Good Stuff: Mexican Hummus

ByJohn Brown

I have been giving a new way of eating a go for the last few months. It’s high-fat, medium-protein, low-carb (HFLC).

Zoinks!?

High freaking fat, you exclaim. Has he gone mad!

Well, possibly.

One thing I do know is that I’ve lightened the load my godlike thighs have to carry by about twenty pounds, which is a nice thing. Oh, and by the way, I’ve paired this with intermittent fasting.

Horrors!

Yes, it is Halloween. Or was a few days ago.

In a few more months, when I’ve given this method a good long test, I’ll explain exactly what this is all about. But I’ll tease you by saying that it seems the scientific community isn’t immune to bias and jumping the gun. Not even close. We’d like to think they are, all those men and women in their white lab coats, but they aren’t. In fact, there are a number of doctors and researchers right now demonstrating that the advice we’ve been getting about fat and carbohydrates since the late 1970s was wrong. Like 180 degrees wrong.

Let me point you to some presentations you can watch about this right now.

“The Two Big Lies of Type 2 Diabetes” by Jason Fung, MD

“Reversing Type 2 diabetes starts with ignoring the guidelines” by Sarah Hallberg, MD

“Therapeutic fasting” by Jason Fung, MD

Okay, so with that lead up, who’s up for a delicious, high-fat meal? Here’s one of my favorites.

I call it “Mexican Hummus.” I found it in Always Hungry? By David Ludwig, MD, PhD. He calls it “Cheesy Pinto Bean Dip.” Which isn’t a bad name, but isn’t inspiring. You might call it modern refried beans, but that sounds like something out of a can or glopped onto the side of your dish. But Mexican Hummus, that has some class. A little zip.

Whatever you call it, it tastes great.

Use as a dip for red, orange, or yellow bell peppers cut into strips. Or eat it as a side. I like it with baked chicken thighs. It’s also good with fajita veggies—sautéed peppers and onions cooked with lots of butter, salt, and a bit a chili powder—and some slices of avocado.

MEXICAN HUMMUS

  1. Mix the following in food processor for 30 seconds or until smooth
    1. 1 C cooked pinto beans, drained and rinsed
    2. 4 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
    3. ¼ C water
    4. ½ tsp chili powder
    5. ¼ to ½ tsp salt
  2. Mix in ¾ C shredded cheddar cheese (you want cheddar cause it melts well)
  3. Heat in microwave or on stove until cheese just melts. Stir.

HOMEMADE CHILI POWDER

I don’t like the chili powder you get in the stores—it’s too strong, overwhelms everything I put it into, and gives me heartburn. So I found a recipe that’s awesome and make my own.

Mix the following together. Choose the amounts in the ranges shown based on your tastes.

  • 2 tablespoon paprika
  • ¾  to 1½ teaspoon onion powder
  • 1½ to 2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • ½  to 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1½ t garlic powder (optional)
  • ½ to 1½ teaspoon cayenne (optional, I put in barely a pinch; I do NOT like it spicy)

HERB-ROASTED CHICKEN THIGHS

This has got to be the easiest recipe on the planet for chicken.

  • 6 to 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (about 2 pounds)
  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons dried herb blend (Italian herb mix, poultry mix, lemon chicken mix, or chili powder above)
  • ½ to ¾ teaspoons of salt
  • ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions.

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  2. Grease a 9×9 inch baking dish with butter or some extra-virgin olive oil
  3. Put chicken skin side up in baking dish
  4. Brush with the olive oil
  5. Sprinkle on the herb blend, salt, and pepper
  6. Bake for 45 minutes.
  7. If you want, you can baste a couple of time through the cooking by spooning the juices in the baking dish over the thighs.

Bon appetite.

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  • Miss Potter, Downton Abbey, Human Planet

    ByJohn Brown

    Miss Potter, a true romance

    How many shows are good enough that you can walk into them partway through and within a minute become completely engrossed? I found two this week. The first is the 2006 film Miss Potter, which tells the story of Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), who is the best selling children’s author of all time. You might know her by the most famous of her 23 illustrated children’s stories: The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

    As a side note, Potter spent a lot of time at her family’s country home in the Lake District. I was lucky enough to be able to vacation there once, but never knew until I saw this film that the gorgeous landscapes that had been preserved were partially due to her donation of 4,000 acres.  

