Category Archives: Food

Now, spokesman says Sanford DIDN’T eat those piglets

OK, so now, supposedly, what Sanford said on TV this morning was a joke:

CHARLESTON, SC — Remember those pigs former Gov. Mark Sanford brought into the State House nine years ago to protest “pork barrel spending” in the state budget?

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday morning, fresh off of his victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary in the 1st congressional district, Sanford said the pigs were “barbecued.”

“Unfortunately, they were barbecued,” Sanford said. “They were great little guys.”

A Sanford spokesman later clarified that Sanford was joking, adding that Sanford did not eat the pigs. (An earlier version of this story said that Sanford did eat them.)

And an earlier version of this blog post said the same, because, well, silly me, I figured the ex-governor was telling the truth to the world. This belief prompted me to say the following:

So… The piglets were supposed to symbolize government waste. Do they no longer qualify as “waste” if you make a meal out of them?

Presumably, he changed clothes — since the pigs had daubed him with literal waste — before firing up the grill.

Twice now, Mark Sanford has huffed and puffed and blown the house down, eating the thoughtless little pigs within.

It remains to be seen whether Elizabeth Colbert Busch can build a house out of bricks before he does it a third time.

I was on a roll there for a minute. But now… well, never mind. I especially like Joel’s attempt to be all self-righteous over this:

“The governor made a joke that apparently was lost on members of the media, who seem unable or unwilling to write about issues that voters actually care about,” Joel Sawyer said.

Yeah, right, Joel. It’s the media who have a penchant for silly, distracting stunts. He says this on behalf of a man who, in the name of fiscal responsibility, hauled two squealing, defecating piglets into the lobby to ruin a new carpet (OK, sort of new — see below) that was part of a multi-million-dollar restoration of the State House.

Of COURSE food stamps shouldn’t pay for junk food

I actually meant to address this subject a couple of months ago, when I read this op-ed by Louis Yuhasz, the founder of an anti-obesity nonprofit in Charleston:

Our foundation works with a 17-year-old girl who weighs 495 pounds. At home she’s fed a diet of convenience store food, bought at convenience store prices, largely at taxpayer expense. Rare is a salad or lean meat. Processed, packaged food is all she knows. And it’s slowly killing her.

But she won’t leave this earth without costing us all a small fortune. She’ll need knee replacement surgery before she leaves her 20s, and in her 30s her hips will fail her too. Taxpayers can probably expect to pay for a long stay in a nursing home for her, because of the toll diabetes will take on her vision and limbs.

If ever there was an example of solving one problem while creating another, it’s the food stamp program in America. Through it, as one critic recently suggested, our government is “subsidizing the obesity epidemic.”…

Don’t get him wrong, he explained. The food stamp program has done a lot of good, and saved lives. But it needs to be changed:

So here’s something Washington should think very seriously about: strictly limiting what foods can be purchased with the money we provide SNAP recipients. We already impose limitations: Beneficiaries can’t use their payments to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Why not take it one step further and bar the purchase of foods that are making us fat and sick, at least with the money coming out of taxpayers’ pockets?

Where would we draw the line? If it comes from the meat, seafood, produce or dairy sections, it’s probably good to go. Or maybe we could use an even more general standard: If my 100-year-old grandmother would recognize it as food, it is.

On the other hand, if the ingredient list includes added sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic trans-fats, industrial seed oils, any ingredient name longer than four syllables, or if it would survive a nuclear holocaust, then put it back on the shelf, or at least buy it with your own money…

I’ve never gone along with the people who want to ban junk food, the way they’ve done with limiting soda intake in New York. But I have no problem at all with limiting what our tax dollars pay for. Besides, obesity costs us too much. We’re paying for it on the front end and the back end, as Yuhasz noted:

SNAP is expensive at $65 billon, but get a load of what obesity costs us in direct medical costs: $190 billion per year. Almost three quarters of Americans are either overweight or obese. Almost one in five children are clinically obese, and what used to be called adult-onset diabetes is one of the biggest health problems among kids…

So now I see in the paper today:

COLUMBIA, SC — Seeking to slow the childhood obesity epidemic, South Carolina health leaders would like to limit the purchase of sugar-filled drinks with food stamps.

