Dietary Dilemmas

My husband and I decided that my health really isn't very good right now, and that changes are most definitely in order. So, I took advice from here and from there(i.e., from my mother and other well-informed sources), and upon some recommendations I obtained this book through the interlibrary loan service.

I read through the book with the intention of being objective. I found the style repetitive, and the author beats around the bush for far, far too long. However, when it comes down to it she seemed to purport a logical, philosophically supportable approach to food, diet and lifestyle. That is, "moderation in everything" - not all carbs, not all proteins, no neverending regimen of rigourous exercise, but a balance of all good things. I handed the book over to the ever-skeptical-of-anything-that-smells-of-nutrition weirdos/chiropractors-and-all-such-hocus-pocus-son-of-an-M.D.-husband, and he likewise thought it sounded promising. We had two misgivings, however.

1) God did not create supplements. Why on earth would it be necessary for me to take 12 different kinds of them every day, and several of them multiple TIMES per day, just to keep my health in good order?
2) We are wary of organic food pushers. For all we can tell, organic food is just an excuse to charge a heckuva lot more money for a "specialized product". I mean, when we ask for a solid account for organic food as a necessary expense, we always end up getting a reply including something about factories and spillage, a depleted ozone layer due to out-of-control 80's hairspray, or something of the like blah blah blah, and the resultant bad soil, bad air {insert hand waving here} - and therefore POOF, the nutrients - ALL GONE. Factory spillage? All over the midwestern breadbasket, eh? Must have missed that for all the purdy sunflowers . . . (Needless to say, we're not convinced. Yeah, I know, I'm such a stubborn little skeptic.)

Nevertheless, we put these misgivings aside and sallied forth to the health food store, thinking we'd give this lady's diet thingy a week-long trial in the "all i's dotted" format, and tweak it from there if we thought things were a little over the top.

Now, we fully expected it to double our weekly grocery bill.

However, we never expected it to triple it. Yes, TRIPLE. The hubby has been having little seizures ever since.

So . . . we're going to go back to eating Cheetos and TV dinners, okay?

Oh for goodness sake of course I'm just kidding. I was raised by a nutritionist, so I could never eat that way in good conscience, let alone feed it to someone I love. All-in-all I'm actually quite good at serving up very healthy, balanced meals - the food just isn't "USDA certified organic" from the local upscale food market.

Now, how precisely my health got to be the way it is right now is probably due to a confusing conglomeration of several factors - things like moving, undergoing major life changes, liking my own cooking a bit too much and a complete lack of social outlets. (It's not because I eat like Bubba Jenkins.)

However, I must admit that I've been disgusted all week with the fact that someone finds it justifiable to charge someone that much money for rather basic food. We're definitely going back to "normal" food - I'll just make the necessary, non-organic substitutions and we can keep ourselves out of the poor house. If there's one thing I hate it's stores that sell things at higher prices than they should simply because they can get some idiot to pay that much. Well, that idiot is not going to be me. Nope. NOT ANYMORE. They're just going to have to find another idiot to pick on.

Another thing that was not made immediately apparent to us in our original read through of the above-mentioned book is that this diet requires us to eat a heckuva lot more food than either of us are accustomed to eating. I mean, just look at this plate (click on photo for mouth-watering, full resolution):



that's a LOT of food.

(Wait, you're thinking. Isn't that STEAK? What do you mean BASIC FOOD? - - Okay, so this was our one splurge item. It was allowed by the diet and BOY did it look yummy - and moreover we only bought one of them, and we split it. Although I have to admit that steak is a LOT more affordable when it's not sold by a "natural foods market". On sale at Publix is the way to go.)

To be honest, though, I'm not sure if I can keep eating this much. Mind you, a ton of it is vegetables. My refridgerator was positively CRAMMED with veggies when we came back, much to my husband's delight. (In fact, he's been very pleased with this change altogether (excepting the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ part), which is great - I like the fact that he's so supportive he doesn't even have to try. . . . I would sure appreciate it if he'd up and dislike that gol-derned goats' yogurt, though. Talk about naaaaaaaaaaaaaaasty . . . ) However, the fact of the matter is that I'm not accustomed to being full when on a diet. That seems downright weird.

