Eat healthy while having fun

I've talked about this in the past but tonight's pizza was just so good that I must share. It was healthy, lots of vegetables, and delicious with bits of hot pepperoni spicing up the presentation. Plus, it was not expensive. Perfect for two seniors on fixed incomes.

Watch the Thursday food flyers. When Dr. Otker pizza is on sale at less than $3.00, buy a few. We used to buy just the four cheese kind but my wife and I have found many of the others from the good doctor also make good bases on which to build great pizzas.

Usually, we add gently fried pepperoni, fried mushrooms, bottled artichokes, a mix of sweet peppers (green, orange and red) and black olives. I may add some minced garlic to the mushrooms while frying. The frying removes excess moisture from the mushrooms. I always wrap the fried pepperoni in a paper towel to absorb any oil released by the frying.

These pizzas cost less than $3 a slice but taste like a million dollars. They are low in fat and low in cholesterol but high in fibre and all the other good stuff contained in the rich mix of vegetables.

The pizza looks big in the picture but it is actually just large enough for two. We enjoy our weekly pizza with a glass of boxed wine. Our favourites are either the merlot or shiraz from Jackson-Triggs. Again, watch for the sales. Don't pay more than $40. We usually pay about $1.50 a glass for these wines. We have a budget and we stick to it.

Being retired and on a fixed income does not have to translate into eating poorly. Life's got to be fun. And with that, I think I'll have another sip of merlot. Cheers!

My obit picture has been taken

My granddaughters all love to shoot pictures. I think this is just part of discovering the world and the stuff we find in it. Cameras are not just something to discover but they are also tools of discovery. It just doesn't get much better than this for little kids.

Isla wanted take my picture. I gave he my small, point and shoot Canon S90. I love the image that resulted. It's me. Old but not too wrinkled and tired. She has captured my sparkle. I hope I have sparkle. I certainly do when I'm watching a cute, little three-year-old take my picture with love and affection.

And how happy I look. Maybe even content. And, in truth, I am both happy and content. She's nailed it. I've told my wife I want this image as my obit picture in the local paper. (Maybe they can lighten the mid-tones just a little before publishing. Open the shadow end of the scale.)

Media spread myth

Isla, 3, sprinkles coarsely chopped cashews onto her peanut butter sandwich.

I thought it was a cute picture. It shows my granddaughter Isla, 3, making "the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the world." The claim might be a little overstated but I was somewhat surprised by one response. I was sent a link to a Post Media story claiming "Butter is alright, but margarine just might kill you, massive Canadian study finds." And yes, that was the headline.

I was sent the link by a fellow I respect. He often posts interesting stuff. For that reason, I follow him on Facebook. Does he believe the Post Media story? I don't know. If he does, he would not be alone. The confusion surrounding the health dangers of margarine has taken on the patina of what Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness."

Simply stated, in the past margarine contained a lot of partially hydrogenated oils. These fats contain lots of trans fats. Trans fats are bad. How bad? According to the American Heart Association, "Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes."

But, and it's a huge 'but', today's soft margarine is not hydrogenated. Hydrogenation makes margarine solid so it can be sold in sticks like butter.

Becel is soft and sold in tubs. It is a non-hydrogenated margarine, made with 68% canola oil, 6% olive oil and 6% modified palm and palm kernel oils. The palm oils mildly solidify the margarine without creating trans fats. Unfortunately, the palm oils add a little saturated fat to the final margarine mix.

Why the media cannot get the hydrogenated oil story right with any consistency is a puzzle. I could take a guess but it would be just that — a guess. And taking guesses, rather than spending the time finding answers, is what drives the media into promoting "truthiness" and "urban legends."

The media loves to form organizations which award member for all the great stories published or broadcast over the past year. Maybe one of these organizations could add another award to their long list: The Truthiness Award, given the media outlet or group that did the most to spread the urban myth that inflicted the most damage on its readers or viewers.

Recipe for Isla's "World's Best Peanut Butter Sandwich"

2 slices of whole wheat bread (bread cannot be made with refined flour)
1 Tbs of pure peanut butter (This stuff separates. No added sugar allowed.)
1 Tsp of pure strawberry/peach jelly (This can be tough to find.)
2 thinly sliced large, fresh strawberries (These are in season in SW Ontario in June.)
2 coarsely chopped, roasted cashews

If the cook is three, like Isla, one adult to supervise, or lend a helping hand should an emergency arise, is not optional.

Egg Creations make a very good omelette

Omelette made with Egg Creations from Burnbrae Farms with salsa sprinkled on top.

As I've stated in the past, I'm not allowed whole eggs. No egg yolks in my diet. It's the cholesterol. Just two egg yolks can deliver ten times the cholesterol I aim to consume over the course of a whole day. Yet, I still enjoy omelettes. I leave the cheese out but I can still make a mean omelette.

I do this by using Egg Creations, a cholesterol and fat free whole egg replacement. My wife has found that Egg Creations Original can be used anywhere whole beaten eggs are used. I didn't find it surprising when these eggs in a carton made great scrambled eggs and fine omelettes. But I was surprised when my wife had great success using them in her baking.

Why do Egg Creations taste like eggs? Because they are made from eggs, from egg whites. They are eggs but minus the yolks. And best of all, they are pasteurized. So they can be used uncooked in Caesar salad and mayonnaise.

If you can't eat whole eggs because of the cholesterol, try Egg Creations. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Folks threw out less trash 60 years ago

The figures change from source to source and country to country but one thing seems certain, there was less trash 60 years ago. I began googling the question of trash because London, Ontario, city council is debating whether or not to lower the waste collection day trash bag limit. It may drop from four to three.

Three bags still seems like a lot. Today was collection day and I only put out one bag and it wasn't full. When I was a young boy in the early '50s I cannot recall my mother ever putting out three cans of filled with trash on collection day. I don't think we even owned three of those big, old steel containers with heavy lids. And we never put out our waste out in a green, plastic bag. Never.

When I was born, the green, trash bag had not yet been invented. The creation of the bin bag or trash bag is often credited to Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen, who worked on the project together. Frank Plomp, working on his own, also developed a plastic trash bag but he was not as successful at marketing. Hansen had an in, he worked for Union Carbide in Lindsay, Ontario. Working with Hansen and Wasylyk, Union Carbide began manufacturing green Glad Garbage bags for the home in the '60s.

Without inexpensive green garbage bags what happened to trash in the dark ages of waste removal? The simple answer is the we didn't generate as much of it and so removal was not as big a problem. The solutions from the '50s may hold promise for folks today. Here are five things commonly done when I was a boy.

• We bought durable goods and repaired them.
• We bought beverages in refillable, or recyclable, containers.
• We bought  items with minimal, or even no, packaging.
• We composted yard waste and often simply ignored the grass clippings.
• We reused more often than we do today.

