Looking For Sunday


I’m in the middle of the move now. Tomorrow we will move the
heavy furniture to Lafayette, Sunday afternoon we will move the
stuff home that is not going to Lafayette and Monday morning I
will clean this place up. Even though I am up to my eyebrows in
packing and sorting I am looking for Sunday.

There is something good about going in that door, exchanging
smiles and good mornings with people I barely know, but will one
day call friend. It is good to sit and feel the music, to let the clean
love that flows soak into me. Even though I study, pray and
mediate on G-d on my own, it gives me a charge to be in a room
full of others reaching for G-d’s hand. Even the sermon always
seems to hold something for me. Last week I was brought up short
by Martha and Mary, too often I am Martha. So I will leave dishes
in the sink if need be, the bed unmade and my robe on the chair, and
on Sunday morning I will be in my seat, in the church that isn’t,
soaking up a little extra G-d with my friends to come.

THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD......................

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

Babcock, 1901

Anger

The Beta Blockers don’t seem to be working this week. I have
suffered from several separate bouts of anger this week. On the
surface each episode is unrelated to the next. But I suspect that
they are actually all the same.

A former business associate learned that I was closing the office
here and was moving into the office at the County seat. So she
wanted to come get a few things she had left here, read abandoned,
when she left six months ago. I didn’t mind, I never wanted the
stuff to start with. But she also thought that maybe she would take
the phones! I explained that phones are portable and that these
phones were going on the road with me.

Then to make matters worse, she filled the secretary in the office I
am moving to with images of me as the dragon lady. Secretary
there will not be my secretary, so I had to assure her that she was in
no danger from my red pen. Thank you very much former business
associate. I really needed the staff there to be afraid of me before I
even moved in.

Now, I had nearly recovered from that little insult when my very
sweet aunt requested that I come to dinner. She stated that A) it
was not a family thing B) they needed for me to come and provide
information about family research and C) there would be food. As
it turns out, none of this was really true. It was a family thing, part
of the family anyway. They did not want my knowledge, they
wanted me to tell one of my elderly uncles, in 100 words or less,
how to do extensive genealogical research. He was convinced, and
probably still is, that I know some secret source for all the
information. Nothing could be further from the truth. At last count
I had gathered information from over 90 sources, including blogs.

The final insult was the dinner on offer. Ham, more pork in the
vegetables, and lots of deserts. The grain offered was in the form
of white biscuits. The black eyed peas were cooked with pork, the
green beans were cooked with pork. I settled on a little slaw, a
little apple salad and a side salad. I also ate an oatmeal cookie and
decaf coffee. Half the people there know I am a vegetarian, but
they seemed to think that I could just pick the pork out. My sister
told me they had pork because it was free. Not for the pig I said.

By midnight I had cooled off enough to actually sleep. Today I am
not angry. But I am really working at staying away from everyone
who might piss me off today. So far so good.

I know none of this is important enough to merit anger, certainly
not to the extent it had me. So it must have been something else in
the mix. Anger is rarely of merit. The sort that just comes over
you is almost never good. But it certainly did serve notice on me
that I have not overcome much, I have just managed to control my
environment enough to avoid most personal anger triggers.

And you know, that makes me a little mad...

What Was On My Plate

I have had a series of lightbulb moments lately. One has to do with
how my mother viewed nutrition. She was a registered nurse who
strongly believed what she had been taught in nursing school. This
is it in a nutshell: Your dinner plate should have a meat, a green
vegetable and a colored vegetable. If you needed more calories you
could add a slice of bread. Children, up to age 21 were to be
served milk at every meal. Deserts could be had on special
occasions, soda when you were sick. Lunch for children could be
any combination of sandwich and or soup or during the school year,
a “hot lunch” from the cafeteria. Breakfast should be toast with
scrambled eggs and citrus fruit, but if you were short on time,
Instant Breakfast would do.

Salads were made solely from iceberg lettuce, tomato and
cucumber. Salad dressing was thousand island, or in the 70's ranch.
In the 60's the bread was white Colonial, by the early 70's it was
Roman Meal. Soup was generally Campbell’s. A few times a year
she would make a pot of real soup. Of course, toast was buttered
with margarine, and chicken was fried in Criso. Seasoning food
involved threatening it with a ten year old jar of McCormick’s.

