Wednesday Wibbles

Wow, two in a row! As always, welcome to the new follower:

• Luca Veste — book blogger, adult student… and father of two daughters! Oh, I’ll bet we have some stories to swap about our kids.

With the manor rapidly re-filling — The Boy and Snippet are back (sigh), and M.A.E. and Lobster show no signs of leaving anytime soon — I’m getting crowded in both time and space. M.A.E. in particular seems to always need something, and isn’t exactly Janie-on-the-spot about helping out. At least Snippet is showing some sign of wanting to take care of Mason… even if she’s inadequate about it.

Speaking of Snippet, she came in yesterday with an awesome sunburn. She wanted to show it to me, and first pulled down the front of her shirt to show her neck — then hiked up the back to show me her shoulders. As she wasn’t wearing a bra, it’s beyond me how I didn’t get an eyeful of boobage along with the acres of redness. I found her some spray-on burn ointment, and it seemed to help. At least she didn’t pull her shirt off again. This morning, she headed to work with plenty of coverage.

With summer in full burn (see above), I made a pasta salad this evening for tomorrow. FARf-alle (bowtie) pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, an onion, a squash, a bell pepper, some broccoli I found laying around in the fridge, garlic, mozzarella fresca, and Vidalia tomato-basil dressing. Lobster doesn’t want to wait for tomorrow, when the flavors will be blended — he’s grabbing a bowl on the way to work. (Oh… did I mention Lobster has a job? He’s working night shift as a welder.)

At least I got some writing done yesterday! I’m going to try keeping up the momentum tonight.

Food and Books

As usual, life has been pretty nutso and I’ve been neglecting the blog except for the weekly fiction dump. So I’ll catch up and get to the rest in the Wednesday Wibbles.

Mason continues to be Mason, growing all the time. He actually used the potty chair Thursday morning! No, no picture, Mrs. Fetched dumped it out and I'm not that neurotic anyway. I don’t know if he’s had any other successes since then or not.

Father’s Day weekend has come and gone. It was a pretty nice weekend, all in all. I didn’t spend much of it chasing Mason and Skylar around, but did take Big V to one of her hospital treatments on Saturday. I took the iPad with me and kept up with Twitter while she was getting worked on. Both days, we ended up eating lunch pretty late — like 3 or 4 p.m., and that did throw things off for me. Saturday afternoon, I started mowing the lawn but was quickly chased inside by a thunderstorm (we’ve had three or four days of rain in the last week, so maybe our dry spell is over).

I did do the grilling on Father’s Day, cooking pork chops and salmon on cedar planks. I bought an oven thermometer because the plank instructions said to have the grill at 350°F. It turns out that I need to turn the grill nearly all the way down to keep it that low. But now that I know, I could conceivably bake bread on the grill if I really had to.

The blackberries have been getting ripe early this year. I’ve seen small handfuls of ripe ones in mid-June before, but never where I could go around and pick a gallon of them. The vines are at the point where they’re becoming a nuisance, trying to invade the yard; there’s one clump that actually is in the back yard, but the berries are big and juicy so I let them have the space they’ve taken. Beyond that, the lawn mower does its worst. I’ve taken Mason over there and picked him a handful for snacking — which may have been a mistake. I just hope he doesn’t get tangled up in there trying to get some on his own. Skylar also got a taste; he nearly spit the first one out but decided he liked it.

If this were the only stand, it would be enough for snacking… but there’s a huge stand behind the detached garage and other one on the other side of the driveway. I also found a couple black raspberry vines that gave me about a pint of big sweet berries. All in all, I picked a gallon in an hour or so, and never got more than 100 yards from the manor.

Mrs. Fetched made us a pie today… and we nailed about a third of it by ourselves. I doubt there will be any left 24 hours from now. But that’s okay, for every berry I picked this weekend there’s at least ten more that are still getting ripe. And other stands farther away from the manor (but still walking distance).

