I was born and raised in the state of Maine. So when I ran across the headline "Feds Spend $150,000 to Teach Rural Mainers How to Cook", I just had to read about my hard earned tax dollars at work. Seems as though the U.S. Department of Agriculture has given grant money to the University of Maine to provide cooking and nutrition classes to low-income residents to "dispel the myth that healthy food tastes boring". The project seeks to build the confidence of "rural Mainers" so they can cook healthy meals. The project guidelines also state that the cooking lessons will be "culturally and socially sensitive".
As I read this article it brought back childhood memories of being a member of a "low-income" family living in a big farmhouse in "rural" Maine and eating one of my favorite meals...homemade bake beans. My mother always made them with Maine yellow eye beans, molasses, brown sugar, salt pork, and mustard. To go with them we had "red" hot dogs and hot sliced B&M Brown Bread right out of the can. And even though we had beans just about every Saturday night, they never got "boring". And I don't remember anyone from the University of Maine having to teach my mom how to cook them. I do remember one thing though. About 2-3 hours after eating a double helping of those delicious beans, the air in that old farmhouse wasn't very "culturally or socially sensitive".
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