Category: Food & Wine

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October is Vegetarian Awareness Month… gotta have something for soccer players, former dictators and wackos

Let's have soe REAL FoooOOOoooOoD!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

USA TODAY via Yahoo.com had a fun article written by a guy who reported the funny fact that occuring in football season is ‘Veggie Month”…. the guy writing the article summarized the position of most real men….. thusly:

Two reasons why I won’t join the “Eat No Meat Club”:

•As a country boy in South Dakota, while in high school I worked in an old-fashioned “butcher shop.” Owner Tom Rosser paid me $1 a week and all the salami I could eat. He also taught me how to cook a steak rare.

•In Europe in WW II, we all knew that that Nazi nut Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

Please pass the meat.

There are many reasons that being a veggie boy is nuts. Besides taste, let me say, cobalamin is one of the only things that comes only from animal protein. Several surveys have shown that most strict, long-term vegetarians are vitamin B12 deficient. The Scandanavian researchers have demonstrated clear intellectual deficits from children reaised as vegetarians.. enough said.

I don’t want to pick on the vegetarians too much… I have fond memories of vegetarians giving me their tickets to ‘steak night’ while I was an athlete at UCLA… however, it does seem like it is a ‘religious experience’ for some women. Vegetarian men? Oh, they may exist… but they play soccer.

Other Strange american Holidays in October

Here’s a word from the veggie supporters:

Metroblogging HOUSTON
Horray for Female Vegetarians  huh?
YELP!

Well, I also found a few sites that extolled the virtues of vegetarians with a philosophical and political message. I even found ‘poetry’… words like’ when I look into a plate of meat… I see a baby crying for her mother.” ….pllleeeeaaassseee!

So… to celebrate this month… I’ll fix an extra large TURDUCKEN next month for Thanksgiving… it’s a lot better than one made from ‘Tofu”.

Roger Freberg

 

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Ride Dr. Cheyne’s wild ‘Chamber Horse’! Yeee-hah!

a forerunner of today's home gymHistory is resplendent with artifacts that help us better understand what life was like in bygone days. The object to the left looks like a chair… but it isn’t. It is a ‘chamber horse.’

For those of you who are fans of Jane Austin, you may have run across this line and wondered… ‘what does it mean?’

“…and I have told Mrs Whitby that if anybody enquires for a chamber horse, they may be supplied at a fair rate (poor Mr Hollis’s chamber horse, as good as new); and what can people want more?”

The chamber horse was sort of a forerunner of today’s modern gym…. and critics say that it was used as infrequently then as many home gyms are today. The ‘horse’ was developed by a doctor named George Cheyne in the early 1700’s. The poles are for hanging onto as you bounce on the series of padded springs… yahoo!

A nice article appears on NEW Scientist which I leave for your reading entitled: “Dr. Diet’s recipe for Health.” Dr. Cheyne’s call for chicken and vegetables no hard alcohol except for wine was well ahead of his time. I also checked out the used booksellers to see how Dr. Cheyne’s works were trading… and since I don’t have several thousand dollars to spend…

  Continue reading “Ride Dr. Cheyne’s wild ‘Chamber Horse’! Yeee-hah!”

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Walmart or Costco?…. there is a choice out there!

Where we shop says a lot about who we are. It tells people about our attitudes and values in the things we buy and who we buy from. Although I can’t get all worked up about ‘sweatshops’ in other countries … I try not to patronize the domestic equivalent…. Walmart.

Costco vs. Walmart... there is a choice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, there is usually a choice in where you can spend your dollars and that choice affects your community and beyond.

I have always tended to buy from UNION shops if I could… however, I would trade with non-union folks IF I believed that the employees were well treated and shared at some level with the success of the business. I observed that Costco’s people work hard, but they pay and seem to treat their people well… they appear to be fair and the usual grumbling seems minor. As one union friend of mine told me… ‘there’s nothing we can offer them to join ( the employees usually recieve higher salaries and benefits when they become unionized).’

