McDonald's full of surprises

Quite a busy today but I read a post which I would like to share. It was written by a Londoner living and blogging in Scandinavia. This post points out why McDonald's is such a global success. But Elle Hermansen's blog is not the only link to McD's story today. Please, read on.

Elle Hermansen writes well and she illustrates her posts with clean, stylish photos. There is a beautiful, classic, graphic look to her pages. Look at how she writes Elle - the two l's form a heart. I read her stuff with a critical eye and try to learn from her. I hope you enjoy Hermansen's blog as much as I do.

Now, have you ever wondered what fish goes into a McDonald's filet-o-fish? Read the New York Times article. If you're a green, this is an interesting read.

Cheers,
Rockinon

On a loved baby and a contented grandpa...

Well, Fiona is home and, for the most part, she is a contented baby. She makes funny faces, she waves her arms wildly enjoying her freedom and sometimes she cries. So far, when she cries someone usually picks her up and she mellows out.

Is this wise? I don't follow this stuff closely, at least I didn't, but I thought we were supposed to leave a child to cry and not reward them for bugging us. But, I pick Fiona up almost every time she cries. My hold-the-baby response just seems so natural and her hold-me-and-I-stop response also seems so natural, so expected, so right.

Time for some research.

First I found lots of links to something called "Attachment Parenting." Miriam Stoppard had lots of good advice. I don't know about the accuracy of the science but the close, caring relationship she promotes surely cannot be bad. She writes, "I shrink from leaving a baby to cry for long periods." But, what is a long period of time? I moved on.

Dr. Laura Markham tells me that Fiona thinks she's in mortal danger unless she's in some one's arms. I don't think so. Lay Fiona down and she's cool. Honest. When Markham told me to keep the baby close by, " . . . in the same bed," it was time to move on. This advice can be deadly.

Parents should never sleep in the same bed with infants or toddlers under the age of 2, the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has warned. Sleeping in the same bed with your newborn poses a significant risk of accidental smothering or strangling.

"Don't sleep with your baby or put the baby down to sleep in an adult bed," Ann Brown, the commission's chairwoman, counsels parents. According to an agency study and published by the American Medical Association (A.M.A.), over an eight-year period 515 children under 2 – an average of 64 a year – died as a result of sleeping in a bed with an adult or much older person.

A safer option is a co-sleeper bassinet which is attached to the bed of the parents but allows the child to sleep in a separate, protected space.

So much for attachment parenting. I went looking for university sponsored sites.

I found the following on a site run by the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF): "Babies cry one to four hours a day. Sometimes they cry because they are hungry, tired, have a dirty diaper or just want to be held. Sometimes babies cry for no known reason. Many babies cry more in the early evening -- just when you're trying to have dinner. Babies cry the most between the ages of 6 to 8 weeks."

O.K. We're in agreement: babies cry; it's normal. But, should we pick 'em up the moment they burst into tears?

I clicked on Soothing Your Crying Infant on the UCSF website.

I learned:

"When your baby is crying, you can try:

• Changing your baby's diaper
• Changing his or her clothes or blankets to see if your baby is too hot or cold
• Feeding your baby to see if he or she is hungry
• Checking your baby for anything that might cause pain, like an open diaper pin.

If your baby keeps crying, you may want to:

• Rock your baby in a rocking chair or swing
• Gently stroke your baby's head
• Try offering your baby a pacifier
• Take your baby for a walk or a ride in the car
• Try giving your baby a warm bath
• Play soft music
• Ask a friend or relative to help you

If your baby continues to cry, understand that babies are exposed to many new sights, sounds, touches, tastes and smells -- all of which can be quite overwhelming. Crying is the only way babies have to release tension. Therefore your baby may be telling you that he or she needs to be left alone. Try swaddling your baby snugly in a blanket and lay him or her in a crib in a quiet, dark room.

Allow your baby to cry for 10 to 15 minutes. You may need to go to another room and shut the door during this time, but remember you are not being mean to your baby by allowing him or her some time to cry. Also, remember to consider whether your baby might be sick."

Did you notice that? Buried in all this advice it says, ". . . your baby may be telling you that he or she needs to be left alone . . . you are not being mean to your baby by allowing him or her time to cry."

Yesterday Fiona was supposed to be sleeping but she didn't seem to know it. She was oh-so-alert. And then she started to cry. But, her crying didn't seem to have depth. This wasn't anguish from deep within. She almost seemed to be crying to just get some low level practice. I didn't pick her up. She soon stopped and looked quite content.

I feel vindicated. I did the right thing.

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Addendum:

After writing the above, I found a bit more on the topic. I really liked the tone of this writing.

