Things I Have Learned This Week

*  Even if one spent the better part of 2 months dealing with a cold & the ensuing complications, it doesn't mean that one can't get another blasted cold just a few weeks later.

*  One cannot acquire a taste for Nyquil, no matter how often one takes it.

*  Attempting to knit an entire sweater in 17 days is just as crazy as it sounds.

*  Games invented by cats are every bit as pointless as those invented by 5-year-olds, but at least cats don't keep changing the rules.

*  Requesting 32 separate seed & plant catalogs was probably a bit excessive.

*  I should not use the gym's elliptical machines anywhere near the television turned to Rush Limbaugh unless I really WANT to burn over 750 calories an hour.....

*   One can add a little mystery to eating at home by freezing leftovers without remembering to label them.

Fat Follow up

(Can't wait to see where THAT puts my blog on Google's search engines!)

A friend of mine has very nicely explained some of the fat terms I keep running across and/or discussing, so to follow up on the whole fat problem from yesterday, more information can be found here:

Secret Weapon Science

The Pop Tart Problem

Remember when I mentioned the homemade Pop Tart recipe?  Well, there's a problem--it needs butter AND shortening.  Like Crisco.  Now as far as the "illegal" foods label goes, I've pretty much written Crisco off as being pretty close to the top of the list.  According to their website, Crisco is hydrogenated vegetable oil.  According to Wikipedia, hydrogenation:

is widely applied to the processing of vegetable oils and fats. Complete hydrogenation converts unsaturated fatty acids to saturated ones. In practice the process is not usually carried to completion. Since the original oils usually contain more than one double bond per molecule (that is, they are poly-unsaturated), the result is usually described as partially hydrogenated vegetable oil; that is some, but usually not all, of the double bonds in each molecule have been reduced. This is done by restricting the amount of hydrogen (or reducing agent) allowed to react with the fat.
Hydrogenation results in the conversion of liquid vegetable oils to solid or semi-solid fats, such as those present in margarine. Changing the degree of saturation of the fat changes some important physical properties such as the melting point, which is why liquid oils become semi-solid. Semi-solid fats are preferred for baking because the way the fat mixes with flour produces a more desirable texture in the baked product. Since partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are cheaper than animal source fats, are available in a wide range of consistencies, and have other desirable characteristics (e.g., increased oxidative stability (longer shelf life)), they are the predominant fats used in most commercial baked goods. Fat blends formulated for this purpose are called shortenings.

Got all that?  Okay, so it's hydrogen added to vegetable oil to make a shelf-stable fat. So, getting out the little Crisco can that I keep around for seasoning cast iron pans, I discover that it contains:

        sunflower oil, soybean oil, fully hydrogenated cottonseed oil, mono- and diglycerides


and that it has gone rancid because I really don't have to season cast iron THAT often.


The OTHER option (besides giving up this entire endeavor is:

LARD.  Yep, rendered pig fat. 

So, I WENT LOOKING FOR LARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and managed to find out that there are types of lard and that I got the wrong one.  I found the shelf-stable one, which contains some hydrogenated lard, as well as an emulsifier and antioxidants.  Turns out I need to find artisan lard, which is without additives and must be kept frozen or refrigerated.

How good could those damn Pop Tarts possibly be anyway??????

Dang!  Where am I going to find gourmet pig fat.......?

I'd Like To Share This

If you're not acquainted with it, there's a wonderful website called "Snopes.com" that is solely dedicated to proving of disproving the number of urban legends being shot around the internet.  I'd like you to take a look at this:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp

There are over 60 urban legends about President Obama being circulated--the overwhelming majority of which are false--some so shockingly stupid it's hard to believe anyone would believe them, much less pass them along.   Not that I agree with everything President Obama is doing or has done, but this has gotten completely out of hand. 