Today, I still try to do all of the above but it is tough. We have become a bag it and toss it society. Heck, we even bag yard waste like the leaves that fall from our trees. We place 'em in huge paper bags beside the road to be trucked away. That's nuts. I just run my electric lawnmower over the leaves and mulch them with my lawn clippings. All just disappears.

Spare coffee carafes and more.

Today, when we buy small appliances like coffee makers, bread machines and the like and then the coffee pot breaks or the bread pan paddles cease to turn, we immediately toss the appliance into the garbage. That's nuts but have you ever tried to buy a replacement coffee pot or bread pan? It can be damn difficult. And that's nuts, too.

I've been known to break glass coffee carafes. When I found a source for replacement carafes, Rowland's Appliance Sales, I bought a couple of extra carafes. I'm confident that they will eventually see use.

Rowland's also sells replacement bread-maker pans for my now out of production WestBend machine. I've gone through two pans and I have one replacement pan still sitting in my basement. It's a good bread-maker. No sense parting with it over a broken paddle.

If you look closely at the picture on the right, you will see that the replacement carafes are sitting on a waffle maker. It was a gift. If I had my druthers, I'd simply make pancakes. But, I have a waffle maker and when the plastic knob broke, it was difficult to control the heat. I went online and found a replacement knob for sale.

You are getting the idea. We should all be repairing stuff rather than simply chucking broken stuff out and buying new. My computer monitor and keyboard are holdovers from a Dell computer I once owned. I now get my computers from a fellow who makes computers in his basement. He reuses the old computer cases and whatever else does not need to be replaced.

I'd post a picture of the lovely watch that my wife bought me some years ago but I can't. I took the watch to the nearby Young's Jewelers and it is away being fixed. I hope to keep that watch going indefinitely.

Refinished used table.

The table in our front hallway came from Goodwill Industries. I didn't buy it. My dad did. And he bought it some sixty years ago. Back then Goodwill took donated old furniture, like the table, refinished it and re-glued it and resold it in their shop. The operation created employment while keeping stuff, like the table, out of the dump.

Although Goodwill Industries no longer does furniture restoration, there are businesses that will do it for a fee. I've had both our sofas reupholstered by Finns Upholstery on Oxford St. E. And our dining room set, my parents bought it used many years ago, was refinished, reupholstered and re-glued. That set will soon be 100 years old.

We have to find ways to keep stuff out of the dump. We have to be creative. Tossing stuff out should be our last option.

The lamp shade is an old beer glass.

Forty years ago I bought two bedside lamps from a Nordel's Furniture, I believe that was the name, on Wellington Road near Baseline Road.

When I broke the glass lamp shade, I could not find a replacement. My wife determined that the base of the shade was the same diameter as that of some old beer glasses we had and rarely used. I took the glasses to London Glass and Mirror and had them cut to fit the lamp base. I got a couple of spare shades made and those aluminum base lamps should be in use for many, many years to come.

I'd go on but you get my point. Changing the three bag limit misses the point, although that's not to say it's a bad idea. But what really needs to change is our attitude. It is society that must be changed.

We need to learn to repair, reuse, recycle.

For instance, glass is almost infinitely recyclable. But, we make so many different types of glass. Take colour alone. There's a ridiculous number of colours. Why doesn't society settle on a set number of colours and on  set number of formulations for glass, and maybe we could up the percentage of glass that is recycled to something approaching 100 percent.

Heart healthy meals need not be boring

"No red meat" was what the stroke specialist ordered. Stick mostly to fish, chicken and turkey -- the white meat, not the dark. Smoked salmon is on the approved list.

So for tonight's dinner, I served smoked salmon on a Montreal-style bagel. My wife hates fish, or so she claims, but she loved tonight's dinner. The secret: high quality fish.

The bagel came from Farm Boy on Beaverbrook Avenue just off Wonderland Road North. This grocery brings Kettleman's wood-fired bagels in from Ottawa. These bagels are made in the traditional Montreal bagel manner and they are delicious. These are not just puffy, doughnut-shaped hunks of bread. These  bagels are slightly sweet, dense and chewy.

The smoked salmon came from Remark on Hyde Park just south of Oxford St. W. Although it was frozen, I thawed it carefully in cold water. There was too much fish for two simple sandwiches, so I cut the salmon in half while still frozen and placed half in a zip-lock plastic lunch bag to thaw. The rest I returned to the fridge for later. When thawed, I squeezed a little fresh lemon juice over the salmon.

The fresh dill also came from Remark. I mixed a tablespoon of finely chopped dill into 60 grams of light cream cheese. I also mixed in some finely chopped red onion.

To assemble, I spread a quarter of the cheese mixture on each bagel half. Next, I placed a very thin slice of red onion on each half bagel and placed half the salmon, about 50 grams, on two of the bagel halves. I sprinkled the capers over the salmon, dusted all with a little coarse pepper (optional) and finished by placing the remaining bagel halves over the salmon.

Since asparagus is still in season, I served fresh, steamed asparagus as the vegetable. You can use butter on your vegetables if you like, I must use non-hydrogenated margarine. I choose Becel with olive oil. As there was still juice in the lemon, I squeezed some lemon juice onto both my wife's and my asparagus.

I should mention the restaurant that inspired this meal: Little Red's in St. Marys. Little Red's Pub and Eatery is the latest restaurant from the team of chef Chris Woolf and his wife Mary. Chris is simply an amazing chef and his wife is a delightful hostess. Everything they serve  is made from seasonal, and mostly local, ingredients. The pub is a little gem, a real delight. We'll be going there again for lunch before the summer is over. Click on the link and check out their Web page.

Lorrie Goldstein: Think Monty Python, not Tobe Hooper

I'm not a fan of Lorrie Goldstein. His opinions do not mesh with my opinions. And it's no wonder as his take on the world doesn't mesh with mine. For instance, where he sees a "scare" tactic, I see a famous example of a failed attempt at extreme humour. The failure of the little promo, which turned out to be an anti-promo, is something we can all learn from.

In a recent opinion piece, Goldstein mentions an ad created by an environmental group in the U.K. that he claims used the tactic of fear to promote the group's stand on climate change. He claims the film showed school children having their heads blown off for refusing to take part in a climate change initiative suggested by their teacher.

The resisting student explodes, completely annihilated.

Not true. It's worse. The students are completely annihilated in the explosions. They are obliterated.  It is all very messy.

The short, No Pressure, was written by one of Britain's most respected comedy writers, Richard Curtis. The writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and more. The short was suppose to be funny. Some thought it was. Many didn't.

The film was removed from the 10:10 group's website just hours after its release and the 10:10 group found itself forced to issue a statement saying:

We wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue (climate change) back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. . . .

At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark.

When I worked in the newspaper industry, there were editors who were amazing. The amount of stuff with which they were familiar was a source of constant amazement. I can think of a couple of editors who would probably have known immediately the film to which Goldstein was alluding and would have known Goldstein's take on the film was open to question. They'd have removed the reference to the film from opinion piece.