If you want to pick up your infant almost immediately, and do it, don't feel guilty. A loved baby is a contented baby. They feel confident and safe in their surroundings. I personally could not go more than five minutes without cuddling Fiona when she cries.

A loved baby is a contented baby and such a loved baby makes for a contented grandpa.

Featured Link: 01

Crimes Against the Soul of America by Caroline Myss, author of Sacred Contracts

Della Reese and Dr. Drake

I've heard it said that lots of ill people go the the United States seeking health care but no American ever leaves. Not true. I can recall the American singer Della Reese coming to London, Ontario, and going to University Hospital in order to be operated on by Dr. Charles Drake. Reese credited Drake with saving her life when he operated on her brain aneurysm.

Later Reese rewarded the community by holding a concert at which $40,000 was raised for the Dr. Charles Drake research fund. The entire event was a big deal here in London and such a fuss was made that I can still clearly recall the event. Reese's decision stirred up a lot of civic pride.

Do I think that Della Reese could have received the same treatment in the States? Yes, I think so. But, Dr. Drake was a brilliant doctor and University Hospital an excellent facility. She made a good choice. I doubt she could have done better.

Are there any other cases of Americans leaving the States for treatment? According to claims on Democratic Underground.com, the answer is yes. So many Americans seek medical care outside the U.S. that a term has been coined for it: medical tourism.

If you can believe the numbers, thousands and thousands of Americans are active medical tourists. Why? My guess is cost. According to the information on Democratic Underground.com, " . . . data show that heart surgery, which costs more than $50,000 in the United States, can be purchased for $20,000 in Singapore, for $12,000 in Thailand and between $3,000 and $10,000 in India." Reportedly the quality of the purchased medical treatment is excellent. (My mitral valve heart repair was done robotically using the da Vinci system and it was covered by my OHIP payments. It was financially painless.)

As a Canadian, I'm torn. I would not want a system like the one presently in place in the States. Because of my open heart surgery, I would have a difficult time getting insurance in the States. If I was lucky enough to get, it would be out of my financial reach.

The Canadian system is not perfect. Having worked at a newspaper for years, I have met a number of people who were having problems with the Canadian medical system. But, with many of my relatives living in the U.S., I know that Americans can have problems, too.

What is needed is a careful, thoughtful discussion. The time for debate is over. It should be clear that with 45 million uninsured Americans, the system needs more than an adjustment.

I quoted infant mortality rate numbers in an earlier post. Not surprisingly, these numbers are suspect. And that is the problem with a debate. One-upmanship becomes paramount. We may even throw about numbers just because they prove our point. We may not look carefully at what the numbers truly represent.

When I was born, I was a small bundle of joy that cost my parents another small bundle but not a joyous one. If I had been born just days later, my delivery would have been covered by Windsor Medical. I believe, and I am going by memory here, that the doctors in Windsor, Ontario, in the late '40s banded together to form Windsor Medical and make medical treatment affordable to all.

When the government stepped in with its plan, Windsor Medical came to an end. I've often wondered if Windsor Medical was a superior system. I don't know and Google doesn't seem to have the answer either.
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For all its problems, and it does have problems, read what it was like when my daughter gave birth just days ago right her in London, Ontario.

The halloumi staycation

This summer The London Free Press is running a little series called "Staycations." With the economy in the grip of a recessionary bear, many Londoners are passing on expensive out-of-province vacations. Staycations has tips for these stay-at-homes on how to have fun while learning about the immediate area — drive no more than two hours from London and often much less.

Retired, staycations are especially appealing to me. My personal boom has past and I am now in a permanent bust cycle. My cheap, old geezer addition to the staycation idea involves only a trip to Angelos Italian Bakery, Cafe and Deli, some visiting friends and a bit of Internet cruising.

I'm making a quick visit to Cyprus thanks to Bill, a visiting friend. I took Bill to the Angelos on Wonderland Road near Southdale Road. Bill loves food; he is quite the cook; and, he loves Angelos. The fresh baked olive bread or the sun-dried tomato loaf are both worth a visit.

Angelos carries a large selection of cheeses. It was there Bill discovered the halloumi from Pittas Dairy of Cyprus. If you are like me, you are asking, "Halloumi? What's halloumi?" You may even be asking, "Where's Cyprus?"

Halloumi is the national cheese of Cyprus. Pittas Dairy is a well known, decades old island dairy — and Bill, a well travelled chap, knew all of this. He lived for some time in the Mediterranean island country, found on a map to the east of Greece and south of Turkey. I mention both Greece and Turkey as the two have had dibs on the island for centuries and have had an open dispute over its control for decades.

