TTC

[Anny Nym]

Do people in your area generally have easy access to a car? A mile isn't that far to walk one way, but it isn't something you want to do with three kids and a week's worth of groceries.

When it´s just a mile (I´m not happy with that one mile definition either, honestly) you do not need to do a weeks shopping in advance. One can go more often plus bike or take a trolley. 2, 5 kilometers is the minimum distance, you would be provided with a kindergarten/school bus access, everything below a child as young as 4 could walk easily - with supervision of course.

The distance is not what "ickes" on food desert, the topic of providing less or worse in quality goods to certain people , may it be racist, socioeconomic or both - isn´t it tied? - reasons is :x

[Coconut Flan]

I think it's things like switching from discussing the dish as cooked lentils to using a term like dal that causes some people to run away from cooking. It begins making it more mystified with what some might call fancy terms or unnecessary word usage. To many beginner cooks it's another unnecessary stumbling block like those that we've been discussing.

[Arete]

So this is what August is saying on another thread:

I just got told here on FJ that carless people in food deserts should just get groceries delivered!

So August, are you just a lying liar who lies (lentil are 3 USD in the US, anyone?), or is it a reading comprehension problem? Because that was OKTBT asking a general question about the availability of a particular service in the US, and me giving a specific answer that it was available in my area for 5 USD. Neither one of us was suggesting that the working poor should just have their groceries delivered. Or are you not capable of handling that there are multiple conversations going on in the same thread?

[formergothardite]

I'd like to see you buy an onion for under $1, and a pound of lentils for under $3, anywhere I've lived in the US.

I live in NC and just bought an onion today for 59 cents. At the farmer's market I could have gotten like five for $1.25. Where do you live that onions are so expensive? I always thought of onions as a fairly cheap food.

I don't like lentils. I do like navy beans.

[OkToBeTakei]

I think it's things like switching from discussing the dish as cooked lentils to using a term like dal that causes some people to run away from cooking. It begins making it more mystified with what some might call fancy terms or unnecessary word usage. To many beginner cooks it's another unnecessary stumbling block like those that we've been discussing.

Very true.

But it is important maybe to point it out if as suggested you go shopping in an Indian store. A lesson I learned looking for clarified butter :lol: I have to navigate the different terms if I transfer US recipes to UK. Cups are a truly brilliant idea, but a stick of butter meant nothing to me until I asked somebody the weight. I suppose it is a bit like most things in life if you want to learn you will, if you don't you won't.

There is NOBODY involved in this conversation who does not have access to Mr Google.

[OkToBeTakei]

I live in NC and just bought an onion today for 59 cents. At the farmer's market I could have gotten like five for $1.25. Where do you live that onions are so expensive? I always thought of onions as a fairly cheap food.

I don't like lentils. I do like navy beans.

Wherever she lives I'm on my way with 2 suitcases of lentils, onions and carrots. Gonna make a fortune am I :lol:

[Coconut Flan]

I see we've never been given a list of those pricey places in the US.

A bag of onions is on sale this week at the nearest grocery store for 99 cents.

I grant you Mr. Google and since we are all online here, it's easy to look it up. A beginning cook though will quickly get overwhelmed with having to look up too many things and likely isn't going to head to the Indian market. I've taught several beginning cooks and keeping it simple is near the top of the list. I shop at a couple of Asian markets and have had to recognize what I want by the packaging sometimes or learn to distinguish between some very similar vegetables. I don't mind, but I wouldn't send someone there who was just figuring out crockpot chicken.

When you first began cooking you probably didn't have a desire to convert US recipes to UK standard either. :) I've done the reverse with some foods my family wanted and bought a multi-marked scale and figured out a couple of substitutions but not when I first began cooking.

[formergothardite]

Wherever she lives I'm on my way with 2 suitcases of lentils, onions and carrots. Gonna make a fortune am I :lol:

Carrots were on sale for $1 a bag too. I got three bags because we eat a lot of carrots.

[jenny_islander]

I can get ordinary skin-on brown lentils for under $2 per pound. If I want any other kind of lentil, prices start at the cost of mediocre steak and go up from there. The only kind of dal I can make is yellow split pea dal; those are cheap. All other skinless legumes except green split peas are :pink-shock: .