Catherine Templeton, director of the Department of Health and Environmental Control, and Lillian Koller, director of the Department of Social Services, have exchanged thoughts on the subject. They agree that cutting the intake of sugary drinks could improve the health of the state’s children, but they are struggling with how to use the food stamp program as a tool in that effort, and especially with whether the federal government will allow it.

Several similar efforts, most notably by New York City, have failed to gain approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps. The feds told New York in 2011 that they agree with the goal of limiting intake of sugary drinks, but the city’s proposal had operational challenges and impacted too many people. They suggested a test program on a smaller scale…

I’d like to see SC be used as that test case, as Joey Holleman’s story goes on to suggest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for our state to be in the vanguard of improving health for once?

This seems to me like something that left and right ought to be able to get behind. I can imagine arguments against it, but I can’t imagine any good ones.

An appeal from Harvest Hope

If you’re looking for a place for end-of-the-year charitable contributions, here’s a good place to consider:

Dear Brad Warthen,

Harvest Hope wishes you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving at this time when we acknowledge all our blessings, and our most generous of thanks for all your support in our mission to provide for hungry families across 20 SC counties.
Families and friends gather at this time to celebrate and offer thanks for all the blessings the year has provided. Yet, 1 in 6 families in SC does not know where their next meal will come from. Thanksgiving only serves as a painful reminder of their struggles to put food on their tables.

Over the last four years Harvest Hope has seen a steady decline in not only the number of donors who are the cornerstone of our mission, but the monetary level of their donations as well. Our donations for 2012 to date are down more than 21% over the same period of time in 2010.

Yet in the face of decreasing donations we struggle to make sure no one is turned away hungry. Your generosity helps Harvest Hope make sure families in our community do not have to experience the pain of hunger while so many others celebrate the simplest of joys. Your kindness is how we continue our mission of HOPE. Giving to Harvest Hope is easy at click here.
The lines were long yesterday at our own Emergency Food Pantries on Shop Road and in Cayce, and they even longer this morning. Many requests are coming into our Florence and Greenville Branches for help with families in those communities struggling to put the most basic of food items on their tables.  Help is needed and your support can provide great nourishment and great Thanksgiving by going online today or dropping off nonperishable food at any of our four locations.

Midlands

2220 Shop Road, Columbia – 29201

1175 12th Street Ext, Cayce – 29202

Pee Dee

2513 West Lucas Street, Florence – 29501

Upstate

28218 White Horse Road, Greenville – 29611

During this season of thanks ~ thank YOU for sharing your

kindness with your neighbors struggling with hunger.

Shawarma: The lunch of superheroes

The above sign, spotted today at Al Amir on Main St., got me to thinking of “The Avengers.”

Tony Stark: You ever try shawarma?

SPOILER ALERT! OK, not really, because it reveals nothing about the plot, although it will ruin a tiny little fun surprise. It’s just one of those little lagniappe things at the end of the credits. Although, come to think of it, this does tell you that all the heroes survive the movie, so SPOILER ALERT!

At the end of the climactic battle, as he’s lying dazed among the rubble, Robert Downey Jr., who as Iron Man has 90 percent of the movie’s good lines, reassures his comrades that he is alive by saying offhandedly, “You ever try shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it.”

Then, the fun part: After all the credits — apparently, Joss Whedon needed the help of about 3.7 million people to make this flick — you see the exhausted heroes lounging, disheveled, around a table in the shawarma joint, slowly munching away in complete silence. This continues for more than 30 seconds, as a restaurant employee sweeps up in the background.

This sort of backhanded, non-branded little product placement has apparently launched a bit of a shawarma craze:

Those of you still reading will likely recall Tony Stark’s fascination with shawarma toward the end of the film. During the climactic battle, Stark suggests the team adjourn to a nearby restaurant to try the dish, which Wikipedia describes as “a pita bread sandwich or wrap” filled with spit-roasted meat (commonly lamb, goat, chicken or a mixture of various meats). At the very, very end of the film, after the credits have rolled, we witness the superhero team sitting at a table, silently eating their shawarma for a surprisingly long amount of time.

