Jenny Ferguson, a young mother, walked around a grocery in California, looking for diapers(尿布) for her four-month-old daughter Anne. She was _________ because of the unreasonably high prices. _________, a set of three diaper packets which was on sale caught her attention. She _________ her coins and discovered she could pay for them. She quickly _________ to the cashier with the packets, hiding her _________. The cashier looked at her from head to toe, giving her a dirty look. “That’s $ 30.”

“$ 30?!” cried Jenny. “But there’s a discount! They should be a lot _________.”

“I’m sorry, lady. The deal has been invalid(无效的)!” the cashier _________.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, teary-eyed. “I can’t _________ it. Can you please give me a _________?” The cashier laughed, “Nice try, woman. But tears won’t work here.”

Jenny couldn’t control her __________ at this point. She whispered to Anne and burst out tears. She had been     ________ to Anne when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She __________ and saw a woman, somewhat in her late 80s, standing behind her.

“Oh, don’t cry,” she __________ Jenny. “I will pay for you.”

She took Jenny’s hand in hers, __________ some baby food, fruits, and bread, and told the cashier to __________. “We’ll take everything, including the diapers. The bill is on me.”

Jenny’s tears were not __________ again and she thanked the older woman for her __________. “I appreciate that so much, ma’am. But do __________ me for I didn’t even ask you your name.”

“Oh, lady,” shrugged the woman. “There’s no __________ to worry. I should leave now…” She rushed out of the store without even __________ her name.

Perhaps the most quarrelsome issue between fathers and sons is the question of work and how to be successful in the real world. Right from the beginning, I thought I should start at the top. I was a talented young man and I thought everyone around me should realize this. With growing pride, I did not believe that I should have to pay my dues like other people. As a result, I constantly tried to find a short cut to the big time.

My father is a good example of the American dream coming to life, a self-made man who achieved success through hard work. Focusing on the promise of college, Dad won a scholarship to Brown University. Digging into his studies while forming a group of close friends, he achieved a lot at Brown. As the years passed and children were born, Dad worked with an unchanging dream, becoming a respected partner of the firm and the head of the sales team. He worked hard, but was also creative, and eventually became a famous expert in raising capital when others failed.

In contrast to my father’s hard-earned success, I grew up as a privileged Upper East Side New Yorker who expected everything to be handed to him. I went to Brown where I majored in literary theory, and partied until the morning. After college, I headed out to Los Angeles where I fed into the dream of selling a big screenplay (剧本). Although my partying became habitual and out of control, I always thought the next big script sale would change everything.

Seeing my attitude, my father told me that there were no short cuts. I never listened. Eventually, I lost my house and my marriage. Never listening to the sound advice of my father and insisting on following my own path toward self-destruction, I ended up in a terrible place.

My father, however, never gave up on me and has been remarkably supportive to me. With the faith of my family and the support of my father, I have been able to pay my dues and launch my career as a technical writer. Like my father tried to teach me, there are no short cuts.

No matter how talented or fortunate you may be, success is the product of sweat in the form of hard work—showing up each day and doing your job to the best of your abilities.

When plates are set on the table, phones, rather than forks, are at the ready. At this point in our social media entanglement (纠缠)，the fact that the camera eats first is pretty much a given. Sure, some chefs, including Michelin rated star chefs, express their displeasure at this, but efforts to make the table a screen-free domain have mostly fallen flat.

New research from Aston University has found that people are indeed influenced by the food photos that their friends post on social media. For example, for every serving of fruits and vegetables that a person thinks their friends are eating, they’ll eat one-fifth of a serving more. This number makes more sense within the context of the recommended “five a day”, meaning someone who’s being influenced would make a point of eating six portions of fruits or vegetables. Similarly, for every three portions of junk food that a person sees friends consuming on social media, they’ll eat an extra one.

The researchers have suggested that social media can be very beneficial when it comes to people’s choices of food and their diets. Study supervisors Dr. Jason Thomas said, “The implication is that we can use social media as a tool to encourage each other’s eating choice within friendship groups, and use this knowledge as a tool for public health interventions.”

Actually, the daily food situation is somewhat different from everything else posted on social media. People also desire to copy what they see but they need good social media literacy skills in order to grasp what’s realistic and what’s absurd. It is necessary to avoid the fake perfection of social media.

It gets boring trying to figure out what to eat three times a day, week after week, so no wonder people want to take the path of least resistance and eat what their friends are eating. Unfortunately, most of what gets posted is the more time-consuming recipes or the attractively styled restaurant meals. By all means, keep your antennae (触角) out for new ideas, but gather them from food magazines, cookbooks, store flyers, reliable cooking websites, and recommended recipes from friends and family.

A food-tech startup in New York has developed technology to preserve food for months without a fridge and artificial preservatives (人工防腐剂). To cut down millions of tons of food waste worldwide, it also may transform agriculture in developing countries where refrigerated shipping containers and trains are rare or expensive.

Have you ever wondered why we don’t devote more farmland to growing fruits and vegetables since they’re much more nutritious? The reason is food’s spoilage (变质). Farther Farms’ unique CO2 pasteurization (巴氏杀菌法) technology isa simple fix that can spin out packaged foods’ shelf life at room temperature. Their first choice was French fries which would normally need to be frozen to survive trips between production facilities and supermarkets. They can’t be pasteurized like other goods. Instead, Farther Farms puts them into special packaging and fills it with specially made CO2, preventing damage from bacteria.

Growing up in India in a farming family, co-founder Vipul Saran developed Farther Farms as a student at Cornell University. His familiarity with the costs and the trouble of moving agricultural products from farms into towns and cities before they spoiled influenced his development of the technology.

“The whole goal is, basically, how we can look into new food processing technologies that can allow us to create value-added food products from these easily spoilt food products, which avoids the need and the dependency on freezing as much as possible,” Saran said.

Rather than packaging apples or potatoes in a plastic bag, the Farther Farms tech is ideal for value-added food products, not only because they require packaging of some kind, but also because they earn farmers more money. Rather than needing to transport them by refrigerated boxcar or shipping container, Farther Farms would ship them at any temperature, thus allowing food producers of all kinds to reach the maximal number of markets.