) that glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, dicamba, and the neonics are harmful for people, pollinators and the planet, just as DDT, chlordane, and so many others have already turned out to be. How long do we have to keep experimenting with toxic chemicals and watching people become ill or die before we recognize a pattern? Poisoning nuisance species eventually builds up levels of residues that poison humans, while the nuisance species, which have much shorter life cycles, evolve immunity to the poisons that are making humans sick. Let's not go through this with more poisons! I urge Kroger take immediate action given the latest science and commit to phase out chemical pesticides using safer alternatives and increase offerings of bee and people-friendly organic food, giving preference to food grown by America’s farmers.
Thank you on behalf of Mother as a lifelong Kroger shopper,
Priscilla King
"
(They're naturally gluten-free...and they're yummy...and did they ever make me sick. Let's all pray for help and guidance to get the toxic element of Cheerios, namely glyphosate, permanently banned from this entire planet.)
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