Closer to Finding a Cause for Autism
We subscribe to Kiplinger’s Bottom Line, and they send us a Daily Health News bulletin. This was in the bulletin today:
AUTISM: CLOSER TO FINDING A CAUSE
It wasn’t so long ago that psychologists theorized that autism was caused by mothers who were unable to show affection toward their children. It’s hard to believe, but these moms were actually referred to as “refrigerator mothers.” Talk about heaping on the guilt! Well, we’ve made huge strides in terms of understanding that autism is not a result of something a parent does to a child. The condition remains a heartbreaker, however.
These days the term “autism” is applied to a range of brain disorders characterized by poor communication and interaction with others. According to the most current statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism now affects one out of every 110 American children between ages three and eight. (That is when the condition is typically diagnosed.) And while we still don’t know for sure what the cause is, I’m happy to report that researchers are making some impressive strides toward solving the mystery.
I recently spoke with Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of California in Davis (UC Davis), to hear more about the work she’s doing. She is one of the authors of two new studies on autism, both reported in the July 2011 issue of Epidemiology. One study shows that children conceived during winter months (December through March) have an increased chance of being autistic. The other shows that women who take prenatal vitamin supplements in the three months prior to conception and the first month after conception are less likely to bear autistic children.
“The studies present us with more evidence that autism isn’t caused by a single factor,” Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said. In fact, she said there’s mounting evidence that autism is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors… which aren’t necessarily the same in each case.
In one of the studies, researchers at UC Davis looked at approximately 6.6 million birth records in California recorded from 1990 through 2002, correlating the rates of autism for children conceived in December through March with those conceived in July. The results were surprising: Children conceived in December had an 8% greater chance of being autistic than those conceived in July… and the percentage of increase over the July rate kept rising for subsequent winter months, reaching a high of 16% in March.
“We don’t believe the calendar month itself is a cause of autism, but it’s a marker for other potential causes that may vary with the season,” said Dr. Hertz-Picciotto, who is also affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute, a research center for the study of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She said these other seasonal factors may include viruses that are more common in winter months or the change in the amount of daylight, which affects, among other things, the body’s production of vitamin D.
VITAMINS MAY HAVE A CRITICAL ROLE
In the second study, researchers collected data from some 700 California families who had children with autism. Results of the study, Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said, showed a reduction of about 40% in autism rates in cases in which the mother had taken prenatal vitamin supplements during the three months before conception through the first month after conception. In other words, a buildup of vitamins before the crucial first month of embryonic development seems to be key to healthy neural growth. Prenatal supplements typically contain vitamin A, niacin (vitamin B-3), folic acid (vitamin B-9), vitamin B-12, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, calcium, iron, pyridoxine, riboflavin, thiamine and zinc.
Folic acid may be the critical component, said Dr. Hertz-Picciotto, because the vitamin is known to protect against defects in the embryo’s neural tube, which develops into the brain and spinal cord. With so many factors still unknown, Dr. Hertz-Picciotto said, more studies are expected to be conducted in the near future, especially research into B and D vitamins as well as fevers, infections and exposure to pesticides during pregnancy.
In the meantime, given the vitamin study’s finding of a 40% reduction in autism rates, it’s certainly wise to take prenatal vitamin supplements three months before potential conception through the first month after conception.
Source(s):
Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, chief, division of environmental and occupational medicine, professor, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis. She is also affiliated with the UC Davis MIND (Medical Investigation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute in Sacramento, an interdisciplinary research center for the study and treatment of autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Rebecca J. Schmidt, PhD, assistant professor, department of public health sciences, School of Medicine, University of California Davis.
Clean Produce with Vinegar; Fight ADHD
For those with children – or grandchildren 🙂 – who are concerned about the connection between pesticides and ADHD, here is a simple solution to washing your produce effectively – vinegar! I found this on EveryDay Health.
For years, researchers have noticed a gradual increase in diagnoses of ADHD. In fact, about 4.5 million kids now struggle with the condition, a 3% increase in the last 10 years.
So what’s causing this increase? A study, recently released by the University of Montreal and Harvard University, highlights a possible link from our produce. While the findings don’t yet determine a cause, the study defines an association between the disorder and pesticides. After testing and analyzing 1,139 children for one year, researchers found those who had highest exposure to organophosphates were twice as likely to have ADHD.
