Something to think about

This isn’t FA or HAES, but it’s something to think about.  I recieved it in my email this morning, fact-checked it through Snopes.com, and thought I’d pass it on.

 

Joshua Bell, world reknown violin virtuoso

 

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
 
4 minutes later:
The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk…
 
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again…
 
10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed.. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

 
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in  Boston  where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by theWashington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people ‘ s priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
 
 One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:  If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made … How many other things are we missing?

As promised — Lemon Curd Recipe

I do apologize for not knowing anything other than US measurements for baking and cooking.

3 large lemons (or 6 small ones)
1 cup sugar
4 eggs + 1 extra egg yolk
10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (and yes, it does have to be real butter, margarine doesn’t work)
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Zest one whole lemon.  Juice all the lemons and add the juice, the zest, and sugar in a non-reactive pan.  Stir until all is combined, and then heat until the sugar is no longer granular (not quite at boiling).  Take off heat and let cool.  Meanwhile, whisk all the eggs and extra egg yolk together, along with the cream until well beaten.   Cut the butter into smallish cubes.  Once the lemon mixture is not so hot (but still warm) add a small bit to the egg mixture to temper the eggs.  Add the tempered eggs into the pan, along with the butter.  Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until the butter is all melted and the curd thickens up.

Take off heat and put the curd through a strainer to strain out all the solids (stray seeds, the zest, etc).  Store in the refrigerator for a week.  Or, you can freeze it for up to 3 months.

This produces about a pint of lemon curd.  It’s a bit on the tart side, so if you like sweeter, add a bit more sugar.

This can be served with pound cake, as a filling for a layer cake, as a dipping sauce for shortbread cookies, in mini pie shells as tartlets, as filling for thumbprint cookies …  If you think of other things to serve it with, let me know!  I’ve heard of putting it into plain yogurt, but I’ve never had enough Lemon Curd left over to try it in my morning yogurt!  One of these days…

Oh, this recipe can be doubled, but to try and make more than one double recipe at a time will result in burning, no matter how careful you are.  At least, it always has for me.

It’s really not about health

I’ve been seeing a few things lately on gastric banding.  Namely, a couple good posts over at Fat Lot of Good.  Specifically, these two posts. 

I personally know two people right now who’ve undergone gastric banding.  One person is my husband’s cousin, the other is a friend from the SCA.  Both people are great people, both were morbidly obese.  One (my SCA friend) was in the “OMG You’re going to die RIGHT NOW you fatty fat fat person!” range.

Both have had the surgery.  Conall’s cousin had hers over a year ago, while my SCA friend just had his recently.

Yanno what?  The banding hasn’t worked for the cousin.  Yes, she lost a couple of pounds, but really, not enough to make any difference.  She’s still a “fatty fat fat” person.  She’s been in and had the band adjusted a few times (the first time the doctor did his best to make it the worst situation ever, she came back from there saying “It hurt so bad I’m never going back!”)  And she’s maybe lost 25 or 30 pounds.  Ever.  In over a year. 

She has side effects from the procedure.  She can’t eat “too fast” or she’ll have “productive burping” (and isn’t that a nice way to say vomiting).  If she eats something too rich (like my cheesecake on holidays, even two bites) she immediately has intense pain.  I’ve seen this happen.  She always has to be near a bathroom.  And she still has to take 20 bajillion vitamins a day so she doesn’t become malnourished.

My friend just had the surgery done this summer.  He’s still in the honeymoon period.  He’s finding out what he can and can’t eat, and how certain foods no longer like him.  Besides being told by his doctors that this (the gastric banding) was the only way to SAVE HIS LIFE, he buys into the whole “if I’m skinny, I’ll be happier” myth.  The problem is, if you are a depressed person while fat, you aren’t going to not be depressed just because you are skinny.   Yeah, I know, amazing concept there.

