Completely Random

I was making a bagel for breakfast this morning when it occurred to me that I had no idea where the sesame seeds came from. As I was pretty sure that they couldn't be a McDonald's creation, and because I can't help myself, I ran to Wikipedia.

Given the size of the seed, I had surmised that it must come from a grass of some sort. Alas, I am not always as smart as I should be--particularly when it comes to plants. The sesame plant is not a grass, but a flowering herb. The seeds grow in the plant's pods. While there are many wild varieties, usually found in Africa, sesame was probably first cultivated in India, where it has a long history and is used in many rituals.

Other things I didn't know about sesame seeds and/or plants:

• According to Assyrian legend, when the gods met to create the world, they drank wine made from sesame seeds. (yep--stole that directly from the Wikipedia page)

• The phrase "Open sesame" came from "Arabian Nights" and refers to the pods of the plant opening when mature.
• The seeds are really good for you: "exceptionally rich in iron, magnesium, manganese, copper and calcium (90 mg per tablespoon for unhulled seeds, 10 mg for hulled), and contain vitamin B1 . . . and vitamin E . . . They contain lignans, including unique content of sesamine . . . with antioxidant and anti-cancer properties. Among edible oils from six plants, sesame oil had the highest antioxidant content."
• It's easier to absorb the nutrients if you grind then up before eating. Tahini is a delicious example.
• The plants are very pretty.

Curiosity. It's a beautiful thing. Well, for me, anyway. Even if you didn't want to know anything about sesame seeds, at least check out the video link in the first paragraph.

Lesson for the Day

Never come between a four-year old chocoholic and chocolate cake.

I took the girls to Pamplemousse this morning. Delectable treats in many different flavors: mango, passion fruit, chocolate mint, triple chocolate mousse, pamplemousse (grapefruit) and of course, a lovely, lovely Chocolate Chocolate cake. Charlotte generally prefers the triple chocolate mousse, but as they were already out of it (at 10:33!) and I told the girls they had to share a little cake and that it was Hannah's turn to choose. Hannah chose the Chocolate, Chocolate.

Charlotte was not amused. Until she tasted one of the chocolate triagles that adorned the top of the cake. Before Hannah had finished one of these triangles, Charlotte had inhaled the remaining four. Hannah was forced to stop mid-way through a horrified gasp that was tinged with laughter as Charlotte grabbed the fork and dove in. A race ensued, which Charlotte won by employing two of her favorite tactics: First: take advantage of the fact that Hannah talks from the moment she gets up in the morning until 12 minutes after she falls asleep; and second: steal my fork and shovel with both hands.

Hannah finally admitted defeat. When asked if she was ever full when there was still chocolate cake to be had, Charlotte answered with a curt "No, " as she finished up the last curls of dark chocolate scattered around the plate.

I should also add that she once stabbed me with a fork when I got too close to her half of the triple chocolate mousse cake that we were sharing for my birthday.


Now repeat after me:
Never come between a four-year old chocoholic and chocolate cake.

Ecomomics of Happiness

It's true. The little things do make you happy. And sometimes they do make you spend more money.

Most Wednesdays, I take the night off and treat myself to dinner at the same place. Sometimes I hit the gym first; occasionally I try a new place--only because I keep thinking that I need to break myself of the "creature of habit" habit. But I'm rarely satisfied--well OK, there was the one time I skipped dinner all together and saw Burn After Reading instead--but I generally wind up at Vino Santo. Because food-wise and not-minding-if-I-bring-a-computer-a-book-or-a-friend-wise, this is my absolute favorite place to go for a lovely dinner. Every once in awhile I do take a friend!

Tonight, I tried to talk myself into either staying home (a bad mashup of "I'm too unmotivated to decide on anything" and "maybe I should tighten that belt a bit") or trying something different. But old habits and my adoration of the Vino Santo Caesar salad with grilled chicken won out.

I might call it a habit, but what really keeps me coming back is that, like tonight, when I got there, the only open table was "my" table. There were two couples waiting, but as soon as I arrived I was told that MY table was ready. And after dinner when I confided to the waiter that I loved seeing them so busy on a weeknight, he told me that they had actually turned away a table because the only one open was . . . MY table.

I’m not sure that everyone else would find the Caesar salad to be as tasty, or the pan roasted sole with a white wine, butter and caper sauce to be as divine. In fact, even my favorite Daniel Gilbert* might say that, because of the habituation factor, even I don’t enjoy the salad or fish as much as I did the first time. And yet.