Organophosphates are man-made pesticides that are sprayed onto fruits and vegetables to keep insects away. While once thought harmless, some now argue children are sensitive to these pesticides. At a young age, the brain is rapidly developing, and kids possibly consume more due to their smaller body weight and size.
Frozen blueberries were found to have the highest organophosphate residue at 28%, with strawberries coming in at a close second at 25%. Celery had a 19% contamination rate.
How do we protect ourselves from pesticide contamination? Here are some helpful hints. If possible, buy local and organic. Even if you do, make sure to still peal your fruit when you have the option. For fruits and vegetables that can’t be peeled (like strawberries and celery), make sure you wash them thoroughly. Most people think running fruit under water for a few seconds gets the job done – wrong. The best cleaning method is to wash produce with a diluted vinegar solution. Here’s how to do it.
Cleaning Produce with Vinegar
Reuse an old spray bottle. For every cup of white vinegar, add three cups of water. Shake well and spray your fruits and vegetables with the solution. You should spray enough to cover their entire surface. After, wash them with cold tap water so your fruits and veggies don’t taste and smell like vinegar (I’ll pass on the vinegar-flavored strawberries, thank you).
Tests prove that the vinegar solution removes 98% of all bacteria or pesticides, compared to 80% when washing with a water and brush.
Do you have any tips to help fight pesticide contamination?
The Passage by Justin Cronin
I subscribe to GoodReads.com, and I buy books through Amazon.com, so I am not sure which one of those recommended this book for me. I held it a couple months before I read it, just wasn’t sure it was something I cared about. Once I started, however, I was hooked.
Don’t you just love summertime reading, the kind where you might even be able to grab a couple hours in a row? When you can focus like that, it’s like you are living two lives; you are in your normal existence, but a part of you is somewhere else, if the book is good enough.
Sometimes that somewhere else isn’t that great, and in The Passage, you are in a post-apocalyptic America where those military scientists have lost control of one of their experiments and life has changed forever as a result. Sorry to sound so cynical, but I started reading Sci-Fi when I was still in middle-school, so I am a little jaded about post-apocalyptic literature, but this one managed to suck me in. Also, even though you know it’s fiction, it is compelling enough to feel very real.
So before I go getting all critical about the little things, I need to tell you that when I had to put the book down, I could hardly wait to get back to it, and I probably need to look after my laundry and my floors and wash up some dishes now that I’ve finished; the book compelled my interest.
I think the author does a great job setting up the world. In order for young people to come into their own, to head out on their quest, you have to get parents out of the way, so all the young people out to solve the problems have parents who have died, or committed suicide (the living situation is a little bleak) and that kind of bugs me, even though I can see the literary usefulness of having this happen.
The survivors, 100 years after the societal meltdown, live a bleak and limited existence, mostly focused on not getting killed. (One of the very scary things is just how fast a society can melt down when faced with an overwhelming threat.)
This is a vampire-novel, but a vampire novel with a total twist, there is nothing attractive about these vampires, called virals. They are demented, and they want blood. They tear into flesh. You don’t want to be out in the open after dark, you don’t want to run into a viral. Justin Cronin makes it very very real. I’m glad my husband wasn’t traveling. I know vampires are not real, and I know there are no virals, and you know sometimes rational doesn’t matter when you hear sounds at night? These bad-guys are very very lethal and very very bad.
And here is what I like. Cronin takes you from utter fear to some compassion for the virals. I imagine this will play into the next book.
I also like his inclusion of children, and they way children perceive and the way children feel, and how those perceptions and feelings grow with the child, and, if you are very lucky or very persistent, how you can gain insights into those perceptions and understand them differently as you reach adulthood. It reminds me of another Sci-Fi author I used to read, Zenna Henderson, who wrote books about specially talented children.
Here is what I don’t like, what I find really frustrating: this is just the first volume. I am satisfied enough with this book, and I know I will have to read the next one, but I think I can see where he is going with it all. I find it frustrating; I am holding my breath for the next Game of Thrones/Fire and Ice volume to come out, and now this Passage follow up won’t be out until 2012, on AAARRGH.