I have another friend, who has diabetes.  Due to circumstances (no money for meds, no insurance, no money for doctors) she was working hard at controlling her blood sugars by diet alone for a very long time.  She weighed in at the ‘overweight’ category but she was (and is still) fine with her body and whatever weight it is.  Her circumstances have changed, and she can now receive the medical attention she so desperately needed for so long.

She’s had some problems with the medications.  I won’t go into all of them, because it’s not my story to tell, but one of the problems is that her medications have caused her to gain weight.  Let me say this again:  Her medications have caused her to gain weight.

So, when she’s having other problems with the medications what does the endocrinologist suggest?  Finding a medication that doesn’t cause the problems the first one is?  No, he suggests gastric banding.  He tells her it could “cure her diabetes”.  You know, for the woman who had diabetes for years that she was (only semi-successfully) controlling via diet because she couldn’t afford a doctor.  For a woman who only gained the weight to be a super fatty fat fat woman AFTER being put on said medicines to help her diabetes.

Now, how exactly is causing her to starve going to cure her diabetes that developed when she was thinner and working at doing everything she could to control her diabetes via diet when she couldn’t afford doctors?

See, it really isn’t about health.  If it was, then the doctor would have listened when my friend said she was satisfied with her body, explained everything surrounding her weight gain (of which I believe this doctor at least saw some evidence of since she’d been going to see him) and found a real solution to her problem.

But, you know, we’re fat.  So it’s okay to threaten us, to frighten the living daylights out of us, and to entice us by saying being medically starved will cure diabetes.  Yanno, that last just might be true after all.  I mean, if you die of starvation, you don’t have diabetes anymore, right?

The punchline is priceless

Hi, y’all.  Remember me?  I know, it’s been a while.

First I was busy, insanely busy, then when that finally ended, I took a small break.  But I’m back now.  Did you miss me?

I’m still busy (just not as insanely busy as before) and am about to leave the house (again), but I saw this online this morning.  I love the Cathy comic.  Always have.  Sometimes I become upset at her for what she’s doing.  Yes, I know, a cartoon character, but that shows how well the creator has done her job.

Anyway, today’s comic is awesome.

Cathy, by Cathy Guisewite, copywrite 2009

Blog Interrupted

I’ve been extremely busy in the past couple of weeks, trying to get a million and one things done. 

I’ve contacted a marketing agency to see about how to get more sales from my Etsy store.  Okay, how to get ANY sales from my Etsy store.  One of the things my agent has told me to do (a goal) is to have 100 individual items up by the beginning of next month.  For people who’ve just gone there now and looked, that’s 85 extra items. 

So, I’ve been busily making jewelry.

On top of all this, I was also insane enough ambitious enough to enter into my local SCA group’s A&S competition.  So, I’ve been making my entries, planning displays, doing research on things like paternosters (the prayer beads, not the prayers), and writing term papers documentation for all my entries.

Oh yeah, and I offered to make desert for that event as well (which which is expected to have an increase of attendance due to a super spiffy award that will be given out during the event.  So, I went from making lemon curd for about 80 people to making double the amount.)  Luckily, I can make lemon curd in my sleep, just about.  (No, it’s not exactly a period recipe, but I had found a period recipe for “orange pudding” that I adapted to make into lemon curd … What?  Yes, I really do geek out on things like this.)

As well as doing all my normal activities like taking care of MiL and all of her appointments, taking care of the house, cooking daily, etc etc etc.  Oh yeah, and having another computer failure. 

I missed my “blogiversary” due to the computer failure, which was last week on the 10th.  I’ve missed a lot of things going on in the fat-o-sphere, and writing about them all.

But today, I was signed onto LiveJournal for a bit, making sure my friends were still alive.  LiveJournal has a feature it calls Writer’s Block.  They post a question every day, and people can answer it or not as they wish.

Today’s question:  If a magic genie told you your calories wouldn’t count for 24 hours, would it change what and how much you ate that day? 

There is so much here to respond to, it would take a book to do so.