My various writing projects are progressing. I sent White Pickups to some beta readers, and am trying not to bite my nails waiting for feedback. I’m about to hit the difficult part in the sequel, Pickups and Pestilence, where I’ll have to stop filling in and rearranging what I’ve already done and move on to the grand finale. I was surprised to find I’m roughly half-finished with it by word count. And this afternoon, I felt a tickle — a disturbance in the Force that says another idea (maybe a Big Idea) is coming. I just hope it’s going to bring me the grand vision that will let me finish this story.

The Final Harvest

… of 2010, at FAR Manor, anyway. The frost is on the way tonight, and we had some frost up on the garage roof and the cars this morning. Fortunately, the foliage and fruits weren’t affected. I’m guessing about three pounds of surprise chow here.



We put the big ones in the window, hoping they’ll ripen. The smaller ones I diced up and made over a quart of green salsa. I’ll post a recipe if it turns out to be edible.

Pictures, Food and Fights…

…but not pictures of food fights. We’ll start off with the pictures…

Mom and Mason


Golf carts on parade…


Mason meets his first clown. He did quite well.


After contemplating the daisy for a few moments, he attempted to eat it (of course).


And, now to the fights. For an evening there, I thought M.A.E. was going to go back to her cheating a-hole of a boyfriend. Well, that now seems to be inoperative. He doesn’t seem to think he’s done anything w0rNg, and thinks that M.A.E. is the one with the problem. But now he’s pulling the control-freak card, threatening to take Moptop (fat chance with a felony drug conviction there, d00d) and making veiled threats (“you’re about to have a very bad week”) and a not-so-veiled threat to get her fired from her job. So she just got her smellphone number changed and who knows what will happen next there? Stay tuned… soap operas aren’t this weird.

Finally, food. Mrs. Fetched said “After I’m done at the chicken houses, I’ll bring some chicken up from Mom’s and we’ll do something with it for lunch.” This is code for, “I’m going to run way overtime, so you might want to fix something if you don’t want everyone here to starve to death.” There were a couple of steaks from last week’s grillin’ in the fridge, and I found some other stuff to make…

Steak Parmesan Pasta Salad

1 16oz box macaroni
8 oz grilled steak, sliced thin
1 cucumber, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 med. onion, sliced thin
1 20oz can corn, drained
1/2 c parmesan cheese (grated)
1/2 c vinaigrette

Prepare macaroni according to package directions. Rinse in cold water and drain well. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Cover and chill for 3 hours (preferred) or serve right away.

Everybody liked it — but they were hungry.

Creamy Chicken/Pasta Salad

A good “hot day” dish, everyone liked it and got extra. I threw this together yesterday for supper from what we had laying around, and it went over pretty well. It takes maybe half an hour to make, plus chill time. The dressing part is modified from a tex-mex recipe I found online; I wanted something creamy and this seemed to fit the bill. The original recipe called for vinegar (and I used it) but everyone suggested to lose the vinegar next time… which means I’ll be making this again.

¼ c. dried tomatoes
12oz package of rotini

Dressing:
1-½ tsp. dried cilantro (or 2 T fresh)
¼ c. lemon (or lime) juice
½ c. sour cream
1 clove garlic, pressed (or 1 tsp. minced garlic)
1 T honey
¼ tsp. white pepper
½ tsp. salt
½ c. olive oil

12oz leftover boneless chicken, cooked and diced (or 1 12oz can)
1/3 c grated parmesan cheese

Bring 4-6 qt water to a boil. Break dried tomatoes into dime-sized (1cm) pieces, boil for 5 min. to reconstitute. Skim the tomatoes into a colander to drain, add rotini to the boiling water and cook as instructed by package directions. Drain and rinse in cold water.

While rotini is boiling, put cilantro, lemon juice, sour cream, garlic, honey, pepper, and salt in a blender or food processor, blend on high until smooth. Continue to blend, slowly adding olive oil.

Fold together tomatoes, pasta, dressing, chicken, and parmesan cheese until evenly coated. Cover and chill. Serves 5-6.

Random thoughts

I haven’t just brain-dumped for a while… probably because I dump things on Twitter instead. It’s long past time.

