The Minnesota Farm Woman

I learned a good lesson this week about minding my own business. I even learned a lesson on keeping my mouth shut, which in these days of computers means sitting on one’s hands. These are  lessons that I should have learned countless times before, but  this time I REALLY learned.  I have been watching with interest a very popular social networking/internet site and wondering just how it got to be so popular. There are secrets, espionage and hundreds of recipes containing  cream soup, cream cheese and sticks of butter.  Since there has been nothing good to watch on TV, I quickly became addicted to the drama of it all.  From this giant cesspool of both good and bad information there emerged a really interesting fact:  Many people don’t know how to cook any more. Young cooks are flocking to this site so they don’t have to get take-out for their families.  Some of them apparently think because it is homemade it is good healthy food.   From the looks of the comments I read, they are not making the occasional recipe from this site, they are doing it every day. The more sticks of butter and blocks of cream cheese,  the more comments:  “This was AWESOME!”  “Sounds  UBER-easy!”.  The latest atrocity was a recipe that contained a roast, a bottle of salad dressing and a 2-liter bottle of pop. The whole bottle of pop. You can drain the salad dressing off after marinating it overnight.  From the notes of others, I knew these gentle readers were about as gentle as a mama grizzly bear protecting her young,  so I added a couple of recipes under a fictitious  name. I thought I could sneak in a healthier tip  here and there, too. If Jamie  Oliver can do it, so can I, right?  I didn’t interact a lot, perhaps five notes in all.   I helped a young cook with a recipe for fresh mango salsa with tilapia.  I complimented two others on their recipes, which looked delicious.  I was nice. Really.  I couldn’t stand it, though when it came to the pop roast.  I posted a general comment that if people thought that cooking a roast in 2 liters of pop was a healthy dinner for their family, they were wrong.  Well, you would have thought I asked them to catch a live rattlesnake and boil it for dinner using only garlic salt and a can of cream of celery soup!  “How DARE you say that we’re poisoning our families?”  “You are a TROLL who joined only to say mean things to us!”.  “I read your comments and they are all negative, and against those who are trying to feed their families on a budget!”  Huh?  I like healthy meals, but love a good comfort food meal as much as the next person.  I want to be buried with a bowl of olive cream cheese dip in one hand and a bag of blue corn chips in the other.  I guess you could say I was voted off the island, and in a record time of just under four hours, too.  I’m minding my own beeswax now, but I couldn’t help but take a  peek last night and found something like this:  “Oh, my!  I made the YUMMIEST roast last night! I cooked it for 12 hours, added four potatoes, and cooked it for another six.”  Nope, I’m not writing a response. Not me. I do have one question, though. Can anyone use the word UBER in a sentence? How about UBER-cholesterol? UBER-obesity?  Oh, no!  I’m doing it again, aren’t I?