Awesome potatoes are cheap here because they are grown relatively close by. I can get the best carrots in the world for really cheap too; they look like the big acrid ones grown for horse fodder, but they are sweet and crisp all the way through, even in the cores, and they turn even sweeter when cooked. But if I want fresh cherries, I am lucky to find them at $6.99 per pound--and I have to go through the bag and pick out all the squashed ones before I leave the store. Meanwhile, I have relatives who can mail pounds and pounds of fresh cherries all the way up here without feeling that they've deprived themselves, but they can't get wild salmon for less than :evil-eye: per pound--while all I need to get a cooler full of salmon is a hook and a rod and a fishing license (and luck and skill and time).

It's a big country. Prices vary by product and by area.

[OkToBeTakei]

I see we've never been given a list of those pricey places in the US.

A bag of onions is on sale this week at the nearest grocery store for 99 cents.

I grant you Mr. Google and since we are all online here, it's easy to look it up. A beginning cook though will quickly get overwhelmed with having to look up too many things and likely isn't going to head to the Indian market. I've taught several beginning cooks and keeping it simple is near the top of the list. I shop at a couple of Asian markets and have had to recognize what I want by the packaging sometimes or learn to distinguish between some very similar vegetables. I don't mind, but I wouldn't send someone there who was just figuring out crockpot chicken.

When you first began cooking you probably didn't have a desire to convert US recipes to UK standard either. :) I've done the reverse with some foods my family wanted and bought a multi-marked scale and figured out a couple of substitutions but not when I first began cooking.

ABSOLUTELY!!

As I've said I grew up in a home with a good basic cook and learned those skills by watching etc. When I left home for Uni, I could look after myself cheaply and was the go to for cauliflower and cheese sauce in my residence :lol: Basic stuff.

As I got older I became more interested but was still too busy working a full time career, we were young making money, going on holiday, eating out was common. I still cooked a lot and always had an aversion to fast food, just my palate I think. Took me ages to persuade Mr OK red chedder was just white chedder with added colour. He insisted it tasted better. Always cooked from scratch because it made more sense both taste and price wise.

Had my kid, did not work and had the time which is when it became a passion not just a part of life. I would have been clueless in an Asian or Chinese supermarket and that type of shopping is time consuming travel wise for me. Took me years to amass my collection of Cookbooks which now numbers over 100.

Not everybody gets that passion but I do think a basic life skill is basic cookery and I was lucky I absorbed that at a young age. It made complicated things easy. I've been making hollandaise since I was 13. I can imagine how daunting that could be learning as an adult. Part of the fun is making mistakes. I mentioned above Swiss roll making at school in Home Ec. I really don't want to discuss how every one I made looked like an exploded anaemic poo :lol: Baking is NOT a skill I have. I can make the easiest full proof victoria sponge into a pancake by being in the same room. Thankfully my 10 yr old has the touch. Mind you that took many hours of devastation in my kitchen :lol:

Sorry I just went on a bit :lol:

I've just made up a new recipe. Not lentils, they are SO yesterday :P I'm making potatoes boiled in water. Gonna call em. Watatoes. :D

[OkToBeTakei]

Carrots were on sale for $1 a bag too. I got three bags because we eat a lot of carrots.

ENOUGH! How am I suppose to make a fortune if you undercut me. Bitch! :P

[itsnikki05]

My mom made that a lot when I was growing up. I loathe it. I do like tater tots though! :)

[Conuly]

When it´s just a mile (I´m not happy with that one mile definition either, honestly) you do not need to do a weeks shopping in advance. One can go more often plus bike or take a trolley. 2, 5 kilometers is the minimum distance, you would be provided with a kindergarten/school bus access, everything below a child as young as 4 could walk easily - with supervision of course.

The distance is not what "ickes" on food desert, the topic of providing less or worse in quality goods to certain people , may it be racist, socioeconomic or both - isn´t it tied? - reasons is :x

If you have the free time to go multiple times a week, sure. Lets say you, like many people in my area, have a commute of just over an hour. You leave work at 5, come home at six - wait, stop at the school first and retrieve the children, sorry, so make that 6:30, prepare and have dinner right away (7:00), hug the kids, check their homework (we are getting near to 8 now!), and dash out before the store closes at 9 on the dot? I hope you didn't want to stop at the fish counter, the deli counter, or the butcher, as they all close earlier. And by that time, incidentally, there are only two lanes open, and the store has a lot of people trying to do just what you're doing.

Go before leaving for work in the morning? Store isn't open that early.