One of the things that turned out pretty well this past weekend: I made kotijuusto (Finnish for “home cheese”). I got the idea from my bob-sister Faboo Mama, who settled on making kotijuusto after a fruitless search for rennet. It’s a simple recipe, but it makes a lot of cheese. It has a consistency much like ricotta, which gave both Mrs. Fetched and DoubleRed the idea of making lasagna with it… which turned out pretty good (and it’s good and gone!), but there’s plenty of cheese left. DoubleRed just cooked some into her scrambled eggs and gave me a taste… dang good. We’ll have to use that stuff up soon, and hey I can always make more. Here’s the recipe I got from Faboo:

3 eggs
5 c buttermilk
1 gallon + 1-1/2 c milk
salt

Whip eggs and buttermilk until fluffy. Bring the milk to a boil, add the egg mixture, and beat well. Turn off the heat and allow the mixture to cool slowly. (Liquid will form on top, and the cheese will settle on the bottom.) mostly… some of it floats

Line a strainer or mold with cheesecloth. Remove the cheese with a slotted spoon and put it into the strainer, sprinkling a little salt between layers. Cover with a plate as a weight, and refrigerate for 12 hours. put a bowl underneath, you’ll catch at least a cup of whey Turn out into a serving dish. Serves 4-6.

Monday, I spent the morning at the office then went to the doc and got a shot for the poison oak I contracted 10 days ago. The shot works quickly… a little pain for much gain. While I’ve decided I’m through giving 300% to the company for crappy raises (or no raises) and no promotion, I’m still pounding away at a to-do list and I’ll be working at home tomorrow taking a few pictures for a rough-out of the new wall-mount template. A word of advice: if you ever consider technical writing as a career, hit yourself in the head with a hammer until you think of something else.

The choir director settled on the Easter cantata this year: something we did… oh, 6 or 8 or 10 years ago with a few modifications. Someone said, "10 years isn’t that long ago." I pointed out: "10 years ago, my kids were 11 and 9 years old!” And I didn’t have a blog… then again, there was no soap opera to write about back then, just Chicken House Hell.

Snippet tried calling The Boy like two days after we bailed him out. Fortunately, he was smart enough to refuse the call. Like I said, he only did what all of us would like to have done, with much less provocation. If there wasn’t a potential kid involved, I’d dance for joy if the judge made the “no contact” injunction permanent. I might dance anyway.

Republicans are such hypocrites. I mean, how does a conservative these days manage to get through a week without drinking Drano or something? “The economy? Um… Oh! look! a fag in a wedding dress! Vote for us, quick!” Yes, having no imagination is almost required for a conservative, but c'mon. I could make six Republicans with a 7404 chip, a toggle switch, and some LEDs. (I told that to a right-wing engineer back in the Clinton years… he didn’t want to laugh, but he knew it was funny. And true.)

Mrs. Fetched is down in Decatur, visiting Big V at the hospital. Big V’s husband came home from his truck-driving job last night & she took him and her mom down to see her. She’ll be home late tonight, if at all. Big V got her foot put back together yesterday; she has a long recovery ahead of her and it remains to be seen if she’s willing to do her part.

Daughter Dearest wants to go to Florida for spring break. Good idea, sez I, except for the (lack of) money part. I’m thinking about going with her, but making a pact to leave the laptops at home and trying to discover (perhaps with some help from Mom and Solar-bro) some of the local attractions. It might be interesting. I know the original Hooter’s is around there, and DD has one of the more tasteful Hooter’s shirts, so we could hit that, the beach, a bird sanctuary, the beach, a park or two, the beach… you get the idea. I could cheat with my iPhone, of course, and post stuff to Twitter and TwitPic if nothing else.

DoubleRed just got a fling dot com popup, so she’s installing Spybot. And this is why I don’t like Dozeboxes in my house.

W00T! Mrs. Fetched just got home. Big V might get transferred to the long-term facility on Friday if her foot doesn’t get re-infected.

Weekend Cinema

Short, quick, and free — like the redneck’s idea of a perfect date — that’s Weekend Cinema!

Tonight, we bring you a little documentary of sorts. Urban farms might sound like an oxymoron, but people are doing it. Some because it’s the only way to put some fresh food on the table, others because food sovereignty is important.

