Friday Photo - 10/12/17

The highlight of this week was meeting Col. Paul Lockhart, a NASA astronaut who has spent 26 days in space.  Hearing his first hand account was absolutely riveting.  B's AHG group has been working towards their Space Exploration badge.  Due to our wonderful leader who scheduled all this, we've had 4 astrophysicists or space engineers come talk to the girls.  Two were women (one was six month pregnant) who both addressed issues of pursuing this field of work as a woman.  The other two were men, one of whom was an African American who grew up in abject poverty in Mississippi.  He wound up getting a PhD in astrophysics from Stanford University.  His story was amazing!  And then we had another retired man who first worked for NASA on satellite technology and then later in the private sector.  All these talks were great, but the best one was getting to meet and hear from an actual astronaut!

Tuesday Topics - 5/9/17

I love this thoughtful article on gnosticism and modern alienation from nature.

I am a member of the American Solidarity Party.  There are many things I like about it.  One thing that makes me uneasy though is that some people really like some out there ideas about the economy and how to fix things.    Every once in a while someone raises the idea of how wonderful a Universal Basic Income would be.  I just thought it sounded too pie-in-the-sky to me.  First of all, I think it simply can't happen financially without us going into debt even more than we are already.  And then, here's an article by Damon Linker about why it just isn't tenable.

Oh man.  I should have saved another article on Georgism vs. Distributism.  Georgism freaks me out because it is premised on the fact that no one owns land but it should be 'held in community.'  However, I don't understand how to hold land in community without it being de facto held by the government, which to me sounds too much like communism and the state owning the means of production, which is basically land!  I love that people in the ASP are thinking about all this stuff.  And I love that they are looking at radical ways to solve the problem of poverty, but I do think they can get a little out there and be more ideological than actually practical.

Aside from this, the discussion on the registered members facebook page is the most intellectual and civilized place on facebook.  These are my people!  The care, they think, they refuse to be led by the nose.  They are active in trying to lead good, moral lives in the community.  It is a vibrant and hopeful place.  Check it out!  Your hope in humankind will be redeemed!  Of course, you have to be a registered member.  There is an unofficial facebook page.  But if you like what you see, you can decide to become a registered member (which I think means officially joining the party.)

Monday Meals - Low Sodium

When they sent Rick home from the hospital the doctor said he should go on a low sodium diet.  I kind of latched on to this as one thing I could do to help protect him from having another stroke.  So I've hurled myself into figuring out how to do this.

I keep reading different things about what constitutes a low sodium diet.  They say the average American has over 3000 mg of sodium which is not healthy.  2,300 mg is at upper limit of what is considered healthy.  People with high blood pressure shouldn't have more than 1, 500 mg.

This is what I've discovered so far:  processed foods have tons of sodium.  Making things at home really reduces the sodium level.

Bread has lots of sodium.  I decided I'd ignore grocery store bread (I've been avoiding it anyway because I don't want the plastic wrapper) and I went to the local bakery website.  But alas even their wholesome, freshly milled flour, baked locally bread is high in sodium.  I resorted to buying Ezekial bread from Whole Foods.

Cheese has lots of sodium.

Adding stuff like ketchup, etc to your food, ups the sodium

Since I have been making stuff at home a lot already, we've been avoiding processed food. Except the thing is Rick mostly eats out.  Before he leaves for work sometimes he just has a banana because he's running out the door.  Other times he'll eat some scrabbled eggs.  I usually don't salt them.  And if he does salt them, it is just a shake or two from the salt shaker.  Or sometimes he'll have a bagel or toast.   Then he;s gone all day and he usually eats a big lunch out late in the afternoon.  He gets burgers from BGR or kabobs from House of Moby Dick.  I know those are some of his regulars.  He loves the potato soup at Potbelly's which I am sure is swimming in sodium.  So he's really going to have to change his lunch ways.

I discovered after reading lots of recipes that for home cooked stuff, recipes tend to substitute fruit to give something flavoring.  Or you just up the other flavorings like onions and garlic.  I do think lots of onions and garlic really help with the no salt.