It’s a dark book, but it kept me glued. The things that annoyed me didn’t annoy me enough to discourage me from reading. 🙂 It is a great summer read.
Thelma and Louise in Saudi Arabia
An editorial cartoon from my friend Grammy, in Texas, from today’s paper:
Freedom Greater Factor than Wealth in Happiness
Fascinating study, I found it today on AOL Health News
Freedom More Important to Happiness Than Wealth, Study Finds
Personal independence, autonomy trump money in data from more than 60 countries.
SUNDAY, June 19 (HealthDay News) — Personal independence and freedom are more important to people’s well-being than wealth, a new study concludes.
Researchers at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand analyzed the findings of three studies that included a total of more than 420,000 people from 63 countries and spanned nearly 40 years.
Their key finding: “Money leads to autonomy, but it does not add to well-being or happiness.”
The studies looked at data from three different psychological tests familiar to therapists:
The General Health Questionnaire, which measures distress in terms of anxiety and insomnia, social problems, severe depression and physical symptoms of mental distress, such as unexplained headaches and stomach aches.
The Spielberger anxiety inventory, which evaluates how anxious respondents feel at a particular moment.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory, which screens for emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and lack of personal accomplishment.
The analysis revealed “a very consistent and robust finding that societal values of [freedom and autonomy] were the best predictors of well-being,” wrote psychologists Ronald Fischer and Diana Boer in an American Psychological Association release.
“Furthermore, if wealth was a significant predictor alone, this effect disappeared when individualism was entered,” they added.
“Our findings provide insight into well-being at the societal level,” the researchers concluded.
The study appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Thing Around Your Neck
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has compiled a series of elegant vignettes in her most recent book, The Thing Around Your Neck. I had just read Half of a Yellow Sun, and was still wallowing in stunned admiration, when I heard an interview with the author on BBC, and learned she had written this book, The Thing Around Your Neck.
I loved Half of a Yellow Sun. I loved Purple Hibiscus. I felt I began to understand just a little bit about life in transitional Nigeria, with all the social and political forces blowing to and fro, straining the very fabric of nationhood.
In The Thing Around Your Neck, something else happens. It shares with Cutting for Stone and other books I like the impressions of those who come to live in the USA for the first time.
“Would that the wee wee giftie gi’e us, To see ourselves as others see us . . . ”
I’ve had a lot of experience going to live in foreign countries. One of the things I learned is that most of what I learn the first couple years isn’t much. You learn a lot of things wrong. You filter everything through your own cultural biases; you judge, you interpret, you try to make sense of things that just seem wrong.
I love to watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s characters do this in reverse, come to America and make judgements based on their own cultural expectations. I love to see us through these eyes.
Once, many many years ago, we entertained a Nigerian in our home, and when we served dinner, steaks, he looked at his plate and said “This would feed my family for a week.” We kind of laughed. We kind of thought he was exaggerating, or even kidding. We just didn’t know. We had never seen anyone truly hungry, we had always lived in this land of plenty. We had no idea what we didn’t know. We saw only what we knew.
Each story is a gem. Each treats the expat experience, coming here, or the reverse, coming to America and then going back and seeing Nigeria through eyes which have changed.
One story I had read before, in the New Yorker magazine and loved reading again, The Headstrong Historian. It starts with a smart woman, weaving her way among the ways of her people, whose husband’s family wants her husband to take another wife. He doesn’t want to. These two chose each other, and managed to live their lives together as best they could, by their own standards. Her son disappoints her, but her granddaughter – she sees her husband’s brave, courageous spirit in the eyes of her little grand daughter. You’ll have to read the story to find out the rest.
Other stories have to do with newlyweds, with students, with love and marriage and affairs – the full spectrum of human experience, through Nigerian expat eyes. There are settings common from all three books, the college campus at Nsukka, a prison outside of town, small villages outside the city. If you read all her books, you recognize place: “Aha! I’ve been her before, in Purple Hibiscus!” You learn how to bribe the guards so you can bring in food for your imprisoned family member, you learn to keep your eyes down to show respect, you learn how Nigeria smells when the rains come, and how dry and dusty it gets during the harmattan.