So tonight we travel to exotic Milwaukee and see what a little Growing Power can do.

You can learn more about Growing Power and their goals at their website.

Food, Coming and Going

If you’ve ever done (food) gardening that consisted of more than a couple of 4x8-foot beds, which I’ve done a couple of times, you’ve learned that Harvest Time isn’t a single week in October. My mother-in-law is a serious gardener, which means a couple acres at a minimum — and she plants not only a lot of different veggies, but several varieties of each so there’s a steady stream of fresh food from July on into October. Or whenever the first frost hits, which on Planet Georgia can occasionally wait until November. So yesterday, we were picking in the tomatoes — if I have it right, there’s no less than six varieties of tomatoes: beefsteak (and she says, “Don’t plant a tomato whose name starts with B”) and one I forgot, which were what we mostly got last night; Romas (my favorite for dehydrating) which are just now starting to ripen; yellow pear (ditto, and they can sit on the counter for a month at a time without getting soft); Rutgers, and Tommy Toe (both of which are still green).

So we took a collection of buckets with us, and filled six of them before it got too dark to tell the ripe ones from the not-so-ripe ones. She spent a large part of today at the county cannery, putting up those and other harvested food — it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve really begun to appreciate the magnitude of what she does. We spend maybe $200/month on groceries, and that was typical when The Boy and Daughter Dearest lived with us, and griped about $400 food bills when we had Lobster and M.A.E. living here a couple years back. That turns out to be a rather paltry food bill — I’ve been reading articles lately about how a family of four ends up dumping $1600 at the grocery store (what are they doing, buying complete prepared meals?). Then there was yesterday: “I put up 60 quarts of veg-all,” she told me as we brought the tomato buckets back to the house. “Big V helped some.” I wouldn’t quite say we have complete food sovereignty here; but if the entire food distribution system went down tomorrow, we wouldn’t starve for a while.

We went up to North Carolina over the weekend to visit my mom — she was glad to be at the summer place, after “six weeks of living out of suitcases” in Michigan and Wisconsin. Daughter Dearest came along, which was a pleasant surprise for Mom, and we vegged out for the most part. But while we were there, M.A.E. called Mrs. Fetched (a relief… I was afraid something was amiss with The Boy again and we would have to leave early) with the latest. She and her SO are sharing a house with her sister and her sister’s husband; both of them have kids (the sister’s is 9 months old, M.A.E.’s is 3 months old and a cutie). But the sister-couple both quit their jobs shortly after they moved into the place, the summer electric bill is running around $200, and they needed a little food relief so they could deal with the rent and electricity. Way-ell, like I said, we can help with the food situation: we loaded up a case with 12 jars, some miscellaneous stuff kicking around in our pantry, and ran it over to her place last night. That should keep them going for a little while.

I don’t know if M.A.E. has developed any cooking skills or not, but this is pretty simple: put a jar in a pot, put it on the stove, let it get hot. One meat, one veggie, and we left them a loaf of bread too. We shall see, I guess.

Eating Local

What with the media hype about E.coli and salmonella in produce these days, the idea of a 100-mile diet seems like a smart idea. But yesterday, we managed to go a couple orders of magnitude better than that.

After a quick Saturday morning fence repair, Mrs. Fetched’s mom handed me a plastic bowl. “Can you grill this catfish?” she asked. “[someone] caught it out of the pond down below the house. I don’t want to heat up the kitchen but it needs cookin’.”

I thought for a moment. “I can give it a try,” I said. “I'll wrap it in foil with some onion and peppers.” She handed me a big bell pepper from the garden, and I took them home and added some basil and oregano from the front yard. If I had to do it over again, I would have used more foil and sealed it properly, but I had two pairs of tongs and didn’t lose anything. The body cavities were a little smaller than I expected, so I ended up putting stuff around the fish more than in it.

Side dishes were fresh corn and fried squash, both from the garden. In fact, the onion was the only ingredient that didn’t come from the farm. Next year, we might get the onions from the garden too.

Blackberry Harvest

No, not the fancy phone, the kind you eat or make into jelly or pies.

I was kind of surprised at how good they looked this year, given the drought. The cool spring and summer (so far) must have done them some good.