You could take a bike (if you have a place to chain it and aren't concerned at theft) or a granny cart, but speaking from experience, people who have to walk a mile to and from the store don't have great streets. I stopped using a cart years ago because it was too frustrating dragging it around potholes and cracks in the sidewalk. (And all uphill, too, but that's not a factor of socioeconomic class.)

It may be possible to go the, uh, extra mile and make multiple shopping trips, but it isn't at all fair to demand people do this.

[fundiemental]

There are some healthy-eating-inclined fundies. Seventh-Day Adventists, in my experience, tend to be vegetarians and the potlucks are pretty healthy. I once attended a Thanksgiving dinner at a SAD home. Tofurkey. NEVER AGAIN.

[Anny Nym]

If you have the free time to go multiple times a week, sure. Lets say you, like many people in my area, have a commute of just over an hour. You leave work at 5, come home at six - wait, stop at the school first and retrieve the children, sorry, so make that 6:30, prepare and have dinner right away (7:00), hug the kids, check their homework (we are getting near to 8 now!), and dash out before the store closes at 9 on the dot? I hope you didn't want to stop at the fish counter, the deli counter, or the butcher, as they all close earlier. And by that time, incidentally, there are only two lanes open, and the store has a lot of people trying to do just what you're doing.

Go before leaving for work in the morning? Store isn't open that early.

You could take a bike (if you have a place to chain it and aren't concerned at theft) or a granny cart, but speaking from experience, people who have to walk a mile to and from the store don't have great streets. I stopped using a cart years ago because it was too frustrating dragging it around potholes and cracks in the sidewalk. (And all uphill, too, but that's not a factor of socioeconomic class.)

It may be possible to go the, uh, extra mile and make multiple shopping trips, but it isn't at all fair to demand people do this.

"cracks in the sidewalk", having to chain the bike, "not fair to demand peple to do this"... wha?!

You are pulling my leg right here, don´t you? You are fuckin´kidding me and I just didn´t get it was Satire, aren´t I ?

But if you don´t, I´d like to add a few things here:

Having a commute of one hour in the first place measured with what? By car, by feet, by dragon? If you have this commute by car, you will have a vehicle of some kind or public transportation/car pool in the first place, But one does NOT need a hour to walk a damn mile 0_o

And we´re talking the ine mile distance, or?

To your example story: why not going to the store right after picking up the kids. Why having to pick up the kids and not letting them go home (if you live around the mile radius, we´re talking)?

To say "but it isn't at all fair to demand people do this" and then giving crackholes or bike chains as example of why it isn´t?

Well, then life in general is maybe a tad to much hassle for you :wink-kitty:

[Artemis]

Don't you think that one issue is the amount of energy people have? I mean, individually? That for some people life IS too much hassle?

Some people do have more energy than others, naturally. Others tire more easily. Perhaps they are less capable of dealing with stress, are in sleep deficit, have underlying medical conditions that drain them - not a lot, but perhaps enough to make some of their energy-saving choices incomprehensible, or even 'lazy' to those who can't comprehend what it is like not to be tired for a large part of the time.

We're all different.

I've been in a situation where I have literally wept with exhaustion, at the realisation that I have to take that case/trolley/shopping cart any further. My joints have ached, my breath was short and my head was woozy. I've had to stop halfway up stairs and rest a tray on a step, because my muscles were tremoring and I was going to drop it. That was an extreme case, yes, and I had severe ME at the time, but it's an extreme end of the spectrum on which sits 100% of the population.

At one end there are the people to whom, for whatever reason, life has dealt a hand that includes less efficient mitochondria, or some other genetic double-cross. At the other are the people who never seem to get tired, who have near-perfect health, the strong resilient people. All of us can shift our place on the spectrum to a certain degree - we can make healthy choices, exercise, take supplements, go on medication, but we may never be able to achieve what others can, because we don't have the genetic make up.

Then there's the psychological issues. There are healthy people who are plain lazy, sick people who are plain lazy, and all states in between. There are very sick people who transcend weakness, and healthy people who expend enormous amounts of energy without a thought.

For someone somewhere on the energy spectrum, the thought of a one mile walk to a store, dragging a trolley over a cracked and difficult pavement may actually be terrifying - in fact, I have to say, I've been there, and don't want to go there again, thanks. For others elsewhere on the energy spectrum, it's incomprehensible that someone wouldn't be prepared to expend 'that little effort' as they see it.

