F is for Food Rules

Are you as confused by all of the advice out there these days on the best way to eat to live forever? I am. However, I found a book that explains good eating in terms I can understand, Food Rules, an eaters manual by Michael Pollen. He wrote the book in 2009, but I think it's still relevant today.

Here are a few of his rules:

No. 13  Eat only foods that will eventually rot.

No. 19  If it came from a plant, eat it: if it was made in a                 plant, don't.

No. 20  It's not food if it arrived through the window of                   your car.

No. 45  It's not food if it's called by the same name in                       every language
              (Think Big Mac, Cheetos, or Pringles.)

No. 25  Eat your colors.

No. 36  Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color                 of the milk.

No. 39  Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

No. 45  Eat less.

And my favorite:
No. 64  Break the rules once in a while.

Do you have any rules you try to follow for eating?

E is for Embarrassing Ellen

I was scanning through Facebook the other day and came upon a comment that puzzled me a bit. A friend had taken some kind of quiz or another and said that maybe the results were a bit skewed because she had to say that she had watched the Ellen DeGeneres TV show.  But then she added that it was when she was home on a sick day like it was an embarrassing thing to admit that she had watched Ellen. That was puzzling to me as to why she said that.

This person watches TV because she mentions other shows, but now that I think about it, they may all be on PBS. I don't know if the fact that she was watching network TV was the problem. I also know this person has no problem with Ellen's sexual orientation, so I don't think it was that.

I don't see Ellen often, but enjoy watching it when I'm home that time of the day. I find the show funny and pleasant and generally a feel good experience. Sometimes it's silly, but that adds to the fun. So what am I missing? Is Ellen a guilty pleasure that I shouldn't admit that I watch like Dancing with the Stars? Is there a cultural thing I'm not aware of? (Wouldn't be the first time.) Have you ever seen the Ellen show? What do you think of it?

Oh, wait. It just occurred to me that she might have been referring to the Ellen sitcom from the 1990s. As I remember it, it was an okay show, but nothing to write home about. If that's what she watched, her comment makes more sense. In the words of Emily Litella from Saturday Night Live, "Never mind."

Note: Ward just read this and he doesn't know why you should be embarrassed about watching the Ellen sitcom either. It's a mystery.

D is for DNA

A few posts ago, I made some provocative statements about finding a new relative. Of course there were questions about what the rest of the story was. I can't tell a lot of it because it's not my story to tell, but I'll try to explain what I can.

In short, through DNA and Ancestry.com, I got a new close relative. Below are the details. Or as many as I can tell. Feel free to skim or skip ahead.

My sister, let's call her Mary Ellen, had been researching our genealogy for several years and as part of that, she had her DNA tested and the results entered into to the Ancestry.com data base. In general, testing provides a breakdown of ethnicity, e.g., Irish-20%, Native American--20%, etc,. and tells you how likely it is that you are related to someone else who is in the data base. For example, your notice could say that a certain person is a 3rd or 4th cousin of yours with high confidence, or low confidence. However it's up to the parties involved if they want to be in contact with each other and share any information. One will contact the other through Ancestry and if the other party is interested, they will respond.

This picture is part of both the past
and present stories.

One day Mary Ellen received a notice that there was a very high confidence that someone was closely related to her. Up until this point, she had been able to figure out how different notices of both distant and close relatives fit into the family trees. But this one was a mystery. Mary Ellen didn't know who they were, so she contacted the other party, let's call them Cathy, to get more information.

As it turns out, Cathy was administering the information for someone, let's call him Abraham, whom she was convinced was related to her because of the many things they had in common. Cathy had Abraham take a DNA test to confirm this.  It turned out that Abraham was not related to Cathy at all, but he was related to us. Mary Ellen starting sleuthing to figure out what was going on. She talked to close and distant family members as well as studying all of her old notes. When my sister thought she might have the answer, she convinced another one of our relatives, let's call her Beatrix to take a DNA test to test her hypothesis. And Mary Ellen was right.

Or in short, a man we thought was our grandfather wasn't, and some other stranger was.

Suddenly, many things from the past became a lot clearer. Big things and subtle things we had never noticed before, now made sense. It took a while for all of us to process this new data. Our family story that we had identified with forever was now different. It was a strange feeling.

In the midst of readjusting our thinking, I realized something important. Colon cancer was no longer in our family history and we could have colonoscopies on a regular schedule now instead of an accelerated one. That was certainly an unexpected blessing.

The whole story is much more complicated than I have explained here, But that's what I've got to share at this point in time.

Have you had any surprises in your family history?

C is for Cooking

My son has been cooking,
but I haven't been taking pictures.
This is the only one i could find.