Now for the fun part: jelly, jam, pies…

First Fruits

I was kind of surprised to see the huckleberries/blueberries getting ripe already. There were only a few ripe ones, but there’s a lot more where that came from. I think there will be enough by Saturday morning to have blueberry pancakes.

In a couple weeks, they’ll really come on the pipe and we’ll have to figure out what to do with them. Probably a pie or two.

The blackberries will be ripe in another month, and I shouldn’t have any trouble getting all we want and then some.

Cinnamon rolls

Continuing the holiday baking series…



I wonder how many will be left tomorrow morning. I told The Boy in passing that I was making them, thinking maybe he’d have an incentive to hang around the house tonight. Oh well… his loss!

Thanksgiving Festoovities

A lot of people were at FAR Manor today, but the food was more than up to the challenge. The only surprise was when Cousin Splat came in, he didn’t get any food — he said he ate at Big V’s, but such minor details usually don’t stop him. This may explain why we also had plenty for supper (and beyond).

OK, everyone sing along: “On the first day after Thanksgiving, my true love served to me: leftover tur-ur-key!"


Both of my teams were playing today, and both got blown out after a promising first quarter. First up was the Lions during and after lunch, then the Falcons after supper. Beth likes watching football, so I had an excuse to actually watch some of the games… but each game got less interesting as they went on. Shooting the breeze was more fun.



While the trees are shedding leaves at a prodigious rate, at least the ones that aren’t brown, the rhododendron bush has been hanging around the free-range insane asylum a little too long: yup, it’s blooming again. Many of my herbs, especially the parsley and mint, are enjoying the cooler weather too. The rosemary is also blooming, and the oregano is staying low and spreading: I expect it and the mint will be locked in a death-match before too much longer (with the parsley refereeing).

The basil that was planted in the ground has mostly survived light frost, and are even shooting out seed pods. I’ve clipped a few of those and put them in a marked bag — maybe I can breed a frost-tolerant basil. If not, I have three large pots inside; twice-daily mistings seem to be helping them acclimate to the dryer air indoors.


After a busy morning of preparing food (and not neglecting the chicken houses), we stuffed ourselves silly at lunch. Naturally, that led to snoozes among the non-football people…


Beth’s heading home tomorrow, for some well-deserved nesting time — she said she’s been at home maybe three days in the entire month (and from reading Beth’s blog, that sounds about right. All of us have enjoyed having her here, and it would be nice if she could stay another day, but that’s how it goes. We’ll meet up with her again when we go to Florida, though.

Cookout Preparations

Tomorrow is Labor Day, and (at least in the US) that means the traditional “good-bye summer’ cookout. Amazingly, we ended up not doing any chicken house work today — and there was much rejoicing, although that does mean we’ll be pounding at it tomorrow.

We spent the afternoon shopping for everything from jeans to plumbing supplies to groceries. We picked up salmon to grill tomorrow, and I’ve already got a side dish going — I took some of the dehydrated tomatoes, reconstituted them, and tossed them into a marinade with red bell peppers (from the back yard), mushrooms, and some fresh herbs. That should make a good side dish for the salmon!

What kind of cookout plans do you have for tomorrow?

Eat to work, work to eat

I suggested stuffed bell peppers for supper tonight — I would have suggested it for yesterday, if we’d had some thawed ground beast. It was quite good, and she invited her parents up to help us eat it. Still, there was enough left over to stuff a microwave dish with a pepper, ear of corn, potatoes, and a slice of Mexican corn bread that Mrs. Fetched’s mom made (hot stuff! yum!). It won’t be any problem carrying it to work, since we’ll be getting my Civic first thing tomorrow.

Since the mom-in-law is going to the farmer’s market in the morning, I cleared the jalapeño bushes of the larger peppers, ending up with over two pounds of biiiig green chiles. Maybe someone will have cilantro and want to trade… I just can’t seem to grow cilantro.

