Category: Food & Health

Mystery Meal

This lesson brought to you by Sally:

Matt and I went out for a fancy French dinner last night. Since it was already a treat, we decided to spring for an appetizer, and ordered something that neither of us knew what it was, but it had something about plantain chips and an avocado mousse, so we thought it was worth a try.

BAD IDEA.  What we got was a chilled bowl of seafood!  It was clams, trout, calamari, and shrimp – none of which I eat and only half of which he likes.  We ate almost nothing and were kicking ourselves for not asking before ordering, until our waitress told us that she was comping our dessert to make up for our dissatisfaction.

Here, it all evened out, but the overall lesson is that being adventurous is fun, but unless you’re really up for whatever you’re served, google or ask before ordering. Those foreign words on menus can be tricky!

And btw, the French version of gnocchi is AMAZING.

 

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

This lesson learned by Gale:

Remind me when I become a grandmother someday, to do a lot of research and not depend on what was considered safe when my boys were born. I had everything homemade, including the crib bumper. Who knew that crib bumpers are now considered unsafe for babies?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/business/01safety.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=aua2

 

Don’t you just love a bargain?

Kat called me to say that she had a lesson for me to share with you.  I thought she told me to tell you to make sure to close the top securely when using a salad dressing bottle – the kind with the recipes printed on the side.  She was now wearing the dressing.

But no.

She was really trying to tell me to HOLD the top securely.  Closing it is not enough!  I had the same bottle, was making the same dressing (hundreds of miles away), and minutes later, had the same experience!

Now we know why these items were at the Christmas Tree Shops for $1.99!

End of the Big Gulp

Learned by Gale:

Today I learned that I should not be gulping down huge glasses of water just to get my daily water intake because the bloodstream can only handle being diluted by about 4 ounces at any one time. Any additional goes to the kidneys to be filter out out to maintain the osmotic balance of the blood. This means more work for the kidneys to filter water that hasn’t even had the chance to filter through the lymph system and clean the body’s tissues.

This process takes about a 1/2 hour so actually we should drink 16 4-ounce glasses of water per day. That sounds so much nicer to just keep a glass of water nearby and sip and enjoy. Ok, I can do that.

source – “Natural Eye Care, an encyclopedia by Marc Grossman

 

 

Old Poodle New Tricks

Actually, it’s turning out to be a whole new poodle…

There is a Brzozowski family recipe for “Poodles”, those chocolate and peanut butter and oatmeal no-bake drop cookies  that you may remember from your childhood.  Well, I signed up to make some for our group pizza party, without checking the pantry.  Result: not nearly enough peanut butter.

In desperation, I used almond butter to extend the batch.  At least one Family Member is appalled, and that was before she found out that I was using a whole new recipe!

The good news: these things are delicious!   So instead of a lesson about checking the larder, the lesson is learning a new recipe.  This is for a very small batch – multiply as needed as I did:

All New Poodles

Mix 1 Tablespoon peanut butter, 1 Tablespoon almond butter, 2 tablespoons low-fat milk and 1/4 cup chocolate chips, over low heat, until chocolate melts.

Stir in 3/4 cup rolled oats. Remove from heat.  Drop blobs onto wax-paper-lined baking sheet.

Refrigerate 10 minutes if you can wait that long.

YUM

 

Eat

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve learned not to go into meetings (or any interactions with other people) hungry, then I could probably hire a personal chef who would follow me around and serve me food in time to avoid me being very cranky and obnoxious.  And unhappy.

But I don’t have those dollars or that chef, so I need to learn, either once and for all, or (more likely) over and over again until it sticks, to EAT well before I get to starving, no matter how busy I am.

Why is this so hard to learn?

Whistle or Die

Although I always tell people that if I had a whistle-less teakettle (like my mother-in-law’s) I would probably burn my house down.  And my family bought me a wonderful electric espresso maker after my fear that I would do the same with my stove-top model for that.  Yet, if I forget to close the whistle/cover on my teakettle, I’m in the same scary boat and the water boils out and it’s not a pretty thing.   Or a safe one.

Lesson learned again today: always always ALWAYS close the whistle on the kettle!

P.S. I know that one of my beloved blog-followers is going to hate this.  But I’m sure she would rather I posted and learned!  Right?

It’s All Connected

From Gale:

We all know that a sinus infection can cause a toothache, but did you know it also works the other way? Thanks to Jane, I did not cancel the appt.  Today I went back to the dentist almost embarrassed to ask him to look at my tooth again. He looked into my mouth and said “Oh you poor thing!”

My tooth had cracked, but when I was there a few weeks ago, it wasn’t as obvious as it was today. Unfortunately, it cracked all the way through the whole tooth, so it can’t be saved. But that’s not the lesson learned.  Food was caught in the crack and it was infected. The lesson learned is that this may have been the cause of the sinus infection, and maybe why it wouldn’t go away.

http://www.ehow.com/way_5640585_bad-tooth-cause-sinus-trouble_.html

Oh, and no problem with the dentist. The internet tells me it can be very difficult to diagnose.

 

Preheat Peril

See this is how an electric oven works: Preheat means heat both the top and bottom elements.  Bake is just the bottom elements.

I have learned how darn important it is to switch from preheat to bake when you put the item in the oven.

Our carefully over-managed Thanksgiving morning project plan had every step in the world on it -when to mix, when to bake, when to carve.  But there was no task and no slack for dealing with broccoli casserole with actual raging flames coming from the potato chip topping too close to the still-on-preheat burner!

All’s well that ends well, but please heed the lessons from this!