As most of you know, cooking is not my thing. I consider it a chore not the creative or relaxing activity that many find. The problem is that eating usually goes much better if cooking is involved. Meals are often more healthful and cheaper when they are cooked at home. Therein lies the problem. Neither my husband or I like to cook and when we don't, our meals become more expensive and usually not as healthy. I have struggled with this for years. (My husband, on the other hand has no problem eating out all of the time.)

But then the most wonderful thing happened. My son moved back home and part of his rent was to cook dinner every night. And we are certainly getting our monies worth. He figures out our schedules and cooks our meals to coincide with when we will be coming home. He makes balanced meals and we are eating more vegetables than we ever have as he adds them to dishes (shredded carrots here and chopped spinach there) as well as having them star on their own. We didn't ask him to cook on weekends, but he does. And if he goes away, he plans ahead and cooks enough to last us while we were gone. I used to think it was funny when I heard people cook for their family when they were going away. I thought that the family ought to be able to handle a few meals for themselves. Well, they probably could, just like my husband and I can, but we sure appreciate it when he does that. He, also, studies recipes and checks the ads. Sometimes he does the shopping and sometimes I do, but he always has a list.

At this point in his life,
all my son wanted to do
was read books and climb trees,
 not cook.

Sometimes I am his sous chef or sometimes I stir something when goes back to work (he has a workshop in our basement), but he is always has a plan he is executing. He occasionally asks me for advice on cooking techniques, but student has outpaced the master. With access to the Food Network, YouTube, and wide array of cookbooks, he knows things that I never learned. He talks the layering flavors and about spices I've never used. And the list goes on.

Last January, my husband joined Weight Watchers. This is the first time anyone in our household has been on this program and it's all new to us. However, my son, mastered the points and allowances quickly. He has expanded his meal to include WW point values. For example, he asks my husband how many points he plans to eat for breakfast and lunch, so he knows how many points he has to work with for dinner. And the list goes on.

Not for one single second do we take my son's cooking for granted. We know this is the best thing that has happened to us in a long time and it won't last forever. He will move on. But for now, the quality of our life has greatly improved and we are very, very thankful.

B is for Birds

I didn't know much about birds growing up. I knew that robins were a sign of spring and the cardinal was the West Virginia state bird. The rest of them were some version of brown and gray and built nests and laid eggs. That was about all I knew. That lack of knowledge was still evident when I was in college and my sister tried to take me bird watching. I couldn't even find the trees she was showing me, let alone the birds.

But that all changed several years ago when we put up a bird feeder for my husband's birthday. Watching our daily visitors was soon my new hobby. I slowly learned that many of the brown and gray ones were sparrows and the big black ones were crows (okay, maybe I already know that). But I learned you could tell the difference between crows and hawks in the air because hawks soar while crows just fly basically in straight line. The saying, "As the crow flies" comes from this that.

I learned that many of our woodpecker visitors were black and white and preferred suet to sunflower seeds. I also sadly learned a sapsucker woodpecker can kill a healthy maple tree in just a couple of years with the holes it pecks.

In the nesting boxes that soon followed our feeder, I learned that bluebirds can put up a pretty good fight defending their territory from sparrows, and chickadee chicks line themselves up in a circle with their tails in the middle and their heads facing outward. I also found out that wrens use twigs to build their nest and put spider egg sacks in them to help control the mites.

In addition, out of curiosity and a little googling one day, I learned that birds poop and pee at the same time. They only have one opening for all the business that needs to be done so when you look at a bird dropping the poop is the black part in the middle and the white is their pee, so to speak.

We don't have as many visitors to the feeders at our new house, but we will get there, I hope. In the meantime, I enjoyed the mockingbird, juncos, starlings, finches and crows that visited this morning. And I didn't have to ask my sister or anyone else what they were. These were birds I wouldn't have been about to identify a few years ago. Slowly and steady, I am happily learning.

Below are pictures of some of our visitors over the years.

Male and female cardinals--WV state bird as well as 6 other states

Bluebird guarding the nest box from sparrows.

Wren nest made from twigs. See the white fuzzy things?
Those are the spider sacs that will help control the mites.

A robin and buds on the tree. Both signs of spring.

Pileated and male downy woodpeckers enjoying the suet cakes.

I was better at identifying crows on the ground than in the air until I learned their flight pattern.

These very young chickadees have already lined themselves around the nest with their heads facing outwards.

I've read that the sapsuckers holes usually don't damage a tree. However, we had one determined bird who eventually killed my son's favorite climbing tree.

Besides learning about birds, I've also learned a lot about squirrels since we put up a feeder.