Eat a Worm, Save the Planet

Can we talk about the ORGANIC craze, now that it appears to be waning somewhat?  Yes, let's.  I have never understood how the marketers managed to get so many people to believe that it's acceptable to be paying way more for what seems to me to be way less.  I'm here to call bullshit on the ORGANIC movement, ok?  Wait, so many levels of strange here, because bullshit itself is in fact an ORGANIC, chemical free form of fertilizer, but I'm getting off track before I even got ON track.

Having lived in Nova Scotia, Canada, which is prime apple producing country, we have fond memories associated with apple orchards.  We jumped at the chance to go apple picking in California.  I had visions of a fun day of picking apples and coming home with a huge cheap supply of fresh apples to make apple pies, and apple sauce, and apple turnovers, all apple everything, all the time.  Fresh. Cheap.

We arrived in Yucaipa, ready to make it happen.  The only orchards we could find were "ORGANIC" orchards, which meant we would be paying a bit more, but these were flippin' ORGANIC APPLES, so you type it in all caps and you pay more for them.  This is the rule of ORGANIC stuff, and we were ok with that. Paying slightly more for your apples is a small price for saving the planet, HELLO.   As we were walked to the orchard, the farm hand explained to us how no pesticides were used on the fruit, and that was why we would be finding worms and other undesirable things in the apples.  Apparently, these worms IN NO WAY affected the quality of the apples (??? By whose definition?) and that we could merely eat around the worm holes or cut the worms out.  HUH?  Well, sure enough, the apples were disgustingly full of worms and it cost about $10 for a small bag of organic apples, that we had to pick ourselves.  I didn't make any pies and I didn't eat very many of them because the worm thing was just too gross and I'm only now able to talk about it without becoming annoyed all over again.

I recalled that story as I walked through Ralph's today and saw the "Crazy Bugs Macaroni and Cheese Dinner."  Yes, that's right kids, organic freakin' Mac Cheese. "Back to Nature", it says on the box.  It's so completely natural and organic, the pasta is shaped like caterpillars and bees!!!!!  I had to take a picture because nobody would believe me if I said they named an actual worm shaped food item "Crazy Bugs Macaroni and Cheese Dinner", but shut up, they absolutely did.  My head is about to explode from how ridiculous it is and now I must take to my bed with a martini to make sense of it.  That would be a martini with 3  worm free olives.  Thank you and good night.