If Goldstein had made an issue of being edited, these editors might have told Goldstein that his attack left hardly a scratch on them and if he wanted to continue his attack they would bite his legs off. Why might they say such things? Because making reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail might be the perfect response in such a situation.

I do have to thank Goldstein for one thing: He made me think about the 10:10 group. The film cratered but it did not take the group with it. If you care about the world, if you consider yourself green, you might find their Website interesting. When I posted this link, the 10:10 site was proclaiming there were "real signs of a brighter future. . . . We're collecting signs of the shift to a low carbon world."

In the group's own words, the stories the group is posting are about "things going right." Whatever one believes about the tactics the group used in the past, scare tactics are certainly not the tactics the group is using today on their Website.

Independent cheese producers are a dying breed

My wife and I have been buying locally produced Bright Brand cheese.

Recently, a local journalist surprised me by tweeting: "Really wish @LoblawsON would stop displacing quality Canadian products like Armstrong Cheese from its shelves with yet more PC brands."

I was surprised for three reasons: One, I've never been all that fond of Armstrong Cheese. Two, I'd assumed  Armstrong Cheese was what I call an industrial cheese made by either Saputo or Parmalat. And three I would not be surprised to learn that both the PC cheese and the Armstrong cheese are from the same cheese producer. (I'm not saying they are. I'm only saying that it would not surprise me.)

As a boy, my parents used to vacation in eastern Ontario. My father was raised there and after he married my mom they had a farm so near Alexandria that the town railway station could be seen from my parent's farmhouse. One of my uncles stayed in the area and my parents still had lots of friends living there and so we visited regularly.

One of my parent's friend was a cheesemaker. I loved going to his cheese factory and sampling the still warm cheese curds floating in the remaining whey. I was a kid who understood well what Miss Muffet was enjoying when surprised by the spider. She was eating squeaky cheese.

Today, that cheese factory is gone. It was bought and closed by Kraft Foods, I was told. My dad's friend made out O.K. Kraft paid him a fair price but the factory and the local jobs it provided disappeared. It was a loss for the community and for the area.

The story of Kraft Foods is a whole other story. Follow the link. It's an interesting tale. Kraft is credited with inventing processed cheese. I had a friend who worked for Kraft in Montreal and he was amazed at the magic the company could perform with cheese. It was good cheese in and Velveeta out. An amazing, if somewhat backward, process.

Today the three big names in the cheese industry are Saputo, Agropur and Parmalat. When I think of Saputo it may not be fair but I think of cheese plant closures and loss of solid, long-time, community jobs. Saputo bought the Armstrong cheese company some years ago, moved production to Abbottsford, BC, and closed the century-plus operation in Armstrong, BC. 73 local jobs were lost.

The closure in Armstrong was not the only Western Canada closure announced at the time. A total of 254 workers were affected, the CBC reported. Recently, Saputo has been busy closing dairy operations in Eastern Canada. In March the Cape Breton Post reported the closure of the Scotsburn Dairy in Sydney. "It was such a sudden announcement that people are mostly in shock . . . . " 100 workers were affected.

Along with the Sydney closure, other closures were announced in Princeton, Quebec, and Ottawa. In all, 230 workers will be laid off. According to the company, it will realize a savings of approximately $23 million annually after all the closure expenses are covered.

So do you buy Saputo products? Think: Alexis de Portneuf, Armstrong, Baxter, Dairyland, Danscorella, De Lucia, Dragone, DuVillage 1860, Frigo, Kingsey, La Paulina, Neilson Dairy, Nutrilait, Ricrem, Saputo, Stella, Treasure Cave, HOP&GO!, Rondeau and Vachon. Is that the whole list? Not at all. For instance, late last year, Saputo acquired Woolwich Dairy, famous for its goat's milk cheese and Saputo may by the cheesemaker behind many private label products.

If you, like me, thought Black Diamond had the earmarks of an industrial cheese, you may have been surprised to see Black Diamond missing from the above list. Don't be. Black Diamond appears on the Parmalat list of holdings: Astro, Balderson, Beatrice, Black Diamond, Lactantia are all Parmlat-controlled brands.

From the long list of cheese brands all being produced by only two giant cheesemakers, it is clear that quality cheese can be made by the big outfits. So, it is not the quality that is the issue for me. It's the jobs. It's the way of life that is being loss.

So, what does one do? Me, I try and buy from a smaller, independent producer. I like Bright. This is cheese  made by a co-op located in the Bright, Ontario, area near Woodstock. The Bright plant has been in the same location since 1874.

I've even introduced my granddaughters to the fine flavour of a grilled cheese sandwich made with Bright extra old cheddar. I don't make a big fuss about the flavour, I don't draw attention to the fact that this cheese is different, and the two little girls respond by loudly proclaiming their cheese sandwiches are "delish." Of course, it also helps that the Bright cheese I use is a reassuring orange.

The Springs Restaurant: a good luncheon choice in London

My wife and I went to The Springs Restaurant for lunch. I've been wanting to sample their fish and chips lunch. Judy went along and even order the same. We both had a plate full of calories for lunch.

The fish portion was large, the beer batter flavourful, the french fries crispy and the pickle just the right degree of sour. All in all it was exactly as anticipated. Now the ale, that was a pleasant surprise. I had a bottle of Ransack the Universe IPA from the Collective Arts craft brewery in Hamilton. It was just as advertised; It was crisp, but not bitter, with overtones of citrus. The citrus flavour was clearly evident but not overpowering. Loved it.

But the best part of the lunch was our waitress. She was a delight. We'll be returning next month for another lunch. There are two items on the menu that caught our hungry eye: Teriyaki Prawn Penne (Jumbo prawns and forest mushrooms sautéed with a julienne of peppers and sweet onions tossed with a spicy sweet teriyaki cream sauce. Served mild, medium or yeow.) and Grilled ‘Northern Harvest’ Cilantro ‘Tzaziki’ Salmon (Served with a tomato/cucumber quinoa salad with sautéed kale.)

One of the sandwiches also caught our attention: Grilled Avocado Buttermilk Chicken Sandwich (a sumac scented chicken breast with a creamy fresh avocado & buttermilk dressing, onion sprouts, greens and sliced beefsteak tomato on grilled sunflower bread.)

Like I said, we'll be back.

Dr. Oetker pizza dressed for dinner

Tuesday night is pizza night for my wife and me. It has become a bit of a tradition. Whenever Dr. Oetker pizzas go on sale for less than three bucks, we buy four or five. With a Dr. Oetker 4-Cheese pizza as the base, we add our own toppings

The pizza tonight had diced hot turkey pepperettes from Oegema's on highway 4 near Talbotville plus red, green and orange sweet peppers, mushrooms, black olives from Remark off Hyde Park south of Oxford St. W. The artichoke came from Costco and the rings of hot peppers are Loblaw's President Choice brand.