Walk two moons in another's moccasins, I guess. It would be good if the weaker didn't have to defend themselves against the stronger, and the stronger didn't feel they had a right to look down on the weak. And what I find very confusing here is the fact that choices have to be justified as being the only right choice.

Sure, you have a Thermomix. (Other thread link, sorry.) If that's right for you, then use it, but don't call me a fossil because I express a view that it's expensive and I think for me it's unnecessary. Don't preach the Thermomix gospel, sister: I don't need to be converted. Oh, you don't have a Thermomix? Cool, enjoy your cast iron pots and wooden spoon. But there's no intrinsic virtue in cast iron pots, and the Cast Iron Pot Bible is your bible, not mine.

Once, again, I don't need to be converted. Your choice does not negate my choice. My choice does not invalidate your choice. Your choice is, and my choice is. They are what they are - individual choices. Not threats, not opportunities for conversion, not moral imperatives, not quasi-political statements, just choices.

And as far as I'm concerned, the same goes for 'Cream of X soup vs White sauce', given that at any given time I may have a) neither the energy nor the time to make white sauce, or, conversely b) a pressing need for plain white sauce as opposed to salty, processed 'what I think of as crap'.

Why this need for extremism all the time? Why this imperative to attain some mythical acme of perfect housewifery/health/ hygiene/whatever?

Yesterday I lovingly made little cheese palmiers, individual Mediterranean tarts, filo goats cheese parcels, and several different salads. The day before that, we each had a colourful, carefully arranged plateful of home made, home grown, broad bean, smoked bacon and onion salad, ditto grilled courgette with feta and lemon dressing, salads, grilled artichoke hearts, beetroot hummus, and ricotta dip.

The day before that, however, we were a) busy, and I was b) on an energy dip. I had a bowl of Chinese instant rice porridge before I staggered off to bed, he had bread, cheese and tomatoes which he got for himself when he came home, and the girls had Batchelors Pasta in Sauce, with a glass of juice and an apple as a gesture to being healthy.

It's not really appropriate to make any moral judgement about that: it's not a moral decision. It just is. it just is the way we manage life like everyone tries to manage life. There's nothing superior about my lovingly home cooked food, and nothing intrinsically inferior about the choices we made the previous or the following day.

They're just choices mediated by our circumstances, some, but not all of which are in our control.

[Anny Nym]

A nice read indeed Artemis, but it´s probably "blown out of proportion"?

If one have a severe health issue, walking a mile is terrible experience. But we aren´t talking people with severe health issue.

We are talking a healthy person (well, I was - if there any misunderstandment and we weren´t, my sincere pardon).

And for a healthy person, walking a mile, moving around a sidewalk crack or chain a bike simply cannot be something deemed as an "unfair" task to perform.

If it is, then there is a serious problem.

[formergothardite]

When my grandmother was a child, walking a mile was nothing. But now people just aren't used to walking to do stuff(at least where I live) and life, at least in many places, isn't set up so that walking is easy to do, especially with kids and groceries.

[Anny Nym]

When my grandmother was a child, walking a mile was nothing. But now people just aren't used to walking to do stuff(at least where I live) and life, at least in many places, isn't set up so that walking is easy to do, especially with kids and groceries.

Well, okay you got me. I don´t know how to respond to that in any way, frankly.

[Arete]

Artemis,

For me it's not about a moral choice, but having a choice. I've done and will continue to do what you did, cook or not cook well based on the day's circumstances. But a lot of people do not have a basic cooking education, and are being told that cooking is just too damn hard, or too damn time consuming, or reeks of class privilege. That is where I am going to push back. Give people the tools, and let them use them as they see fit. Don't tell people that the tools are always out of reach.

A better use of resources is ensuring poor children have fresh as opposed to powdered milk even if some gets wasted. We need to make it easier not harder to acquire fresh food. If that is practicing class snobbery then I really do throw up my hands in surrender.

[Artemis]

Artemis,

For me it's not about a moral choice, but having a choice. I've done and will continue to do what you did, cook or not cook well based on the day's circumstances. But a lot of people do not have a basic cooking education, and are being told that cooking is just too damn hard, or too damn time consuming, or reeks of class privilege. That is where I am going to push back. Give people the tools, and let them use them as they see fit. Don't tell people that the tools are always out of reach.