Vanity has ever been an economic motivator and it is always in the merchants’ best interest to make sure you want to come back again and again. After all, why would you not want to go where every body knows your name (Norm), where the staff all know where you like to sit and know which menu items you might like and those . . .well, maybe not so much.

It may have been a complete fabrication--even a partial would have felt good--but the waiter said that it was my table, and they were going to hold it on the (very good) chance that I came to claim it. And I was told that my “usual” house white had been replaced and that I probably wouldn’t like it. I didn’t. It was then upgraded to something much nicer—cost (to them) be dammed. Maybe it was a small exaggeration. But there WAS a couple waiting by the door, and there WAS only my table open.

The upshot is that it made me happy. It didn’t cost them a whole lot.

And it made me want to keep going back.



And this post just reminded me to buy my own copy of Burn After Reading.


* I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t catch Mr Gilbert on the Colbert Report a couple of years ago. But now you can! God I love the Internets!

Random Question of the Week

The serving size for ice cream is listed as ½-cup. Is that calculated using:

1. The amount of ice cream that comfortably fits into the ½-cup (i.e.: loosely scooped);
2. The amount of ice cream you can force into the ½-cup; or
3. The amount of melted ice cream that fits into the ½-cup?

Interesting Fact of the Day

Australian researchers found that mixing liquor with diet drinks can intensify the alcoholic effect by 50%.

(Source: Womens Health)

Chicken Press

Over the weekend Urban Chickens Sophia and Zsu Zsu had a visit from Michael Procopio, food blogger for the San Francisco Examiner. Not only were the chickens on their best behavior, but Sophia was thoughtful enough to lay an egg just about half and hour before Michael arrived.

The column includes some nice close-ups, including one of their business ends--and c'mon, you know you've always wanted a (sorry, couldn't be avoided) birds' eye view of the business end of a chicken. Or is that a smidge too much of "knowing where your food comes from"?

So go, go! Read Michael's column (Urban Chickens: Do-it-yourself Hen Party) in the San Francisco Examiner! As if seeing the chickens weren't enough, the column is funny and I love the way he writes.

The Weekly Dammit, #19

After a lengthy hiatus, it's back! C'mon, you know you missed your Weekly Dammit.

Dammit #1:
Holy crap! It's actually been a month since the last Dammit. I'm blaming it on work, changes to Charlotte's schedule, a trip to Georgia for Thanksgiving . . . Or we could just go with laziness.

Dammit #2:
Mike Huckabee once advocated quarantine for AIDS patients. And said that Hollywood stars should fund HIV/AIDS research from their own pockets. Guess who's ahead in the Iowa and South Carolina polls?

Dammit #3:
Normal people come with "irrelevance filters." That means that they can actually concentrate and generally have much better memories. To paraphrase myself from a comment on Mixx.com, if you didn't come with said filters factory installed, can you buy them?

Dammit #4:
A slice of pumpkin pie (1/8 of a pie and who eats only that?) has 320 calories and 15 grams of fat. On the positive side, it also has 7 grams of fiber.

McMarketing

A recent study by researchers at Stanford University found that kids as young as 3 were already being brainwashed by advertising in general, McDonald's in particular.

The kids, preschoolers aged 3-5, were given two "meals" at the same time: identical McDonald's food, with different packaging, one with the familiar McDonald's wrappers, the other with plain wrappers.

The result? Almost 77% of the kids preferred the fries with the McDonald's logo; the hamburgers were pretty much even; the carrots--you heard me, the carrots--split 54-23% in favor of the McD's packaging. (I must admit, I was surprised to see that the Happy Meals(R) now come with carrots.)

As Tom Robinson, the study author, noted, "[the] kids' perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding.'"

Kids' perceptions are also heavily altered by what they learn from their parents, and McDonald's is a fitting example in our house. Hannah once asked why we never went there and I told her that the food was really bad for you. She has translated that for anyone who asks--and some who don't--as "they have nasty food."

Now, we all know that it isn't nasty food; it's soooooooo good, especially when you're, say, 20-ish, staying out until the wee hours, followed by early shift waiting tables. Then it was all about the bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, hash browns and a pot of coffee. (Coffee home-brewed or at the restaurant, because, hey, I have to draw the line somewhere!)

