A Great, No-Nonsense Take on Vitamins

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Accessed from the Vitamania website

Vitamania, a film starring Dr. Derek Muller, available through various streaming platforms, released in August 2018.

Please, folks, please–watch this film! We watched it for the second time just last week, and I had the same reaction that I had the first time: I need to eat better, eat more fruits and vegetables, make sure I’m getting a good range of nutrients from my food. Because here’s the thing: we can’t eat a crummy diet and then think we’ll be okay if we just pop some vitamin pills. (And perhaps other supplements–I plan to re-watch the Frontline episode about that whole blah-de-blah soon, so watch for a review of that.) Vitamins are supposed to be consumed in our food. (Not to beat the drum or anything.)

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A Totally Thrown-Together-but-Great Chicken Casserole

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Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay

So . . . we’ve all been cooking solely for our families and pods, right? Last Friday night, though, Jim and I actually attended a dinner party. Woo-hoo! It was over at our church in what’s called the “Fireside Room,” which actually has a fireplace, and included just us and two other couples. The other four had all had COVID, so we felt pretty safe. I had volunteered to bring the main dish. It’s an easy choice to make something Italian and pasta-ish, and always good, but I wanted something a little different. I’ll give you the very basic item I came up with and then some ideas to jazz it up/change it up. One of the women asked for the recipe, which was flattering. When she, and you, see what I did you’ll probably laugh, but my idea worked really well. There are still some leftovers in the fridge as I type this Monday morning, and I’m looking forward to having some for lunch.

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Kung Pao Pork and a Revision or Two

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Image by Lebensmittelfotos from Pixabay

Just a quick note: I made the kung pao chicken recipe with pork last night, using the recipe as I’d written it in the previous post. We’d all liked the chicken version immensely, but I’d kind of thrown it together and wasn’t totally sure of the exact proportions. So I made the sauce with equal parts sherry, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and chicken stock, and while it was very good it was a little heavy on the vinegar. So I’ve now reduced the vinegar a little in the recipe and added a description of the easiest way to mix up the sauce. Be sure to give it a try! I think I’ll make a beef version one of these days, with the only change being swapping beef stock for chicken. Be sure to let me know if you make this and how you liked it.

A Guh-reat but Really Easy Recipe For Kung Pao Chicken

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Image by Fernando Sadao Shiraishi from Pixabay

I’ve had a standard stir-fry recipe for many years that can fit either chicken or beef depending on the stock/broth used and other variations. I don’t think lemon juice goes with beef, for instance, so I substitute sherry. It’s served me well, but recently I’ve become interested in developing a good homemade version of kung pao chicken. When we lived in Falls Church, VA, we ate a number of times at the Peking Gourmet Inn, a restaurant less than a mile from us that was a favorite of many celebrities, including the George W. Bushes. The walls are lined with many framed and signed photos. Gideon especially loved their kung pao chicken, saying that it wasn’t like any other version he’d ever tried. I loved their egg rolls, and sometimes for lunch I’d call in a takeout order (with extra garlic sauce), swing by and pick it up, and consume the two scrumptious, golden, packed-with-filling rolls in about five nanoseconds. Heaven! (Well, nearly.) In homage to that memory I made some egg rolls not too long ago that weren’t bad, although I didn’t deep fry them. Too messy! Then I decided to make a run at the kung pao. While the end result wasn’t really much like the PGI version, I have to say that the results were pretty gratifying. You know you have a hit on your hands when people keep taking seconds . . . and thirds. There was a tiny portion left. (Which I ate for lunch today, and it was just as good as freshly made!)

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More Reasons to Ignore the Keto Krazies

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Image by zuzyusa from Pixabay

Maybe a little bit of an overstatement, as not everyone who follows a so-called “ketogenic” diet is literally crazy. Of course not! And I haven’t written about this type of fad diet, or indeed any type, for quite some time. But a recent article in the Washington Post, plus another book out by Gary Taubes, he of Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It, has put keto back on the front burner in the sense of my being reminded once again of its non-starter status for me.

Let me start by being sure everyone understands the term “keto diet.” Here’s a good summing-up quotation from the above-cited WaPo article:

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Super-Simple Habits for the New Year

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Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

Didja watch the video from yesterday? We worked pretty hard on it but hope to do better as time goes on. Just like the Zoom choral pieces I just about tore my hair out over for my choir’s online Christmas concert—I almost gave up on those but persevered. Now I’m looking forward to our spring concert and its new challenges. Same with videos for this site, which will include some v-e-r-y  s-i-m-p-l-e demos from the upcoming cookbook. So stick around!

Anyway, I emphasized in the video how important it is to form permanent, longstanding habits that have no finish line. Doing a short-term “challenge” is pretty useless. You go on some extreme, short-term diet and lose a lot of weight, but then you just go back to eating the way you did to cause the need for weight loss in the first place. So what was the point? You’re probably worse off than before, since you would have lost muscle mass but regained fat tissue.

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My First Exercise Video!

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Hi folks–While this isn’t a fitness blog, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to include some exercise ideas as we head into 2021. My own goals are to do my floor exercises three times a week, plus a walk at least four times a week. Nothing extreme or extravagant! But I explain my whole “forming habits with no finish line” philosophy in the video. So here it is:

What’s Up with the New Alternative Sweeteners? (I’m Not a Fan.)

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Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

Three items recently spurred my interest in this subject. First, a month or so ago, my mother-in-law got a postcard from a realtor with a recipe for buckwheat pancakes on it. She planned to make them and showed it to me. “What’s this ‘no-carb sweetener’?” she asked. I had no idea. The recipe clearly wasn’t talking about some type of artificial sweetener that you use by the drop, as it called for something like a cupful. Hmmm. (But I did warn her that this was a vegan recipe, as it called for “flax eggs,” which you make by mixing ground flaxseed and water in proportions of 1:3 and letting the mixture sit for about 15 minutes. A perfectly good thing if you’re allergic to eggs, of course, and if you’re ethically opposed to animal products. But you don’t have to do it if you think that flaxseed is better for you than eggs. Just eat the eggs!)

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Some Year-End Thoughts

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Image by Erad from Pixabay

Have you just recently started getting posts from this blog? The pause was caused mainly by an accidental change in our mailing-list service. It was also at least somewhat caused by the fact that I hadn’t been writing many posts recently, as I’ve been concentrating on my music blog. For 2021, though, I’m going to set the goal of writing a post a week here. Remember, this isn’t a food blog as such, or a cooking blog. It’s a site that concentrates on the part that food should play in our lives. (“Roles,” remember.) Ideally, all the food that you eat should fulfill at least one of these two roles:

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A Welcome Voice of Reason from the Food/Agricultural World

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I really have no idea how I ran across the blog “The Farmer’s Daughter USA,” but I have to say that I love, love, love Amanda. Here’s why:

Like me, she comes from a farming family. (I’d last about five minutes actually working on a farm, but that’s all by the by. And, as my son points out, my dad left the farm as soon as he could. Still! I treasure the memories of family vacations to southwest Minnesota where there were two big silos on my Uncle Abe’s farm saying “Baerg Dairy” and where I fed chickens and let calves lick my fingers.)

She is a voice of true sanity in our world of food fads.

She’s survived cancer with courage and grace.

Okay. Here’s an old post she sent out recently and which I’d recommend you read (it’s very short). Have you ever felt guilty as you pass by the rather sad-looking fruits and vegetables labeled “organic” in the produce section and thought, ‘Maybe I should buy these, but they’re so expensive and they look so sad’? Well, now you don’t have to!

“I Don’t Spend More for Organic, and You Don’t Have To Either“