Now, based on that short in-joke, TMZ claims that the Los Angeles shawarma industry has seen a massive spike in popularity since the release of the film. “At Ro Ro’s Chicken — a famed Lebanese joint in Hollywood — the manager says shawarma sales jumped 80% in the days after the movie opened,” the gossip site claims, while saying that a number of other Lebanese restaurants offered similar results…

That’s fine. Just as long as they don’t start rebranding it the Super-Gyro…

A tick whose bite can make you allergic to meat? That’s it! I may never venture outdoors again…

I already had plenty of reasons to avoid going outdoors, including:

  1. The heat, exacerbated by the humidity.
  2. Sunburn.
  3. Mosquitoes.
  4. The fact that statistics show that more than 99 percent of yard work occurs there.

Now there’s this:

Meat lovers, beware. One bite from the tiny lone star tick may be enough to cause meat allergies and turn you into a vegetarian. Dr. Scott Commins of the University of Virginia has been seeing meat allergies popping up along the East Coast and thinks the tiny tick may be to blame. Of the nearly 400 cases he’s seen, nearly 90 percent report a history of tick bites. Commins says saliva from the tick that makes its way into the wound can cause some people to break out into hives or even anaphylactic shock three to six hours after chowing down on some animal carcass. So make sure either your sleeves are rolled up or you’re adequately covered in bug repellent before hitting that summer barbecue.

The lone star tick.

My diet is already limited enough with the allergies I have. An allergy to meat would be catastrophic, if you’ll excuse the understatement. As the colleague who brought this to my attention wrote, “Good grief!  You need to avoid this fella at all costs or you’ll be down to nothing but rice!”

Add to that the fact that I’m one of these people who thinks that the only real food is meat; other foods are meant to complement meat. I heard an overweight standup comic say it well a number of years ago. It went something like: Salad isn’t food. Salad is something you eat with food.

So it’s settled. From now on, I just need to figure a way to protect myself between the house and the car …

Help Harvest Hope feed those who need help

And if you can’t give blood, maybe you can give to help the needy be fed.

Right after posting the thing about the need for blood, I read this appeal from Denise Holland at Harvest Hope Food Bank:

Two weeks ago, one night about 9:30 pm, returning from Walmart, I walked back into my house sobbing because my heart was completely filled with many emotions.  My husband looked at me confused, asking what is wrong as a trip to Walmart normally does not do this.

I sat down and told him the following very true, very moving story…I hope you will feel moved and called to action.

Upon finishing my shopping,  I got in a long checkout line in the non-food section.  I was there after 9pm to pick up a few last minute items for a children’s activity at church.  I was behind a young couple, with a small baby sitting in the infant portion of the buggy.  They caught my attention. I was struck at how much the young man with his wife reminded me of my own grown children.  A nice appearance, the young man had on athletic type shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops, the young lady had on jeans and a hoodie, the baby was clean and dressed in a little onesie.  As I stood there, I noticed a little more.  They were wearing very simple wedding bands, and the dad kept putting his hand on the back of his wife and child’s mother, saying “are you feeling ok?”  “Do you want to go sit in the car?” She did look in my opinion pale like she did not feel really great.  I heard her reply very nicely to him, “no I am fine” and smiled back at her husband.

Well naturally I started playing with the baby, making silly old lady sounds and faces to get the baby to smile and laugh.  The baby’s dad (obviously a little girl by the pink onesie) occasionally touched the little baby and bent down to kiss her neck of which she just giggled and smiled.  At one point he looked back at me and I said to him, “that little girl certainly loves her daddy’s kisses”. He smiled and said yes.  The couple then gave their attention to counting the items in their buggy and began a sorting process counting out 10 jars of baby food, separating them in rows in the buggy.  Then it struck me that all they had in their buggy was jars of baby food and several canisters of baby formula.  The mom and dad appeared to be in low conversation like they were worried and checking twice everything they had.  I continued to play (at a respectful distance) with the baby.

While I stood there, I prayed “Lord this could be my children” and I felt in my heart that they were concerned about the amount in their buggy…

To read the rest of Denise’s story, click here.

It’s a bit long, but here’s the upshot of it: The young husband is about to go away to serve in the military, and he and his wife were trying to stockpile plenty of food for the baby, as the Mom’s transportation options are limited. When they got to the register, they couldn’t afford what they had selected (nothing but baby food), so Denise paid for them.