I try to keep my cholesterol below 50 mg/dL for the day. According to the nutritional info on the box, two slices of this pizza contain only 40 mg/dL of cholesterol. The stuff we added is mostly plant stuff and plant stuff doesn't contain any cholesterol. The turkey sticks are incredibly low in cholesterol. That's why we buy them. This is a heart healthy dinner.

And why the Dr. Oetker pizza. It's made in London.

The true breakfast of champions

Before getting into today's post, let's make a few things clear. One: I am not a doctor. Two: I do not have, and never have had, a serious diverticulitis event. And three: If you a senior, do not make big changes to your diet without consulting your doctor. Increasing the fibre in one's diet is generally not recommended for those presently suffering a severe diverticulitis event. Whether fibre is good or bad for those attempting to fend off another event is an open question.
________________________________________________

Yesterday I had a fierce chest pain. It doubled me up and left me somewhat dizzy and out of breath. I told my wife: Mistake number one. At her insistence, I called our family doctor: Mistake number two. When I mentioned the pain started in the front of my chest and moved to my back, I was ordered to go to the hospital. It was recommended I call an ambulance. I was ordered not to drive myself. I had my wife drive me.

On entering the hospital, blood was taken almost immediately and rushed to the lab for analysis. With the blood sample taken I was off for a CAT scan. A dye was injected into my arm making me feel hot and flushed. For a moment I forgot the chest pain that was now a nagging ache.

It wasn't long before the emerg team knew I was not facing my immediate demise and they lost interest in my medical problems. There were others who needed immediate care and so I was wheeled into a screened off area and left to age like a fine cheese. It would take some time to get the complete report from my CAT scan and blood test. Until the report was ready, I was pushed to the side. I didn't mind. I was relieved.

It was after five when I got the report. It was an extensive, three page document. I will give a copy to my family doctor and to the lead doctors on the medical teams that keeps me alive. I'm not an easy case. I have an ICD/pacemaker in my chest for my arrhythmia and bradycardia, I have micro-bleeding in the brain, I often have TIAs, commonly called mini-strokes, and those are just the three most obvious medical problems I face.

On page three of the report I read: "Very mild sigmoid and descending colon diverticulosis." Diverticulosis means one has small, bulging pouches forming in the digestive tract. These pockets are called diverticula. The greatest number of diverticula develop where the colon is the narrowest, in the sigmoid.

According to the Harvard Medical School, diverticulosis is one of the most common medical problems in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans have it by age 85. This wasn't always the case. A hundred years ago diverticulosis was rare and it is still uncommon in the developing world. Why? Diet. The typical American diet lacks sufficient fibre. In other words, North Americans eat too many refined carbohydrates.

According to Harvard:

 "dietary fiber is a mix of complex carbohydrates found in the bran of whole grains and in nuts, seeds, fruits, legumes, and vegetables . . . dietary fiber has little caloric value — but it has plenty of health value." 

Dietary fibre keeps the colon healthy by drawing "water into the feces, making the stools bulkier, softer, and easier to pass. Dietary fiber speeds the process of elimination, greatly reducing the likelihood of constipation." The Harvard medical folk couldn't say enough good things about fibre.

Steel cut oats go well with fruit and chopped nuts.

Which brings me to my breakfast. It's healthy, packed with fibre, delicious and inexpensive. Meals like this keep diverticulosis from developing and if it does the fibre may prevent the progression to diverticulitis and irritated, inflamed, possibly infected pouches.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup steel cut oats
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 peeled, cored, and coarsely diced apple
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• 20 grams dried blueberries
• 2 Brazil nuts
• 5 or 6 cashews
• 1 mashed banana
• dusting of cinnamon

 

Instructions 

I boil the water in my microwave at high for 2 minutes 10 seconds. When boiling, I add the steel cut oats, swirl the oats in the steaming hot water and put the mixture in the microwave to cook  for five minutes at 40% power.

While the oats are cooking, I measure 1 tablespoon of Qi'a (a chia, buckwheat and hemp dry cereal) into a small bowl. I add two tablespoons of 1% milk to soften the Qi'a. While the dry cereal softens, I turn my attention to peeling, coring and coarsely dicing an apple. I add the apple chunks to the bowl of Qi'a and dribble one tablespoon of maple syrup over the apple.

At this point the microwave is beeping. I stir my oats and hot water and put the mixture aside for a minute to cook the Qi'a topped with apple chunks and maple syrup for a minute on high. After the apples have softened with the slight cooking,  I return the oat mixture to the microwave for another four minutes at 40% power.

With the oats again gently cooking, I coarsely chop 20 grams of dried blueberries plus a couple (2) Brazil nuts and five or six salted cashews and I mash a banana.

If the oats need more cooking, I give them from 45 seconds to a minute on high in the microwave. At the end of this time all the water should be absorbed with the oats looking very moist, almost soggy. I add the Qi'a, milk, apple and maple syrup mixture, the blue berries and nuts, and finally I add the mashed bananas and stir. If the mixture isn't hot enough, I heat all on high for an extra 45 seconds. It's done, I stir it to get rid of any hot spots the microwave may have created and it is ready to eat.


My doctors tell me a breakfast like this fights diverticulosis. As my problem is still in the early stages with the diverticulosis described as very mild, I may be able to avoid progressing to the more serious diverticulitis with inflammation and possibly infected pockets. It's a pity I didn't eat like this all my life.

Sadly, when I was younger I used to eat stuff like "the breakfast of champions." Humbug.

(According to the Website Fooducate, Wheaties is low in fibre. The cereal still earns a rating of B+ overall but in the fiber category it is a dismisal D+.)

Buy ingredients on sale and keep it cheap to eat

The shrimp is the wild Argentinian kind caught in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. I like it better than the farmed shrimp from Southeast Asia but there are questions about the sustainability of the Argentine shrimp fishery.

Thankfully studies are underway to understand the fishery and ensure its health well into the future. But protecting the earth's abundance is a difficult task. The Argentinians can only protect the shrimp fishery in their own waters. A lot of shrimp is caught in waters not controlled by the Argentinians. Reportedly, over-fishing in the international waters is common.

My wife and I picked up the shrimp on sale some weeks ago. The sweet peppers we got at Costco on sale today. The bright red and yellow peppers came from an Essex County hot-house.

The asparagus came from the neighbourhood asparagus farm. The stuff is so fresh and so tender that with just seconds of cooking it is ready to serve. We always buy two pounds in order to get the best price.

I'm sure you are getting the idea. Buy your food ingredients either on sale or grown locally and in season to get the best value. I'm retired and the paper carries articles now and then telling me how poorly many seniors eat. I cannot understand why. Use your head when buying the stuff you eat and you will eat well.

At the moment eating well means asparagus. I buy more the moment we run out. The little, local farm is not open all that long. I pig out on the green stalks as long as I can. I try to buy as little asparagus from Peru as possible. The way a lot of the South American stuff is grown is an environmental disaster.

I'd provide a recipe with this post but I can't. The idea for this Cajun shrimp stir fry came from Weight Watchers. Google Cajun shrimp and you'll find something similar, I'm sure.

