Trading one type of desert for another

Richard Charpentier Notes from Rich Leave a Comment

When I first heard of the concept, “Food desert,” I scoffed.  It sounded absolutely ridiculous to me.  And then I moved to West Virginia and I found out that food deserts are real.  Heck, even a ride up to the Whole Foods in Ohio proved that things are regionally dependent.  In other words, some of my favorite ingredients for meals just weren’t available to me.  It was painful.

Visiting the grocery stores and Wal-Marts in OH / WV were always an exercise in getting depressed.  “The fridge is empty, something must be purchased to fill it.”  And then arriving at any of the shopping locales I became discouraged as I couldn’t find what I wanted.  What I could find, frozen pizza (can’t have milk), corn dogs (yeah, in my 40’s no thanks), and the rest of the fast microwave food were all not things I had any interest in, or just couldn’t have.

I mention corn dogs due to an incident at Wal-Mart shortly after I arrived in the Parkersburg area.  At checkout there was a young lady behind me with her two little ones in line.  Their basket (the whole basket) was full of frozen corn dogs.  I do not exaggerate here.  I’m dead serious, a basket full of corn dogs.  Mmmmmm……

Today I have landed in the actual desert.  I’m in New Mexico.  It’s absolutely wonderful to be back here.  Open plains, snow capped peaks to the north, everything I love about the southwest.

I’m happy to report that after arriving here a trip to the grocery store was taken…..and you know what?  Yeah, I’m in the real desert, but out of the food desert!  Variety gets to return to my menu!!!  Pretty exciting stuff.

Who would have guessed that food deserts are real?  I wouldn’t have until this year.  Live and learn.

The Airstream fridge is stocked.  The cabinets are stocked.  And I’m happy.

On a totally different line of thinking…..

While driving today I played around with audio recordings.  Initially I was going to record again for Dragon Dictate to see if I could do better than yesterday.  But about 30 seconds into composing a post for the day this maniac in a beautiful Prevost Bus started passing me, and then decided he wanted to get into my lane well before he completed passing me.

There was a lot of cursing on the recording.  It has been saved for posterity’s sake, but it was pretty ugly.  I was so mad, I’m sure some readers would love to hear it.  🙂

After the near miss with the bus I didn’t really feel like speaking and formatting sentences and phrases for Dragon Dictate.  Instead I thought, “Why not just do an audio podcast?”  So, that’s what I did.

In the end, I actually recorded 3 in total.  The first one was practice.  The second one is getting added to the bottom of this post.  And the third one?  Well, maybe it will pop up here in the future.

Let me know what you think.  This particular audio podcast was recorded on the road, so there is some background noise.  If folks like the audio format you just might find more of them up here.  If you think they suck, let me know that too.

Well, that’s it for the night.  I’m going to enjoy a meal now, a real home cooked meal.

Oh, and tonight the Airstream is parked near “Iron Santa.”  Let’s see who figures that one out……

 

 

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