But there are many stories like this in our community, and while she’s got a really big heart, Denise can’t help them all out of her own pocket. So help out Harvest Hope.

Check out that rack! (It’s a guy thing)

No, this isn’t a follow-up on this previous post.

This is completely different from that Mom issue. This is a glimpse of what the world would look like if it really were run by men.

This is from a release by Phil Yanov from the Greenville Spartanburg Anderson Technology Council:

We need to talk about a cow
One of the cool things about my job is that I get to hang around people who follow their passions. Even if that passion is the absolutely crazy idea that ordinary men should be able to barbecue an entire cow on a seriously reinforced metal rack.  I know that this sounds like something that can’t be done, but it can and has been done right here in Greenville.  My friends are going to do this again. You are invited.  It’s called Bovinova 2.0 and while seeing may be believing, smelling, tasting, and experiencing it is even better. Check out the websiteBuy a ticket. Plan to join us this weekend for a visually stunning event.

(Yes, this was the same event that was featured in the Wall Street Journal.  This year, a cable cooking channel will be filming a show there. You can be a part of the fun. Get your ticket.)

I see something like this, and it reminds me of the sort of thing that comes up on TV or something and makes my wife say, “Only a guy would think of something like that.”

Stuff like… dropping major produce (watermelons, pumpkins) off a tall building to see them go splat. Or placing explosives in them where they stand and blowing them up. That sort of thing. Or almost any sort of weaponry.

The sort of thing that makes you think Tim the Toolman is nearby, grunting, and somehow responsible for the idea.

Something like… the headline on this post, which I stole from the release itself.

Men can always be more obtuse than women can be clever, so don’t mess with us

One of my Facebook friends of the female persuasion posted the above notice today.

Ha-ha.

I responded:

OK. What’s a recipe book? And where do we keep it? Since my dinner’s in it, will I be able to find it by smell?

Ladies, never, ever think that you can manipulate us by being clever. Our sheer, unforced obtuseness, combined with the fact that evolution has developed helplessness in us to a stage you can’t even begin to fathom, will always defeat you.

What if Malthus was actually right for once?

Not that I think for a moment he will be — no one in the history of ideas was ever more spectacularly wrong (the poor fellow argued that resources would never be able to keep up with population growth even as an agricultural revolution led to much faster growth in food supplies than in population).

But some still predict that he will be. Andrew Sullivan drew my attention to this:

Grain yields are beginning to hit a “glass ceiling” in many countries, Brown said, where farmers have already taken advantage of what science has to offer for improving yield. As more and more countries hit an upper limit on productivity, the world grain harvest will begin to plateau, even as demand for food continues to rise, causing a rise in prices. More worrisome, the global food market is vulnerableto external shocks such as prolonged drought. “We don’t have idle land, we’re flat out,” says Brown. “We don’t have [food] stocks. We’re living harvest to harvest. The question becomes, what if we have a major shortfall in the world?”

Of course, if Malthus were ever proven right, that would be an extraordinarily bad thing. So I continue to root against him, even as I occasionally worry: Have you bought a bad of “topsoil” lately? It’s like all chunks of bark and stuff…

Key to awesome BBQ: You start with the wood

CUT/CHOP/COOK from UM Media Documentary Projects on Vimeo.

One of the highlights of the weekend in Hilton Head was when we got to taste the wares of Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, served by Rodney Scott himself.

But the event’s organizers did a cruel thing to us: They showed us the above film in the morning, and we didn’t get to eat the barbecue until that night. But when the time came, we made up for the wait.

I was deeply impressed by the craftsmanship, passed from father to son, that goes into this awesome pork. Starting with cutting the wood. I was surprised (perhaps because I’ve been influenced by Memphis style) that the wood wasn’t hickory. But it’s selected and hand-cut by the pitmaster.

And you can taste it.

All work and no play make Brad a dull boy. Which he is not, as amply demonstrated by Exhibit B

Here I am with the birthday girls in Hilton Head. Or is it “on” Hilton Head, or “at”? I don’t know. First time I’ve ever been here.

In any case, this is by way of full disclosure. It was not all work at the Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Inititiative graduate weekend in that locale.