Fiddleheads make a nice change

Fiddlehead greens, the furled fronds of a young fern, make a fine vegetable alternative. Low in fat, with no cholesterol (no vegetable contains cholesterol), a small 100 gram serving supplies 10 percent of one's daily potassium needs plus eight percent of magnesium, 72 percent of Vitamin A, 44 percent vitamin C, 7 percent of iron and 9 percent of one's protein requirements.

The polenta served yesterday with tomatoes and asparagus.

Served here with polenta topped with a tomato sauce containing not only tomatoes but egg plant as well, this dinner would please my heart and stroke doctors. Admittedly it does contain some beef, a no-no, but there are only two, small meatballs. The meatballs were coated with fennel seeds and gently fried in their own oil. This removed some of the fat from the meatballs

The polenta was a leftover from yesterday. At that time my wife and I served company the polenta with grilled tomatoes and steamed asparagus.

All in all the polenta made for some very inexpensive meals. It delivered eight full servings and tasted wonderful as leftovers.

Don't believe everything you read. Head lice are not super.

Head lice are not easily spread by hats, pillowcases, sofa backs or rugs.

Newspapers love a good story. The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's most respected newspapers, warned readers about the growing problem of super lice. These are lice which have developed resistance to the insecticides used in the traditional treatments. Hardy, resilient, tough to wipe out: No, I am not talking about head lice but about the stories, mostly myths, surrounding the pesky, little bugs.

When the Toronto District School Board announced it was reviewing its "no nits" policy, a media fire storm erupted. The "no nits" rule, once common in schools around the world, excludes from school those students suspected of having head lice. And they cannot return until their heads are declared nit free. The rule sounds reasonable but isn't.

Teachers, parents and even health care workers often misdiagnose head lice infestations. When the Harvard School of Public Health examined samples of head lice and nits submitted for study, more than 40 percent of the samples had nothing to do with head lice. This is why a "no nits" policy results in students being barred from school for such things as hat lint or dandruff. Of the remaining samples, approximately half or 30 percent indicated non-active infestations. Do the math. 70 percent of the samples were innocuous.

The Toronto Star fanned the fires of fear by conducting a highly suspect, online poll. The loaded questions determined most readers believed "nits are damaging to the kids." This came as no surprise since the story was replete with myths. Readers were warned, "Lice are a common problem among young children because they can be easily spread by sharing items like hats, brushes or combs." Completely untrue. A myth.

Research has shown, and this is a quote, "the odds of head lice transmission via hats of lice-infested children is sufficiently low to be considered improbable and inconsequential."

With the school board in Toronto reconsidering its approach to the head lice problem, my local paper, The London Free Press, decided to do a take on the story but with a local twist. The fact that neither the public nor the separate school board was contemplating changes to the head lice policy should have made this a non-story but it didn't stop the paper. A grabber headline, a big picture of a concerned mother intent on protecting her young daughter from head lice, a separate fact-box with the usual stern warnings and voilà: a head lice story.

The Thames Valley District School Board cannot be faulted for being cautious. Without community support a move to discard the "no nits" policy may fail. Progressive boards which moved too fast have been forced to reinstate the discredited "no nits" policy after facing a flood of complaints from angry parents and, in some cases, teachers.

I contacted a school board in the States that had to backpedal on its decision to drop its "no nits" policy. It felt the local newspaper was of no help in getting out the true head lice story. The newspaper preferred yesterday's myths to today's news.

Head lice are not a health hazard, they do not spread disease, on this everyone is in agreement. What they do is carry is a nasty stigma. They spread fear, stress and anxiety. Possibly, The Free Press should have run a picture of a young mother who no longer wants her children exposed to the possibility of being barred from school for having hat lint. Don't laugh. Remember the study done by the Harvard School of Public Health.

The little critters, only as big as sesame seeds, are unable to hop, let alone leap tall buildings, yet in the press they are called "super lice." There is nothing super about them. After years of being controlled with insecticides, the little bugs have done what insects do best — adapt. Head lice have developed resistance to the insecticides in the hair treatments used to fight them. This development took no one by surprise.

But that very adaptability may well be their undoing. After living thousands of years as our uninvited guests, head lice are perfectly adapted to life on a human head. Once off the human head, they don't fare so well. They die.

With newspaper stories goading them on, fearful parents toss out pillowcases complete with pillows. Hats, scarves, coats are washed or even dry cleaned at some expense. Toys are bagged and left bundled away for weeks. Almost everything a child with head lice has touched is considered contaminated. Rather than focusing on the environment, parents should focus on the affected child's head. The fear-driven cleaning response is totally out of proportion to the risk and this is thanks in part to the myths spread by our newspapers.

When I contacted the local reporter who wrote the head lice story, she referred me to her source, something she found on the Web. I thought, "You can't believe everything you read on the Web." The reporter's nose was so far out of joint because I dared to question her story, she has not talked to me since. Clearly readers should not question journalists.

It's claimed that Edward R. Murrow said of his own profession, "Journalists don't have thin skins. They have no skins." Sadly, I have discovered this observation on the sensitivity of many reporters to criticism is all too accurate. In this age of the Internet, with the ability to check any and all questionable claims, journalists would be wise to listen to a little criticism.

Google enough sources and you will soon realize there is a battle being raged over head lice. I like to think one side studies lice in the lab while the other studies lice in their environment, in the community, in schools and on children's heads.

To get the whole story, the accurate story, I contacted the people behind the claims. My search led me to Richard Speare, professor emeritus, James Cook University, Australia. Speare is one of the major players in  unraveling the myth-riddled head lice story. Speare graciously responded to my email and attached a number of documents detailing some of his work.

Speare and his cohorts accepted that hats were considered high-risk items but could find little hard data supporting the all-too-common claim. The research team examined over 1000 hats in four schools. They also examined the students. The team found no head lice in the hats but over 5500 head lice on the students' heads. One myth busted.

The Australians also investigated the possibility of contacting head lice from contaminated floors. 2,230 children were examined from 118 classrooms. A total of 14,033 lice were collected from the children but not one louse was recovered from a floor. Researcher Deon Canyon doesn't mince words. He calls the risk of contacting head lice from a floor "zero." It is, he says, another groundless myth.

The out-of-proportion fear and stigma attached to head lice can make the lives of our most sociable little children quite miserable. Why the most sociable? Because they are the kids most likely to be making the head to head contacts that are almost always the source of the problem.

The reward for their social nature can be exclusion from school, isolation from friends, over-treatment and under support. Toddlers can find themselves ostracized by their best friends. It can be emotionally traumatizing. It doesn't have to be this way. The next time I see a story in the newspaper on head lice, I want to see a picture of a mother protecting her child from unwarranted emotional trauma. This would be a great story and this would be news.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has listed solid reasons for discontinuing "no nits" policies:

• Nits more than ¼ inch from the scalp are usually not viable and thus are unlikely to hatch.
• If nits are easily visible, they are most likely empty shells or nit casings.
• Nits are cemented to hair shafts and are unlikely to be transferred to other people.
• Misdiagnosis of nits is very common, resulting in children being banned from school in error.
• Misdiagnosis can result in a child undergoing unnecessary chemical treatment.