And, since I still have to make more jewelry, work on the lace (which won’t be finished by next week, but is being entered as a work in progress), make the paternoster and write up the documentation (now that I have enough research done), I don’t have time to write that book.

So, I’ll leave this question to you, dear readers.  Pick this question apart as much as you like, write dissertations on how this whole premise is wrong, do whatever you want.

I will be back, hopefully soon.   I only have 30 more items to make for the website, and then take pictures of them all.  Whoever knew that a jewelry artist would have to learn how to take pictures?  I mean… that’s not my medium!

I Am Not Afraid

Note:  This is not going to be one of the normal FA posts.  I had one all written out, which will post on Wednesday.

This may be triggering, has to do with rape, so it’s behind the cut.

Peach Census

In five days, I made:

• 26 jars of peach marmalade
• 11 jars of peach syrup
• 4 jars of peach “butter” (made with the solids left over from the syrup)
• one batch peach cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (my first buttercream type YAY!)
• 4 bags of pie filling, frozen
• 3 bags chopped peaches to go in my morning yogurt

I still have enough peaches for a pie and possibly an experiment with cheesecake.    As well as us eating peaches all week.

Yup, that’s what 54 pounds of peaches will get you.

I should be blogging regularly again starting Monday.

Home made bread

I have 4 loaves of bread cooling on the counter.

Three are plain white. One has cinnamon added. All will be teh yum!

It’s really an accomplishment for me to make bread completely from scratch. Back when I was married to the ex- (15 years ago), I tried making bread. It would raise beautifully the first time, but once in the pans, it wouldn’t go anywhere. The outcome, of course, was a flatish brick of cooked dough, but not anything I’d ever call bread.

Birth mother had gone through a phase when I was still living with her, when I was about ten I’d guess, where she would make bread every month. She’d make enough that we’d have bread for the whole month, freezing the loaves we wouldn’t eat right away.

I remembered watching her make it, and it didn’t seem like it was all that hard. Mix everything together, knead it for a while, put it in a greased bowl in the oven to raise. Once the dough raised double, take it out of the bowl, punch it down, put it into greased bread pans, and then put it back in the oven to raise again. (Or, if the oven was already being used baking another batch of bread, put it on the back of the oven to raise again.)

Did I mention that our oven at birth mother’s house was gas? The kind with the pilot light on all the time? Did I mention the oven I was using when I tried making bread 15 years ago was electric?

Yeah, there’s the difference. The pilot for the gas oven kept the oven at a slightly warmed temperature. Perfect for causing the yeast to grow. The cold electric oven never did that.

I made at least 20 loaves of bread before I finally gave up as it being a lost cause. And of course, the ex- used that against me — I was so useless, I couldn’t even make bread right! (But he never tried it himself.)

I felt a total failure. I *was* a total failure in my mind.

I eventually received a bread machine for a birthday gift a while back. I used it all the time, but it didn’t redeem my failure at making bread. After all, in a bread machine, all you have to do is put the ingredients into the machine in the correct order and turn it on. The machine did all the hard work (mixing, kneading, keeping it at the correct temperature) for you.

While I had the bread machine, I did a lot of research into bread making, and knew the theory of why I had hard, dense loaves of baked dough all those years ago. I still wasn’t willing to try to make bread from scratch. I knew when I failed (not if I failed, but when) it would just re-enforce how I was a failure. You know, can’t even make bread right.

When MiL bought the new oven, I saw it had a proof setting and thought it was time to get over my fear of failure with the bread. I no longer have the bread machine, so if I want fresh, home made bread, I will just have to do it the hard way. Still, it took 6 months before I worked up the courage to try.

Two weeks ago, I made my first ever batch of home made bread. It turned out wonderfully. It rose well, had a great density, wonderful grain, and tasted awesome! The only problem was that according to the recipe, it was only supposed to make two loaves, but it really should have made four loaves. So I had a couple misshapen loaves from when they over rose the bread pans.

