The Long Road Back Pt 5: I’ll suck wind big time on Wednesday

Already I know this: I’ll be off my game (hockey) on Wednesday.

My skating will be rough, my shot will be worse. So, my goal will be to pass the puck quickly whenever it’s on my stick and make the opposing team of fifty-year-old (plus) players think I’m an astute playmaker. Or astute something-or-other. I’ll settle for astute anything.

I was a slug for two weeks. Didn't get close to 100 points/week.


["Yipes. The cushion is disappearing": photos GH]

Two weeks ago I was in Fenelon Falls, slacked off the fun and fitness routine a bit and dropped 29 bonus points. Sure, I collect bonus points so that I can drop them on occasion but I love a big cushion. I feel my loss.

The following week was worse. My wife and I visited Ottawa and once home I completed only 1 walk, 1 run and 1 ride and lost another 53 bonus points.


["Time to ride but no time to run? What's with that?"]

This past week I hit the bike hard. 134.5 mi. Got some points back. But completed zero runs, missed hockey again and will suffer on Wednesday.


["My motto - pass, pass, pass. I should have passed on the pie!"]

Plus, I’ll be carrying 14 pounds of turkey, stuffing, gravy, multiple side dishes and a rich dessert. Ok, maybe 2 desserts.

It is a long road back but - hopefully - I’ll have a bigger cushion and at least two runs by the end of the week.

Because this is Thanksgiving Monday and there’s still turkey in the house I’m pretty sure I’ll have a bigger something by week’s end.

***

How many calories in a drumstick? In a cup of gravy? In two slices of peach crumble pie?

Q: Do I really want to know?

Q: Was Rome built in a day?

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Series of Some Significance: KFC’s Double Down Sandwich

After reading a bit of my commentary re KFC’s new sandwich in the USA, a reader double-checked on Google because he thought the Double Down was a hoax.

(Hey, it's not Hallowe’en yet).

Though it’s a stupid sandwich, and getting too much positive press State’s side, I added the 4-part series to Series of Some Significance (see side margin) because - in my opinion at least - the salt and fat bomb is linked to another current news item here in Canada.


["No hoax. The DD is a fat and salt bomb"]

I.e., the rising cost of health care.

And the cost of health care is linked to another of my pet concerns.

I.e., the growing national debt.

As well, one day soon perhaps (in time for high school graduation?), the DD may come to Canada and I wanted my fellow citizens to be warned.

We are what we eat and are poorer and unhealthier for it.

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Dear Ann Landers: Lunch out is not an ‘in’ thing

Dear Ann Landers,

My wife just called from my son’s house (she’s babysitting our grandson) and invited me out for lunch with Ollie and her mother.

Now, I don’t like restaurant meals all that much because of the cost and high calories. I’d rather putter around the kitchen and eat leftovers.

Plus, we went out for lunch together during our last Sunday drive and we’re going out for a big family supper tomorrow night.

Am I turning into an old scrooge? What should I do?

Signed: Perplexed

***

Dear Perplexed,

I hear your pain - but don’t feel it.

Go on, get out of the house. Order a salad.

Say ‘Hi’ to your lovely wife, Ollie and Betty for me.

Ann Landers

***

GAH: "I’m outta here. Maybe my wife will pay."

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Grocery Store Blues: The daily dance with salt and sugar continues

At lunchtime yesterday I poked my head into the fridge to see if anything would speak to me.

(“Hey, I’m that leftover soup from 6 days ago. Wanna live on the edge?”)

I noticed a bit of spaghetti sauce. Two days old.

Pasta it is, I said to myself.

I was starving so I bumped up the amount of sauce by adding more sauce, plus mushrooms, green pepper and onion.

I know there is sugar in Hunts Thick and Rich sauce (7 grams of glucose-fructose and/or refined sugar per 125 ml or 38 g per can), too much for my taste, so I like adding veggies to lower the ratio.

Once the pot of sauce was on the burner I grabbed PC spaghettini from a side cupboard.

I wondered if the directions still included one about adding salt to the water even though most Canadians know there is too much salt (and sugar) in just about everything we eat.


[Did you know? Windsor Salt now adds sugar to their boxes of salt. Sweet!]

Instruction 1 read (in part):

“Bring water to a boil. Add 15 ml of coarse salt.”

I said, fugettabouttit.

There’s way more than enough salt (and sugar) just in the sauce.

Way way more.

**

Is the salt shaker still on your kitchen counter or table? Does it need to be?

Do you like sugar in your salt?

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Live Small and Prosper: The latest reason for practicing restraint out-shadows all others

I said in my most recent column that a quick look at the four main reasons grain prices are on the rise will reveal that our personal fingerprints are all over them.

One reason, greater meat consumption globally, is directly related to the beef, chicken and pork found in our refrigerators and freezers and since summer is approaching and big BBQs sit on 99.99999% of the back decks in North America I thought it would be a good time for us to start showing some restraint in our eating habits.


[Over-consumption is like planting a tree in concrete - GH]

There are many good reasons:

The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people - more than the entire population of the planet. [The Virtuous Consumer by Leslie Garrett]

Eighty per cent of agricultural land in the US is used to raise animals for food. [Ibid]

Less meat on the plate equals more crops for people and/or more land for Mother Nature. [Me]

A vegetarian diet is credited for providing a longer life with reduced risk of such diseases as diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and some cancers. [The Virtuous Consumer - link to Leslie's personal website]

The animals live longer too and their numbers would decrease to more natural levels. [Me]

There is an even better reason to eat less meat.