Here I am with Clare Folio Morris of the Clare Morris Agency and Susan DeVenny of First Steps. You see another picture of us on the previous post, with Clare and Susan looking deadly serious and me seeming to Tweet every word they’re saying. Well. Choosing photos for publication is an art, you know. You can show what you want.

Alert photographer Jim Hammond captured both moods well.

Here, I’m joining the ladies in celebrating their birthday this weekend. They’re both 30 or something.

This was at an awesome barbecue on Saturday night, with pulled pork from Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway and from Henry’s Smokehouse in Greenville as well, and lowcountry boil from Conroy’s, and oysters, and other good stuff. I think that’s a Palmetto Charleston Lager in my right hand.

The blog will now return to being serious…

How do Occupiers eat? Here’s how…

Just in case you, like our governor, are sitting up nights wondering whether how the Occupy Columbia protesters are getting nutritious, sanitary meals, here’s an explanation from Maris Burton, a member of the Occupy Columbia Food Committee:

Dear Budget and Control Board members,

It has come to my attention that the storage and cooking of food is being used in an attempt to demonstrate the need for emergency regulations to protect the public health.

I have been involved with supplying and arranging delivery of food to the Occupiers.  I have taken part in several discussions regarding how to safely handle food and how to provide nutritious cooked meals. People are not living on the State House grounds; they are Occupying the grounds as a form of protest.

Since the eviction from the State House grounds on Nov 16, 2011 and the subsequent temporary restraining order that allowed the use of tents and a 24 hour occupation as part of our right to free speech, we agreed to lessen our footprint and to focus on having non-perishable items such as individually wrapped snack packets of crackers and nutrition bars, and water available to the Occupiers.

Dry goods are kept in a sealable plastic tub, not accessible to wildlife. We have a rotating food schedule of volunteers who prepare hot meals off site and bring them to the State house. We have one cooler on site that is kept supplied with ice and sometimes contains yogurts, cheese or packaged sandwich meats or creamer for coffee.  Food is brought at set times and cleared away promptly.

Any used dishes are collected each evening and washed at a volunteer’s home and then returned to the State House.

There have been no incidents of food related illnesses, and there has not been a problem with any wildlife coming near the food.

I welcome any questions you may have.

Such things are mildly interesting to me, because of my own strong aversion to living in the open. I’ve always thought, for instance, that the hardest part about serving in combat infantry would be the bivouac thing. Storm Omaha Beach, with the Germans having presighted every square inch and ready to rain lead and high explosives on me? Yeah, OK, just as long as I get a warm dinner and comfortable, dry bed that night, preferably back in England. To me, the real horror stories of war are those about the defenders of Bastogne getting frozen, literally, into their foxholes every night for a month during the coldest winter in Europe in a century, or the extremely gross conditions on Okinawa, living in a muddy soup of human waste and decomposing bodies. The fighting, by comparison, seems far less objectionable.

But I see even optimal outdoor living conditions to be less than desirable. I am not what you’d ever call a Happy Camper. By definition: If I’m camping, I’m not happy. Comparatively, anyway.

So it’s interesting to know how they’re managing over at the State House.

At least the fries were French

This isn’t Proust. In fact, I’ve never read Proust. And the descriptions I’ve read of Remembrance of Things Past never seem to recommend it, because they always note how amazingly long it is. In any event, I don’t read French, and it seems a waste to spend that much time on something and not know at the end whether it bore any resemblance to what the author intended.

But today, under the most mundane circumstances, I experienced something like the episode of the madeleine. Really. It was way literary.

Lanier and I were having lunch at the Mousetrap, and I had ordered the hamburger steak with fries. We had told the waitress Lanier had a pressing appointment, and our orders came out quickly, and hot. Something about the look of the fries put my mind on the verge of something. They were perfectly ordinary crinkle-cuts, but there was something about the color, the apparent consistency. When I tasted one, everything — flavor, moisture, temperature, mixture of crispness and tenderness, the grease, the feeling against my teeth — brought back a very specific memory from 43 years ago. That was when I had tasted fries that were exactly like these.