I’m just sorry there isn’t another book by this author – yet – that I can read!
I guess these books that I love deal with a theme dear to my heart – that we are culturally blind to so many things, and that as human beings we are more alike than we are different. Short of packing up all our lives and our assumptions and moving to many different countries, the best we can hope for in learning different ways of thinking is for books like these by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which show us how differently we perceive things, depending on our cultures, and how alike we are in the things that we feel, as human beings.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Purple Hibiscus
A couple of years ago, when we had a great book club in Kuwait, I read Half of a Yellow Sun, by this author, and I was blown away. Some books you just read for entertainment, and some books have such a strong, compelling voice that it comes back to you, again and again, and you think about it for a long time.
So when Amazon.com recommended Purple Hibiscus, I bought it, along with The Thing Around Your Neck. Purple Hibiscus is the author’s first book, and The Thing Around Your Neck is her most recent. In 2009, I found an interview with her online; you can watch it by clicking here: An Interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is an enormously talented author.
When I read Half of a Yellow Sun, I became Igbo, growing up in Nigeria. While that story was told through many eyes, I was able to be a boy from the bush brought to the college campus to be a houseboy, I got to be a wife, her sister, her professor husband. We experienced the Biafran succession, the insanity of several regime changes in Nigeria, the total fog and waste of war, through the eyes of the Biafrans.
Reading Purple Hibiscus was a little different; the story is told through the eyes of a girl, Kambili, who lives in a very controlled environment. We know from the very beginning that things are not right in her wealthy, beautiful world. Her father and mother love her, take good care of her, feed her, clothe her – and that is just a part of a bigger picture. Her father has an idea of the way things should be; he attained his position and wealth through his education by the Catholic priests and he has a rigid idea of how everything must be done. Vary from his strictures, and you get beaten, or scalded, or you little finger is broken and disfigured.
Part of what makes this book so compelling is that while the environment is Nigeria, and, to us, exotic, the climate of abuse is the same everywhere. It’s a dirty little secret, even in the wealthiest of families, you keep your mouth shut to stay alive, and to protect your family’s image. Abuse is no stranger to rich or poor families, and can only stay alive because people stay silent.
Kambili, fifteen when we meet her, lives a tiny, small, scared life, following the weekly schedules her father prints out for her and her brother and posts over her desk. She hears her mother beaten over the smallest failure, imagined or real. Her mother miscarries twice due to these beatings, and her father tenderly cares for the mother whose miscarriage his beatings caused. It is crazy-world. Kambeli and her brother are expected to take first in every class; if they do not, they, too, pay a severe penalty.
Just as the political climate in Nigeria starts to tremble and fall apart, so, too, does Kambili’s life, and in the falling apart, comes new ways of doing things, new perspectives, new risks and even learning to run, to laugh, to be ‘normal’ as other children are. She is blessed to have an aunt at the university, no where near so wealthy as her family but able to cajole her father into letting the children visit with her. The aunt, Ifeoma, laughs, and encourages her children to challenge other’s opinions respectfully, and who grows the very rare Purple Hibiscus. Her heart aches for Kambili and her brother, and she tries to give them space to figure things out for themselves, and to chose what they want for themselves.
It is a scary time in Nigeria, a time when men can come to the door and take someone away, and you don’t know if you will ever see them again, or how damaged they will be if they return. Kambili’s own life is full of a similar terror, but the terror is inflicted by someone who she loves, and who loves her.
I love the soul of an author who can write a book like this, a book that makes me feel like in another life I was a Nigerian. I can’t begin to think I know much about Nigeria now, but having read three books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I have the broad outlines of the divisions which traumatize and fracture Nigeria to this day. Even better, I understand how very different the cultural expectations are from our own, and how very similar we are as human beings.
This is a great read. It is inspirational. You might even learn something. You can find it on Amazon.com.
Jeannette Walls: The Glass Castle
The Glass Castle was a hugely popular best seller in the USA, and it must have been while I was gone. A part of me remembers reading a little bit about it and deciding it wasn’t my kind of book, but after reading Half Broke Horses, I had forgotten what the subject matter was and was excited to have another Jeannette Walls book I could read.