The last of my “restricted” stock just got un-restricted. The HR department sent a memo around saying that they were going to use shares to withhold taxes, and “your net pay will not be affected.” Um… they forgot the Social Security part, which knocked a cool $600 off this paycheck, and I can ill afford to not have that money. I need to sell some of that stock, I guess… and since it’s lost about $2 in the last week, I’ll have to sell more than I needed to in the first place. At least I have the option (pun not intended). Maybe it will shoot back up tomorrow. Maybe pigs will… oh, never mind.

Ramen done right

It could use some mushrooms, but otherwise the broth turned out loads better than I expected! Chuck that sodium packet in the trash and Know the Potential of Ramen. As with all my CubeDweller recipes, all of the ingredients can be stored in a file cabinet or other dry place (no refrigeration required).

CubeDweller Ramen Soup

4 c. water
6 sun-dried tomatoes, broken
4 pearl onions, peeled and quartered
1 clove garlic, diced

Herbs (substitute as you please, this is what I used but would have added basil if I had some):
1 sage leaf
1/4 tsp. marjoram
1/2 tsp. black pepper
Mrs. Dash® Tomato/Basil Blend
3/4 tsp. chives, chopped
1 large parsley leaf

pinch of salt
1 tsp. olive oil
1 packet ramen
Protein source of choice, cooked if necessary (optional, I used a tin of sardines packed in water)

Put tomatoes, onions, garlic, sage, marjoram, pepper, olive oil, salt, and 2 cups of water in a microwave pot. Cover tightly and microwave on high for 10 minutes. Stir. Add ramen, protein source, and remaining water; microwave on high for 2 more minutes. Garnish with chives and parsley.

Serves two with a side dish, or one if you’re hungry.

Nice winter days

The only thing you can say for certain about January and February on this planet is that the days steadily get longer. I noticed yesterday that there’s now more light at 6:30 p.m. than there was at 5:30 p.m. at Christmas. Spring training is about to get under way, another sure sign that winter really is not permanent. I don’t follow baseball nearly as much as I used to, but to me baseball is still a metaphor for summer nights, the voice of which is Ernie Harwell calling the play-by-play for the Tigers on a static-y AM radio:

For, lo, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

I mean, really. The announcers for the Braves are OK, but nobody can do “swinnnnnnnng an-a miss!” like Ernie. God, I miss him. Maybe that’s why I don’t follow baseball these days; my personal Voice of Summer is now only in my head.

So yesterday, I didn’t feel like fixing lunch, and I needed a little exercise. I stepped outside and ohhhh yeahhhhhh, sixty-some degrees, the sun was shining, and you can’t enjoy a day like that in a car! Off to the Kroger Grill to get some grilled chicken, to be consumed at an outdoor table with some baked beans and a Diet Cherry Coke (an indulgence I allow myself once or twice a week). I walked quickly, both to save some time and so I could count it as my day’s exercise. Just to have a little fun and make it a bit more aerobic, I took the shortcuts through the weeds in the back of the office park and the parking lot of the building where I used to work.

And... the grill wasn’t open? WTF!?? A day like this, when people are going to want to have lunch outside, perhaps for the first time in months? Sheesh! There are plenty of other restaurants close by, but nothing I particularly want (or need, given I’m trying to limit sodium). But wait! They have a sushi bar inside! I asked the chef on duty about sodium, and he showed me their booklet that has all their nutrition info plus other neat sushi facts (not to mention all the groovy things they’ll sell you, including a complete DIY sushi kit for $37.50... yum). The Shoreline Combo looked like a pretty good match of moderate sodium and low cholesterol, so I grabbed one. Since I was there, I picked up a six-pack of ramen since I was out. The cashier actually asked me if I was from California. Um, no... but Lord knows this planet could stand to be a little more like it.

Turns out that little soy sauce packet they give you has more sodium than all 12 pieces of sushi combined, so that went in the trash and I just spread the wasabi over each piece. It was a very pleasant meal, and I had the entire outdoor dining area to myself. I saw another (full) soy sauce packet on another table, so it looks like someone else may have had the same idea before I did. Walking home after a very satisfying meal, I had to take my coat off and carry it. Mid-February can be like that, or it can be cold steel rain, or slush storms. You just make the most of the good days.