Female head lice glue their eggs to the base of human hair shafts close to the scalp. And it must be a hair on a human head. A human body hair won't do. Nor will the hair of a favourite pet.

Also, the distance the egg is from the scalp is important. The eggs, called nits, are incubated by the warmth of the scalp. A growing hair can carry a nit too far from the warmth. It will fail to hatch. Without an oh-so-close warm scalp, there's no hatching. It's that simple. Adaptation is a weakness as well as a strength.

Now you can understand why the presence of nits does not indicate an active infestation. If the nits are easily seen, they are most likely not viable. Or the nits may be nothing but empty egg casing or bits of dandruff and the like, all misidentified by the untrained eye. The CDC knows all this but not all school boards and not many parents and certainly not many reporters.

It is claimed head lice have become difficult to eradicate. But it is not just head lice that have developed resistance to the insecticides in use. Many parents have also developed strong resistance to the neurotoxins used in the treatments. More and more parents are hesitating to douse their child's head with powerful, poisonous chemicals to kill a benign pest.

Image courtesy: Community Hygiene Concern, Joanna Ibarra

The approach du jour is bug busting. A lubricant, often conditioner, is used with water to wet the hair. The lubricant makes it difficult for the lice to move quickly and thus avoid the fine-toothed nit comb sliding through the hair from the roots to the tips.

Bug busting is nit picky. The goal is to physically remove all nits and lice from the infested head. Many people have neither the time nor the patience to see the process through. The failure rate is quite high.

Others believe an oil, such as coconut oil, will coat the bugs and suffocate them. It will certainly slow them down but lice are resilient. This approach has yet to find clear support from scientific testing but those wanting to asphyxiate the little critters may be on to something.

One product available in Canada, Nyda, combats head lice by using the asphyxiation method but kicks it up a notch. During an interview on Radio New Zealand, Professor Rick Spears was asked, "How essential is a nit comb for getting rid of head lice and nits?" The professor answered:

With some of the new dimethicone based products, some of the silicone based oils penetrate the egg too, so the embryos die as well. In that case you don't have to comb them all.

That's Nyda! Nyda is a dimethicone based product. And it claims not only to kill lice but also nits. In many cases one treatment is sufficient, the maker says. If necessary a second treatment ten days later guarantees a lice-free head. No neurotoxins are involved. Nyda is safe but keep it out of the eyes. You don't want a child fighting head lice to also be fighting the caregiver, you, and the treatment.

I chatted with a family that used Nyda as directed. The parents told me that Nyda appeared to eradicate the head lice after just one treatment. But the affected child was treated again after ten days just to be sure. The family asked me not to go into too many details as they had discovered the London school their child attends does not follow the "no nits" policy. The principal and teaching staff were clearly enlightened.

The parents read The Free Press article and realized the paper wasn't enlightened. The paper and the reporter were still living in the head lice dark ages. The parents were disappointed and more than a little surprised that the newspaper story was so much more myth than fact.

If it makes you feel better, wash that toque, put those sheets in the dryer set to hot, bag those toys, vacuum the floor and carefully dispose of the dust bag. But do try to relax, shake off your fears. Take comfort in the facts and forget the myths.

Remember: head lice are adaptable and they've adapted to heads. Off the human head they are dead within as little as six hours. You see, the damn things aren't so super after all.
_______________________________________________________

For a slide presentation on dispelling the myths surrounding head lice, click the following link: Head lice: Are you Scratching for Anwers? 

This presentation was posted by the Victoria State Government Health Department. Note: the info on hair treatments does not appear to be up-to-date. The relatively new dimethicone based products do not seem to enter into the discussion.

People do not always apply head lice hair treatments correctly, some areas of an infested head may be missed. For this reason, saying no treatment is 100 percent successful is arguably true. With improper application, even dimethicone based treatments can fail.

The Victoria State Government also has an info sheet online. Here is a link: VGS head lice info sheet. If you don't believe me, maybe you will believe the VSG health department.

And lastly, here is a link to an interesting CDC post. It advises, among other things, "Students diagnosed with live head lice do not need to be sent home early from school; they can go home at the end of the day . . . "

I tried to interest my local paper in this alternate story concerning head lice. The reporter of the original story took great personal offence. She refused even to discuss the topic of head lice and what experts say. She was saying nothing. In fact, asking her a question using Twitter so incensed her that she may never speak to me again. Weird and remarkably childish, reminds me of my 3-year-old granddaughter and her pouts.

Polenta makes a nice change of pace for dinner

Polenta topped with tomato sauce and rimmed with fresh, green vegetables.

Polenta topped with your favourite tomato-based spaghetti sauce and then rimmed with fresh vegetables, like broccoli, green beans and asparagus as shown, makes a wonderful change of pace dinner. The instructions for making polenta can change from package to package. Some polenta is instant, cooks in two minutes, and other polenta can take up to half an hour of simmering and constant stirring.

What ever you decide, the result is delicious and in expensive. We pair our meals with an inexpensive red, box wine. If it were bottled, it wouldn't cost even $6. This is truly a dinner for the retiree on a tight budget.

We needed to save a little money on dinner. Why? Because later, we're opening a nice bottle of Antichi Poderi Jerzu Chuèrra Riserva Cannonau di Sardegna to enjoy with slices of toasted baguette topped with grated Parmesan cheese and diced olive spread. The smooth, full-bodied ruby-red wine is based on the Grenache grape which has gained fame for being the grape used in making Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The Sardinian wine may not be famous like its French cousin but it is easier to find on sale.

Ah, we will all sleep well tonight. And who said retirement isn't fun? (Now, to go and decant the wine. I understand it is best if it is allowed to breathe for a couple of hours before serving. Hey, I'm just following orders.)

Part One: Selling news is not like selling pickles

Selling news is not like selling pickles. People want pickles. This is not to say that people don't want news. They do, they just don't want to pay for it. Never have.

Two-bits worth of pickles costs two-bits. Fair enough. But two-bits worth of news costs maybe a nickel. Why? News is subsidized by advertising. In a traditional newspaper the editorial content and the advertising copy exist in a symbiotic relationship. Despite their great differences, journalism and advertising live side by side on the pages of a newspaper in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Today that relationship is under stress. The parasite, the advertising, has found a new host: the Internet. Here, think Alphabet and Alphabet's biggest division, Google. According to Reuters:

"Alphabet Inc easily beat Wall Street's quarterly profit forecasts on Monday, helped by strong mobile advertising sales . . . Google's advertising revenue increased nearly 17 percent to $19.08 billion, while the number of ads, or paid clicks, rose 31 percent . . . Advertisers pay Google only if someone clicks on their ad." (These are the fourth quarter results ending Dec. 31, 2016.)