What I want to know is how can people be so desperate to hate someone that they would believe and SHARE malicious lies without ever bothering to check to see if they are true.  I mean, I dislike Sarah Palin, but I have never forwarded any emails about her, and my opinion of her is my own personal business and has generally been formed by the things she has actually said.  I don't feel the need to spread malicious lies about her, because she's really no threat to me.  However, when I receive one of these emails about Obama, I look them up to see if there is any basis in fact--which there has never been on the ones I have been sent--and then promptly drop the sender from my soup night & Christmas card lists.  People who wish to be that hateful and ignorant have NO place in my life.  Period.

Food Writing?

I'm currently reading a book about a woman attending the Cordon Bleu cooking school, and she said when she applied to the school, she stated that she wanted to be a food writer.

Do I lead a rather sheltered life, or did anyone else not really know that there was such a thing as a "food writer?"  Not a writer of cookbooks--that part I grasped--but writing about food in some other fashion.  During the past year, I have been studying food and cooking history, but prior to our No Processed Foods experiment, the last food writing I had actually read might well have been The Gingerbread Man. 

 I may need to get out more........

Crossposting

Some of you may have noticed that I have "borrowed" a couple posts from my knitting blog this week.  I thought some of you might be wondering what I do with myself when I'm not engaged in bizarre cooking experiments or spreading layers of horse manure on our lawn.  Perhaps you were thinking that I conducted myself as a "normal" person or something.  So, in order to fully dispel such a rumor, I thought I'd introduce you to the "Ravelympics."

Ravelry is a "social networking" site for people who are obsessed with enjoy knitting, crocheting, or spinning.  I actually don't really understand the term "social networking" as I don't see how one can actually unsocially network, but I can tell you that Ravelry is a tremendously cool site that allows over 600,000 knitters world wide to share pattern and yarn reviews, share project pictures and details, and to quit boring their spouses/friends with constant chatter about knitting and all things yarn related.

Not that I don't have a lot of very cool friends who don't  knit, but joining the online knitting community has been a lot of fun.  I haven't participated, but the annual Sock Wars totally crack me up.  You just have to love a group who can invent death by sock.  The Ravelympics are a funny take-off of the Olympics.  The events for this year are

• Aerial Unwind (Frog those poor unloved projects to reclaim that yarn)
  
• Bag Jump   (Bags, totes, pouches)
  
• Beading Biathlon  (All things beaded and embellished)
  
• Bobsled  (All things pets)
  
• Cable Cross-Country (All things cables)
  
• Charity Curling  (Projects for charity)
  
• Designer Biathlon  (From a swatch to published pattern in 17 days sample completed and pattern released on ravelry - swatching allowed before torch lit)
  
• Designer Original Dance (Create your own design sample from scratch in 17 days {swatching allowed before torch lit}; pattern need not be written)
  
• Designer Pattern Skeleton  (Create a publishable pattern; do what you feel is necessary to produce a publishable pattern testing, editing, etc)
  
• Downhill Dyeing  (dyeing yarns - this will only create stash)
  
• Felting Freestyle (All things felting and fulled)
  
• Fleece to FO Long-Track  (Start with fleece or roving and create a finished object)
  
• Flying Camel Spin  (Just spinning…lots and lots of spinning)
  
• Free Dance  (Don’t fit into any other event? This is for you)
  
• Giant Slalom-ghan (Afghan, blankets, throws)
  
• Hat Halfpipe (All things hats and heads)
  
• Holiday Jump-Start Skiing  (Projects to be gifted/given in Dec 2010 and holiday-themed items; also any gift-giving projects qualify here )
  
• Junior Olympics  (garments/accessories for kids and babies {toys have their own event})
  
• Labyrinth Weaving (All things woven)
  
• Lace Luge  (Lace patterns and laceweight yarns)
  
• Mitten Moguls (Mittens, gloves, anything that covers hands/wrists/arms)
  
• Nordic Colorwork Combined  (Colorwork, intarsia, fair isle)
  
• Platter Lift  (Home and décor projects)
  
• Samalog Machine Skate (Machine knitting)
  
• Scarf Super-G  (Scarves, cowls, neckwarmers, smokerings, scarflettes…all things neck)
  