San Luis Obispo, California just recieved it’s first ‘box store’ and listening to the local politicos, you would have thought that the world was going to end. It’s ironic that the city’s coffers will be stuffed with the unanticipated gains from the store they fought so hard to keep out.  As I mentioned, the benefits to the city are significant as well as to the consumer.

Looking back, I can remember that only a few years ago, it seemed like shopping locally was really adversive. When you walked in and asked a local merchant, ‘how much he was selling his lamp for?’… he would typically respond by asking,”well…. how much do you have?” Times have changed and with greater choices come lower prices.

shopping at CostCo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The car on the left is obviously NOT mine but from a post by someone proud of their visit to Costco… obviously a thrifty soul as he is driving the vehicle featured in the last ‘Pink Panther’ movie… I think this …er…ah… car is said to be priced around $16,000. Come to think of it, I think something like this ‘auto’ was in the last Austin Powers flick, too?

I my neverending quest to provide reading material, here are a couple of links to recent articles on Arkansas-based Walmart that might just give you a chance to pause:

OCT 3rd Editorial

Walmart to cap wages & Add part timers

I guess I’d rather put a couple of nickles into someone’s pocket knowing that they’re making a happy living… and yes, I enjoy the discount, too!

 

Roger Freberg

 

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An ode to Niacin…… the Wonder FOOD!

NIACIN

“For metabolic purposes, niacin is interchangeable with its amide, niacinamide, also known as nicotinamide.”

Well, that’s a mouthful!

BUY THE BOOK!Science is beginning to show some specific benefits in the use of Niacin…. whether in the treatment of blood sirum cholesterol, schizophrenia  and many other maladies.

Here are a few facts that you may not know:

1) “Niacin plays an important role in ridding the body of toxic and harmful chemicals. It also helps the body make various sex and stress-related hormones in the adrenal glands and other parts of the body. Niacin is effective in improving circulation and reducing cholesterol levels in the blood”

Here’s a book review on the author to the left:

2) There are a wide variety of foods that are rich in vitamin B-3 ( Niacin)…. so did you know:

Continue reading “An ode to Niacin…… the Wonder FOOD!”

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A Tribute to the… er… ah… “Testicle Tree”

the fabled fruit of the Testicle tree... banned in BostonLiving in California, most of the folks here are very familiar with the fruit of the “Testicle Tree”. In fact, you can’t visit a family home anywhere in the West where there isn’t a ‘secret family recipe’ that incorporates … er… Avocado.

If you subscribe to the NEW SCIENTIST, they include in the September issue a story about the history of the greatest fruit on earth… the Avocado.

I leave the reading of some of the stories to you …. but I found two most amusing:

First, it appears that the “Spanish Monks” viewed the Avocado ( ‘ahuacacuauhiti’ in Aztec) as a ‘promoter of lust’ and banned the tree from it’s monastery grounds! After some mispronunciations of the Aztec name over time… “Avocado” is the name that has evolved down to us today.

The second story is worthy of P.T. Barnum. It appears an enterprising man shipped Avocados into the United States … unfortunately, they began rippening all too quickly in his warehouse… panicked… he then circulated the story to all the newspapers that the ‘rumor’ that avocados raised sexual potency was completely false. His warehouse was quickly emptied.

Funny how some promises will get folks to do almost anything…. even things on the internet and through email.

As for me, I have a simple recipe for my Avocado dip: 9 Avocados mashed, salsa, sour cream and seasoned “Susie Q” to taste…. ahhhh… yes, dip with white corn chips. Add football and the liquid beverage of your choice… and the world is a better place!

Avocado recipes:

Hass
Que Pasa Baja
Quick Dip
Corn Salad
Avocados Stuffed with Crab Meat

Roger Freberg

Celebrating the AvocadoSoccer players have small avocados

PS.  Never Forget who brought us 911… and those who are defending us today