Cookbook cover for the algorithms,
and, yea, to push my book at bit.
It's old but still good.
I am definitely an inheritor
of the Puritan work ethic. When I was young, I frequently spent the night at
the home of one of my best friends. Her mom was the church secretary, which may
have accounted for this memory. But I remember that she would wake us in the
morning by singsonging, “God has made another new day/Think! Shall we let it slip useless away?” Sixty-plus years later, I can still hear her voice, and I
have a tendency at the end of the day to take stock, assess what I’ve
accomplished. Some days it’s not encouraging.
Today I can report one big
accomplishment: I had a new idea! You know the jokes about hot potatoes that
are too hot to hold, so you toss them back and forth in your hands? That’s kind
of how I am about this new idea. I don’t really know what it is, what to do
with it, and so I am tossing it back and forth in my mind. I’ve been saying
lately that I’m waiting for inspiration to strike, and I’ve had a couple of
false starts. So, I’m not sure about this new idea, but it seems to have
possibilities. No, I’m not telling what it is. I’m going to let it simmer in my
brain. Hint: food imagery may give you a general idea.
Speaking of food, I got hooked
on a website today that promised a list of things that are not good for you,
particularly if you are elderly. I thought, okay, maybe twenty-five. I’ll read
it and see how I do. And for the first twenty-five, I scored well—I think the
only bad thing for me was hot dogs. I know they’re not good for you, and I don’t
eat them often, but I do enjoy them. But the list went on forever—over 200
foods, so you know many of the things you eat every day were on the list. There
were some surprises to me, and some cautions I won’t take too seriously—honey for
sugar content, tuna for mercury, other canned fish like sardines for sodium. In
many cases, whoever wrote this site (it came from Street Insider.com) was careful
to balance the warnings with the advantages of some food. Sardines, for example,
are high in protein and good fats.
I noticed some trends—if you don’t
eat these foods every day, you’re probably okay. As the ancient Greeks tried to
teach us, “Moderation in all things.” Another take-away: pesticides make many
good-for-you foods a problem. Strawberries and tomatoes were on the list for
that reason: their skins are so thin that pesticides penetrate into the meat
inside. Leaf lettuce is also there, because it needs thorough washing to rid it
of pesticides, dirt, and bacteria. I am as of now being fussier about buying
organic vegetables. And third: prepared, pre-packed foods, from mixes to flavored
chips to cake batter and icing, are a problem. I have long been an advocate of
scratch cooking, so that didn’t bother me much.
Diet cola, American cheese
slices, bacon, and commercial salad dressings are no surprise Do you know how
easy it is to make salad dressings at home? But meat—just plain meat—is on the
list because of the antibiotics and hormones given to livestock. Once again, an
argument for careful shopping and organic products. For instance, I make it a
point to buy free range chicken and organic eggs. Hot sauce—the spiciness can damage
your intestines. Okay by me—I can’t eat spicy food. Spray cheese and pork rinds
are no surprise—who eats those anyway? —but tortillas and frozen vegetables?
Mass produced tortillas have too many chemicals including preservatives, so
stick to homemade. Frozen vegetables can break down if kept too long in the
freezer (I’m guilty, because who doesn’t want to always have a pack of green
peas handy?).
I understand pre-packaged
hamburgers should be on the list, but it also includes hamburgers. From what I
read, that means fast-food burgers, but probably those wonderful burgers
Christian makes us at home are okay. Again, there’s a boost for scratch cooking
at home.
Want to check the list and see
how you rate? Find it at Commonly
Eaten Foods to Avoid for Your Health and Your Wallet | Investing Magazine
(streetinsider.com)
Speaking of food, I did have
one other accomplishment: I made myself a Reuben for lunch. I had badly
overestimated my family’s appetite and bought way too much deli meat for
Saturday night’s poor boy sandwiches. We had a lot of turkey, roast beef, and
ham left over. I thought there was pastrami too but couldn’t find it. So, I made
the sandwich with roast beef, provolone, kraut, and some of the homemade
Thousand Island dressing in my fridge. Got to say, it was really good. Tomorrow
I’ll think of something to do with some of the turkey—perhaps a turkey and blue
cheese sandwich, one of the few good ideas I salvaged from a two-year college
stint in small-town Iowa all those years ago.
So how was your day today?