Clearly there is money to made on the Internet from advertising. But I could have told you that. When I took a buyout from The London Free Press I tried to start a blog at the paper as an experiment. The editorial department was not at all interested in my experiment. Although I was promised a blog, they dragged their feet, I looked elsewhere.

Soon I had a blog supported by Blogger, the blogging platform owned by Google. I decided to run AdSense. One ad appears beside my posts and another ad runs immediately after. If a reader clicks on an ad, AdSense and I split the payment. AdSense claims the lion's share. I find this only fair as Google charges me nothing to post my thoughts.

I haven't earned a lot from my blog, but I have earned a little and more importantly I have gained a little window into how money can be made online. When I left the paper, I had asked to have a blog with the paper but there was a stumbling block: I wanted to be paid. I didn't want a lot but I was offered nothing. There was no money to be made on the Internet, I was told.

A few months ago, after the monthly breakfast of retired local media types, I picked up the entire restaurant tab plus tip. I found it strangely satisfying to be able to pay for dozens of breakfasts with money earned from posting information to the Net.

I was a little surprised that after more than seven years in retirement, the media line about the Internet had changed very little. The spin from the media still seems to be that there is no money to be made online. I don't believe even one panelist admitted that decades ago newspaper management took their collective eye off the ball or should I say dot and fumbled the future. How to fix that colossal  failure of imagination is the question demanding to be answered.

And the answer will not be found in treating newspapers like pickle factories. The American food giant Smuckers bought the Southwestern Ontario pickle producer, Bick's, once located in Dunnville, Ontario. I say once located in Dunnville as Smuckers closed the plant and merged the business with its Stateside operation. Smuckers chopped lots of jobs and saved a lot of money. Nothing is left of Bick's but the name. Economies of scale made it all profitable.

In the media world giants also rule. Canada's newspapers have been bought, closed, moved and merged. Reporters, editors, and oodles of support staff, even advertising staff, have lost their jobs. In many Canadian communities nothing is left of the local paper, a paper that may have been a going concern for more than a century. In many cases even the name of the local paper is but a memory.

But, unlike the big pickle maker the media giants have discovered economies of scale did not make it profitable.

End of Part One.

Understanding the heart attack gender gap

Understanding the heart attack gender gap

More dining on a budget in retirement

As I have often said in the past, dining at home during retirement doesn't have to break the bank. Watch the sales and build the menus around these items. The little potatoes were not a dollar for enough for both my wife and me.

The small tomatoes were also on sale but I had to buy a big box of the things. I've been finding ways of including them in my dinners every night. I don't want to have to toss some because they were kept too long. Tonight I grilled all the vegetables after rolling the tomatoes and potatoes about in a little garlic flavoured olive oil.

The fish is sole purchased frozen at Costco packaged in a gigantic plastic bag of a size only Costco would carry. Each fillet is individually wrapped and none has any sign of frost-burn. We keep them frozen until needed and then let them thaw in a sink filled with cold water.

I put a layer of Sole fillets in a small baking dish, topped this with a tight row of asparagus and then finished off with another layer of Sole. I brushed all with olive oil combined with the zest from one lemon. I heated the oil mixture for a couple of minutes on the top of the stove before brushing on the sole and asparagus.

The romaine lettuce was, you guessed it, on sale. We bought a three pack and I cut one head in half tonight and grilled both halves after wiping each with a little oil and vinegar dressing. Before serving, I sprinkled grated Parmesan cheese on the fish and on the romaine plus I put a few chopped chives on the fish and added a squeeze of lemon juice. (My wife grows chives in her small garden. Chives grow like weeds. We will never run short when it comes to chives.)

And how did it taste? Good, very good. And like I said it didn't break the budge.

Thanks to the strong flavour of the Parmesan, the garlic and the asparagus, we decided our red house wine would go just fine. Recently, we got a few 4 litre boxes of Peller Estates French Cross blend on sale for $30.95. You may laugh but at that price we are only paying $5.80 for a 750ml of wine. That's the amount found in most bottles. Being old enough to recall the wines available in the '60s has its advantages. For us the wine quality bar is set awfully low.

That said, I do have a nice Chateauneuf Du Pape aging in the cellar. I'll crack it open when the time is right. And yes, I got it from the sale bin at the LCBO. It wasn't cheap but it wasn't all that expensive either. It had been knocked down in the double digits. It was the last bottle in the store and was being dumped to make room for more product. It will make a fine wine to serve guests.

Stuff I found of interest today: April 12, 2012

First Link

The London Free Press has often run stories maligning the healthcare in Canada. According to the local paper, generally the Americans are much better off than those of us north of the border. I contacted the source of one of the Free Press stories, the Commonwealth Fund, and they said their findings had been given a right-wing spin by the London paper. For that reason and others, I am quite interested in healthcare stories. Which brings us to my first link:

• For life expectancy, money matters: The Harvard Gazette

A new study shows, that the average life expectancy of the lowest-income classes in America is now equal to that in Sudan or Pakistan. Yes, in the United States being poor is so hazardous to your health. I assume some of the same rich-live-longer findings would also hold in Canada but would the spread be as dramatic?

Second Link

When it comes to retirement stories, I have begun following Wade Pfau. This fellow is not just another opinionated blogger. Pfau has credentials. Today, I am posting links to two of his posts:

• Which Is Better for Retirement Income: Insurance or Investments?

Retirement income planning has emerged as a distinct field in the financial services profession. But because it is still relatively new, the best approach for building a retirement income plan remains elusive. There are two fundamentally different philosophies for retirement income planning. Pfau says one approach is probability-based while the other puts safety first.The second Pfau post to which I am linking is:

• Understanding the Tools in Your Retirement Income Toolbox

Retirement plans can be built to manage varying risks by strategically combining the following retirement income tools in different ways. You should be familiar with all these tools for creating a successful approach to retirement.

Crayola inspires everyone interested in art.

Third Link

Do you have children? Yes? Check the Crayola Website. I've granddaughters and the Crayola post is chock full of good ideas. I went to art school and I still found the Crayola site informative.

Today I learned about Koru painting created by the Maori people of New Zealand. Koru symbolizes new birth and growth. The colourful painting on the left shows fern plants ready to unfurl.

In the coming days I will post more links to the Crayola Website.

More than a dozen fruits, vegetables and nuts daily but no meat

Pasta with pesto, green beans, potatoes, broccoli, walnuts, pine nuts and more.

 

Today was a no meat day. My doctors at the stroke prevention clinic have advised me to go meatless every other day. When I do have meat, it usually fish or chicken. Red meat is a once a month treat. Eggs are simply out. I have ice cream with cake on my birthday. My cholesterol levels are down across the board with the bad cholesterol down dramatically. The diet seems to be working.