    The movie opens with the fact that Potter, who is played so well by Renée Zellweger, has missed her early chances of marriage. She’s a young spinster, and, having a number of her illustrations purchased, is determined to make some money publishing her own illustrated stories. The movie follows her journey to publication, which met with opposition from both publishers and her family, but the real heart of the film is the story of her meeting and falling in love with Norman Warne, whom her parents, especially her mother, don’t approve of because he’s a tradesman. The film is full of wonderful drama, humor, tragedy, and solace. I can’t recommend it highly enough. In fact, I found myself watching it a second time two days later with my girls with just as much enjoyment.

    Downton Abbey, a period drama

    The second show is the BBC miniseries Downton Abbey.  Its first season of seven episodes aired last year in the USA on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater.  The second season will air at the beginning of 2012.  

    The series is set in the fictional Downton Abbey and follows the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants. The stories take place over the time period that starts with the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 to the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914.

    The main story line running through the episodes is the fact that the Crawley family must give up the estate to a distant relation because they have no male heir. But what I find so refreshing is that the stories of various servants are included. Some are funny. Some pull at your heart strings.

    So far I’ve met and enjoyed some truly delightful characters as well as a couple of villains. If you enjoyed the BBC’s Pride & Prejudice or the Cranford series, I think you’ll enjoy this.

    Human Planet, an amazing documentary

    These last two weeks I’ve watched with fascination the eight episodes of the BBC and Discovery documentary series Human Planet. One species on our planet has adapted to every environment on earth—that’s us. The series looks at a number of remarkable ways humans have adapted to the various habitats.

    You’ll see people from all over the globe who do things you never would imagine. Here’s just a small sample:

     

    • -Folks in Churchill, Manitoba Canada who trick or treat on Halloween with hungry polar bears stalking the streets
    • -A man in Papua New Guinea practicing the ancient art of shark calling in a small canoe
    • -Dolphins that help humans fish in Brazil
    • -A wild honeyguide bird working with Maasai boys to steal honey from wild African bees
    • -Mongolians using tamed golden eagles to hunt fox
    • -People in the eastern Amazon who love their pet monkeys so much they breastfeed them
    • -Inuit Canadians who risk death going under the arctic ice during low tide to gather mussels
    • -Three Dorobo in Kenya stealing food from a lion pride of more than twenty lions

     

    Oh, and how could I not mention the three children who hunt tarantulas in Venezuela, roasting them up as tasty treats that taste a little like crab. I could go on and on. There are sixty-three of these stories in all, grouped into eight episodes that each focus on a certain habitat, including deserts, the Arctic, jungles, mountains, grasslands, rivers, and cities. Each episode also includes a behind-the-scenes story about the filming of one of the episodes. And some of these are as thrilling as the stories themselves.

    In fact, that’s one of the things I love about this series. In addition to showing me fascinating things I’ve never seen, a number of the stories also raise the adrenaline just a bit. And yet, that’s not all. Because while presenting “strange” cultures, the stories humanize these folks so that instead of presenting aliens, these people feel more like fascinating distant relations. This is storytelling at its finest. If you like nature shows at all, you’ll be totally delighted with Human Planet.

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  • Good Stuff! Two movies, a book, and a shovel

    ByJohn Brown

    We’re going to start with the shovel because it’s been dumping snow this year, and I know there are some folks out there who want a quicker way to clear the snow from their driveways and walks. And, boy, do I have something for them.

    I think it’s safe to say that the Brown family clears more snow by hand than the average American family. We have a driveway and street that together are a little over a tenth of a mile long. Here’s a picture.

