Monthly Archives: April 2015

Everyday Earth Days

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Kathleen Fox

Did you do anything special in honor of Earth Day this week? I didn’t, really, unless you count having leftovers for lunch.

I never even thought of this habit as environmentally friendly, until after lunch when I heard a radio interview about wasting food. So now I can pat myself on the back for avoiding food waste, when all this time I thought I was merely avoiding cooking. I can even feel proud of my extra commitment to saving energy. Not only do I practice efficiency by cooking once and eating twice (or three times or sometimes even four), but sometimes I save even more energy by refrigerating, microwaving, and eating the leftovers in the same bowl.

Overall, I do live a fairly “green” lifestyle. Almost every week, for example, I dutifully haul my reusable bags off to the grocery store. And at least, oh, half the time, I even remember to take them into the store with me instead of realizing when I get to the checkout that the bags are still in the back seat of the car.

I don’t buy snacks in single-serving packages. You can’t imagine how eco-friendly and virtuous it feels to buy M&M’s by the large 12-ounce bag instead of in those plastic-wasting little bags.

I don’t pollute the environment with toxic cleaning products, because I hardly ever do any cleaning. And when I do, I generally use plain water, because either I can’t find any cleaning products, I’ve forgotten to buy cleaning products, or it’s been so long since I did any cleaning that the cleaning products in the cupboard have all evaporated.

I don’t waste resources on lawn care. First of all, I generally don’t apply fertilizers and weed-killers. Second, I do very little watering. This approach not only conserves water and keeps potentially harmful chemicals out of the environment, it also means the grass doesn’t grow very well. As a result, I save even more energy (my own and the planet’s) because I only need to mow the yard about once a month.

I don’t buy bottled water. With rare exceptions; I have to admit we did buy a case of 24 bottles back in February. We were traveling, forgot to fill our reusable water bottles, and stopped at a store to buy a gallon. We found that a) they didn’t have water by the gallon and b) buying the 24 bottles on sale was by far the cheapest option unless we wanted to consider getting lite beer. I’ve felt guilty ever since we walked out of the store with them. This week, thank goodness, we used the last bottle. It was a weight off my environmentally-conscious conscience.

And that reminds me of an environmental irony I noticed recently. That icon of green living, a little hybrid car, was parked in front of an office building. The back cargo area was filled with cases of bottled water.

I bet there was a single-serving bag of M&M’s in the glove compartment, too.

Categories: Food and Drink, Living Consciously | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Discounted Seniority

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Kathleen Fox

Last week I heard a talk about “how not to grow old.” The speaker did a nice job of presenting a lot of the standard advice: stay active, eat well, continue to learn and keep your brain busy, enjoy the moment, and so on.

I have to admit, though, that I listened with a somewhat cynical ear. As several older members of my extended family have discovered over the past few years, some of the not-so-great aspects of aging tend to whack you upside the head regardless of your best efforts with yoga, vitamins, or positive thinking. Besides, the speaker seemed two or three decades too young to be an authority on the topic. Either that, or the advice she gave was really working well for her.

One tip she offered did catch my attention. Never ask for the senior discount, because it means you’re thinking of yourself as old.

What she didn’t say was how to respond if someone else, who apparently thinks of you as old, offers you the senior discount.

I do know one response that, based on personal experience, is probably not recommended. I was traveling with my daughter and her friend, who were both 20 at the time. We stopped at a motel in Dillon, Montana. When I raised an eyebrow at the room rate quoted by the nice young man behind the desk, he quickly added, “Of course, you might qualify for a discount. Do you belong to AAA? Or AARP?”

Shocking myself as much as I did him, I slammed my hand down on the counter. “That’s an insult! Do I look old enough to be a member of AARP?” And I went off on a rant about senior discounts, and how rude it was to assume that people qualified for them, and I’m not sure what all else. In my defense, it had been a long day of driving and I was tired. Besides, I was joking—mostly. Meanwhile, the two pretty young women with me were cracking up in a way guaranteed to embarrass any nice young man who just might have been hoping to impress them. When the poor guy gave me the final room rate, he was very careful to explain, “And this is the Triple-A discount.”

