Free Veggies

I'm not too proud (I lost all pride in this area long ago) to say that I have been a recipient to W.I.C. (Women, Infant, Children - not Women in the Church) for about 10 years. W.I.C. is a government program to help families out with grocery bills and to try to get people to eat healthier. They offer milk, cheese, juice, eggs and few other items to people who have children under the age of 5. I started on the program when I was pregnant with Mollee and have been on it ever since. When you are pregnant they also give you carrots and tuna fish to help your babies brain develop properly.

At one point, I had four children on the program and we were getting 16 gallons of free milk each month (4 per kid) and we were using every bit of it. I still am not sure I completely understand it, but Jason says the government wants a healthy nation and this is one way they strive for that. My kids are definitely milk drinkers now and I'm not sure I would have offered that much milk to my children, so I guess it helped us be a little healthier. We also eat an egg meal once a week, my kids can't believe that some people eat eggs for breakfast.

Anyway, today I went to pick up my vouchers for the next quarter and they were having a W.I.C. Farmer's Market. This is a new program that our county has been given the opportunity to try. All the produce they are giving away has been grown in our county. It, obviously, made my trip to the health department a lot longer than I had planned, but I got a big box full of: 2 cantaloupes, a bag of apples, a head of cabbage, a bag of okra, three eggplants, a bag of peaches, a big bag of squash and a few onions. We got to choose what we took - other options were potatoes, red peppers, watermelon, tomatoes, cucumbers and jalapeno peppers. (Yes, I chose cabbage, okra and eggplant!!)

Free yummy food just makes me smile!!! Now, how do you cook eggplant?