I checked Loblaws for halloumi but found a Canadian made PC copy instead called Halloom. It may be a good cheese but it is not staycation cheese. Why the name change? Halloumi is registered as a protected Cypriot product in the U.S. and there are moves to protect the name worldwide. Loblaws wants to make cheese not waves.

More about Pittas Dairy, halloumi and even Cyrian politics later. For now, let's cut to the chase. What do we do with the stuff?

According to Bill, put a tablespoon or two of good olive oil in a frying pan and heat until a drop of water sizzles and dances on the surface. Add the halloumi, sliced about 3/8-inch thick, and fry. Grind a little fresh Telicherry pepper on the frying cheese, if you like. After a couple of minutes carefully flip the slices and lightly brown the other side. A squeeze of lemon juice is a traditional finish.

Halloumi, unlike most cheese, has a very high melting point. Traditionally made from sheep and goat's milk, the international product often contains a lot of cow's milk. If done right, the halloumi retains its resistance to melting despite this change.

That's the first part of our staycation — fried halloumi, a little bit of Cyprus right in our kitchen. Thanks to the Internet we can enrich this experience.

With a bit of googling we learn that Cyprus, with its location in the Mediterranean Sea, enjoys a combination of climate and vegetation making it ideal for raising sheep and goats. It's no surprise that over generations Cypriot cheese makers have fused different Mediterranean cultures and blended the result with their own ideas, developing a rich cheese producer tradition and world famous cheeses like halloumi.

Finding recipes is easy but to serve my halloumi I made up my own recipe inspired by what I had read. I lightly grilled buttered slices of Angelos garlic baguette, placed the fried cheese on the grilled bread and then topped each serving with a grilled slice of lightly salted beefsteak tomato.

The cheese, as promised, had not softened from the heat but it did have a squeaky quality reminiscent of fresh cheese curds. It was delicious.

Check out these recipes. The BBC offers 12 ways to serve halloumi. Delia Online had an interesting recipe for halloumi with lime and caper vinaigrette.

Pittas Dairy offers not only its own recipes but links to recipes on the Net. The 20 Pittas recipes are presented as a PDF booklet with lots of information about the dairy and the cheese. I downloaded it for future reference.

Bill had mentioned serving halloumi with eggs and bacon for breakfast. The Pittas booklet has just such a recipe.

Enjoy.

Oh, about the politics of Cyprus. You are on your own on this. I'm too busy enjoying the food to concern myself with the politics. Hey, I'm on vacation!

Addendum:

I still had some halloumi remaining and so the next day I grilled a sliced garlic baguette, spread a small amount of basil pesto on the grilled bread, grated just a little Parmesan onto the pesto, laid down the grilled halloumi and finally placed halved olives on top of all.

Delicious.

Cheers,
Rokinon

Babies and where to have 'em_Part Two

This blog updated and expanded Friday, September 4, 2009
__________________________________________________

She's here. A beautiful baby girl. Such a joy. Such a wonder. A miracle. And no small miracle at that, despite her diminutive size: 19-inches, six and a half pounds.

It is almost midnight but we got home around five. It has been family, food, talk and wine every since. Well, maybe wine, family, food and talk to be more accurate.

If you read yesterday's blog, my wife and I arrived at the hospital around eight thirty this morning. It is an old hospital with some wings dating back to the early years of the last century and some sections may be even older. There are recent additions and some not so recent additions but the overall look on arrival is one of a vibrant, aging well, facility. I dropped off my wife and went to park our car.

The parking garage is just across the street and after parking the car I hiked down the five flights of stairs. I had heart surgery some years ago and so I like to do everything to squeeze a little exercise out of life. No elevators for me.

The birthing suite was on the third floor of the hospital and I again took the stairs. The balusters, handrails, etc. were wood with the finish chipped and worn from decades of use. "Ancient," I thought.

On reaching the third floor, I had a long corridor stretching out in both directions. I thought the birthing rooms were in the east end of the building and turned left. I noticed lots of stored stuff lining the walls. When I walked past a row of portable cribs for newborns, I knew I was getting close. The hospital had been built before a lot of this stuff lining the walls had been invented, or even imagined, and I thought that storage space must be at a premium in such a building. (Also, there is a lot of construction going on and the congestion in the halls could well be partially a result of the construction.)

I came to an intersection of corridors and I was lost. The information and sign-in office was empty. A sign next to a wall phone said to call for assistance. A very pregnant woman entered the office, picked up the phone and called. Watching this I felt that the hospital might be a little understaffed but within moments a woman appeared to assist the caller.

I felt a tap on my shoulder, it was my son-in-law. He guided me to the birthing room wing, which was down two of halls and through a couple of sets of fire doors.

Entering our daughter's room I heard a heart beat — a loud, strong heart beat. It was the heart beat of my still unborn granddaughter. A sensor on her tummy was both recording and broadcasting the unborn infant's heart beat.

