My 99 Cents

This looks like it’s worth a try…

Happy Summer everyone!

A great big Howdy! to all the outdoor-loving vegetarians out there! Are you feeling ho-hum, uninspired, less than fresh? Cubicle walls closing in? Speed-dialing to get Antonella cut from American Idol just not doing it for you anymore?

Why not treat yourself to a luxurious, 7-day, Big Game Safari Getaway-With-a-Twist? If you’ve never tried it, a Vegetarian Hunting Preserve Theme park vacation is just right for today’s traditional-yet-eco-positive families – don’t wait! Reserve a cabin today at

Ain’tlers Ranch

Meat-Free Hunting for the Vegan Set!!

Why should Dick Cheney have all the fun? You too can mistake a life-long pal for a duck and shoot him in the face! But at Ain’tlers, the ducks are completely safe from harm. In case you have been living under a rock, Ain’tlers is the World’s First and Finest Meat-Free ‘Big Grain’ Hunting Venue.

Let’s face it: The thrill of the hunt is what makes America great & free; hunting is a rite of passage for every manly, red-blooded, border-fence building American boy (and gal) . But look around – animals are getting harder to find, never mind kill. How can concerned parents and citizens continue to instill the God-based values hunting big game imbues?

Rest assured Dads and Moms! No matter how slow, clumsy, or afraid, your offspring will bag “meat” on Ain’tlers 13,000 acres of landscaped “wilderness.” Thrill to the “chase” as you and Jr. stalk our glazed polymer “Serengeti” towards half a ton of textured soy protein. An artist’s care infuses life into our sculpted quarry. Ain’tlers’ curd ‘elk’ tracking system is state of the art — and let’s face it, these critters can’t run, or hide, or see! At Ain’tlers, we even offer No Fail Hunting for Toddlers Three and Older: one good thwack will bring down our “NoBull” life-size grain game**.

And ask about Father/son overnights! The sold-out 6:00 am “Stalk and jump” is a huge hit with the young’ns.

No need to leave the guns at home, Pops! Just imagine what your XM-8 Lightweight Assault Rifle will do to a hefty block of dyed vegetable matter shaped like a puma …every shot’s a “kill.”

No more crouching, no more rising at dawn to flush out prey. No more crapping in the woods. No more… Heck, no more effort whatsoever on your part, and that’s our money-back guarantee!!

Don’t just take it from us…have a peek at this non-stop roster of fun:

Daily Matador contests! “Soy in the afternoon”

Bagging curd: One Man’s Quest.

Free Lifelike “ain’t-lers” with every reservation made with VISA or MasterCard. The perfect accent for any bachelor pad.

Don’t miss this once in a life-time Dream vacation! (Act now and get a free ice crusher).

Michael Pollan’s brilliant essay, “Unhappy Meals” in the NY Times describes how, among other things, “nutrients managed to push food aside in the popular imagination of what it means to eat.” The essay is rather long but truly worth a read!

Something’s very wrong with the way most of us buy and consume food in America but Pollan really breaks it down:

Consider what happened immediately after the 1977 “Dietary Goals” — McGovern’s masterpiece of politico-nutritionist compromise. In the wake of the panel’s recommendation that we cut down on saturated fat, a recommendation seconded by the 1982 National Academy report on cancer, Americans did indeed change their diets, endeavoring for a quarter-century to do what they had been told. Well, kind of. The industrial food supply was promptly reformulated to reflect the official advice, giving us low-fat pork, low-fat Snackwell’s and all the low-fat pasta and high-fructose (yet low-fat!) corn syrup we could consume. Which turned out to be quite a lot. Oddly, America got really fat on its new low-fat diet — indeed, many date the current obesity and diabetes epidemic to the late 1970s, when Americans began binging on carbohydrates, ostensibly as a way to avoid the evils of fat.

[snip]

By comparison, the typical real food has more trouble competing under the rules of nutritionism, if only because something like a banana or an avocado can’t easily change its nutritional stripes (though rest assured the genetic engineers are hard at work on the problem). So far, at least, you can’t put oat bran in a banana. So depending on the reigning nutritional orthodoxy, the avocado might be either a high-fat food to be avoided (Old Think) or a food high in monounsaturated fat to be embraced (New Think). The fate of each whole food rises and falls with every change in the nutritional weather, while the processed foods are simply reformulated. That’s why when the Atkins mania hit the food industry, bread and pasta were given a quick redesign (dialing back the carbs; boosting the protein), while the poor unreconstructed potatoes and carrots were left out in the cold.

Of course it’s also a lot easier to slap a health claim on a box of sugary cereal than on a potato or carrot, with the perverse result that the most healthful foods in the supermarket sit there quietly in the produce section, silent as stroke victims, while a few aisles over, the Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms are screaming about their newfound whole-grain goodness.