I bought a mandoline at Stokes from the Pickering Town Centre last Sunday thinking that it was such a great deal at $49.98. The salesgirl told me that she had one at home, and that she really liked it. There were two to choose from: a heavy frame stainless steel and a plastic frame (for $24.98). They both came with different blades so that you could slice and julienne. Because I thought that the stainless steel one would be of much better quality and would last longer, I bought that one.
DH had been asking me to make french fries for a couple of days so I decided I would whip out the new mandoline (I washed and dried it as per the instructions last night), use the remainder of our GM canola oil in a plastic jug (more on plastics next time) to please the big guy and the little guy. Well, perhaps I was disillusioned from watching too much FoodTV, but I thought that a mandoline was supposed to be super sharp so that you could slice things really quickly with the swipe of your hand. I was so very disappointed with this purchase! It took much dangerous effort (luckily I didn't cut any fingers) to make the potato go through the blades. I decided to stop and use my good old Japanese hybrid knife and wooden chopping board.
It took a long time to make just three pototoes and one sweet potato, but DH did enjoy the fries. Unfortunately, Little R just kept moving about, no sitting, and babbling. It wasn't the most enjoyable dinner experience as a family. I ended up eating cold beets, cold potatoes and cold soy chicken (which I'm sure is GM). Still, the most disappointing thing was the (man, the computer just restarted on me... I'm lucky this blogging service saved this much of my text for me) poor quality and expensive mandoline! Sure it was made in China, but what isn't these days? I'm going to see if I can complain to the store or to the company; I'll keep you posted.
I took the kids to Bulk Barn today. They have a fairly good selection of natural foods and products. Their organic bulk is also labelled in green for easy spotting. I also like that many of their products say on their package "GMO free" or "No GMO." As I mentioned in the previous posting, it's most likely that if a product does not say it's GMO free that it probably contains some GMO save certain things such as olives (see the Greenpeace list).
So, why do I make a conscious effort to avoid purchasing GMO products? First of all I think its safety is questionable (we're all one big experiment right now), and secondly I don't believe that the world's food (its seeds and soil) should be control by corporations. There is a list of pros and cons here: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml. I know that I'll probably not be able to totally dodge consuming GMOs, but I will certainly use my purchasing power to choose products that are natural.
Now even though a product is natural, doesn't mean it was grown pesticide-free. I always knew that we were eating synthetic pesticides in Canada, but I thought that other countries such as China did not use them. Well, how wrong was I again? Not only is it used on food, but also on crops to make clothing, such as cotton. "It takes half a pound of chemicals to make one regular old T-shirt" (Ecoholic, 29).
I keep forgetting to ask the people at Bulk Barn if I can bring my own containers because I really don't want to use the plastic bags once (well, now I've found out that you can recycle plastic bags by dropping them off at your grocery store) and toss them. When I find out, I'll let you know.
Next time I'll touch upon our plastic situation.
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