    We clear that lovely stretch of road by hand with shovels. (Yes, we are crazy; more on that below.) Most of the time we have it cleared long before any city plow shows up. But we love our city plows because they can do the heavy work at the edges on the bottom two-thirds. And they do all the work on that bottom part when it gets really heavy and deep. We love our neighbors with tractors who’ve come to our rescue as well.

    Still, we do most of the clearing.

    We began our mad shoveling craze for one simple reason: we couldn’t get to our house when it snowed. And it was a pain in the neck to hike that tenth of a mile.

    Part of the problem is that we live on a hill, and there are a couple of steep stretches. Another part of the problem was that we had not availed ourselves of this higher technology called snow tires. We thought all-weather tires would do just as fine.

    Wrong. Big wrong. They don’t even come close.

    With all-weathers, on a hill, you have to keep the road clear. As in to the blacktop. Because once you build up even a small layer of snow, you’ll get slick patches, and then the all-weathers do nothing but spin.

    But we didn’t discover that until a few years into it. And by that time, we’d learned that shoveling such a long drive was not only good exercise, but it also was a great way to teach our four girls how to work hard and not fear projects that seemed daunting.

    I know some of you are thinking, dude, why not purchase a snow blower, or a pickup or four-wheeler with a plow?

    Because snow blowers at the time, much less four wheelers and pickups, were out of our budget. Because I’d much rather spend the money on a family trip somewhere fun. Because why spend the money when you can line up as a family and create your own Brown Family Snow Blade and give your kids stories to tell their kids about living in the Gulag?

    Anyway, it’s what we do. Fast forward now to this year. Three of our daughters have grown up and gone off to college. Nellie, my youngest daughter, and I can usually still get it done. But this year’s record snows kicked our butts. Royally.

    Now, we’ve tried all sorts of shovels. I can guarantee, if it was at a store for sale, we’ve tried it. We’ve used brooms. We’ve used all sorts of configurations of girl, woman, and dad power. After all that experimentation, we found a standard push shovel to be the best for general snow and a square garden shovel to be the ticket for ice. But this year our trusty tools weren’t cutting it.

    So, after one long day on the driveway, I went on line looking for a better shovel. And after looking at quite several contraptions, I found The Snowcaster.

    You can see it in action below. It’s basically a plow. One made for a human to push.

    When I saw it, I thought this thing had to be better than pushing shovels. So I ordered it and assembled it. The curved blade of incredibly hard plastic rises 9 inches above the ground and is three feet long. Its nifty design allows you to simply flip it to change the direction of the blade.

    After using it these last six weeks on multiple snows of everything from ten inches of powder to three inches of watery slush, I will simply say that it’s amazing. It’s so good, I ordered a second unit.

    The Snowcaster does have a limit—you’re not going to plow three-feet of snow with it. You’re not going to plow a build-up of two feet. If you’ve got a lot of wet snow over a large area, you will break a sweat. And sometimes you’ll still need a shovel to toss snow at the edges. But for moving large quantities of snow out of the way on asphalt or concrete, it’s the best thing I’ve found to date.

    If you are like me and don’t want to purchase a machine just yet, have snow to move, and want to dramatically reduce the time it takes to move it while providing some fun for the kids, I think you’ll love The Snowcaster. I ordered mine directly from the company here: https://thesnowcaster.com/. The model I chose was the 70SNC. I wouldn’t suggest the long model unless you rarely get snows above three inches. I say this because on some days with lots of snow the three-footer was about all I could push.

    Okay, onto the movies. I have two excellent ones to recommend. Both of which are based on true-life events.

    The first is Denial, a British-American historical drama, that tells the story of how Deborah Lipstadt, a holocaust scholar, was taken to court for libel in Britain by David Irving, a man who claims the Holocaust never happened. In America, you’re always innocent until proven guilty. However, in Britain, with libel, the burden of proof is upon the defendant. So how do you prove you weren’t slandering someone? The movie was thrilling and fascinating. And gave you something to think about afterwards. If you enjoyed Woman in Gold, you’ll enjoy this.