A better use of resources is ensuring poor children have fresh as opposed to powdered milk even if some gets wasted. We need to make it easier not harder to acquire fresh food. If that is practicing class snobbery then I really do throw up my hands in surrender.

Yes, this, I agree with, and I think it fits with what I was saying.

'Give people the tools, and let them use them as they see fit. Don't tell people that the tools are always out of reach.'

This, especially. It's just as classist to say 'cooking fresh food is a mark of class snobbery' as it is to say 'the poor choose to make the wrong choices, and we can't do anything about that.'

If you don't know that there is a choice, you don't have a choice.

If you know that there is a choice but you don't have the technical skills to exercise a choice, then effectively, you don't have a choice.

If you know that there is a choice, and you don't have the financial, physical or mental capacity to exercise the choice, then effectively, you don't have a choice.

However, if you know that there is a choice and you can, but choose not to, exercise it, - i.e. you WILL not to - then that's your business! Also, don't sit there with your willed lack of choice and moan about how unfortunate you are, and don't fard over your willed lack of choice with the mask of incapacity for choice.

The people who are unfortunate are those who genuinely have no choice, not those who choose not to make a choice, or choose to make the wrong choice. There is no inherent virtue in deliberate stupidity or pig-headedness although I have always felt there should be infinite compassion, help and support for true lack of, or inability to, choose.

Does that make sense?

"Cooking reeks of class privilege"? Ye gods, even prehistoric man stuck the occasional roast in a fire. How can cooking reek of class privilege? If you're so poor you have nothing on which, or with which to cook, then yes, you don't have the privilege of being able to cook. But equally, you probably also don't, in that case, have the human right of having any food to cook either, and the lack of your human right to shelter and food in that case makes the 'class privilege' issue look rather peripheral to the main issue which is that you're homeless and probably bloody starving.

And homeless and starving is not necessarily a class issue . . . ask any of the educated, professional, middle class people who are in refugee camps all over the world. Or some of the panhandlers on any street . . .we're all vulnerable.

AreteJo, you might find it interesting to read a book called 'Round About A Pound A Week' by Maud Pember Reeves. It's about food and nutrition in Lambeth, London, in the pre WWI years.

[August]

Artemis,

For me it's not about a moral choice, but having a choice. I've done and will continue to do what you did, cook or not cook well based on the day's circumstances. But a lot of people do not have a basic cooking education, and are being told that cooking is just too damn hard, or too damn time consuming, or reeks of class privilege. That is where I am going to push back. Give people the tools, and let them use them as they see fit. Don't tell people that the tools are always out of reach.

A better use of resources is ensuring poor children have fresh as opposed to powdered milk even if some gets wasted. We need to make it easier not harder to acquire fresh food. If that is practicing class snobbery then I really do throw up my hands in surrender.

But it doesn't even begin to help to jump in and tell them to just start cooking food which they have never tasted, is entirely different to anything they've ever tasted and which they don't have the skills to cook. It's like taking a game console out of a kids hands and giving a copy of Ulysses, then complaining when he calls you an elitist snob. Give him a comic book instead, or a bat and ball.

You have to meet people where they are. They're not going to have any motivation if they or their kids don't like the end product. If they're used to ttc and boxed mac and cheese, they are not going to jump at your tasteless lentils. Teach them a basic vodka sauce for pasta, or a simple tomato pasta sauce which freezes very well. Suggest they throw a handful of frozen peas in the pasta before draining for mac and cheese. Teach them to chop and saute butternut and put that in the mac and cheese, or chop a bit of baby spinach and wilt it (tasteless!). Or roast cherry tomatoes to add in. Get them to try a cream cheese and boxed parmesan sub for the "cheese" sachet. Teach them how to make gravy and brown meat for shepherd's pie. For that matter, teach them how to mash potato (srsly, lots of people do not even own a potato masher), then how to use that as the basis for croquettes. Teach them pancakes, move on to crepes with fillings.

I don't even know where to start with you weird obsession with powdered milk. You've admitted its an irrational hangup. Or do you have an actual reason why it's better for a kid to have ultra pasteurised milk and a cookie than powdered milk and an apple?

