March 1, 2014

           How about a food blog today? Here’s a test I never knew about. How can you tell if a soda really is diet? Easy, according to some people. Corn syrup is heavier than water. Drop the unopened can into a tank full of water. If it sinks, that isn’t diet. In the absence of the fructose, the carbon dioxide in the fizz is just enough to keep the narrow end of the can at the surface, as shown. Imagine those greedy people at Walmart, impeding scientific progress by wanting me to spend $12 on the tank first.
           Near poison, that’s what I called my list published in the February 9, 2014 addendum. As I emptied my cupboards of GMOs, I opted to look for the worst example. And there it is. Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese Soup. Here are the ingredients they would prefer kept in the fine print:

           Modified food starch
           Corn oil
           Cottonseed oil
           Canola oil
           Soybean oil
           Modified cheese
           Enzyme modified butter
           Soy lecithin
           Hydrogenated soybean oil
           Enzyme modified butterfat
           Enzyme modified butter oil

Basically, it isn’t even food. Brought to you by the Cambell Soup Company, in Camden, New Jersey. The Soprano State. It seems they must be running out of real food ingredients and must be pipelining this gunk in from the Dupont settling tanks. Look at this label. How do they even find out half these chemicals exist? Why mustard extract? Why not real mustard? The stuff grows wild all over Wyoming.
           I disposed of this “soup” along with two quarts of used oil at the hazmat dump. It very quickly becomes a habit to examine labels for these components, for I hesitate to call them ingredients. Additive/stabilizer/colorant/preservative soup is a better title but admitted less catchy in some circles. I mean, what is “enzyme modified”. Is the fat modified by the enzyme, or is the enzyme what modifies the fat? All I know is these items are on the watch list. Think, would you eat a spoonful of each material by itself? If not, put it back on the shelf.
           These products must be replaced, which is another emerging task. Shopping now takes more time, part of it caused by how not every store carries what you need. No one-stop unless you go up to Whole Foods with a credit card. It’s probably dangerous to carry enough cash to shop there for a family of four. To depart from food momentarily, that was Jag on the phone.

           Rehearsal is cancelled. Wow, the poor guy sounds as rough as I did after a Friday night at the campus pub. But he is doing the homework and actually watched the video of the Valentine’s show. And saw the room for improvement without a big “Glen-style” argument. But the video proves what we do is unique in this area. Bass and rhythm, both instruments sharing middle ground to flesh out the sound by combining what are evidently highly arranged and rehearsed patterns.

           Back to food. Here is the least to look for in a soda. The catch is this is not a domestic product. It is imported from Mexico via El Paso, it does not say where in Mexico. But my guess is wherever that is, they bury their garbage in the ground instead of making soup. The tradeoff is this one bottle has 160 calories. Yesterday’s crossword had a clue that was a condiment made from berries. This threw me, as I thought of blueberries and gooseberries. The answer? Allspice. So I had to look that one up.

           I presupposed berries meant plural species. Nope, according to Wiki, it is many berries from one plant, a tree. Originating in Jamaica, the dried ground berries are used in everything from sausage to chili to a deodorant. Don’t ask. The seeds can only germinate after being digested by birds. Don’t ask about that, either. I think today I will buy some and see if it adds anything to my increasingly bland meals. I even cut out all the breakfast cereals I like because they contain corn. There are others, like Cheerios, which are not my favorites. And most sauce mixes, soup mixes, and a lot of powdered anything are laced with corn.

           Here is the lowly peanut, which has found its way back on my table. But this time in carefully measured quantity. Shown here (look closely) is me measuring three tablespoons into a tray. That’s another 160 calories. Show here is a daily intake, not a snack. I now like these crushed and on my Cream of Wheat. Um, how long do I have to eat healthy before I can start smoking again? A little humor there, guys.

           Are there any non-food topics on the roster this fine afternoon? How about this trailer for sale. It seems in prime condition so I zipped over for a look. And that’s the red scooter that I zipped on. The unit is much more solidly built that it looks, it is of much better quality that you’d rent for U-Haul. I looked it over admiringly but I don’t own anything that could tow something that heavy. The price tag was also weighty, at $7,800. I noted the tags were from Ontario, where they have not heard there is still a tight money market in these parts. He’s trying to sell it to another Canuck if he’s asking that much for it. But it sure is a heavy duty rig. A full eight feet wide interior measurement, and those rear doors that swing way out to let you use every square inch while blocking the wind. My pod would fit inside there with room to spare.

           And what about the lack of an index on this blog? Actually, it is indexed, by date. But I really mean a glossary. It is like a Chinese textbook, where if you don’t recall where you read it, how will you ever find it again? Want to get rich and famous off my hard work? Develop that glossary. All you have to do is mention every topic I ever brought up and which date. That would be good enough. Can that even be done in my expected life span? Try to surprise me, this blog was never meant to go as far as it did. But even though I’ve got ten times the readership of a bestseller, I’m still an unknown. If I ever get discovered, it will be after the fact now.
           It is only mid-afternoon. Nothing is planned other than bingo. Drop back another time and I’ll tell if anything exciting happened there. It didn’t. But check in anyway. I mean, it is the first bingo on rent week, which dampers everything.

ADDENDUM
           For the first time in my life, I read 500 wpm and remembered the entire session. You can do this too, by going to Spritzer. What a novel concept, that each word has a recognition point. It seems to work for me, a traditionally slow reader.
           One thing I apologize for is if you have already seen some of the articles like this on television. I’m reporting things that are new to me and discovered by reading as opposed to by watching.

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