We were uptown and health conscious. If you wanted seconds,
you could have them, provided what you wanted was the green
vegetable, the meat, soup or salad. Seconds of “starchy foods”,
potatoes, corn, peas, bread and pasta were discouraged. You
never dared ask for more desert.

Casseroles were saved for special occasions, like Thanksgiving and
Christmas. We ate very little pork, only chops once in a while and
ham at Christmas. Beef was considered a better food then chicken,
which was only served once or at most two times a week. Beans
were considered inferior protein, so even though my mother loved
pinto’s we only had them twice a year. Greens were cooked at
New Year’s, Southern style, which means boiled up with ham
hocks until grayish and totally limp. We did have cornbread every
other month or so. Mom made it to go with homemade soup, and
the pinto beans and greens. Cornbread also topped my favorite
meal, hamburger pie.

When I was about eleven we started making Lipton instant tea with
lemon and artificial sweetener. No calories. We could drink all of
it we wanted. And that was a lot. We used a large jar of the
powdered mix every week.

Television brought us visions of such wonders as Kraft Macaroni
and Cheese in a box, Cream of Wheat Cereal and Rice a Roni. I so
loved Cream of Wheat that I would make it myself, with milk and
sugar, every afternoon after school. Cake was strictly off limits but
the Cream of Wheat passed muster. Middle sister made the Mac &
Cheese, which I liked best with little green peas and hamburger.
The Rice a Roni never really caught on.

Rarely, once in a great while, we were allowed chips or french fries
with our burger.

We felt sorry for, and a little superior to, people who ate beans
often, or who made do with chicken because it was cheaper then
beef. We really worried about the neighbor who made fried ham,
homemade biscuits and homemade red eye gravy every Saturday
morning for her children. What dangerous food to feed children!
We smugly ate our Cream of Wheat with sugar, grapefruit topped
with sugar, Rice Crispies with sugar, toast with jelly and a egg,
washed down with milk and reconstituted orange juice, knowing
our diet was far superior to the neighbors.

Every single day we consumed an entire gallon of 2% milk and
every other day an entire loaf of bread.

My father made his own breakfast, never varying the contents, two
strips of bacon, two scrambled eggs on white bread with
mayonnaise. The sandwich was tightly wrapped in saran wrap and
eaten in the car while he drove to work. I looked forward to
joining the management work force, so I too could have bacon
every day.

The foods that scared my mother the most were all the things she
considered “starches”. Starches would make you fat and pasty,
they were empty calories and bad for the digestion. Starches were
partially responsible for most of society’s ills including poverty,
illiteracy and plain old meanness. Under the umbrella of starches,
were rice, pasta, bread, corn, peas and all grains.

Until I was an adult, living in my own home, I never tasted a whole
grain other then rolled oats. The first real whole wheat bread I
tasted, I made. Thank you Laurel’s Kitchen. Ditto the brown rice.
Even so, I could not shake the feeling that if you did not eat meat
every day you would become weak and waste away in a horrible
manner. I was also suspicious that Mom was right and that the
“starches” would get you.

I thought that green beans came in a can and needed to be cooked
for at least two hours. Peas were easier, just open the can and heat
to a boil. Unfortunately, they were starches, so I could not make
them as often as I would have liked. Corn was the same. I will not
torture you with all the ways you can combine canned food on a
plate, but needless to say I had learned from the best.

SUBWAY V. MCDONALDS or Poison for Lunch?

Lunch on the Run - Part One

In my work neighborhood there are all the usual fast food choices,
plus a handful of restaurants. Since the idea today is to get lunch
fast, I’m going to look at what I think ought to be some fairly safe
lunch choices.

I know I want chicken, everyone knows it’s better than beef. So
far so good. I want it on a bun, since I am in a hurry, and I want it
grilled, not fried. I know if I eat it grilled I avoid all those nasty
transfats and the hydrogenated stuff. I am feeling kind of good
about my choices but I don’t really know which I want, Subway or
McDonalds. Since both are very close, I decide to make my
decision after looking at both online.

First the Subway. Fresh baked buns, fresh ingredients, lots of
yummy vegies. So, on to the website, subway.com - once there I
choose the Menu/Nutrition tab at the top and nutrition from the
submenu. Then from the selection at the bottom marked additional
nutrition links I choose product ingredients. Since I know wheat
bread is better then white I chose wheat.