Anny nym, she's not being facetious, she's referring to busy roads with no crossings, refuges or lights, roads with no room for pedestrians to fit alongside, riad layout which makes the real distance five times the straight line distance, that sort of thing. It's a given in the US that there will be huge cracks if there's a sidewalk, but many many places don't have room for a person alongside the road, let alone a flat area for them to walk on. Walking through a drive through ATM or crossing at lights without a pedestrian signal is nothing in comparison. Like this, only worse

http://www.pps.org/wp-content/uploads/2 ... 8-crop.jpg

like this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/4548488179/

Even with nice sidewalks you have to remember snow. I'll see if I can find a pic of what it looks like with snow

http://archemdis.com/2013/01/08/over-te ... -progress/

http://pvpost.com/2013/03/01/snow-piled ... hool-16282

And bear in mind, these article are talking about main arteries, small side streets are left to their own devices once the roadway is clear. You can be climbing rotten ice mountains for weeks.

[formergothardite]

Well, okay you got me. I don´t know how to respond to that in any way, frankly.

Well it is true. You can't just say, go walk a mile pushing groceries and tending small children to people who aren't used to doing that and expect that they won't view it as a huge challenge. Just based on my 53 friends on FB, there are a good many who view walking a half mile lap around a local lake as their exercise for the day. And these are healthy fairly young people in their 30's and 40's.

Since most people don't walk places anymore(in my general location, I'm sure there are parts of NC where they do) there are places where there are no sidewalks and instead there is just high grass. So to walk that mile to get groceries they would have to struggle through high grass(that will most likely have poison snakes NC leads the nation when it comes to snake bites) or walk on very busy roads with fast traffic.

It is a 20 min drive to the closest store for me, but there are produce stands closer. It is like a mile from my house to the main road, but from the main road it would most likely be less than a mile if I wanted to walk to buy fresh produce and local eggs. But I don't. Why? The speed limit is 45 but people usually go faster and it is blind curve after blind curve. There are no sidewalks and people dump dogs off here on a regular basis, so there are wild, hungry dogs running around. So I drive.

[Conuly]

Anny, I am dead serious. First of all, if the store is a mile away, that is a TWO mile walk, there and back. (And just because I can take the bus/boat/train combo to work does not mean I can take a bus, boat, or train to the store. I have to walk it, up and down the hills, crossing two busy streets, and thank you, whoever mentioned snow, because let me tell you it is an absolute JOY to climb a hill of ice only to end up trudging three feet in a pool of slush halfway to my knees, with or without the groceries or children.)

I don't know how long it takes you to walk a mile, but it takes me about 20 minutes. So if I go to the store multiple times in a week, that's 40 minutes in the evening, not even counting the time it takes to do the actual shopping. (And if I were to drag the kids with me after a long day of school, without their dinner, that'd be 40+ minutes of unadulterated whining, plus that will push dinner and bedtime back even further. Even poor children need sleep and a steady mealtime.)

Potholes in the sidewalk will prevent you from using a cart, because if your cart gets into one it is extremely hard to get it out. I don't particularly want to pick up my cat food and eggs and onions once they've spilled, actually. So I do the shopping with a backpack and a few large bags, but every week I have to argue with the guard not to make me ditch those at the door.

As for chaining my bike, if I don't do that, it will get stolen. Then what do I do? But there is no provision for that at my supermarket. So taking a bike? In the end, not a terribly feasible idea. (That is putting aside the fact that not everybody even knows how to ride a bike, and yes, that is something related to poverty.)

I'm actually much closer to my store, and I have the ability to go during the schoolday, but I think demanding people fit it into their schedule with kids multiple times a week is, again, a bit much.

[Conuly]

I just thought of something else.

I actually do like to walk. It's not unusual for me to pick up the CSA and then decide to walk down to South Ferry from 28th st. rather than take the train.

I also have a gimpy ankle. Two, actually, but one is worse than the other. I consider it a lucky thing if I go four months without twisting one or the other. Over the past few months its gotten worse, and it hurts sometimes when I'm not doing anything.

I need physical therapy. I'm not going to get that, because it costs money we don't have. I mean, we really don't have it.

I should stay off the ankle entirely when it happens. I can't do that either. It's .7 miles to walk the kid to school, which adds up to 2.8 miles in a day, not counting the stairs in my house and all.

But I will be damned if I am going to do extra walking when I am injured or possibly may be, and I know for a fact I am not alone in this situation. If I had to walk two miles to do the shopping, I wouldn't do it if I couldn't. I'm not making my ankles *worse* if I have any say in the matter.