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Tomatoes are probably the only fruit or vegetable that every animal or insect seems to like.  You plant them in your yard and snakes, birds, and all types of bugs will go after your young red or green tomatoes.  The predators will not leave the tomatoes alone… even bacteria seems to want these antioxidants.

I was on a trip to Orlando and bought a sub from Subway on friday and asked for extra tomatoes.  Then this scare got worse and the media ran the tomato story all weekend long and even McDonald’s stopped putting tomatoes on hamburgers.  Wait?  McDonald’s doesn’t even put tomatoes on their Big Macs much less that small cherry you get on a salad there doesn’t count as a tomato.

You know its a scare when you see the FDA coming out with a list of possible suspects and you walk into Whole Foods and they are missing half their stock.  Whole foods got rid of the Roma tomatoes but kept the vine tomatoes and are offering refunds on previous purchases.  I can see the lines forming now of people with a receipt in one hand and a tomato in another.

I was served a tomato in my salad on my American Airlines flight on Monday - I might just die from that!  We know even the water on those flights might have some kind of bacteria or the claims of them finding feces and other remains in airplane water.  I think American uses bottled water unless they refill the bottles with what’s on board from the septic tanks.

Try and order a salsa lately?  Salsa and pico de gallo has been banned from most restaurants as well.  What is this world coming to when we cannot eat one of the healthiest fruits (or vegetable).

I still to this day do not know whether its tomatoe or tomato or if its a fruit or vegetable.  Everyone has different viewpoints but one think I know for sure is I have four tomato plants in my backyard and I plan to eat tomatoes whether the FDA tells me I can or not.

An advocacy group claims Wal-Mart is misleading its customers by labeling non-organic foods as ‘organic.  Our expectations confirmed?  Yeah, mistakes will happen but at five different Wal-Mart locations?  And why has nothing been done since September about the mis-tagging of Organic Foods?  Don’t sell that Whole Foods stock just yet… Whole Foods may come out a winner in this battle!

This group is accusing Wal-Mart of organic fraud and they may be on to something.  We may be seeing a lot more of these stories since the higher prices are in the organic foods.  But lets take a look at the employees that work at Wal-Mart.

I do not really think Wal-Mart is doing this organic foods mislabeling on purpose.  I think it is the employees that are ill-informed and just do not know what an organic product is they think it is natural.  They are so used to the terms “new”, “natural”, 10% juice” etc that they just look at organic as a natural instead of organic product.  When you go in a Whole Foods you are used to everything already being mostly organic or natural instead of the fake chemical bags of Cheeto’s or fake chemical foods in grocery stores.

Go in Wal-Mart yourself and you will most likely discover it yourself.  The stockers in Wal-Mart have everything so trashed in the store that hardly anything matches what the sign says.  Although, Wal-Mart deserves to pay for misleading people if they keep doing this.  Especially when it comes to organic foods where they mis-mark them at higher prices and rip off the consumers.  If Wal-Mart is going to sell foods and try to compete against Whole Foods or Wild Oats then it needs better training to educate employees on what organic foods really are.

This has nothing to do with politics but this is a site about living real and we surely love our wine. I saw this question asked the other day on Yahoo Answers and was not satisfied with the answers so here is mine. The person asked if it was ok to keep the wine in the fridge for 6 months. Here is my answer:

I know a little something about wine. The bad news is, I have lousy taste and will drink anything, no matter how vile, before I will throw it out. In any case, bad wine becomes vinegar, so if you can’t drink it, you can always cook with it. White wine will keep overnight or so in the refrigerator. Red wine you pretty much have to drink once it’s opened. We do have one of those vacuum seal doohickeys and that keeps the white wine pretty okay for the next day.

Hard booze, on the other hand, will keep pretty much forever if it’s tightly sealed. And vodka, sherries and port wines, which have a lot more alcohol than regular wine, will keep for a while too. But pitch the wine. Spring for a new bottle or two and keep it on its side, like it says in the movie Sideways. Guess you didn’t see that? Pretty good movie, lots of wine talk.

The thing with wine is the quality.  If you are going to drink it you need to be willing to pay for a decent bottle. Cheap wine has no health benefits and the flavor is an insult to the senses.