Moreover, one other thing that's bothering me about this diet thing: in the past, I've always had a spiritual, sacrificial approach to my dieting ("offering it up", if you will), along with a philosophical adjustment that involves reassessing food according to its most proper end (i.e., "I eat to live, I don't live to eat"). This diet, however, demands that I spend a huge portion of my not-working life prepping, cooking, eating, and cleaning up afterwards. As I sit here now I should be back in the room properly cleaning up after a fresh, beautiful, and very messy dinner. You see, evidently leftovers more than a day old are a big no-no, and you're supposed to rotate your food so that you never eat any one thing more than once every three days. Now, this presents something of a difficulty with the whole, "I eat to live, I don't live to eat" mantra, as that's hardly what my life looks like right now. I mean, for all I can tell, since starting this diet I live to chop, sautee, simmer, broil, scrub, and drink water - that's about it. :-/

Oh, and another thing I dislike, according to this lady, all alchohol, no matter what quantity, no matter what kind, classifies as a "toxic chemical".

FIE, I say. FIE FIE FIE. I will not tolerate that kind of slander for an instant.

Oh, and also, did I mention that I'm hungrier than usual all of a sudden, between meals? I don't know if the diet/piles of supplements has already succeeded in boosting my metabolism or what, but I'm positively starving these days. Whussup with that?

Maybe I should take that as a sign and go back to the diet that I used to lose 40 some-odd pounds way back 7 or 8 years ago, huh? . . .

Yummy

yummy yummy yummy . . .

The recipe for it is here.

You're welcome. :)

Hospitality

Be forewarned. This is another rant, courtesy of me.

Definition:

" 1. the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers.
2. the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way. "

It just floors me how little anyone values this old-fashioned virtue these days.

The world is much too full of businesses.

You see, business institutions do not value hospitality. The only reason for exercising generosity (or, rather, the appearance thereof), since it invariably costs you money, is if it gets you something. Every relationship is one of utility, and there is no more hospitality - only the base, groveling behaviour that is better known as schmoozing.

This, if nothing else, is the strongest testimony to the fact that the place I am currently employed does not aim itself at the betterment and education of humanity as its primary aim. It is, before all else, a business institution. Time and time again it has failed in upholding the Christian tenants of hospitality - tenants that are supposed to be intrinsic to the ideology it was supposedly founded to uphold. However, it is too gain-focused to have even considered these sorts of things into even the most basic University functions. Seven tickets per graduating student - that's it. No room for non-graduating students, no room for the large Catholic families of graduating students or those of family friends. I mean, we simply have to make sure we reserve enough room for all of our VIPs! After all, this University is primarily a special-interest club for old people wearing Prada, right?

This place never fails to disappoint me . . . and this infamous charade continues to defraud the world of what it actually needs, bidding it satisfy itself on the only thing it has to give - i.e., its own shallow self-importance.

Full well I know how unusual a background I have come from. However, I also know how much the laziness of the "real world" wants people like me adjust our expectations to its ineptitudes, "seeing life as it is". My first reaction is to condemn the supporters of so-called "reality" as madmen - for indeed, there is nothing more insane than merely seeing life as it is, and never how it should be.

However, what's worse, though, is that it would be one thing for the supporters of the status-quo to ignore the impossible dream. Dreamers, after all, are hard to come by - few people are willing to live life quite that fully. What's infinitely worse is that the dream is FAR from impossible. In fact, in this case, at least, a small community of much poorer, wiser people have been living this simple, uncomplicated dream called "hospitality" for over 35 years. Given that fact, I simply cannot understand why it is that people attempt to use "reality" as an excuse for blatant stupidity. Just because people are stupid doesn't mean they have to stay that way.

Love Bug Season

It's officially getting to be the spring season for love bugs. Named for their alarmingly enthusiastic mating habits (the female drags the attached male with her wherever she goes, even bearing him aloft, despite his being limp and unhelpful, during flight) the Wikipedia article I found states that the spring season runs from late April through early May, and sure enough just the day before yesterday I started to note the familiar pop-pop-pop of bursting love-bugs on the windshield of our little Honda. The fall season for love bugs runs from late August through early September, so, Tasik, if we still happen to be down here, and you still happen to be planning a trip to visit, bear that fact in mind, as the acidity of their smooshed guts is known to leave pits and etches in automotive paint and chrome, and they are far more numerous than you'd think. The Wikipedia article referenced above suggests applying a "vegetable coating", whatever that is, to prevent the bug-guts from sticking to your car.

Yet another reason NOT to live in Southwest Florida. There seems to be no shortage of those.

"Whatever I do, I want to be able to do it well. 98% of all academic employment will bar me from being able to do that. For the most part, the academic system itself necessitates mindless mediocrity. I just can't live with that all of my life."