Perhaps it wasn’t one of my finer moments. Especially since nowhere in my rant did I reveal that, as a matter of fact, I was 52 and thereby officially old enough to join AARP had I cared to. If, by chance, you are reading this and you are a man in his early 30’s who worked at a motel in Dillon, Montana, 12 years ago, please consider it my public apology.

In the decade since, I’ve become a little more relaxed on the topic of senior discounts. I have even—please don’t tell anyone—occasionally gone so far as to order a meal from the senior menu. I don’t do it easily, though; there’s always an inner dialog first. It goes something like this:

Inner Voice A (the frugal one): “The senior menu is cheaper.”
Inner Voice B (the health-conscious one): “The smaller portion on the senior menu has fewer calories.”
Inner Voice C (the logical, practical one): “Why don’t they just include those smaller-portion meals on the regular menu? Lots of younger people would probably like to order them.”
Inner Voice D (the one who’s the real me): “Chronological age be damned. I am not now, I never have been, and I never, ever, ever will be old enough to order off the senior menu.”

Most of the time, I end up listening to Inner Voice D. But at least I don’t let her slam her hand on the table and shout at the waitress.

Categories: Food and Drink | Tags: , | 3 Comments

And the Beet Goes On . . .

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Kathleen Fox

Last month, on the NPR program “Here and Now,” a chef named Kathy Gunst gave one of the most effective sales presentations I’ve ever heard. About beets. I was listening in the car, and by the time she was finished with a 10-minute interview, I was ready to drive straight to Safeway, buy a bunch of beets, take them home and cook them.

In spite of two facts: a), I’m really not excited about beets, and b), I’m definitely not excited about cooking.

How did she get me so excited about a fat red vegetable I don’t even care about? She used six tools to create an unbeetable way to sell an idea. Here’s how she did it:

Stay UpBeet. I don’t care much for beets, but Kathy obviously does. Her enthusiasm about them was genuine. The energy she gave off was contagious and let even a lukewarm beet-eater like me “Catch the Beet.”

Beet Your Own Drum. Not once during the program did I hear Kathy say “you should” or “you need.” She didn’t tell us that we ought to like beets or why; she just talked about what she liked about them.

Lay Down a Beautiful Beet. This was radio, remember. All she had to work with was words. And yet she used words to appeal not just to our ears, but to all our senses. She described the flavor and texture of beets in specific terms and made them sound delicious. She talked about the different colors of beets—not just red, but orange and yellow and white. She described slices of the different colors arranged on a platter so vividly that I could see it.

Don’t Beet Around the Bush. Kathy was direct and clear when she talked about the nutritional value of beets. They contain B vitamins, fiber, folates, anti-oxidants, and all sorts of other stuff that’s good for us. She gave us the basics in a way that was easy to understand and remember.

Keep a Simple Beet. On the rare occasions that I catch part of a cooking show, I am usually daunted by their elaborate recipes and complicated processes. Half the time they use ingredients I’ve never heard of, can’t spell, or have no idea how to pronounce. Instead, Kathy made cooking beets seem easy. Just roast them—which is simple and also keeps in the nutrients and enhances the flavor. Even better, it makes them easy to peel. Just put on disposable plastic gloves or stick your hand inside a plastic bag and rub the skin off. No mess, no staining, no sweat. She made it sound so easy even I could do it.

Know How Long to Let the Beet Go On. Kathy was brisk and packed a lot of information into her presentation. She focused on the right sized bite for the time she had. She said her say and then Beat It. She didn’t let the Beet Go On, and On, and On.

Since this presentation was so effective, did it work for me? Well, sort of. Even though I was tempted, I didn’t drive to the grocery store and buy some beets. However, I did get excited enough to look them up.