Initially, the memory that came to me was visual. In my mind’s eye, I could see that I was in a diner. From the center of the field of vision running off to the right was a counter, with high stools, behind it one of those windows to the kitchen. Starting at the center and running toward the left was a window with blinds — it was dark outside — and then a doorway out to a sidewalk. I couldn’t see where I was sitting — a booth, a table? — only what I could see, looking up, from that vantage point. There were people moving about, but they were indistinct, ghostly. I couldn’t fix on them. Then came the sounds of the place, the clanking dishes, the hiss of the grill, the rowdy sounds of boys’ voices.

I knew where I was. The junior varsity basketball team of Bennettsville High School — 1967-68 school year — was on the road. We were having dinner after a game in a small town in the Pee Dee, before getting back on the bus to head back to B’ville. I was 14 and this was an adventure, one of many like it.

I was part of the team and not on the team — sort of like Ollie, the team manager, at the start of “Hoosiers.” After the grueling tryouts (one gets a taste of eternity in windsprints up and down the court), the coach looked down at me and told me I had almost made it. He was sure I’d be ready next year. If I’d be the manager, I could work out with the team and play against Robin Frye in practices. Robin was the only guy as short as I was who had made the team. I was in the 9th grade, and wouldn’t get my height for a couple of years.

Most of my duties were pretty simple — gathering up the balls after practice and such. But I had one that I regarded as core, one that made me feel important beyond my years. I was the official scorekeeper for the team. I sat at the folding table along the sidelines with the other team’s scorekeeper on my left, and the guy with the scoreboard controls and buzzer on my right. My supreme moment of the season was in a late home game. One of our guys was fouled, and he took his free throw and made it. The referee was giving to the ball to the other team to take out when I told the guy next to me to hit the buzzer. The ref came over and I told him our player was entitled to a second shot because it was a one-and-one situation. The ref said he didn’t think it was. I told him I was sure, and showed him the fouls on my sheet — I remembered each one. The other scorekeeper said no; there hadn’t been that many fouls.

The ref said that since I was the home scorekeeper, my record was official. He went back out and gave our guy another shot.

I’m surprised I didn’t fall off my folding chair, I was so drunk with power. I couldn’t believe it — I had given a signal, and that whole packed gym had stopped everything to hear what I had to say. And then, my word being law, I had pronounced my ruling, and the ref and all those other adults had obeyed.

It’s good to be the scorekeeper.

But I kept my face impassive, and acted like this was the way things were supposed to be.

In the late 80s, I attended my cousin’s graduation. His was the final class to graduate as Green Gremlins. The graduation was held in the football stadium of the new, consolidated Marlboro High School, which everyone would attend the next year. But then a storm came up. Those in charge decided everyone would repair across town to the old school, and we’d complete the ceremonies in the auditorium there. So we did.

The place was packed, and steaming hot. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit in the auditorium, so people were distributed anywhere they could get a vantage point of the stage. I found myself in the wings of the stage itself, watching the kids come up for their diplomas. I remembered that one of the backstage doors opened onto the gym, and slipped away to go check it out.

Speaking of “Hoosiers” — remember the end, with the camera panning slowly through an almost-empty gym, obviously years after the miraculous championship? There’s a small boy dribbling and taking shots, alone, at one end of the court, and every time the ball hits the court surface, the echoes resound, as the camera gradually swings up and zooms in on the portrait of The Team. It was like that. It felt like that; my every step sounded like that.

I went over and stood in the spot from which I had issued The Ruling. Odd, it strikes me now, that a movie hasn’t been made about that great moment in sports history. Hollywood doesn’t know what’s good, I guess.

Those are the things I thought of when I bit into that one fry. No, it’s not great literature, but the same principle of involuntary memory applied…

And then afterwards, a beer. Or two…

Cleaning out the old IN box, I ran across this Tweet I had sent myself meaning to blog about it last week:

Taegan Goddard @pwire

Taegan Goddard

New poll: Which presidential candidate would you want to have lunch with?http://pwire.at/mJNvAf

Turns out that far more Americans polled — 53 percent — would rather have lunch with Barack Obama than any of the GOP candidates. Sarah Palin came in at a “distant second” with 16 percent.

Last election cycle, all the talk was about who you wanted to have a beer with. Asking the question this way is going to foul up our stats, for comparison purposes.