It takes less effort than leaving the car at home to conserve fuel (our insatiable thirst for fossil fuels is another reason grain prices are on the rise) and we need an easy way to practice restraint over and over and over again until we get really really good at it so we’ll be ready for the hard hard times when they come.

I mean, if we can give up cheeseburgers we can certainly take public transit.

If we can say no to a tenderloin we can, with new internal fortitude, walk to the variety store for smokes and a bag of chips.

If we can eat fewer chicken wings and more beans and brussel sprouts - my gosh, hold onto your hats - we’ll find the strength to trade in the monster pickup for an electric scooter. Yowwzzah.

Practice does make perfect.

[Did you know that climate change will lead to fashion faupas? It surely will. Visit Four Mugs]

Reading Books, Riding Bikes: Buried in Killing Power and Cheap Food

I read while riding a recumbent bike in the basement and though I’d like to say I’m learning and staying lean at the same time I’d only be half right.

Cycling makes me hungry and soon after I dump sweaty clothes in front of the washing machine I open the door of the fridge and look for replacement fluids, especially in the shape of a can of Guinness.

The following is from The Little Green Handbook (TLGH), one of two or three books I dip into several times per week:

“Between 1989 and 1993 about 100 million pistols, revolvers and rifles were sold through US-approved commercial channels to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru.”


After several mathematical calculations I learned that, if annual sales remained the same, another 350 million light weapons would have been sold since then - by the US alone. Many other countries sell vast numbers of weapons, of all kinds.

TLGH is a book that outlines seven trends shaping the future of our planet and ‘Conflicts and Increasing Killing Power’ is one of those trends. What a blast.

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma I read of another disturbing trend:

“Of course the problems of our food system are very different - if anything, it produces too much food, not too little, or too much of the wrong food.” pg. 257, Michael Pollan

Why so many bullets and burgers?

When time allows, link to the two books; see “Recommended reading”, side panel.]

[On the lighter side, also see Cartoon in Progress at Four Mugs and a Crock]

Book Review: Like to Eat? The Omnivore’s Dilemma a ‘must read’

I’m reading three books at the same time, four if I count the one I peek at during TV commercials that concerns Bob Dylan’s big song, Like a Rolling Stone, and though The Little Green Handbook by R. Neilsen is loaded with amazing facts, figures and charts [U.S. military budget is 42 % of gov’t spending and rising, education is less than 7%] I spend most of my time with my nose in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

I’m on page 219, slightly over halfway through the very readable text, and getting an alarming and long-overdue education about our continent’s over-reliance on corn and industrial-sized, fossil-fuel-driven farming practices that debase humans, animals and our ecological surroundings. [And it’s true. If factory farms had glass walls many of us would never eat beef, pork or chicken again.]

But I’m also learning about how farming can be a very innovative, rewarding and environmentally friendly vocation or life.


For example, author Michael Pollan spends time on a family farm that cultivates grasses, mainly dependent on free sunlight, that in turn support the healthy growth of a wide variety of animals and by-products.

Chickens team up with cows to manage the grass and replenish the soil, chickens and rabbits team up to provide a unique cash crop, turkeys keep grape vines in tip-top shape, pigs turn cow patties and grass into free, rich compost, and together with a farmer who knows more about plants and animals than 20 factory farmers put together forms an enterprise that rewards the land rather than kills it.

Read the following quote and tell me where the author was at the time - a factory farm or grass farm.

“Unfolding here before us, I realized, was a most impressive form of alchemy: cow patties in the process of being transformed into exceptionally tasty eggs.”

I recommend the book highly to anyone who wants to eat healthy food and leave the air, water and land in good condition for future generations.

[Check Recommended Reading in the right hand panel for a link to an even better book review and go to Motorcycle Miles to read a bit about my next adventure.]

London Food Bank Challenge Part 3: Answering questions about my food choices

I am taking the London Food Bank Challenge this week, am eating meals from food items purchased for $30, had to drop St. Pat’s Day celebrations from my calendar (who can afford 3 pints of Guinness on a $30 budget?) and just finished lunch made with my own two hands.

The Food Bank wants to know how I’m doing, so here are a few words:

I think I can live on 30 bucks for 7 days and wait until 5 p.m. this coming Sunday for Guinness.

Preparing breakfasts for the duration was simple and cheap. I routinely eat a ton of oatmeal each winter and an eight-day batch, containing rolled oats supplemented with 1 or 2 teaspoons each of flaxseed, raisins, dried cranberries, bran, cornmeal, millet (birdseed), quinoa, and bulgar, totalled $1.25 or about 16 cents per day. Add a slice of toast and jam and I’m under 50 cents per day for a healthy start to the day.

Purists will take me to task about my oatmeal recipe (“What’s with the birdseed? It ain’t real oatmeal?”), I might be stepping outside the rules each morning by using my stash of free coffee cards from The Little Red Roaster (Guinness I can put on hold, but caffeine waits for no man) and my reputation for Spartan-like self-reliance may have been tarnished when I happily accepted a gift of chocolate chip cookies from a neighbour.


Pancake lunches and a huge homemade mac and cheese casserole keep costs under 50 and 75 cents per meal respectively.

Though I don’t look too manly in a frilly apron I’m finding my way around the kitchen without problem.

My wife even eyed my casserole enviously when I pulled it from the oven yesterday. I may be asked to create it again.

Conclusion: Meals can be cheap but I’m not eating a balanced diet so far. How do low-income families manage that important task?