At first the sound was loud and clear and then it weakened. I must have looked panicked as my son-in-law stepped over and explained that the sensor was on his wife's belly and so, as the infant moved, the strength of the signal changed.

My wife was already in the room. She took the elevator. It was more direct and there were signs pointing the way. The world is designed for wusses. I'll teach my granddaughter to be an adventurer, a risk taker, an urban explorer and take stairs.

Beside the bed sat my daughter's nurse. Her nurse? Yes, expectant mothers are assigned their own nurse upon arrival. This woman would stay with my daughter throughout the day. She would monitor both mom's progress and the progress of the baby. There was some high tech equipment beside the bed and the nurse was checking a printout.

The monitoring equipment was connected to the main nursing station and the nurses on duty were also monitoring our daughter and soon-to-be-born child.

By 9:00 a.m. our daughter had dilated to 5 cm (about 2-inches). I believe the goal was 10 cm. The nurse told our daughter the first five is the difficult five. Our daughter smiled, leaned back and with a casual wave of her hand replied, "It was nothing."

Well, the first five may be the hardest but the last five were the longest. she was not dilated to a full 10 cm until early afternoon. And then, as they say, the hard part began. I wasn't there. My wife was there; her husband was there; and an increasing number of nurses and doctors were there.

By the time my granddaughter was born, there were five nurses in the room and two doctors. Both mom and child were being checked and both were looking good!

Later, sometime after the excitement had subsided, Dr. John Stoffman stopped by the room. Stoffman was the pediatrician conducting rounds at the hospital that day. Coincidentally he was the pediatrician who cared for both our daughters when they were both young. He remembered our daughter as having been once his patient and he will be the doctor doing the follow-up on our granddaughter. We all hope he will be able to be our granddaughter's doctor.

Little Fiona already has an OHIP (Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan) number. Someone has to pay Dr. Stoffman.
__________________________________________________

Do all births go so smoothly. No, of course not. Stories like this are interesting but they are not the whole story. Good stories and bad stories are always there to be found. More important are the overall figures.

Let's look at the CIA World Factbook and deaths/1000 live births: Singapore 2.31, Bermuda 2.46, Sweden 2.75 . . . Canada was in about 36th place with 5.04. The much maligned, at least recently in the United States, health care systems of Great Britain (4.95), France (3.33) and others all sported better numbers than Canada.

And the United States, where did it land on the CIA list? Well, the U.S. came in lower than Canada. The United States rated about 45 with 6.26 infant deaths per 1000 live births. This is one notch worse than Cuba.

Americans are being so badly served, not only by their health care system but by their media. It would be so easy to write "fools like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs" but they are not fools. Why they don't report with more thoughtful maturity, more journalistic integrity, encouraging more productive discourse, I'll leave up that up to you.

The United States deserves a better health care system. Rating well behind Macau, Andorra, Slovenia and South Korea on the CIA infant mortality rate list is just not acceptable. But, the U.S. also deserves, and desperately needs, a better media. It is impossible to run a successful democracy when so much of the voting populace is being misinformed.

Cheers,
Rockinon.

Babies and where to have 'em

It is 5:22 a.m. and I'm awake and my mind is racing. Our daughter called minutes ago to tell us she and her husband are off for the hospital, for the maternity ward; I'm about to become a grandpa!

One of my first thoughts was, "Oh how glad I am to be living in Canada." Our local hospitals are excellent but for a number of reasons one specializes in babies and births; they're the experts at delivering nine-month-miracles.

My second thought was how dangerous is this? I'm a worrier. (There's the telephone. It's our daughter. She's at the hospital and everyone is relaxed. Man, they're acting like this is an everyday occurrence! Wait. It is!)

Gotta be safe, right?

First hit from Google reads: U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says:

"American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births."

This is not an attack on the U.S. medical system. I'm sure that folk, like those in the American congress, do not have to fear for their newborn children or grandchildren. My guess is that if you calculated the infant mortality rate for those folk, and other well-off American folk, all would be fine. It would not surprise me to learn that those figures are among the best in the world.

What drags down American averages is the folk without proper medical care, at least that is my bet. And what this means is that millions of Americans would be far better off giving birth in Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia.

I'm not rich. I'm not sure where on the American medical pecking order my family and I would fall. It is just so comforting at times like this to be a Canadian.

I'm not suggesting that the U.S. should adopt the Canadian system or any other country's system. I'm suggesting that the U.S. should examine what is being done in other countries and go us all one better. Show us the imagination and the leadership for which the United States is so famous. Watch the following YouTube video, it gives one pause to think.

Cheers,

Rockinon