WHEAT BREAD Enriched flour (flour, malted barley flour,
niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water,
whole wheat flour, high fructose corn syrup, wheat gluten, contains
less than 2% of the following: wheat bran, yeast, salt, soybean oil,
dough conditioner (acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono-and
diglycerides, ammonium sulfate, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid,
azodicarbonamide, potassium iodate, amylase (enzymes)], cracked
wheat, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, caramel color (contains
sulfites), dried honey preparation (honey powder, invert sugar,
wheat starch, soy bran flour, silicon dioxide [anti-caking]), mineral
oil. Contains soy and wheat.

Wow. Who would have thought? White flour is the first
ingredient? High fructose corn syrup? Sulfites? Mineral Oil?
WTF?

Ok, the breads scary. I don’t even know what most of that stuff is
really, but the stuff I do know. YIKES.

But, I am in a hurry, and chicken is good for you, so lets add that
chicken breast now.

CHICKEN BREAST PATTY Chicken breast with rib meat,
water, seasoning (corn syrup solids, vinegar powder [maltodextrin,
modified corn starch & tapioca starch, dried vinegar], brown sugar,
salt, dextrose, garlic powder, onion powder, chicken type flavor
[hydrolyzed corn gluten, autolyzed yeast extract, partially
hydrogenated soybean oil and cottonseed oil, thiamine
hydrochloride, disodium inosinate & disodium guanylate]), sodium
phosphate.

Ok, what is the deal here. It’s a joke, right? Corn syrup, brown
sugar, MSG hidden as Hydrolyzed corn gluten and autolyzed yeast
extract, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and more of that what
the hell is it stuff.

Sigh, I am hungry, but not that darn hungry.

Ok, all hope is not lost, maybe McDonald’s is better. With hope in
my heart and rumbles in my belly I head to mcdonalds.com. Once
there I choose USA from the pull down menu in the top left corner,
then food, nutrition and fitness from the menu bar. Then Nutrition
Info and Ingredients List.

Premium Grilled Chicken Classic Sandwich:
Honey Wheat Roll, Grilled Chicken Breast Filet, Mayonnaise Dressing,
Leaf Lettuce, Tomato Slice, Liquid Margarine

Hey that looks ok, except for the liquid margarine, my doc says not
to eat that stuff. But look what was in the Subway bread, better
have a closer look.

Honey Wheat Roll:
Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin,
reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, whole
wheat flour, dry honey blend (honey, high fructose corn syrup, invert
sugar, corn syrup, wheat starch), sugar, yeast, contains 2% or less of the
following: soybean oil, canola oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil,
salt, wheat gluten, calcium sulfate, potassium iodate, L. cysteine,
monocalcium phosphate, dough conditioners (may contain one or more
of the following: DATEM, ascorbic acid, calcium peroxide, enzymes,
azodicarbonamide, distilled monoglycerides, mono- and diglycerides),
calcium propionate (preservative), soy lecithin. CONTAINS: WHEAT
AND SOY LECITHIN

Ok, I am getting worried now. White flour is the first ingredient in
the wheat roll. Honey, high fructose corn syrup, invert sugar and
sugar. Geeze, is there any other sugar they could add? Just to
make it a little better they added some partially hydrogenated oil
and a whole slew of chemicals that might could be used to kill
roaches.

I’m not giving up yet, maybe the chicken’s good and I can just
throw the bun out.

Grilled Chicken Breast Filet:
Chicken breast filets with rib meat, water, seasoning (salt, sugar, food
starch-modified, maltodextrin, spices, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract,
hydrolyzed [corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten] proteins, garlic powder,
paprika, chicken fat, chicken broth, natural flavors (plant and animal
source), caramel color, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, onion powder,
extractives of paprika), modified potato starch, and sodium phosphates.
CONTAINS: SOY AND WHEAT. Prepared with liquid margarine: Liquid
soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils,
salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides,
sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor,
citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color). CONTAINS: SOY
LECITHIN

I think I’ll cry. Autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed proteins, lots
of yummy MSG, a rose by any other name... hydrogenated oils, and
again with the roach spray list of other stuff.

No chicken sandwiches today.

DISCLAIMER: the ingredient lists were directly copied from the
websites of Subway and McDonald’s. I am not a doctor or
scientist. My opinion that all the food I have listed here is poison is
just that, my personal opinion. Do your own research, its only a
google click away.

