Bacteria Makes Me Fat!
It’s not my fault! Bacteria makes me fat! I am so relieved! (But I am still fat đŚ )
This is an excerpt from Newsweek Magazine, part of a much longer article which you can read for yourself by clicking on the blue type, above.
The grapefruit diet, the Atkins diet, low-fat diets, low-carb diets, the cabbage-soup diet: they and all the other fad diets make the health establishment roll its collective eyes. The only way to lose weight, says every reputable textbook and medical society, is to burn more calories than you consume. And if you are adding pounds, the reason is, pure and simple, that you are consuming more calories than you expend. Weight gain is a straightforward matter of calories in minus calories out, they maintain.
But while the basic math is right, the meaning of âcalories inâ isnât what weâve been taught, according to a growing pile of studies of chubby mice, obese people, svelte mice, and slim people. The calories that matter are not simply the number printed on grocery items, fast-food menus, and those guilt-inducing signs next to Starbucksâ brownies.
The calories that count are those extracted by your digestive enzymes andâas more and more research is showingâthe trillions of bacteria in your intestine. People whose gut bacteria are better at digesting fats and carbs than their neighborâs will absorb all 1,500 calories in a Friendlyâs Ultimate Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt, while the neighbor will absorb fewer. So even in people with identical metabolisms, the effects of eating identical foods can be different.
No Standards for Virgins or Extra Virgins in USA
I found this today on AOL News/Slashfood and it is a subject – long time readers will know – of interest to me. Ever since I read the article on The Olive Oil Scandal in The New Yorker I have been a religious reader of labels. I have discovered that in most of the US stores, the olive oil, virgin, extra virgin or otherwise is a blend of oils from Turkey, Spain, maybe even a South American country. To get olive oil from one country, I go to specialty shops. I have not seen one single bottle of my very favorite – Palestinian olive oil – and I wonder if it is even exported. I always bought it from my friends overseas; someone would bring in gallons and gallons of it and it was always so fresh tasting, and so tasty. It smelled so good you were tempted to eat a spoonful! No, no, I didn’t. The smell is unforgettable, and nothing I have tried in the US comes close. I can’t even find any California olive oil in the local stores!
Virgin? Extra virgin? Or something else entirely?
You never know what you’re really getting when you open a bottle of “100% extra virgin” olive oil, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture is hoping to change that with new standards for the green-gold oil set to roll out this fall, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The new rules come at a time when olive oil demand is surging. Americans bought 79 million gallons in 2008, up from 47 million gallons a decade earlier, the paper reported.
There are no federal rules that define “virgin” or “extra virgin” olive oil, Vito S. Polito, professor of plant sciences at UC Davis and co-chairman of the school’s Olive Center, a research group, told the Times. As a result, he said, “the U.S. has been a dumping ground for cheap olive oil for years.”
Bob Bauer, president of the North American Olive Oil Assn., said most of the olive oil on U.S. store shelves is legit, but his group alerts the FDA when problems occur.
Bauer told the Times 3 to 4 percent of the 200 to 300 samples his group tests each year are unadulterated or mislabeled, meaning they’re not as pure as they say they are or they’ve been combined with another type of oil.
“We’ve petitioned the FDA to create a standard of identity, which would define in black and white what olive oil is and is not,” Bauer told the Times. “They never acted on the petition.”
A spokesperson for the FDA told the Times that the agency does not regularly test olive oils for “adulteration,” but relies on information from the public or other groups.
The voluntary regulations being rolled out this fall set parameters for freshness and purity, fatty acid levels and ultraviolet light absorption, which can tell how fresh the oil is. USDA experts will also conduct tasting reviews, the Times reported.
Some worry that the regulations will be meaningless until they’re mandatory.
“It’s like saying you have to stop at stop signs, but there are no cops at the corner,” Paul Vossen, a University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor for Sonoma County, told the paper. “Standards are a good start, but enforcement is important.”
News and Roosters
“How’d you sleep?” I cheerily greeted my sister, Sparkle, newly arrived from Paris to our small farming village in Germany.
