Pizza is a Vegetable

It's an important victory.
~Corey Henry, spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute

Pizza is now counted as a vegetable in school lunches.The House of Representatives passed a bill that allows 2 tablespoons of tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable. It is kind of reminiscent of when ketchup (ketchup ingredients:tomato concentrate, distilled vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, salt) was declared a vegetable. Most school lunches no matter what is on they tray now include a couple of packs of ketchup. Meets the requirement for vegetable, right?

The reason the "pizza is a vegetable" is worse however, is because it is not only dubbing 2 tablespoons of watered down tomato paste and high fructose corn syrup a vegetable, it is wrapping it in processed, bleached flour (pesticide laden and low in nutritional content) and processed cheese food (high in calories and fat, low in nutritional value),  and more high fructose corn syrup.

Notice, there are no veggies on this:

Mmmm...remember these? Looks nutritious, doesn't it? I don't know why school lunch pizzas always have to be rectangular. Both of my kids started off their school lunch days excited about pizza Fridays until about 2nd grade, when they realized it really didn't taste good at all. From 3rd grade on, based on the urgent pleas of my kids, I began packing their lunches.

Note: I like packing lunch for my kids, that way I know what they are eating (and not eating).

Something else I learned: In 1910, bleach white flour was declared unfit as human food by the Federal Western District Court of Missouri.

Not All Shiitake is the Same

Not presume to dictate, but broiled fowl and mushrooms - capital thing!
~Charles Dickens

Shiitakes mushrooms are grown 2 ways, on hardwood logs or on sawdust blocks.

Highest quality shiitakes are grown on oak logs. It takes 6-18 months to colonize the whole log which is then soaked to produce mushrooms. Moisture in combination with cold triggers the reproductive cycle of the mushrooms. A log can produce for four years yielding larger crops as the log matures.

Sawdust blocks are made of sawdust (surprise!). The blocks are inoculated then incubated for 1-4 months. They are then soaked in water to produce mushrooms. Some nutritional content may be added during this process, because the sawdust grown shiitakes are not as full of protein and vitamins as the log grown mushrooms.

Note: There are a plethora of recipes available for shiitake mushrooms. My favorite thing to do with any mushrooms is just to throw a few in to whatever I am cooking.

Something else I learned: If you are buying shiitake mushrooms at the grocery store, you are most likely getting the type grown on sawdust blocks (no matter how expensive they are).