Big mistake. This book is nothing like Half Broke Horses.
Or maybe it is. Maybe what I loved about Half Broke Horses was the voice of an amazing woman, and maybe what kept me reading The Glass Castle is the voice of an amazing child who tells a heart breaking story. Or maybe it isn’t so heartbreaking, because the children survive. They are scarred and damaged, but never so damaged or loony or self-deceived as their parents.
I don’t like reading books about kids whose parents don’t take good care of them. Oprah chose a lot of those books in her book club. These books depress me. I cannot imagine how parents can be so self-absorbed, how they can take on the responsibilities of children and then not put those children first. How can they?
The Glass Castle stars the daughter of Lily Casey Smith, who is the mother of Jeannette Walls, and her husband, who is Jeannette’s father. The book opens with little three year old Jeannette proudly cooking up a hot dog. Her mother is busy painting and has told her to find something to eat. Her nightgown catches fire, and she is terribly burned. She spends a long time in the hospital, which ends with her father taking her out in a hurry, bundling her into the car, already loaded with her family, and “doing the skedaddle” which is leaving town just in front of the bill collectors.
This is her life. From time to time, their alcoholic Dad will take a job and bring home some of the paycheck (he drinks and gambles most of it) and when he won’t work, on rare occasion, their mother will take a teaching job, but the kids have to get her out of bed in the morning, have to grade her papers and make her lesson plans. Often there is not enough for the family to eat. They don’t stay in one place; they ‘skedaddle’ before they are evicted for non-payment of rent. They eat cold food – when they eat – because the parents didn’t pay the electric bill.
The Dad is smart, charming and cajoling, and when he is sober, the kids learn amazing things from him, and educated engineer. Unfortunately, he is not often sober. He chases after alcohol and he chases after women; the people in the towns where they live know it and the children learn to know it, too, to their constant humiliation. When he wheedles money off his kids, and promises to repay, he asks “Have I ever let you down?” The answer is so stunningly obvious as to be heartbreaking – Yes. Yes, again and again and again.
The Mother is equally irresponsible. One time, when the family is starving, she is in bed and occasionally goes under the covers, where Jeannette discovers her mother has a chocolate bar hidden that she can eat – while her children go hungry.
The author’s voice is never self pitying, she just lays it all out and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. Each child escapes the family as soon as possible; the children plan and save their money to get out, first sending off the oldest sister, then Jeannette, then the son. They all head for New York, where they find work and support themselves. Like bad pennies, Mom and Dad show up in New York, cadge meals and money and join the ranks of the homeless in New York, going from food pantry to soup kitchen, and diving dumpsters for their worldly needs.
This is not a feel good novel. The good part about it is that children can survive this kind of criminal neglect, and become a successful author as Jeannette Walls has done. I am so glad I read Half Broke Horses first, because her grandmother is such an admirable character, whereas her parents are scum and I just felt so angry when I read the matter-of-fact descriptions of their behavior that I was glad they were not where I could get my hands on them.
I don’t know any parents as bad as Rose Mary and Rex Walls, but I know I believe this – if you choose to marry, and if you choose to have children, know that children require time, and love, and energy, and patience. Know that if you have grand ambitions, or an addiction, or a character flaw, you won’t be able to provide for your children’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs, unless you are willing to sacrifice your own needs and wants. While the children in the book loved their parents, they recognized that their parents were sadly lacking in the parenting roles. The way these children were neglected will make me remember this book for a long time.
Would I recommend it? Yes. It is a gripping book, at times even horrifyingly humorous, as when Jeannette figures out how to find lunch food in the garbage cans when all the other kids have finished eating. It is not a feel-good book. It is a horrifying indictment of self-absorbed, neglectful parents, parents you will love to hate.
If I sound a little overwrought, it’s because I worked with the homeless. We were able to help many, but I also ran into families like this family, families who would prefer not taking any help if it meant they had to play by the rules, you know, rules like “you have to take care of your children.” We had all kinds of classes and forums and mentors to help with learning skills, like feeding children well on a small budget, learning to discipline, simple skills, survival skills.