Just think... in a few months, we’ll be wishing it was cold again. But for now, it might snow again tomorrow night. sigh

Dangit

Mrs. Fetched baked some salmon last night, with some potatoes etc. on the side. I put the leftovers into two microwave plates — one for my lunch today and one for The Boy after he came home from band practice.

As things really went, Lobster ate The Boy’s plate... and The Boy ate my plate.

Sodium dodging

There's a new extreme sport for middle-aged men, called “Sodium Roulette.” Here’s how you play:

1. Go to the supermarket.


2. Pick up something that sounds good.


3. Now, look at the label and see how much sodium there is in one serving. Write it down.


4. Repeat until someone goes over 2400mg of sodium. That person is out.


5. Last man standing wins!

Actually, I spent my lunch in the supermarket yesterday and actually found some good stuff. I’ve been trying to come up with some foods that are easy to fix in a microwave, don’t require refrigeration, are tasty, and not bad for you. I consider the trip a success, coming back with:

• “Instant” brown rice (I don’t consider 7 minutes cooking time to be “instant,” but whatever.)


• Cipollini onions (they’re small, so you can use whole onions and not have halfies left over)


• Albacore tuna, marked “very low sodium” (at albacore prices, naturally... ouch)


• Sardines packed in water (very little sodium, especially compared to packed in mustard or oil)


• Smoked oysters (more sodium than the fish, but still within reason)


• Low-sodium Triscuits (I was looking for Wheat Thin(g)s, but these will do)


• Bean sprouts (there’s a refrigerator at work, fortunately... I just didn’t want to fill it up


• Mrs. Dash Tomato/Basil/Garlic Blend


• Bananas

I have a few packs of ramen hiding in the back of one of my overhead bins; chuck the “flavor” packet and what’s left is the closest thing to instant pasta that I know of.

Googling for “cipollini onions,” I found some recipes for roasting them that sound absolutely divine as a side dish to beef or pork... but right now, I’m primarily concerned about what I can cook in the break room microwave. I cut up a couple of onions into the rice pot, threw in a small handful of bean sprouts, added some Mrs. Dash, and nuked the whole shebang then topped it with a can of tuna. The result was edible, if a little bland; I need to vary the ingredients a little bit and maybe toss in some green pepper. I’ll post a recipe when I get it right.

I’m thinking about how I can do something with the ramen & smoked oysters...

Born pure, salted to death

Given my aging-male issues (blood pressure, cholesterol), I decided to take a closer look at some of the labels on stuff I eat. I was surprised; except for that one weekend breakfast where we fix bacon & eggs, I don’t eat that much cholesterol at all. Through the week, I eat oatmeal when I get to work then have a pop-tart in the mid- to late morning; not much of the artery-clogging stuff.

But My God! the sodium!

It’s in everything, it seems. Even Coca-Cola (which I don’t drink much of) has a little! I had lunch at Subway today, and grabbed one of the nutrition charts they keep handy: most of the sandwiches have like 1100mg (or more) of sodium. Hunh? That’s as much as a cheap can of soup (the Healthy Choice soups are better). The sandwiches must absorb it from the Chinese restaurant about three doors down or something. “On average, Americans consume 4,000 to 6,000 milligrams of sodium daily” (recommended intake is 2400mg, just over a teaspoon of salt). No wonder over 25% of the population has high blood pressure!

I was already taking a hard look at cheese, thinking the cholesterol might be a problem there. Well, not so much as the sodium. Mom was telling me about touring a cheese-making operation last year; she saw them literally using shovels to throw salt into the batch. Low-fat Swiss cheese seems to be the best bet in terms of both sodium and saturated fat.

Even a slice of bread has 120mg to 180mg of sodium. That just floored me; I often make my own bread, so I decided to have a look at my own product. Aha... preservatives. My bread recipes call for about ½ tsp. of salt per loaf (and I tend to skimp on the salt anyway), the only sodium in any of the ingredients I use — at 14 slices per loaf, I get 82mg of sodium per slice. Yup, gonna be making my own bread from now on. And maybe slicing it just a little thinner, too.

When it comes to scary, Stephen King’s got nothing on food labels.