But it may be a better, more rigorous question. Most of us are probably less picky who we have a beer with. Although it depends on who’s buying.

Harvest Hope reaches milestone, has a million to go

Just got this good news from Harvest Hope Food Bank:

Harvest Hope Reaches $300,000 Total to Attain Southeastern Freight Lines Matching Goal

May 19, 2011

COLUMBIA, SC – May 19, 2011 – Harvest Hope Food Bank announces that as of this morning, Thursday May 19 they have raised  $304,455.38 since announcing the Southeastern Freight Lines matching campaign in early April, which qualifies them for SEFL’s $150,000 matching donation for a total of $450,000.

Combined with the $456,293.67 raised during their March matching campaign staked by Mungo Homes, Harvest Hope has now raised $910,749.05 toward their $2 million funding goal announced on March 8th.  Harvest Hope now looks to raise the final $1,089,251 to reach its goal and ensure their ability to meet the growing hunger needs across 20 counties of South Carolina.

Harvest Hope wishes to thank Southeastern Freight Lines and Mungo Homes for their generosity in each staking $150,000 toward the matching campaigns, and urges other members of the business community to follow the examples set by these community leaders and step up to pledge their own matching campaigns.

Lots of progress, but lots of money still to raise to meet the goal, and keep up with the mission.

OK, so NONE of us knows what we’re talking about (the collards controversy continues to rage)

Remember how yesterday we were sorta kinda making fun of Greg Ryberg for not knowing (although I assumed he was being facetious) that the collards vote was for SC “official leafy vegetable,” not “official vegetable?”

Turns out that Ryberg had it right, and Larry Martin, and The Associated Press, and bradwarthen.com, all had it wrong. AP moved this correction last evening:

SC legislators make collards state vegetable

Corrects that the designation is for “official vegetable” instead of “official leafy vegetable.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina senators have named collard greens the state’s official vegetable.

The Senate on Tuesday approved recognizing collard greens with a 30-12 vote. The proposal needs to get routine final approval Wednesday before being sent to the House.

State Sen. Greg Ryberg of Aiken wondered why collards were getting singled out for recognition and not something like green beans.

State Sen. Larry Martin of Pickens said the designation was for a leafy vegetable and green beans weren’t leafy vegetables.

But the legislation doesn’t limit the designation to a leafy vegetable.

That means collard greens can stand tall over everything from everything from arugula to zucchini.

I don’t know about the AP, but I suddenly feel the need for a leafy vegetable with which to cover my nakedness…

I really need to get over to the State House more

A colleague laments that she missed this debate over in the Senate today. I feel the same. Note the boldfaced part:

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. South Carolina legislators gave the lowly collard green its due Tuesday when the Senate agreed to make it the official state leafy vegetable.

Always washed, frequently boiled and traditionally a charm for wealth in the New Year first put on Southern tables by slaves, the collard green would join dozens of other “official” things the state recognizes.

For instance, milk is the state’s official beverage and state-grown tea is the state’s official hospitality beverage. The Carolina wolf spider is the state’s official spider and the bottlenose dolphin is the state’s official mammal.

The 30-12 vote showed there were collard green doubters.

Sen. Greg Ryberg, an Aiken Republican and Wisconsin transplant, wondered if there was competition.

Sen. Larry Martin, a Pickens Republican, defended the choice. “We all know the popularity of the collard,” Martin said.

“What about the green bean?” Ryberg asked in a reference to past efforts to put money into a green bean museum.

“The green bean’s not leafy,” Martin said flatly. “This is very specialized.”

I’d like to have been there for that.

SC Senate steps out, takes a stand for collards

This came in this afternoon from John O’Connor:

S.C. Senate Judiciary approves bill making collards the state’s official leafy vegetable.

I asked John whether there were any votes for arugula, but he said not.

Now, before y’all go off on a tirade about how the Legislature spends all its time on such silliness (which is probably the complaint I hear the most often about lawmakers), the truth is that they don’t. Spend all their time on stuff like that. In fact, Judiciary also debate the bill to have the governor and lieutenant governor run on the same ticket, and to have the state superintendent appointed rather than elected. This is all according to John. On account of The State still pays him to hang out over there…

Both ought to pass easily, but of course, this being the SC Senate, what ought to happen has little to do with reality.

