Thousands of cups

First, let me just say that I do not like the new "MyPyramid" nutritional guide. I prefer the simpler "eat 3 to 5 veggies a day," with none of the complicated variations depending on age, size, gender and activity levels.

On the other hand, I do like the way the newer guide breaks veggies into five categories: dark green, orange, beans/peas, starches and "other."

Using the old rule, if the recovery garden produced 100% of one person's vegetable intake, it would need to produce 1,095 to 1,825 servings of vegetables. That seems a little overwhelming.

With the new rule, for my age and gender, the recovery garden would need to produce 104 cups of dark green vegetables, 78 cups of orange vegetables, 912 cups of beans/peas, 912 cups of starches and 2,007 cups of "other" (which includes my favorites: peppers and tomatoes and onions).

We're not growing any of the starchy veggies, and we've got the orange veggies covered easily(butternut squash). That leaves almost 3,000 cups of veggies to grow for one person, or 18,000 cups for the six people in our two households.

I'm having trouble picturing that, especially since growers generally think in terms of weight, not volume, and when we use volume, it's bushels, not cups. If I did the math right, we need 141 bushels to feed the two households!