Of course, after the article was published in the Mercury News, someone sent in a letter basically saying that it wasn't the marketing, it was the packaging. "Because presentation is everything, just ask any chef or home cook." Not in my house, but anyway . . .

So our kids are either 1) being trained to prefer high-fat, high-calorie food that is loaded with sodium (carrots excepted), or, 2) they're being trained to prefer the food equivalent of bright, shiny objects, no matter what they taste like.

Methinks that, either way, we're screwed.

The Weekly Dammit, #5

Dammit #1:
Some foods that require a bit of mixing and/or cooking on your part include the calorie count in the item as packaged as well as the number of calories in the finished product. I'm sure that there is a quasi-logical reason for this--maybe someone wants to know the baseline before they start tossing in a bunch of other stuff. Maybe someone actually wants to eat Bisquick right out of the box. I'm not going to do it, but I have no problem with someone else giving it a go--as long as I can watch. But here's a thought: Why not use that space to tell us where the ingredients came from? That seems to be a bigger issue these days than knowing that Annie's Homegrown Organic Shells and Real Aged Cheddar has 270 calories uncooked vs. 280 prepared. (You'd have to go to their website to see that all of their wheat comes from the US.)

Dammit #2:
Why do certain people feel the need to tell me "The problem with you lefties is . . . "? I never say to them "The problem with you assholes is . . . "

Dammit #3:
It would seem that some manufacturers want you to buy their product but not actually be able to touch said product. For the past few years, packaging seems to have become more complicated and impossible to get into without injury. To open it, you need to first gather a few items: heavy gloves, a valium and/or glass of wine, bowie knife, duct tape (to muffle whining from the children while you actually get to the damn toy), and a sweat rag.

Perhaps, though, the tide is turning? I almost wept with joy today when I opened a package that had the product GLUED lightly to a recycled cardboard backing. It still had the plastic overlay, but that too was only glued to the backing. Thank you thank you. Now if only we can convert all manufacturers before the holidays.

Dammit #4:
Someone leaked the last Harry Potter book. It's bad enough that I'm going to be camping all weekend, but now some idiot has made it more likely that I'm going to hear something about it before I actually get to the book.

Dammit #5:
I think that Dammit #4 was probably a huge dork alert. Yes, I've read the Lord of the Rings books too. All of them. Several times. Mostly when I was a kid. Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Dammit #6:
In order to buy alcoholic beverages, you have to have been born on or before today's date in 1986. I am so old.

The Weekly Dammit, #4

Dammit #1:
When Thomas makes dinner, I frequently rue the fact that I have but one stomach. Last night's tangy chicken skewers with romescu sauce made me wish that what I lovingly refer to as my baby pooch were, in fact, a functioning stomach, allowing me to keep eating, just for the pure pleasure of the combined flavors and textures. And it's not without guilt that I say this (bonus Dammit!), as it was long ago drilled into my head that, somewhere in China, there were children who would be more than happy to have my meal. I began to doubt my parents' word when those same children refused my repeated and insistent pleas that they at least, and for the love of god, take my pork chop briquettes. Somehow I think the answer would have been different had we'd been talking about the Peach Cobbler a la mode.

Dammit #2:
Not so very long ago I was quietly pleased to see that Cindy Sheehan had decided to give up the fight and go home to her other children, whose existence, I must admit, surprised.

But I should have known by the phrasing, "leaving to spend more time with her family," that Ms. Sheehan had already made the decision to treat us once again to the prospect of her on the campaign trail. That's right! La Dame Sans A Clue on Anything Not Iraq-related has declared her intention to give Nancy Pelosi a run for her money. Yes, that Nancy Pelosi and all of that money. Of course, Nancy will be allowed to keep her job if she just brings articles of impeachment against President Bush within two weeks.

Articles of impeachment: Not a bad idea. Representative Cindy Sheehan? Dreadful idea.

Dammit #3:
My lack of imagination is pitiable. Apparently, there is growing concern--among some Republican lawmakers and pundits, no less--that the military will be made the fall guy for failure in Iraq, once they run out of troops sometime in the spring. I thought that the plan was to run out the clock until the '08 election and then leave the whole steaming mess in the lap of whoever lands in the White House next. Even I never expected this from the administration that branded half the US population as un-American and against the troops. Tsk. Silly me.