    The next is Hidden Figures, an American biographical drama, that tells the story of female African-American mathematicians at NASA. These women were employed as computers—that was their official job title. Of course, this was before electrical computers and calculators, and what they did amazes me. The story is about the USA struggling to catch up to the Russians in the space race, and how four of these women helped while dealing with deep-seated prejudice against Blacks and females. It is full of humor, poignant moments, and surprises. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen these last few years. I don’t know what to compare it to. All I know is that you will laugh, be amazed, become outraged, and cheer.

    Lt. General Michael T. Flynn. Flynn is a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Assistant Director of National Intelligence and is now our National Security Advisor. If you want to understand how he is likely to advise the president about our war against radical Islam, let me recommend his book The Field of Fight. In the book, Flynn describes his background as an intelligence officer and how critical good intelligence is in this fight. He then describes his take on who the radical Islamist enemy is and how he thinks we can win the war against them. He shares several surprising insights that only someone with his experience can and reveals as well how good and smart leaders can disagree about strategy. One of his main points is that we will never win the war by killing bodies—this is an ideological war, much like the war we fought against communism. For those wanting to get past news blurbs and hear the man speak for himself at length, I think you’ll find this book interesting.

    And because, Dear Reader, you read all the way to the end, I will give you two more movie recommendations. Moana is a great, fun, family film. La La Land is an enjoyable musical romance that will probably break your heart. It did mine.

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  • Interview with Author Leah Cypess

    ByJohn Brown

    Leah Cypess says, “After selling my first story (Temple of Stone) while in high school, I gave in to my mother’s importuning to be practical and majored in biology at Brooklyn College. I then went to Columbia Law School and practiced law for almost two years at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a large law firm in New York City. I kept writing and submitting in my spare time, and finally, a mere 15 years after my first short story acceptance, I sold my first novel, Mistwood, to Greenwillow Books (HarperCollins).”

    Leah lives in Brookline, Massachusetts (right outside of Boston) with her husband Aaron, a researcher and doctor at the Joslin Diabetes Center, and their two daughters. She majored in biology, minored in journalism, went to law school, worked as a lawyer, and has just started to learn about hawking and hunting. She’s published a number of short stories, which are all available for free on her website.

    I just had the opportunity to interview Leah about her writing process and books. Enjoy!

    *

    JB: MISTWOOD, published by HarperCollins in April, 2010, is your debut novel. But is it the first you’ve written?

    LC: Most definitely not. I wrote, revised, and submitted four manuscripts before Mistwood. (Technically, five; but I don’t count the first one, because it wasn’t very good, and I didn’t know what I was doing with the submissions process either. I was fifteen years old.)  In fact, after getting the offer from HarperCollins, I acquired an agent, who asked me to send him a list of my previous manuscripts and their submission histories.  The list was sixteen pages long.

    JB: Holy cow, five novels and 16 pages of submission history. That’s a lot of dedication. And faith in the face of rejection. I’m intrigued. How did the sale of this novel come about? Was it just another submission to yet another editor or did you have some connection? What was different with this book?

    LC: Both the faith and the sale were helped by the fact that I could see incremental improvements. My first novel received mostly form rejection letters, a couple of letters inviting me to submit further, and one revision request. My second received a lot of personal rejection letters, many more requests from various editors to submit future works, and one two-page revision request. The third made it to the acquisition committee at two houses. So I could tell I was getting closer, though it was still pretty dispiriting to think I might never make that final leap into publication. (After Novel #3 was turned down by both acquisition committees, even though it was being championed by senior editors in both cases, I had a couple of bad days.)

     In the end, I think what was different about Mistwood was mostly luck.

    It wasn’t my most perfect manuscript – there was a lot of revising to do after it was accepted! – but it was the one that resonated with the right editor at the right time. This was an editor who had asked me to submit future books after rejecting the query for Book #3, then requested Book #4 and written me a detailed and regretful email about why she didn’t feel it was right for her. By the time I sent her the query for Mistwood, she was obviously confident enough in my abilities to request that I email her the full manuscript, and to read it right away. After all those years, the acceptance for Mistwood came just a few months after I started submitting it.