Duh...

Some time back I went with a friend to the nutritionist her MD
wanted her to see. This woman is well thought of by the medical
community. She basically said to my friend, you have type 2
diabetes, you can never get rid of it, you can control it with diet,
exercise and medication. Don’t focus on getting off medication she
said, we don’t want you to have to give up birthday cake or fried
chicken, or even BLTs. Be sure though to eat some butter with
your potatoes and some mayo on those BLTs. The fat lowers the
effect of high glycemic foods and reduces the fast elevation on
blood sugar.

When pushed she did acknowledge that using whole grains in a
natural form, ie steamed brown rice, plus vegetables, nuts, seeds and
legumes would probably take care of the problem enough to keep
you off the medicine. BUT WE KNOW NO ONE WILL REALLY
EAT THAT WAY, AND WE DON’T EXPECT YOU TO.

Fast forward a few years and my sister, with type 2 diabetes, tells
me that you never recover from diabetes, you can only control it.
Yikes. This information came from her diabetes education and
support group. Oh yeah, according to her, its ok to eat commercial
bread as long its wheat bread, and lettuce is ok if you don’t like
Kale, and white rice is ok if you eat beans or meat with it. Need I
go on?

I am shocked that the medical system is lying to people. Most of us
were trained from birth to think medical doctors are the last word.
Are they conspiring with Kraft and Colonial Sanders and the
pharmaceutical companies to keep us sick or are they just stupid?

Death By Food

My mother thinks, and yours might too, that all you have to do to
lose weight is not overeat. This was true for much of human
history. But the rules have changed and food is not what it once
was. Even modest amounts of modern food can make you fat
and sick.

Almost everything you eat contains one or all of the trinity of
death: MSG, High Fructose Corn Syrup and Hydrogenated Fats.
There are literally thousands of other pollutants in our food, but
these, with no real help from the myriad of other toxins, can and
will make you fat, give you high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes,
artery and heart disease and a whole host of other metabolic
diseases.

I thought for some time that if the label did not list MSG there
was no MSG in the product. Not so, there are over 60 names for
MSG, including such innocuous things as broth and natural
flavor. It is even injected into grocery store meat.

If you have metabolic disorder you are a victim of the modern
food industry.

The younger you are now, the more at risk you are. In 1960, the
year I was born, many foods were still made with sugar instead of
HFCS and MSG had not really gained a foothold in the food
industry. Of course HFs were all the rage in the 60's. Every
kitchen contained the large size can of Crisco, we thought it was
cleaner and safer then lard. If you are younger you have been
flooded with these chemicals since birth. Most commercial baby
formulas contain MSG and corn syrup. Even though we know
that MSG causes brain cell loss, even though we know corn syrup
contributes to obesity and diabetes, we still tolerate it in our baby
foods.

We are becoming progressively fatter, sicker and dumber. If you
eat the “safe”, “healthy”, “convenient” food in your grocery store
and virtually every restaurant you are playing roulette with your
future.

Sunday Things

Sunday morning dawned cold and clear. We had our morning oats,
enjoyed a few minutes of music in the living room then trotted off
to church.

The church we are attending, Mosaic, is non-traditional in a
number of ways. First the building doubles as an all age
“night club” called Fathom, and it looks as much like a club
as a church.

Second, it supports the arts. It looks more like a gallery
then a church.

Then there are the services,
about half an hour of music, then a prayer, a brief break and then a
sermon with bible reading woven into it. There is a lot of visual
media in the mix, including images, movie clips and the like. The
sermon is given from a stool near the seating, not from a podium or
raised platform.

None of this seems odd to me. Going to church at all does.

No one cares or asks what any one person believes or doesn’t
believe. Best of all, there is a terrific mix of people, none of whom
seem very nosy about what we do, where we do it, where we are
from etcetera ad nauseam. A very nice girl never fails to ask us
what we did during the past week, which I never manage to answer
without, unintentionally, sounding evasive. I can’t say, I am a
paralegal and this week I did xyz, and I am a painter and I am
working on something now, (in fact, even in my head as we speak)
and I do volunteer work that I love and this week I sorted and
labeled old blueprints and architectural elevations and I am in week
three of my eating plan and doing pretty good at it but I am
thinking about making spinach and feta cheese pastries with filo
dough because I am reading a book called the Sultan’s Kitchen and
when I leave here today I am going to my mothers. Deep breath.
It really is pointless, I can just imagine her kind eyes glazing over as
I speak. So I say, oh just working and enjoying the spring. Sounds
evasive, maybe even sneaky or unsocial, but so far it’s the best I
have managed.

