I poked around and didn't see a gardening or cooking forum at the Trap. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction if I somehow missed them. If not, these are HUGE topics that take up an entire forum in and of themselves. I noticed a fair interest in cooking at this site while creeping around the "What's Your Favorite Food" post, so if it isn't here already, cooking would make a great forum. I noticed that post garnered an incredible amount of interest. Food is integral to our lives, so may as well have a forum dedicated to it in all it's wonderful forms.

As our food supply becomes more polluted, people are increasingly turning to growing, harvesting, and preparing their own food. So how 'bout a Gardening forum too? This time of the year, as our thoughts turn to the outdoors, gardening would be especially timely.

I'm not much of a gardener - or a cook - but various people in my family love to do one, the other or both.

I help out with the parts that I don't mess up. I can chop vegetables, grate cheese, etc. And in the garden: I can mix compost with the best of 'em. Just don't turn me loose on any of the plants or they'll shrivel up and die out of pure spite *smirks*

As for organic: I would love to eat more natural, non-messed-with food. It's very expensive, though. A very small jar of organic peanut butter is more than four bucks at the grocery store, for example. I can get a jar of "regular" stuff that's twice as large for half that. And organic chicken? Anywhere from four to seven bucks a pound when I can get the "regular" stuff for 50 cents a pound or less. When the grocery budget is only so large...well, you know.

Hey FolkRockFan! Love your kitty avatar. I have to admit I'm not a very good cook or gardener either, but I'll sure as heck suffer through my own cooking than eat the trash the Monsanto monsters would like to pawn off on the willfully ignorant public. I know the prices on Organic are outrageous for the most part, but Safeway (of all places) has recently started carrying an organic line called, "O." They offer organic eggs, cheese, veggies, peanut butter, ketchup, salad dressing, tortilla chips, coffee, cookies, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, frozen veggies, pasta, spaghetti sauce, olive oil.....well - all the staples at a VERY reasonable price. I would imagine it's just a matter of time before they start carrying organic dead animals.

No, I'm not a spokesperson for Safeway. Heck - I used to be one of their biggest critics. But now I have to salute them (if you have a libation in your hand, raise it now) for being one of the first major chains to come out with their very own organic line. Little by little, even Walmart is getting in Organic products. They started with free-range eggs. Now, it seems every time I visit it's a treasure hunt of sorts to find the latest line of organic product. This trend will grow everywhere as people tire of "franken foods" engineered by monsters like Monsanto and the like.

But yeah, you're absolutely right about the overall prices on these products. That was probably my biggest motivator in starting a garden, modest as it is. It's really amazing how much money you can save growing a few crops in a small space. I experimented for awhile with a technique called, "square foot" gardening, which is everything the name implies and more. It incorporates raised beds (to warm the soil), and trellises which allow the growing of space demanding plants in small areas. Oh, I could go on and on. That's it then! Where's the gardening forum??

Please start the momentum by posting them either under:

Life Talk
or
Life Talk > Real Life Experiences

plus, gardening book introduction should be posted under Books section and cooking school experience should go under School and Career or Real Life Experiences for now.

Once we see the participation, we will create a new sub-forum. Thank you.

Or, if you feel it fits better with improving your overall health, as I'm sure you do, then by all means, let's take it on over that direction!

sorry for this kind-of-a-stupid-question, but what is an organic food and what is it's difference between the usual ones? sorry. i've heard of it before, but i only thought it was just the ordinary ones.

as for the cooking forums, yeah i'd gladly participate. members could share cooking tips and recipes (although i don't know if others would participate, i know i do). but in the case it couldn't be created, it would be fine to put the topics on appropriate subforums like what buff mentioned. i love to cook and i'd love to see some tips and techniques in cooking and recipes as well.

as for my food intake, i am leaning towards eating more healthy foods, and basically more veggies. i'm actually quite comfortable now not eating meat (especially pork and beef). i'm actually comfortable eating oatmeal now, that i hated like years ago (and after i found out that it could be very helpful in losing weight and "making you feel full").

"Organic" is just a contrived term used to describe food production as it should be, without the use of pesticides, hormones or unnatural methods. Imagine how farming existed before big agri-business moved in and turned animals into machines, and vegetables into genetically modified frankenfood, and you'll have a good idea of what organic is. They just added a cooking forum. Let's say we migrate over there..........