    JB: I’m betting your persistence and work made some of that luck. Work seems to be a little bit of magic all by itself and has been used by a lot of other authors I know. Hum (grin). So let’s talk about the book. You should know you made The Top 200 YA Authors list I just published on my site. It ranks YA authors by average number of readers per book. And while the list can’t purport to be anything but a reflection of the tastes of the area’s library patrons, I think it’s probably representative of what’s going on in my region. So congrats! The book starts right off with a bang. It’s about a shape shifter. I know shape shifters have been around forever, but most fantasy these days seems to be about vampires and werewolves. Tell us a little bit about the core idea of the novel and its genesis.

    LC:  That’s awesome that I’m on the Top 200 YA Authors list – thanks for letting me know!

    I’ve been reading fantasy/science-fiction “forever” (I cut my teeth on the Edgar Rice Burroughs books my father had stored in our garage), so shapeshifters are just as familiar to me as vampires and werewolves.

    The core idea of the novel is that of an inhuman creature grappling with the fact that she seems to be turning human — while trying to figure out why, exactly, this has happened to her, and who and what she truly is. (And, of course, fending off assassins and dealing with palace intrigue.) That idea developed over the course of writing the novel – I started out with a scene of men riding into a misty forest in search of the magical creature who lived there, with no clear idea of what that creature was or why they wanted her. Then I kind of made the rest up as I went along. (This writing process is one of the reasons the novel was revised nine times before being published!)

    JB: I really liked the beginning. No wonder you felt compelled to follow the idea. And nine revisions! It sounds like you use drafts, as opposed to outlines or other tools, to help you discover your stories. Were these big revisions, almost complete rewrites?

    LC: Thanks! I’m glad you liked it

    I usually don’t rewrite scenes completely – most of my editing of already-written material consists more of snipping unnecessary parts and adding little bits and pieces. (Especially of description, which I tend to leave out entirely in the first draft.) But I do a lot of moving scenes around, deleting some scenes, and writing some new ones.

    Though I don’t use an outline when I first write, I usually create one during the revision process so I can keep track of the jigsaw-puzzle my manuscript has become.

    JB: That’s interesting. Well, I have just one more question for you. Tell us what’s coming next.

    LC: What’s next is NIGHTSPELL, a stand-alone companion novel to MISTWOOD, which will be published in May 2011. It’s about a country where an ancient spell allows murder victims to return as ghosts to seek vengeance on their killers… and if they don’t manage that, they remain ghosts forever. After a couple of hundreds of years of this, the kingdom – Ghostland – has evolved into a place where the living and the dead co-exist, albeit uneasily. My main character, Darri, is a foreigner to Ghostland; she is a barbarian princess who abhors the idea of ghosts and is only there to rescue her younger sister Callie, who was sent as a hostage four years ago. But Callie has changed in those four years, and now has secrets of her own.  In her quest to save her sister from herself, Darri will ultimately face a decision that will force her to reexamine beliefs she has never before questioned – and lead her into the heart of a conspiracy that threatens the balance of power between the living and the dead.

    JB: Oh my bleeping heck. That just gave me a case of massive author envy. I was thinking about writing a ghost story just yesterday and thought, “naw, ghosts are all played out.” Curse you, Cypess!

    Sheesh, talk about a parting shot. Well, I would ask about the next book, seeing NIGHTSPELL must be ready to go if it’s coming out in May, but I can only stand so much punishment. The good news, if I put my reader hat on, is that it looks like I get to put a tickler in my Outlook for this May. In the meantime, I going to suggest to my readers to give MISTWOOD a go. Thanks, Leah, for your time. I enjoyed the interview.

    LC: Thanks, John!

    *

    John sez: folks, I think I’m going to make interviews a regular feature. I just loved finding out more about Leah. It’s also interesting to see just how much work she’s put into this. I know that a good number of authors sell their first or second novel (see the Hines stats in the on writing section), but for a good number of others it’s later novels that sell. In either case, I think it’s clear that good old fashioned work makes up a big part of the secret sauce.