“That #*%@ing ROOSTER!” she exclaimed. “He started crowing around 3:00 a.m. and never stopped! You must have heard him! He was right under our window!”
No. No, there was no rooster under our windows. The nearest rooster was up in the next farm, maybe 100 yards away. But I kind of remembered when we first moved in, I think I remember we heard him. We no longer heard him. You just get used to it, I guess.
What brings this to mind is that KUOW in Seattle has a program today on the Seattle City Council vote – they are about to vote to increase the number of chickens allowed by ‘urban farmers’ but to prohibit the roosters.
You can hear the discussion for yourself by going to KUOW. There are some hilarious comments, one by a man who said “Sure, ban roosters, right after you ban boom boxes, and teenagers, and heavy trucks, and garbage pickups. There are a lot worse sounds in the city than roosters!” (I may have paraphrased that quote, I was laughing too hard to write it all down.)
AdventureMan and I love National Public Radio. We support our local NPR station, WUWF in Pensacola, which I listen to while I am driving, but when I am working on a project, I still stream KUOW, which I started doing while I was living in the Gulf. I love the huge variety of opinions and subjects, and I appreciate that there is more news in the world than what they show on TV, after all, on TV they can only show what they have film footage of. There are books to be discussed, and movies, and music, and social situations in Khandahar and Botswana and Sri Lanka and boy soldiers in Liberia . . . things I haven’t a clue about unless I listen to my national public radio station. I read the paper daily. I watch the news once a day – but it doesn’t meet the depth of coverage of NPR.
I think chickens are pretty cool. They are also pretty stupid, but I am all for a chicken or two, fresh eggs, etc. When I needed fresh eggs in Germany, I just walked up the hill and bought them from the chicken lady. When I asked my landlady about recycling, she just laughed, and we walked our food leftovers, peelings, coffee grounds, etc up the hill and threw them over the fence for the chickens. I don’t even mind roosters. Sorry, Sparkle!
Butler’s Pantry
This room is kind of an LOL; it is called the Butler’s Pantry, but we don’t have a butler. It has a dual wine refrigerator, one held at 47°F for white wine and one at 61°F for red wine. We do have wine in them, but we are not great collectors of wine. The cupboards have come in handy for all the beer and wine glasses we collected during our years of living in Germany. The white wine refrigerator also holds beer, which is tasty in hot hot weather and with Mexican food.
This is a room we are in and out of all the time – on our way to the garden, on our way to the laundry, and on our way out the door to the garage. The photographs are by AdventureMan:
Home Improvement: Spackle and Paint
When you paint those walls (or have them painted) save a small container of your paint in an airtight container. When you are putting things on the walls – yeh, you can measure all you want, but sometimes that wire on the back of the mirror or heavy painting is just a little longer than it should be. It happens to everyone, even the pros.
When I was an Army wife, our houses had to pass inspection before we moved on. I was GOOD. I learned how to mix a little spackle and paint, and use a toothpick to seal the holes.
Once the hold is sealed, use a paper towel or kleenex or toothbrush (in a pinch your clean finger) to make the surface a little rougher, otherwise the spackled area stands out because it is smoother than the surrounding area. Using a toothpick works best for filling in small holes, if you have a larger area, use a popsicle stick or small spatula. Having a little paint of the original wall color mixed in to the spackle makes the fill invisible. đ
(Whenever I use spackle, I think of my sister Sparkle, who calls oatmeal ‘spackle’, LOL!)
Pensacola, Tuesday, Rain and Sunrise
Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, so what a difference it makes when I have a good night’s sleep! Last night, for the first time, I tried the ceiling fan – what a difference! This morning, I was awake, rested, and ready to get up before six.
For a minute, I thought I was in Kuwait, it was all fuzzy and dusty outside, but I realized it was just the fog on my windows, and it was raining.
I grabbed my camera; you know me, I love sunrises, and this was a beauty, pink and rainy:
Turned around, and there was a sparkling rainbow. Pardon the fuzziness, but my camera keeps fogging due to the change from inside to outside:
All the peppers I have planted seem to be flourishing, and I am wondering what I am going to do with all these peppers? Maybe I can make some kind of relish? I could make something like stuffed jalepenos, chili rellenos, except I don’t think I have enough peppers ripe at one time to make a real dish. Maybe later in the season . . .