BUT… this time, they actually did pass the superintendent bill, 17-2. Which is something.

By the way, you may or may not be gratified to know that Sen. Robert Ford DID speak out about the Senate wasting its time on things that didn’t matter. But he wasn’t talking about the collards; he was talking about the changes to our constitution.

My favorite one of John’s Tweets today:

Twitter can’t do justice to Sen. Ford’s arguments.

Another great opportunity to help Harvest Hope

Did you see the Steven Mungo op-ed in The State Sunday? In it, he explains why he and his family are such staunch supporters of Harvest Hope Food Bank and its vital mission of feeding the increasing numbers of hungry folks in the Midlands and beyond. And they don’t just do it as a feel-good thing:

We all do this not just because it sounds like a worthwhile cause, but because we believe Harvest Hope gets the job done. It’s efficient and effective.

Harvest Hope is a very lean organization, as I have learned from closely observing it. It actually does better than give a dollar’s worth of aid for a dollar’s donation. If everybody ran their business the way Harvest Hope does, a lot fewer of us would have gotten in trouble when the recession hit.

Don’t know if you heard (even though I was Tweeting it out every day), but the $150,000 match offered by the Mungos was double-matched as of April 1. And that’s a tremendous response by the community. Of course, it gets Harvest Hope less than a fourth of the way to the $2 million it needs.

So it’s great to see that another prominent local business has stepped to the fore to make an offer identical to that of the Mungos:

Harvest Hope Announces New Matching

Campaign by Southeastern Freight Lines

(Columbia) Harvest Hope Food Bank announces the beginning of a new matching campaign sponsored by Southeastern Freight Lines. The generosity of Southeastern Freight Lines will result in a $150,000 contribution to Harvest Hope once the food bank reaches $300,000 in donations.

Southeastern Freight Lines is headquartered in Lexington and has more than 6,600 employees. “Our commitment to employees has enabled the company to build a culture of customer service excellence over our 60-year history, and we are just as committed to the communities we serve,” said Tobin Cassels, president of Southeastern Freight Lines. “We recognize the enormity of Harvest Hope’s mission and want to do our part in making sure hungry families in our community have a safety net to give them hope. We are proud to work with Harvest Hope in an effort to put food on the tables across 20 counties.”

In March Harvest Hope announced that the combination of an increase in service demand and operating costs combined with a decrease in donations had resulted in a financial crisis and they issued an appeal to the public for funding help to raise $2 million.  Almost immediately, Mungo Homes staked a $150,000 matching campaign if Harvest Hope could double that amount in donations.

On Friday, April 1 Harvest Hope’s donations reached $306,293.67 which qualified them for Mungo Home’s $150,000 matching donation. With over $450,000 in donations, Harvest Hope is now almost ¼ of the way toward their $2 million goal.

Harvest Hope wishes to thank Mungo Homes for their continued generosity, and is pleased to announce that Southeastern Freight Lines has stepped up to help them achieve their funding goal. With the completion of Southeastern Freight’s generous matching campaign Harvest Hope will have achieved half of its $2 million dollar funding goal.

About Southeastern Freight Lines

Southeastern Freight Lines, a privately-owned regional less-than-truckload transportation services provider founded in 1950, specializes in next-day service in the Southeast and Southwest and operates 76 service centers in 12 states and Puerto Rico. Southeastern has a network of service partners to ensure transportation services in the remaining 38 states, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Mexico. Southeastern Freight Lines provides more than 99.35% on-time service in next day lanes. A dedication to service quality and a continuous quality improvement process that began in 1985 has been recognized by more than 300 quality awards received from customers and associations. Southeastern Freight Lines subsidiary, Southeastern Logistics Solutions, provides expedited service and multi-modal transportation services across the nation through strategic capacity partnerships. For more information, please visit www.sefl.com.

For more information about Harvest Hope’s mission to feed the hungry in 20 South Carolina counties, visit www.harvesthope.org.

That was announced last week, and since then $42,405 has been contributed toward the $300,000 needed to match. This is good progress, but we as a community have a long way to go to meet the huge need.

For more background on Harvest Hope’s critical need, read my former post on the subject. And going forward, watch my Twitter feed for updates…