    Ah, that was fun. But, dang it, I should have asked her about her lawyer and biology background. Next time.

    LINKS

    Leah Cypess’s website

    The first three chapters of Mistwood

    Praise for Mistwood

    Codex Author Blog Tour 2011

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  • Other Movies I Enjoyed: 2000 – 2009

    ByJohn Brown

    Other Movies I Enjoyed: 2000 – 2009

    Don’t have time to provide the logline and comments for each. But those with an * are movies I especially enjoyed.

    2009

    • Avatar: except for all the moments when I thought the characters were going to break out in Pocohantas songs–“haaave yooooou ever heard the wolf cryyyyyy to the bluuuuuue cooooorn mooooooon…”–I enjoyed it. When I came out I defintely wanted to be a blue dude.
    • Julie & Julia: funny, although did they really need to show the “coarse” Julia?
    • Monsters vs Aliens: I didn’t like the villain or the story, but BOB was hilarious and worth it.
    • Star Trek: Best Star Trek movie. Second is Wrath of Khan.
    • Up

    2008

    • Henry Poole is Here
    • *Iron Man: Wow, I’ve wanted to fly since forever.  This movie was just cool.
    • Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa: The penguins and King Julian.
    • *Slumdog Millionaire (RU)
    • Taken: great concept. Ending fell flat, but I love the concept
    • The Dark Knight: first 30 minutes all I could say was “I want to be Batman, I want to be Batman.” The Joker was amazing. However, something didn’t work for me in this movie. I thought there was only one heroic moment (the convict on the boat). I didn’t feel Batman’s dilemma in the end. The end was poetic, but I didn’t feel the drama. It was still a fun ride.

    2007

    • The Bourne Ultimatum
    • *The Jane Austen Book Club: this one should have been a runner up. I really liked this.

    2006

    • Cars: Mater
    • *Casino Royale (RU)
    • Firewall: a good Harrison Ford film, excellent villain and situation
    • Happy Feet: I thought it was going to be dumb, but I really liked it. The characters were great.
    • Invincible: the story of Vince Papale, a 30-year-old bartender from South Philadelphia who overcame long odds to play for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles in 1976.
    • The Devil Wears Prada
    • The Lake House
    • The Pursuit of Happyness

    2005

    • Batman Begins
    • Cinderella Man
    • Coach Carter: Loved the story and Samuel Jackon’s character
    • Hitch
    • *Hoodwinked: really loved the humor
    • Madagascar: Hate the lion and the story but the penguins and King Julian are hilarious. I laugh every time.
    • Serenity
    • *Sky High: fun with Kurt Russell and Bruce Campbell
    • *Walk The Line (RU)

    2004

    • *Collateral: A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in LA. He must find a way to save both himself and one last victim.
    • Ella Enchanted: goofy, but a lot of fun to watch with my girls
    • I, Robot
    • *Miracle: I hate hockey, but I liked this
    • Napoleon Dynamite: was in shock until Pedro shaved his head, then I couldn’t stop laughing.
    • *Spiderman 2 (#5)
    • The Bourne Supremacy
    • *The Incredibles (#2)
    • The Village: watched it with inlaws and it scared them for days–totally worth it

    2003

    • Elf: syrup
    • Holes: we loved the book and the movie did it justice
    • *Last Samurai (#7)
    • *Luther (RU)
    • *Matchstick Men (RU)
    • *Open Range: best cowboy movie in a looong time–I just love Duvall
    • *Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl (#9)
    • *Return of the King (#1)
    • Runaway Jury
    • *Saints and Soldiers
    • *Seabiscuit (RU)
    • Secondhand Lions
    • The Italian Job: Yes, I cheered for criminals

    2002

    • About a Boy
    • Drumline
    • *Ice Age (#3)
    • Minority Report
    • Reign of Fire: best dragon movie to come along in a long time
    • Snow Dogs: goofy fun, enjoyable to watch with the kids
    • *The Bourne Identity: really liked the suspense and action
    • The Sum of All Fears
    • *The Two Towers (#1)
    • Treasure Planet: I didn’t think it could work, but it did. Enjoyed the relationship between Jim and Silver
    • Two Week’s Notice: a good romance
    • *We Were Soliders (#6)