Today, I made another batch. This time I used four bread pans, and I have beautiful looking bread loaf sized loaves of bread. They’ve just come out of the oven, so I can’t cut into them yet to see how the inside is, but I’m sure they are as good as the last batch is.

Even though I’m getting better, the old thoughts, the brain washing my parents and ex- did sometimes still creeps in. But I like that I can now add “bread baking” to my list of skills. I like even more knowing how far my self esteem has developed in order for me to even attempt it two weeks ago. At the time, I went ahead and did it, even though I wondered if I would fail again. I was willing to risk having to deal with the voices coming back if (when, the voices were saying) the loaves turned into flat loaves of baked dough.

Pushing myself can have good consequences, I’m finding. In this instance, delicious consequences. Later, once the bread has cooled enough, I’m going to cut myself a slice and spread some butter and honey on it. Yum

And now for some breaking news!

The CDC has just released their statistics from 2007, and have proven once again, that fat is indeed an epidemic that is going to kill us all!

 

Data in this report are based on death records comprising approximately 91 percent of the demographic file and 87 percent of the medical file for all deaths in the United States in 2007.

 

The age-adjusted death rate for the United States decreased from 776.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2006 to 760.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2007. Age-adjusted death rates in 2007 decreased significantly from 2006 for 8 of the 15 leading causes of death: Diseases of heart, Malignant neoplasms, Cerebrovascular diseases, Accidents (unintentional injuries), Diabetes mellitus, Influenza and pneumonia, Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease, and Assault (homicide).

Life expectancy at birth rose by 0.2 years to 77.9 years.

 

 

 

Statistically significant decreases in mortality in 2007 from 2006 were registered across all age groups except under 1 year, 1–4 years, and 5–14 years. The magnitude of the decreases in mortality (which are significant unless specified otherwise) by age group is (Table 1):

1. Under 1 year (0.6 percent, not significant)
2. 15–24 years (2.4 percent)
3. 25–34 years (1.4 percent)
4. 35–44 years (3.1 percent)
5. 45–54 years (1.8 percent)
6. 55–64 years (1.7 percent)
7. 65–74 years (2.7 percent)
8. 75–84 years (1.9 percent)
9. 85 years and over (2.1 percent)

All quotes from:  http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr58/nvsr58_01.pdf

 

 

 

 

Wait.  What?  In almost all age groups instances of death have decreased?  The quote above is raw data JUST stating deaths.  Not breaking it down for specific diseases, just a decrease in all instances of death in those age groups.  And the quote higher up states that incidents of death have been reduce for diseases such as “diseases of the heart, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes mellitus”.  Oh, yeah, so called fat-related diseases.

But, if what we’re being told is true, and we are in an epidemic of moribid obesity, and it’s going to kill us all, how does anybody explain the fact that instances in death in all age groups are going down, and that incidents of death by so called fat related diseases are going down?

Really, if there was that much an “epidemic” of obesity, and it were that bad for everybody, then the rates of death would be increasing, especially in heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.

And what was that other thing?  The average life expectancy at birth has risen (again) to 77.9 years (which is the second year in a row of having a record life expectancy).  How can this be, when we are being told over and over that our children will be the first generation of kids to not outlive their parents?

Seems somebody’s lying.  I don’t suppose the hard data would lie.  Do you?

Thanks to Sandy at Junkfood Science for initially posting this!

Just a quick post…

To say I might not be posting much in the next week or two.

The peaches are coming in this weekend.  Three 18 pound boxes of them.  So far, I only have two batches of marmalade, a few pies, and a batch of peach cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting.  But it’s only Tuesday, and the peaches won’t be here until Saturday.

Who knows how many different ways I’ll be able to process these peaches.

Three 18 pound boxes.  Was I crazy when I ordered them?  Wait, don’t answer that question, I know I was crazy. 

But … Fresh peaches!  Yum!