Mulling this one over. This is the most comprehensible account he's given me yet. Not that his other explanations were crazy or anything - far from it. It's just that my personality didn't relate to them very well. I'm a fighter by nature, so the concept of difficulty doesn't always evoke a sympathetic response, no matter how much I want it to. I almost always regard every trial as an invitation to a duel, no matter how long and no matter how impossible it may be to win. Moreover, the claim that I don't understand how it is to undergo some particular tribulation doesn't help me to true sympathy, either, because in all honesty, given the same circumstances, I'd probably NOT feel the same way. I'd still be in the middle of it all with both fists swinging, lashing everyone with my tongue, loosing my wrath on all who stood in my way - - in short, giving people nightmares. Now, mitigating the severity of these personality-driven shortcomings is the knowledge that this part of my temperament can be good, and it can also be very, very bad. I am not typically at all lacking for spiritedness, but often it escapes the mean of courage and goes over into the extreme of wrecklessnes, trampling Christian charity and undoing all the good I may originally intend to work for.

Now, back to the above account, this does seem rather reasonable. Why risk dooming oneself to a life of academic mediocrity, or, dare I say, academic ineptitude, as it ought to be conceded that most standard-model academic institutions are far worse than mediocre? Most institutions fail of their purpose entirely - - teaching nothing, learning nothing, publishing ever increasing mounds of printed blather and never, even remotely, pursuing She who is called "Wisdom". Surely, one could draw much greater fulfillment out of doing something practical extraordinarily well? I always thought this when I was young, (sarcastically, you think, "When you were young? Pray tell, what are you now? OLD?" . . . okay, by young I mean "When I was seventeen.") bravely defending my theory that even the humblest farmer should be a philosopher. I was never disproven on this point, just distracted from it, and I still find it necessary to hold that every man, of every employ, should philsophize - not merely because he wants to further the progress of some academic field (whatever that means), but simply because it is the perfection of his human rationality to contemplate higher things.

I have observed in the past that my husband can really enjoy everyday work. Practical labor doesn't bore him at all, surprisingly enough, for all of his intellectual talent. However, there is no debating the fact that he is uncommonly gifted - his powers encompass a beautiful balance of the best virtues I ever observed in my classmates. He has similar powers of retention to those of Dr. Phil, as well as a similar depth, or penetration, to that of the fittingly-named wise man. Moreover, he possesses a quiet, soothing logic similar to Anna's (that is, if you are docile enough to be guided - his patience falls short of the saintly lady to whom I refer, but whose doesn't?). In some ways, it chafes me that these talents may go unheeded by the world, but then again that's very vain of me. My husband is not ambitious, although lately I've been forced to admit that maybe I am, and in that realization I must admit that I really am a very silly girl, indeed.

Terence, the Assitant Director of the library where I am currently employed, sympathizes with my husband's disappointments entirely. Terence has been a very interesting co-worker to associate with. He is uncommonly well-educated, having several degrees in mathematics, classics and medieval studies from some well-respected institutions in Canada (the University of Toronto and PIMS, to be specific) during their "golden ages" - i.e., a good long while ago. He likewise asserts that sharing and pursuing wisdom on an everyday level will likely be a million times more effective than attempting to do so in academia, where flattery and pointless publishing are sure to devour most of your time and energy, forever removing you from true leisure, which is a necessary prerequisite for real philosophy. "We work so that we may not-be-at-work" is a long-forgotten concept in Kantian academia, where even the intellectual life is thought of as a fever of dutiful and difficult productivity.

So, in short, I am reconciling myself to the changes that are most certainly coming, and coming soon. There is no doubt that they are the will of God.

Quiche

So, I've been less motivated to cook and clean lately. Not really sure why, but it's indeniable - I just don't want to do it.

I'm not sure what the solution is to the cleaning problem, but as for the cooking problem, I decided that it might be a good idea for me to take some photos of my meals so I can show them off here. :) I'll include recipes with them, too, so that you can make them yourself.

(Proviso: I am not an experienced cook, but I have gathered that I'm, nevertheless, more experienced than some, if only by exposure to food that tasted really good in my youth. Hope this is useful for someone.)



Quiche is a little time consuming in the beginning, but all the steps are incredibly easy. Moreover, it tastes wonderful, and it's the only egg-dominant meal I know of which still tastes great as a leftover (in fact, you don't even need to bother warming it up, because it's great cold - - unless eating cold food gives you the heebie-jeebies, that is. I know some people who are like that.)