    2001

    • *A Beautiful Mind (#10)
    • Behind Enemy Lines
    • Legally Blonde: you didn’t like Witherspoon? Come on, tell the truth.
    • *Lord of the Rings (#1)
    • Monsters Inc
    • Oceans Eleven
    • Recess: School’s Out: I loved watching these on Saturday morning with the kids. The movie was just as good.
    • The Princess Diaries

    2000

    • 28 Days
    • *Cast Away
    • Chicken Run: “Mrs Tweedy, the chickens are revolting…”
    • *Emperor’s New Groove (#4)
    • *Gladiator (#8)
    • *Miss Congeniality: this was excellent fun to watch with the wife
    • O Brother, Where Art Thou?: loved the soundtrack, characters, and story. Hated the abundant profanity
    • Space Cowboys
    • The Perfect Storm
    • The  Kid: Bruce Willis and the kid are great
    • *Unbreakable: really liked this one, great superhero movie
    • X-Men: didn’t like it as much as others, but it rocks for pure super-hero power
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  • Gladwell, Dish Cloths, and Higher Technology for Tuna

    ByJohn Brown

    The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

    After reading Made to Stick, I decided to read the book that inspired it—The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. I’d read Blink and Outliers by the same author and found both fascinating.  I’m happy to report The Tipping Point is just as good. In it, Gladwell examines what conditions cause ideas, behaviors, messages, and products to spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. 

    In the book he shares a number of situations and studies, including the sudden drop in crime in New York city in the 1990’s (which started by attacking graffiti in the subway), the dramatic popularity of the Blue’s Clues TV program with pre-schoolers, Paul Revere’s success in rousing the citizens along his route (versus the almost total failure of the other guy who rode that night), the resurgence of Hush Puppies shoes, syphilis in Baltimore, Columbia Record’s amazingly effective golden box ad campaign, and a dozen other outbreaks.  From all of these, he extrapolates three rules of social epidemics—The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context.  

    The arguments Gladwell presents are thought-provoking and powerful, but what makes him such a treat to read is how he writes.  Like the best science writers (in fact, I think he IS one of the best), he tells great stories with interesting characters.  He puts the reader on the edge of the seat with mystery, insight, and humor. He makes things that could be incredibly complex seem like first grade math. It’s as if he’s standing right there with you chatting about the subject. Moreover, he does all this from page one.

    Here’s what I mean. I left the book out on the kitchen table one night after reading a few chapters.  The next morning Super Wife came down to quickly eat breakfast and get herself to a meeting.  She made the mistake of opening the book to glance at the first page. Twenty-five minutes later she came up for air and realized she was going to be late and dashed out the door. The writing is pure mind control.  And I loved every minute of it.

    If you’re at all interested in advertising or how fads and movements start, if you want to affect the behavior of customers or local teens, if you just like to read how things work, I think you’ll love this book.

    Sunflower Dish Cloths

    I used to suffer along with subpar dish cloths.  There were the dish cloths with mesh on one side that were so small you had to rinse them after every wiping stroke.  There were the hand cloths made of terri that belonged in a bathroom but were repurposed and were far too big. Then were the cloths that had some slippery crap in the thread that refused to soak up water.  And there were the crocheted things that I think we should have put out of their misery when we first got them. Folks suggested we go to sponges. So we did sponges and had similar results.

    Oh, woe, woe, woe.

    Then a kind and loving friend gave us a set of mystery cloths that were incredible.  They were large enough that we didn’t need to rinse with every wipe.  They had this fantastic weave that was open, yet absorbent, and dried quickly.  And the weave had enough of a texture that you could use it to scrub.  We received those back in 1999.  They lasted us for years and gave us much kitchen cleaning joy.  But, alas, like all of mortality, those brave cloths finally began to give up the ghost. 