The right ventricle of my heart is enlarged and the tricuspid valve is leaking. This is all the result of a genetic disease called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC). It sounds bad but if one could choose which part of one's heart is going to fail, choosing the right ventricle is the right decision. The left side of my heart is in pretty good shape as I had the mitral valve repaired robotically some years ago.

The ARVC has disrupted the electrical system of my heart and left me requiring an ICD/pacemaker. An ICD is an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. If my heart should begin beating rapidly, it hit 300 bpm once, my ICD shocks the heart forcing it t return to its proper rhythm. I have only had about four shocks and they all were delivered a few hours apart. Such an event is called an ICD storm. My meds were increased and the problem has not returned.

My pacemaker is another matter. It runs almost 100 percent of the time. I have a complete heart block. I run on battery power. I'm a bit like a Tesla automobile. At some point the battery will need to be replaced. At that point, a new unit, complete with a new battery, is put into my chest.

With so much going wrong with my heart, I don't want to add traditional heart disease to the equation. I watch my fats, I eat lots of fresh fruit, lightly cooked vegetables plus a few nuts every day. My diet may be restricted but it doesn't feel that way. I actually eat a far more varied diet today than I did before my ARVC was discovered. I love food, I enjoy cooking and my diet makes me happy. 

Cooking new and imaginative creations is fun. The results, when they turn out, are a mixture of art and craft. When my wife and I sit down for dinner, the meals often look beautiful and taste wonderful. And our meals don't set us back a bundle either. We buy stuff in bulk when its on sale. We have a PC Points card and we try and buy the stuff with bonus points when those products are also on sale. We charge everything with a credit card that returns us one percent of the value of our food expenses. And we are not too proud to price match. 

We try to avail ourselves of every trick. It seems to work. My wife and I are both retired and yet our food expenses are not hard on our limited budget.

How simply moving benefits your mental health

How simply moving benefits your mental health

Treasures mark path to mindfulness

Most of those at the party missed the small bouquet of artificial flowers.  Not my
granddaughter. The six-year-old got my camera and saved the moment with a picture.

What does a Harvard Graduate School of Education article and a little six-year-old girl have in common? Answer: Both promote a positive approach to life reinforced by the seeking of small treasures in daily life.

The Harvard folk have a name for this: Mindfulness. One exercise to develop mindfulness is to remain constantly alert for small moments of beauty throughout one's day. My oldest granddaughter has a word for these beautiful things, these beautiful moments: treasures.

She constantly sees treasures in her world. She stops her little bike to pick up walnut shells split and emptied of  meat by a squirrels. She finds the intricate sculptural shapes inside, once secret but now revealed to the world by the hungry squirrels, beautiful and worthy of careful inspection. The shells grab her attention and make her smile as she rolls them in her hand to quietly inspect their inner beauty.

I have a small, orange pail filled with her collected shells. This pail makes me smile. The pail is one of my treasures

Steel cut oats make an inexpensive and very healthy breakfast

Steel cut oats for a good but inexpensive breakfast.

All too often I have read how difficult it is for retirees to eat well on a tight budget. One reporter even went so far as to suggest retirees should prepare themselves for eating pet food as human grub may be out of the question. That's nuts.

I'm retired and my breakfast is nutritious, filling, amazingly delicious and cheap. Even my granddaughters, two and six, have given it a thumbs up. The steel cut oats are the main ingredient and these cost as little as 11-cents a serving or less. The fresh and dried fruit, nuts and maple syrup drive up the cost but the whole mixture still comes in at a bit more than a dollar a serving.

Keeping the number of strawberries used down can keep the cost in line as strawberries are the most expensive ingredient. When apples are inexpensive, I dice an apple, soften it in the microwave, and add apple instead of strawberries to my mix.

I like the PC Blue Menu Steel Cut Oats. I boil 1 1/4 cups of water in the microwave, remove the steaming water from the oven and stir in 1/4 cup of the coarsely cut oat groats. I return the oats and water to the microwave and cook for 12 minutes at 40% power. This is important. At full power there is a big risk of the cooking oats boiling over.

At the end of the ten minutes, I remove the bowl from the oven and stir. Any foam that has gathered at the water's edge, I stir into the mix. I return the mixture to the microwave for a a further five minutes at 40% power. At the end of five minutes I stir the mixture, making sure to stir anything adhering to the side of the bowl back into the oat mixture. I finish by cooking the oats for up to one minute at full power. When I remove the bowl from the oven, the top of the mixture is covered with bubbles. (These times and power settings will vary depending up the microwave used.)

While the oat groats are cooking, I measure 1 tablespoon of Qi'a into a bowl and add two tablespoons of milk. I let the chia, buckwheat and hemp cereal soften for a few minutes while I turn my attention to dicing four or five strawberries to add to the bowl of Qi'a. I dribble one tablespoon of maple syrup over the berries. I coarsely chop 20 grams dried blueberries plus a couple (2) of Brazil nuts. I add these to the mixture. Finally, I mash a banana and add it.

All the measuring, dicing, dribbling, chopping and mashing takes time. If I time this right, I may have to take a break to look at the morning paper, at the moment the oats are done the sweet fruit and nut mixture is added to the hot cereal. I stir all together and enjoy.

You MUST experiment with the cooking times and microwave power settings to ensure you do not overcook the oats or have the oats bubble over and splatter about your microwave. My times are unique to my microwave. Take care. Go slowly. I use the approach I do because I am sure it will not result in a mess. It takes a bit of time but it works and like a said, I take a break and read the morning paper. When one is retired, time is not a problem.

Addendum: Bought some Bob's Steel Cut Oats at Costco. Price was a bit less than the PC Blue Menu Steel Cut Oats I've been using. Bob's claims to cook quicker than the PC variety but does carry a warning about the potential for boiling over if cooked in a microwave. From weighting equal volumes of both brands of oats, I believe the PC variety is a bit denser than Bob's. The PC oats may be ten percent heavier when equal volumes are compared.

Difference One: I have cut the amount of water to 3/4 cup.

Difference Two: When using Bob's, I have cut the time to five minutes at 40% power. After that I stir the cooking oats and return the bowl to the microwave for another three minutes at 40% power. At this point I may give the mixture another minute at high but usually I can give it a bit less. You'll get a feel for how much extra cooking is required as you gain experience cooking the steel cut oats.

Warning: I liked my oats cooked a little more than many folk but as time goes by I am finding I like a little more crunch in my finished cereal.

This is not only a filling breakfast, it is very healthy. The exact nutrition numbers will vary with the amount of fruit and nuts one adds, but I think it is safe to say that this breakfast may provide 15% of one's calcium needs, 35% or more of one's daily fibre requirements, more than 100% of one's need for Vitamin C thanks to the fresh strawberries, a quarter of one's potassium, magnesium, iron and B6 needs. The nuts provide a bit of protein without adding any cholesterol to the mix.

And these are only the good things listed on the packages of fruit and nuts. On the Web you will learn that just two Brazil nuts, the number I chop up and add, meet all of one's daily selenium requirements.

This is definitely a healthy breakfast.