COLD. Talk about change

Things change quick in Oklahoma. On Sunday it was in the 60s here. The last two days have been 40s and now we have ice.
None on the roads yet. The winds seem to be blowing the puddles around. It was enough ice that I actually had to work at getting it off my windows this morning. It's a cold day to be one of the security guards looking at badges today!


On another note I wanted to mention some musings I had regarding times and change. NAtional Geo has been feeling very activists these days. It started with the 'End of Cheap Oil', then 'Global Warming', then 'Fat',and now 'Caffeine'. VERY good articles. All learning about consequences of things to come... usually grim (good articles).
Rose and I have been evaluating our diet for a long time, but we are usualy to lazy to do anything about it. 'Yeah we should cut back on that', 'Shouldn't buy those'. This year we thought we'd take a more active role in trying to eat healthy.
A movie... 'Super Size Me'.... did a great job (like the Natl Geo article on 'Fat') on explaining concerns about present eating practices esp fast food. The New Year gave us a chance to try and chance our fast food habits to non existent. One book I've found very fun is called... the kids cookbook ... it has nice pictures of everything. Easy recipes. Fun to make... (Cian likes to hover and help pour things and measure stuff). I particularly love the smoothies (being as I also got a blender for Christmas....mmmmmmm)
Oh.. and if you rent the DVD of Super Size Me watch the extra about the McDonalds fries. Or I'll tell you...They do an experiment put several fast food burgers and fries under glass jars and compare them to homemade burgers and fries. Then they wait....and wait and wait. mold sets in and all sorts of stuff starts growing on everything....everything except the Mcdonald's fries. I think it went on for 4 weeks? The McDonald fries still hadn't aged a day!

I was also thinking about how if I lived in a different time period this kick of being picky about what I eat would be harder. We live in a world now that seems to be spoiled enough to have the luxury of being picky. Listening to the turn of the century stories of the pioneers and even to my Dad and coworkers I heard stories that lots of people have never experienced. Eating pigs makes a lot of sense when you're dealing with cattle or doing cattle drives. All the intricacies of preparing the pig and what parts you use. Slaughtering after several freezes to take care of parasites. Using the lard to cook things later. The preservability of it... sausage etc. If you had a big enough pig it would last you a while!
I don't mind never having to know how to kill it, prepare it etc, but it is one of those things that seems to be going out the window of common knowledge and into the realm of a select few. More and more things seem to be going this way. Computers have become simpler to use and many people that use them today couldn't build them like the people before them.
We americans have lost our recipe for vacuum tubes. More and more things are going to solid-state. Nowadays the Russians and the Polish still have knowledge of tubes. They never stopped using them. And I found out a few days ago that during the Cold War the US government had a contract with Russia to buy vacuum tubes (they were the only vendor!!).


SO.. I suppose this is why I enjoy cooking so much now. Taking my eating into my own hands. Shying away from over processed foods which have to have nutrients added back into them. Getting Cian (and sometimes Jamie who is usually busy with her mama/daddy/baby combo of some toy she has in different sizes... or Diego rescuing Baby Jaguar... or some combination of them) to join in is a lot of fun.
During these times when things become simplified and the 'how' and 'why' is lost; it is fun to do something on my own however small it may be.

yikes ... thats a long post... oh check this out. Awww Yeah.. or rather...." it's... it's incredible."