Saturday night I made a dish with pork chops.  I never cook with pork at all.  But these were on sale and I thought, hey pork and apples go together.  And I happened to have a jar of apple butter sitting in my pantry.  So I looked at various recipes and came up with my own concoction of browning pork chops in olive oil and garlic, then cooking in a jar of apple butter, lots of chopped white onion and a little water.  It came out delicious but I cooked away too much of the sauce, so next time, I'll be careful about that.  It was a bit dry.

I kept track of sodium on Sunday:

Breakfast
Parfait - homemade yogurt-105 mg a cup ,but he had less than a cup with strawberries and mango and couple of unsalted cashews.

French toast made with two slices of cinnamon raisin bread (Ezekial which is lower in sodium than most brands) soaked in a mixture of egg, a splash of milk, vanilla, cinnamon and a little sugar.  Cooked in no salt butter.  65mg per slice.

So far:  235 mg give or take.

Usually on Sundays we have a late big breakfast and then an early supper.  So we really don't do lunch on Sundays.

Dinner:
He had two quick fry hamburgers - no salt added, just ground beef and lots of tiny diced bits of onion.  That's about 150 mg total.  He had to forgo the bun and the cheese.  We just gave him a big salad of romaine, cucumbers, carrots and red pepper.  I also made my own version of guacamole which came out delicious:  2 ripe avocado, 1 large finely chopped tomato, a couple of heaping tablespoons of finely chopped onion, a good sprinkling of cumin and a about 1 teaspoon and 1/2 of lemon juice (I was just eyeing it).  It turned out tasty!  No salt!  The naturally occurring sodium is barely worth recording.  Rick doesn't even like guacamole, but he tried it and said he liked it.

235 + 150 = 385

We went to mass in the evening after dinner and then out for gelato after church.  The place puts huge scoops on your cone.  Rick even told the girl you don't have to put that much on!   He got a combo of toasted almond and coconut.
toasted almond gelato 65mg a cup.  He had possibly 1/2 cup
coconut gelato 50 mg a cup.  He had maybe 1/2 cup.
cone 84 mg

35 + 25 + 84 = 144 mg

Total for the day:  764 mg of sodium.  Of course this is a rough estimate and I don't even know if I am reading the chart I am using for calculations correctly.  

But even so, I am sure it was much less sodium than he usually takes in on a daily basis.

Today, I am going to make him lunch with no salt tuna, lots of carrot sticks.  Not sure what else I'll be able to give him.

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils - Book 17

I read this on the kindle which combined The Wonderful Adventures with the Further Adventures.

Well, my reading pace slowed considerable due to life happening.  So I just finished this book, I guess my final book, for the Children's Literature Challenge of April (um, it's May 7th already!  How'd that happen???).

Selma Lagerlof looking pretty schoolmarmish.  

This book was so captivating.  I had no real idea of what it was about when I started it.  It was written by Selma Lagerlof of Sweden, the first woman to win the Nobel prize for literature.  She was a school teacher who wrote on the side.  After she became more and more well known, she stopped teaching and began writing full time.  But at some point in her career, when her writing was taking off but she was still teaching, they (not sure who) asked her to write a Geography book.  This book is very much in the same vein as Charlotte Mason and Waldorf type books of the late 19th century/early 20th century, where didactic books were written using imaginative narratives to convey the information.  For instance in Waldorf, they teach math facts using 'gnomes.'  Some popular books that taught science were Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley or The Fairy-Land of Science by Arabella Buckley.  So that's what The Wonderful Adventures of Nils is, a way of teaching Swedish geography to school children.  So you would think the publishers would have thought to at least put a map of Sweden in this book.  But no they didn't!  I found myself googling maps of Sweden so I could get a better understanding of what the author was talking about.  Major oversight there!

Nils is a not very nice young man who gets himself turned into an elf and winds up flying all over Sweden on the back of a white goosey-gander from his farm.  The white goose has always wanted to fly north to Lapland with the wild geese and Nils happens upon him just as he has decided to undertake this journey.