First, here's my grandmother's pie-dough recipe (which I'd thought was my father's recipe, as he was primarily the one who make it). NOTA BENE: Measure everything very carefully - - this is one of those recipes where the ratios have to be just right or weird things happen.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup shortening

- - - cut shortening into flour with pastry cutter or knives used scissor-fashion (you know the drill), until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Beat 1 egg in bowl
Add 1 T. vinegar
then add 5 T. water

- - - add liquid mixture to the flour mixture. I recommend digging in with your hands instead of attempting to use a spatula - it mixes it better, faster.

Roll out the pie-dough on a VERY well-floured surface (I prefer to use a pastry cloth) until it's as thin as your tastes prefer. Roll the pie-dough up around the rolling pin carefully (I prefer to lift up the edges of my pastry cloth to support the dough and keep it from tearing) - - as if the rolling pin were a spool and the pie-dough a cloth. Then roll it back out over your pie or tart pan.
I've found this to be the most reliable way to keep anything from tearing. My mother-in-law taught me how to do it, and says she learned it from a Sissy Spacek movie. *shrug* Go figure - movies CAN teach you useful things.

This recipe makes enough pie dough for 2-3 quiches. Pie dough saves well - just put it in a ziplock and throw it in the fridge. Allow the leftovers to "thaw" a bit before trying to roll them out.

Now for the filling:

4 eggs
1 cup milk (evaporated milk or light cream works even better)
spices

- beat well -

Now, those are the only essential components of the filling. What else goes in is entirely up to your discretion, and often you can just grab whatever leftover bits of meat and veggie you have in your fridge, using spices that fit them.

Now, first, bake your pie-crust at 475 for 5 minutes (this helps make it flakey), then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and add your ingredients:

For the Quiche pictured above I added the following:

generous sprinkling of garlic powder (using the sniff-test to determine whether it was sufficiently garlic-ed) - - added into the egg/milk mixture, of course

three slices of hickory-smoked ham, diced
about 1/8 of a green pepper, diced
1 roma tomato, diced
a palm-full of mushrooms, diced
a generous amount of asagio, parmesan and romano cheese

- - - You sprinkle the latter group of incredients into your hot pie-shell and then pour your milk/eggs/spices mixture over the top.

It should bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, give or take, depending on your oven. The quiche will stop "jiggling" and a knife inserted into the center will come out clean when done.

Other ingredients I have used:
baked turkey
ground mustard
bacon
swiss cheese
red peppers
onion/onion flakes
spinach
feta cheese
chicken breast

P.S. - obviously, from the picture, I like serving this with white wine. This is highly recommended. ;)

A Division of Strengths

I've noticed that, when students are giving an account for why they/prefer like some professor/tutor, they are likely to give certain kinds of answers. Thinking about why this was, I came to the following division, and I think it's rather exhaustive:

A professor/tutor can be preferred according to

I. An excellence with regard to the object of his science (matter)
-and/or-
II. An excellence with regard to the method of his science (form)

With regard to the first, a perfection may be perceived according to

A. The depth/dignity of the concepts grasped and taught
-and/or-
B. The variety of concepts/points of view presented on some subject

With regard to the second division, a perfection may be perceived according to

A. Will - - often includes the use of difficulty and/or fear of humiliation to motivate students.
B. Intellect - - maintainance of good order in discussions, a logical progression of ideas suggested, encouraged, expended and demonstrated
C. Passion - - deep enthusiasm or love for the subject presented

It seems to me that having a balance of all these strengths makes for the highest level of pedagogical perfection, while an overemphasis on some one strength can render a professor unsuccessful, highly disliked, or both. Some of these are very obvious - who didn't have that one teacher who was all enthusiasm, no brain? Who didn't fret over the high demands of some course, or tolerate the bragging of a classmate who demonstrated greater proficiency in some area of study, due to the fact that their professor was the academic equivalent of a drill sargeant? Admittedly, there are some strengths which are less likely to result in such a dilemma, such as option II-B -- however, without enthusiasm and good humor, even the most logical of classes can be too dry an environment for intellectual growth - moreover, without honourable material (I-A), logical order tends to lose it's charm, i.e., a masterfully logical class on the anatomic structure of the small intestine would generally lack the ability to enthrall most people.

Does this seem fair to you, oh tiny little group of readers?

morning funny . . .

"Honey, I'm going to work now. You should probably get up or you won't be around in time to meet me for mass."

Husband groans, turns over.

"Not feeling rested, huh?" I ask.

"I dreamed that I was reading War and Peace again. I read 600 pages last night, so now I'm worn out. I need more sleep."

. . .