Lots of tomatoes, all the Black Krim. My other tomatoes have flowers, but I can’t spot any tomatoes on them yet. I am loving the Black Krim! Fresh tomatoes, tasty tomatoes, every day, oh what luxury!
This house used to have a swimming pool, but long ago, they filled it in and made a garden. I love what they did – their plant selections attract all kinds of birds and butterflies:
Margaritaville on Pensacola Beach
The weather was beautiful in Pensacola, all 4th of July weekend to the fireworks. Early Monday morning, all hell broke loose, the heavens opened and it poured rain.
In spite of the good weather leading up to the Fourth, the droves that usually invade the beaches to celebrate didn’t materialize. One restaurant owner said his business was down 80% from last year at this time. We decided, in spite of the rain, to head over to the beach for lunch, do our small part for the Pensacola Beach economy.
LLLOOOLLLL! The first place we tried, Peg Leg Pete’s, (“Our Latitude Will Change Your Attitude”) had such a crowd that the wait was 25 – 30 minutes, standing out in the rain, so we passed. Our second choice, Crabs – We Got ‘Em was closed until 4 pm. Oh AAARRGH,, but there is still the brand new Jimmy Buffet hotel, Margaritaville and we’ve been eager to take a look so in we go.
Bad news is that you can’t use the underground parking lot, even on a rainy day, unless you are a hotel guest. Good news is that if you are dining in the restaurant, valet parking is free, and when you have a baby and car seat with you, valet parking is very very good. đ
Margaritaville is beautiful, and fun. As soon as you walk in, it is beachy; beautiful sand and sea colors, a faux straw mat floor and comfy beach-home furniture. Beach music, too.
The view of Pensacola beach, even on a rainy day, is glorious. Please note that the beaches are CLEAN. Come to Pensacola! Save the economy!
Our original plans had been to find one of the beachy restaurants, you know, family restaurants, full of kids, one more little baby wouldn’t even be noticed. The main demographic in the Margaritaville restaurant was couples, mostly 50-ish, women in sundresses they were a little too big for, and men in big bright flowered shirts, drinking fancy beach drinks (There is a whole page of them đ ). There was one baby, and few other children.
We only had to wait about 15 minutes to get in, and there was a nice lounge where we could wait. We had the popcorn shrimp for starters, and we liked it. The bacon cheeseburger was good, according to my son, and the crab cake sandwich disappeared in a heartbeat. Baby Q was good as gold and had is first taste of dill pickle. He liked it! My seafood salad had macaroni in it. Aargh. Service was good, unobtrusive and friendly.
It’s a nice place. I would stay there. I love the clean lines and the sea colors. There are other places I would rather eat.
Woe to You!
We had a priest in Germany, a priest we dearly loved. He told us about how growing up, he would go to church with his Mom and after the sermon, she would say “I hope all those sinners were listening this morning!” AdventureMan and I sometimes say that after church, knowing full well that ‘those sinners’ is us.
It’s hard to read the scriptures for this morning, because Jesus is talking to religious people, and telling us that often the better we think we are, the farther we have to go.
Lord, clean us from the inside!
Matthew 23:13-26
13 âBut woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.* 15Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell* as yourselves.
16 âWoe to you, blind guides, who say, âWhoever swears by the sanctuary is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by the oath.â 17You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that has made the gold sacred? 18And you say, âWhoever swears by the altar is bound by nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on the altar is bound by the oath.â 19How blind you are! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20So whoever swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21and whoever swears by the sanctuary, swears by it and by the one who dwells in it; 22and whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by the one who is seated upon it.
23 âWoe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practised without neglecting the others. 24You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!
25 âWoe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup,* so that the outside also may become clean.
Bank of America Account
They just keep getting worse and worse. This one has atrocious grammar and punctuation, and keeps changing font size!
Freedom Isn’t Free
Happy Birthday, United States of America! Happy Fourth of July, AdventureMan.
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