And Kathy wasn’t kidding about the health benefits. Beets are great food. In fact, according to one account I found, they might even be great medicine.

In a small rural hospital in Siberia, during a blizzard, a doctor had to do emergency open-heart surgery on a middle-aged man. The surgery went well, but the man needed blood transfusions and the hospital’s supply of blood was gone. Blood donors couldn’t get to the hospital because of the storm. The doctor took blood from every possible donor on the hospital staff, including himself. It still wasn’t enough. At last, in desperation, the doctor caught sight of an orderly going past the OR with a food cart. On it were bowls of borscht—beet soup. The doctor knew his patient was close to death. There was nothing to lose. He grabbed the food cart, hooked up an IV, and transfused the patient with borscht.

Miraculously, the man started to recover. After a week in the hospital, he went home, and he has gone on to lead a healthy, active life. He has just one small problem.

Every now and then, his heart skips a beet.

Categories: Food and Drink | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

Missing the Point

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Kathleen Fox

Maybe I’m merely grumpy, or out of touch with mainstream reality, but sometimes I just don’t get the point. Things that seem to make sense to the majority of people just don’t make sense to me. Such as:

Deliberately enhancing bookshelves with careful arrangements of books in which some are standing upright, some are lying flat, and some are merely props for other decorative objects. Our bookshelves pretty much always look like that, but somehow the overall effect is crammed instead of ornamental. Possibly that’s because random rocks, misplaced pens, or dangerous items temporarily placed out of reach of toddlers don’t qualify as “decorative objects.”

Appetizers. I’ve never seen the logic of inviting people over for a special meal, which someone goes to considerable trouble to plan and shop for and prepare, and then filling them up with something generic like crackers or chips and dip before they even get to the table. It seems almost insulting to the cook. Unless the whole point is to dull the guests’ appetites. Maybe the host hopes to get by with smaller servings of an expensive main course, or hopes guests might be too full for dessert so there will be some leftover pie for breakfast the next day. But in that case, shouldn’t they really be called “disappetizers” or “unappetizers?”

White chocolate. True, it has cocoa butter in it. But that just means it contains all of the fat from the cocoa bean but none of the good stuff that makes chocolate taste so delicious. And, even more important, it doesn’t have any of the antioxidant ingredients that allow chocolate lovers to claim that eating the stuff is good for us. Besides, it doesn’t look like chocolate or taste like chocolate. Adding cocoa butter to a piece of white candy doesn’t make it chocolate, any more than putting butter on a piece of toast makes it a milk shake.

Formal wear. Why is the appropriate attire for formal occasions shoulder-baring dresses for women but long-sleeved jackets over long-sleeved shirts for men? It only makes sense if you think like a slightly warped statistician. If half the people in a room are too hot and the other half are too cold, then I guess that averages out to “comfortable.”

Piles of pillows on beds or couches. If you’re spending the night in a friend’s nice guest room—one where everything actually matches and no odd piles of random stuff are stored under the bed—it doesn’t feel right to dump the extra seven color-coordinated pillows on the floor in the corner. But what else are you supposed to do with them in order to clear enough space so you can actually sleep in the bed? As for couches, a couple of pillows on your own couch may be handy to loll on while you read or to prop up your tired feet. A carefully arranged collection of them in someone else’s living room is a different story. There you’re left little choice but to perch on the edge of the couch like an eager proselytizing missionary or a patient waiting in the dentist’s office who is ready to bolt.

High-heeled shoes with long, pointy toes that: a) were designed with no reference whatsoever to the actual shape of the human foot; b) can only be walked in by trained athletes with good health insurance; and c) make your feet look three sizes larger.

Sometimes, I feel like the philosophy student who sat down to take a final exam, only to discover his No. 2 pencil was broken. He said, “Now I understand–there is no point!”

Categories: Odds and Ends | Tags: , | Leave a comment

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