Not only is this book a geography book, it is also a quest for Nils as he learns to care about others and becomes a likable, brave and responsible young man.  It also weaves many folk and fairytales into the epic.  The author even very cleverly injects herself into the book.  And all this is done with great grace so that I never felt like it was heavy handed in any way.  Like real fairy tales (not the cleaned up modern retellings) some dark things happen.  Real things like death, have to be confronted.  We come to love Akka, the wise old leader of the wild geese (who is a female goose).  We meet the evil and cunning fox, Smirre.  We meet the proud but loyal Gorgo, the golden eagle.  We keep catching sight of Osa and Little Mats the other goose keepers that Nils knows in real life.  They are having their own epic journey and we don't find out exactly what is happening to them until the end.

The amazing thing to me was how the author conveyed the sensation of flying.  She must have gone up in a balloon or an early plane.  Honestly, some of descriptions gave me the sensation of flying while I was reading them!  We swoop all over Sweden from forest, to coast line, out to islands along the coast, to cities big and small, over streams and rivers and lakes, castles and tiny hamlets, farms, marshes, mountains and waterfalls.   We see miners and lumberjacks, factories and fishermen.

*Dover published this title but it only includes the first book and not the continuing adventures.  It stops pretty abruptly.  I advise making sure you read both books as the story is much more satisfying.
An excellent story written by an excellent author.  I thoroughly enjoyed traveling with Nils.  Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Photo Friday - May 5, 2017

Well, it's been quite the week.  I'm kind of too tired to go into depth.

To me it was strangely comforting when asking for directions to Rick's hospital room, the reception said, "Turn right at Pope Francis!"

Rick took himself to the ER from his office.  Turns out he'd had a small stroke.  That was on Wednesday.  It's Friday now and we are hoping he'll be released.  It was a scare but he seems to be doing well.  We just need to figure out why this happened.

Tuesday Topic - The Best Way to Get Out of Poverty

I grew up in a labor Democratic family, proud of our union roots.  So it still sticks in my throat when I agree with conservatives.  But honestly, looking at history and the world around us, I think Arthur Brooks is on to something!  My tension remains though, that free trade/capitalism, while being the most efficient at bringing the most people out of poverty and allowing for the most freedom, still encourages a very consumeristic and wasteful culture.  And we must be watchful and wary because it does have a history of slipping into exploitation!  Those are things we need to figure out how to counteract.  Anyway, here is Brooks.  What he says makes sense to me.  And by the way when I began to befriend conservatives, I found that they were not people who hate the poor at all.  They are very compassionate to the poor on a personal level.   So I really appreciate that Brooks clears up that misconception is constantly being lobbed at conservatives (and there are bozo conservatives who feed off that for sure).

Monday Meals - Making My Own Yogurt

I know intrepid women who make their own yogurt.  I, however, have never been one of them.  It seems way too complicated.  I am ashamed to say that I actually bought a plastic yogurt maker on the recommendation of a friend a couple years ago and I have yet to use it.  I might just give it away.

This is the model I have.  It's got a yogurt button!

However, I now have an Instant Pot.  I got it last year at an auction for a pro-life ob/gyn clinic that serves poor women.  A good cause!  I've only used it twice since then.  It is basically an electric pressure cooker and I have a fear of pressure cookers which I am trying to get over.  The first time I used it, soon after I got it, was to make pulled pork.  It turned out well.  The second time I used it, a couple weeks ago, was to make lentils.  And this also turned out well.

The thing about the Instant Pot is it cooks food well and very fast.  So it really seems like a good way to avoid the urge to buy convenience foods (usually involving single use plastic in its packaging).  Instead of buying cans of already cooked lentils, I can buy them in bulk and then cook them up quickly when I need to.  I am trying to avoid cans because they are often lined with plastic.  I am next going to try to cook up some black beans.  I use a lot of black beans in my cooking.

This Instant Pot also has a yogurt making function!  Yogurt is problematic if you are trying to reduce plastic waste.  Everything comes in plastic!  I did take to buying White Mountain yogurt in glass jars, however, it is pricey and the glass I realized is wrapped in shrink wrap!  Wah!  Why'd they do that???  Also, it is Bulgarian style yogurt which is really tart and liquidy.  My kids prefer thicker Greek yogurt.  Apparently, it is easy to make this style in the Instant Pot.

Oh White Mountain, ya done me wrong!

So this week, my big resolve is to make yogurt for the first time.  Wish me luck!  I'm actually nervous.  I will report back on the results.

Here's the recipe I plan to use.