Other then the chatty girl, who is, as I may have said, very nice, and
pretty also, no one seems very nosy at all. Very good.

Now, after church we went to Mom’s house. A nice visit was had
by all. Everyone is happy, which childishly I do not like, because
we are going to church. They assume, possibly not correctly, that
this means that I am not A) dancing ecstatically around a bonfire,
B) worshiping God using a foreign name that G-d might not like or
answer to or C) planning a trip to an Ashram. They hope this
means that I will transform into a good right minded x-tain, just like
them. I will even learn to vote republican...ha ha ha. Maybe I will
even take up eating PORK, like a good evangelical. HA HA HA,
not even if falls from heaven on a sheet...

This week, (back to church) the three piece ensemble, did a version
of “When I survey the wondrous cross...” that made the hairs stand
up on my arms. The sermon was pretty good as well.
Unfortunately I was having some interesting chest pains, and
frankly I was paying as much attention to my innards as to the
sermon. I also got to see many small children zinging around and
screeching with happiness as they hunted eggs. The little kids
really made me happy.

None of this seems odd to me. Going to church at all does.

Have a good week, I’m thinking of you (and filo dough and
accident reconstruction and frozen leaves)

Morning Oats a/k/a Horse Chow


Per Person

½ cup rolled oats
1 cup water
1 tablespoon slivered almonds
1 tablespoon Raisins
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Combine the oats, water, raisins and cinnamon in a small sauce pan,
heat over medium heat until it bubbles just a little. Add the slivered
almonds and the ground flax seed. Give it a stir and eat.

Notes: Do not use instant oats, use old fashioned rolled oats. If
you are out of almonds you can use walnut pieces. Currents and
raisins are interchangeable, you could also use prunes or dried
plums but use unsulphured ones. Flax Seed must be ground or it
will just go straight through undigested. Keep nuts and seeds in an
air tight container in the freezer. Do not drink juice or other sweet
liquids with this meal.

People who do not like oatmeal have probably always had it
overcooked.

If you did not eat correctly during the day this makes a quick
healthy evening meal as well.

April Fools, Mosaic Church, 3D Movie



A few weeks back Spouse played at Fathom, an “all age club” in
Downtown Chattanooga. I was not impressed with the
management of the venue but I really liked the space. The place is
very large and every available wall is covered with art. The main
room has concrete floors, hand painted faux stain glass windows, a
huge stage, open industrial style ceiling, and exposed HAC systems.
There are glittering glass mosaic lanterns and globes hanging
everywhere. The ladies room is painted purple.

Now to make it more interesting, the room I just described is the
meeting space for the Mosaic Church. I bet you can see where this
going. Last week Spouse and I went. Yes we did. We went to
church.

We liked it. We both liked it. Good music (more about that latter),
a decent sermon, comfortable seating (including sofas), Fab coffee
and pastries. The coffee and pastries are during, not after. There is
no traditional structure. The service consists of people coming in,
getting coffee and breakfast, sitting on sofas or at tables with
chairs, listening to the music, or humming or singing along or
standing in front and swaying with it. Very low key, very
comfortable, not alarming in any way. After about thirty minutes
the minister, Tim Reid, came out in jeans and an untucked shirt.
There was a prayer, then a bible reading, then a sermon. The
sermon was really more of a talk, relating the reading to life. It was
simple and fresh and relevant.

We liked it. So we came back. This week, we had music, lunch,
palm stems, and a semi-topical sermon. After church most of the
congregation went to the movie Meet the Robinsons. Oh Ho...
Very cool movie. GO SEE IT. It is 3D, really impressive
compared to what passed for 3D when I was a kid, and a number of
good messages. 1. What you do matters 2. Families sometimes
look strange 3. Failure is part of the process of success 4. Keep
moving forward. If you loved the Jetson’s you will like this one.

SOME THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MOSAIC: The actual space,
the downtown location, the young congregation, the support of the
arts, the informal service, the sofas, coffee. I like the box near the
door for offerings. I like feeling like I am in church built from the
ground up based on what someone would think organized worship was who had
never ever seen or participated in a church service.