• Short Track Shawls  (Shawls, stoles, wraps, shawlettes)
  
• Single Skein Speed Skate (Projects of just one skein/hank)
  
• Skelegurumi  (Toys and amigurumis)
  
• SnowCross  (Projects that combine knitting, crochet, needle-felting, embroidery, sewing …; minimum of 2 crafts combined together)
  
• Sock Hockey  (All things socks and slippers)
  
• Stash Compulsory Dance  (Use of long-neglected stash purchased at least 1 year ago)
  
• Sweaterboard Cross (All forms of sweaters, vests, cardis, pullovers, boleros)
  
• WIPs-Dancing  (WIPs/UFOs and only these; Projects not touched since Jan 12th)
  

There are now more than 9,000 competitors, with more joining every day.  Bobicus Maximus--otherwise known as the site owner's dog, Bob--will be handing out "medals" for the event, and there will be a "parade" of finished projects.  I am competing in the Sweaterboard Cross, and in case you haven't already guessed as much, trying to knit an entire sweater in 17 days really is few sandwiches short of a picnic.  But, not like insanity has ever stopped me before......

Ravelympics 2010 - Pregame Show: The Countdown.....

Bob:  With just hours to go before the torch-lighting for the 2010 Ravelympics, we take a look at some of the last-minute preparations being done by one of the contestants.  Ms. Sutton, thank you for taking time to talk with us this morning.  Tell us, what sorts of things are you doing today?
 
Toni:  Well, Bob, first I did a little dusting.

Bob:  Now I notice you're chosen to use Endust at this point.  Are you mostly a spray-polish duster?

Toni:  Well, generally I'm a "this-is-a-big-freakin'-waste-of-time" sort of duster, but I thought the house might be a bit frightening two weeks from now.

Bob: I see.  I notice you've been accumulating a few things today.  Can you tell us about them?


Toni: Certainly, Bob.  First there's some hand lotion

--always a necessity for any type of knitting marathon, especially here in the drier climates.  And of course a large supply of coffee

 

to help me keep my focus.

Bob:  Now I've noticed some knitters can drink coffee nonstop without impeding their performance.  Are you one of them?

Toni:  Well, Bob, you don't get to this level of competition without some caffeine addiction. However, I do have my limits, so if I start to get the jitters we have a supply of herbal teas on hand

and for when things get really desperate....

 

 Bob:  My, that's a really large bottle of champagne, there...

Toni:  Victory party, Bob.  Or possibly the being-released-from-the-hospital-after-a-complete-nervous-breakdown-party.  These things can go either way.  

Bob:  Now this brings up an interesting point.  Will the Ravelympics participants be drug tested?

Toni:  It's doubtful, Bob, as drugs are often quite necessary to even feel it would be possible to knit an entire sweater in 16 days.  Over at the "Fleece to FO Long Track" tent, where the competitors will be spinning their own yarn AND turning it into a finished object, I'd say some sort of stimulant is almost a certainty.

Bob:  I see.  And what are these other objects in your pile.

Toni:  When knitting for leisure, I can often read a book while knitting, but it slows down my time.  Speed is of the essence here, so I'll need a few things to keep my mind busy while I work.  For more serious moments, 

we have the COMPLETE Jane Austen movie collection--the BBC version, not the "adapted" A & E version--I'm always a purist about these things--and for the lighter moments,

the complete first 3 seasons of "Rocky and Bullwinkle."  There's nothing like a little Sherman and Mr. Peabody to keep one inspired.

Bob:  Now, Ms. Sutton, we understand that you have two cats--is that correct?

Toni:  That is correct. 

Bob  Cute as they may be, cats can often pose a real problem for knitters--how do you plan to handle that?

Toni:  Well, I've taken a few precautions there as well.....

Bob:  Oh, I see.  Well, you certainly have thought of everything.  We certainly wish all the competitors well as they complete their final preparations.  Less than 8 hours to go now.......