The problem is that these skills require self-discipline, and many of the parents would rather not take help than have to exercise self-discipline. I saw women who would sacrifice their children for their current boyfriend, a woman who was severely angry with her daughter for reporting a family member had molested her, a man who didn’t want to take a job that would ‘tie him down’ when his family was starving. I saw this, with my own eyes, and there is no way you can MAKE people take good care of their children. You have to ask if the children are better off with these parents, or ‘in the system.’ Not a pretty choice.
This book, too, is on Amazon.com. Reading it is like watching a disaster on CNN. You don’t want to believe it is happening and you can’t look away.
Saudi Women Drive Today
From today’s BBC News:
Saudi Arabia women drive cars in protest at ban
Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
The direct action has been organised on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel.
The Women2Drive Facebook page said the direct action would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.
Last month, a woman was arrested after uploading a video of herself driving.
Manal al-Sherif was accused of “besmirching the kingdom’s reputation abroad and stirring up public opinion”, but was released after 10 days having promised not to drive again.
“All that we need is to run our errands without depending on drivers,” said one woman in the first film posted in the early hours of Friday morning.
The film showed the unnamed woman talking as she drove to a supermarket and parking.
We can’t move around without a male”
Maha al-Qahtani
Female driver
“It is not out of love for driving or traffic or the experience. All this is about is that if I wanted to go to work, I can go. If I needed something I can go and get it.
“I think that society is ready to welcome us.”
Another protester said she drove around the streets of Riyadh for 45 minutes “to make a point”.
“I took it directly to the streets of the capital,” said Maha al-Qahtani, a computer specialist at the Ministry of Education.
Religious fatwa
On Twitter, Mrs Qahtani described the route she had taken around the city with her husband, saying: “I decided that the car for today is mine.”
Her husband said she was carrying her essential belongings with her and was “ready to go to prison without fear”, AFP news agency reported.
One woman who asked not to be named told the BBC driving was often considered to be “something really minor”.
The ban is one of a number of restrictions Saudi women face in daily life
“It’s not one of your major rights. But we tell them that even if you give us all the basic and big rights, that you are claiming are more important than driving, we can’t enjoy practising those rights because the mobility is not there.
“We can’t move around without a male.”
The motoring ban is not enforced by law, but is a religious fatwa imposed by conservative Muslim clerics. It is one of a number of severe restrictions on women in the country.
Supporters of the ban say it protects women and relieves them of the obligation to driver, while also preventing them from leaving home unescorted or travelling with an unrelated male.
But the men and women behind the campaign – emboldened by uprisings across the Middle East and Arab world – say they hope the ban will be lifted and that other reforms will follow.
Amnesty International has said the Saudi authorities “must stop treating women as second-class citizens”, describing the ban as “an immense barrier to their freedom of movement”.
The last mass protest against the ban took place in 1980, when a group of 47 women were arrested for driving and severely punished – many subsequently lost their jobs.
The women were angered that female US soldiers based in the kingdom after the war with Kuwait could drive freely while they could not.
Baked Salmon Dijon
We took separate cars to water aerobics this morning as my computer kept telling me I didn’t have an aircard (?????) and AdventureMan had his own errands to run. First, though, I had to make a run to Joe Pattis to pick up some salmon steaks . . . I have a yearning for Baked Salmon Dijon.
So easy to prepare. So good!
Baked Dijon Salmon
Serves 4
Ingredients
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
• 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
• 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
• 4 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
• 4 (4 ounce) fillets salmon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 lemon, for garnish
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. In a small bowl, stir together butter, mustard, and honey. Set aside. In another bowl, mix together bread crumbs, pecans, and parsley.
3. Brush each salmon fillet lightly with honey mustard mixture, and sprinkle the tops of the fillets with the bread crumb mixture.
4. Bake salmon 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until it flakes easily with a fork. Season with salt and pepper, and garnish with a wedge of lemon.
This recipe, like many of the recipes I try comes from allrecipes.com, which sends me an e-mail every day with recipes I might like to try. At least once a week there is something of interest.
Once at the Geek Squad, my computer worked just fine. He mentioned sometimes an aging router can play tricks like that. Oh aaargh. I’m just glad everything is working fine for now. It’s all a mystery to me, why these computers work sometimes and sometimes they don’t, it’s all like smoke and mirrors, or magic.
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