    My problem was that I didn’t know who had made those cloths and where I could get more.  We looked all over and couldn’t find them.  And then, at this year’s Garden City Raspberry Days craft fair, we saw them nestled amidst all the kitsch!  We bought as many as we could afford, and went our way rejoicing, fully expecting these to last us until we have grandchildren.  Maybe we’ll pass them down as priceless heirlooms.  Maybe some day they’ll be featured on Antique Roadshow.  Maybe they’ll be resurrected with us and become the official dish cloth of the Millennium when the world is renewed (it could happen).

    If you’re sick and tired of sponges and crappy dish cloths, let me suggest you pick up some Sunflower Dish Cloths made by Sangamon Mill. You can order them in bulk at http://www.sangamonmill.com/ , or in smaller quantities online from places like Amazon.

    Everiholder’s Veggie & Tuna Press & Strainer

    Do you eat tuna? If so, you know the biggest pain is draining the can. But you don’t have to suffer along any longer using the lid, which doesn’t do a good job at all anyway.  There’s a better solution, which Super Wife discovered. It’s called the Tuna and Veggies Press and Strainer by Evriholder: http://www.evriholder.com/Tuna-Veggie-Press.asp.  With this little blue piece of higher technology you easily and quickly press all the juices away, and nothing slips out the sides. We love our.  You can order it online, although Super Wife found it at our local evil empire Wal-Mart store.

    That’s it for now.  In the next review, I’m going to reveal two killer recipes over which all who partake will salivate and drool—Chocolate Éclair Cake and Dill Potato Salad.

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8 Comments

  1. You should check out the instant pot pressure cooker.

    Cooks dry pinto beans in less then an hour. (So much better than canned) plus there are so many great recipes.

    It’s pretty easy 1 pot cooking but I think tastes better then crock pot.

  2. I have the Cuisinart version. Have done beans before. But I do have to say canned are easy and cheap.

  3. LCHF coupled with Intermittent Fasting has allowed me to drop 80 pounds in 8 months, effortlessly. And my blood work is stellar, cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose, A1C, fasting insulin, all of them are improved and well into “normal” or even “optimal” range now.

    I went on a two week vacation to Hawaii with my family and actually dropped 5 pounds despite occasionally breaking the LCHF because I kept faithful the intermittent fasting regimen throughout.

    Some will “high fat” is a death sentence but if you look at the science that got us to that declaration, you find that it’s full of bad studies and assumptions that later didn’t pan out in real clinical studies. But yet it’s the conventional wisdom and people’s reputations and careers have been ruined by trying to confront it with new facts. Hmmm, there’s a story in there….

  5. This is interesting! I need to drop some weight (Type 2, A1C is good at 6.6, but some weight loss would be good.)

    I seem to need more specifics on a diet plan. Like a typical week of menus. I’m trying to limit carbs (because of the Type 2), and need to walk more. So a guideline of daily menus is useful to me.

    The results from ‘igglesPhan’ are impressive. I’d like that!

  6. Thanks for the update, John.
    i’ve run across similar articles in the last year re myths about fats and intermittent fasting – but not tested them as yet. I’ll be very interested to follow your updates.

    nice to see the other comments from folks. also. for the record, we also use the instant pot pressure cooker. I made a killer lentil soup. Good stuff.

    again, regards and looking forward to next updates.

    PS – thanks for the info re Extant … been on my “need to watch” list for some time, just not gotten around to it yet.

  7. What’s your recipe for lentil soup? I tried to make one in the pressure cooker and it was awful–hard lentils. Terrible.

  8. Sorry for the late reply… I had hoped to find that recipe since it did turn out so good -lentils were not hard at all. I have not made it since b/c nobody else in my family will eat lentils -go figure! And it made a LOT of soup.

    I found the recipe on some cooking website early in my playing with the pressure cooker (got it 1+ year ago on black friday sale) ,,, just didn’t save site and cannot remember what device i used to find it!

    I guess i am not prepared to ever make it [exactly] again! Yikes. If I ever recreate it, i’ll let you and interested parties know.

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