I'm not a bsule

When my blog becomes famous (and you know it will), will I be sued for illegally uploading photos I find via google images?

Via is a funny word. V-words in general tend to be humorous. Vulva, for instance, is a hilarious word. Here are some of my other favorite V-words: vampire, vestibule, Viagra, vegetable, virgin, vagabond, and Vatican city.
Very well then. I'm not in the mood to give you nutrition advice this evening. I'll be back later in the week for that. I welcome suggestions.

Rindfleysh

I decided that eating half a bag of sour cream and cheddar potato chips was a good substitution for going to the gym tonight. I'm usually not like this. Maybe it's because I worked through the weekend. Maybe it's because I spent the entire afternoon grading boring papers. Maybe it's because I was hungry and was too lazy to eat anything nutritious. Or maybe I just wanted to.
Whatever.
Before my grading excitement, I taught two elementary school classes, and will teach another two tomorrow. It was cute. They're 2nd and 3rd graders. The 3rd graders were awesome, but the 2nd graders were kind of stupid. Maybe I'm being too hard on them. I asked them to give me an example of a food that's in the dairy group. The girl I called on up front said "water". I'm not good with politely saying someone is wrong. I guess with kids you're supposed to say things like "that's a good try" or "not quite, but thanks for volunteering". I just said "no". I don't think the teacher liked this.

Then I was doing my shpeal about milk. I have them tell me what the mineral is in milk that makes your bones and teeth strong. They say "calcium". Then I ask "where does milk come from". After saying "the store", they say "cows". Then I say "how does the calcium get into the cow?" Usually the kids guess the right answer, which is "by what they eat (grass)". But today this kid said "when babies come out of them". I don't even know where he was going with that.

I feel like a corporate whore for the major chain supermarket I work for and the Dairy Council. I want to go off on a tangent about how cows are forced to live in inhumane conditions in unsterilized facilities in close quarters with billions of other cows which is why they need antibiotics so often and that they don't really eat grass and roam around freely like they're supposed to but instead they eat grain which changes the pH in their intestines which increases the levels of E. coli which not only spills out onto the meat when the cow is slaughtered but also gets released through their crap which gets used as fertilizer or spills into the water supply for crops which is how we get E. coli outbreaks in spinach.

But I guess 2nd and 3rd graders wouldn't understand these concepts.
So your nutrition tip of the week is about meat. The kind that comes from cows. It's about avoiding the inhumane slaughter house meat loaded with bacteria and antibiotics.
Here you go:
#1-The very best is organic, but this isn't readily available in most places so the next best thing is
#2- "Natural" meat. But not everything that says "Natural" means the same thing. They lie to get you to buy it. You also want it to says:
-no antibiotics
-no hormones
-no animal by-products
-humanely treated
-100% grass fed is best, but grass-finished is OK.
(Adapted from: Marion Nestle's "What to Eat").
And when you start complaining about how much it costs to buy organic and natural meat, think about how cheap it is to buy beans and tofu. You only need to eat red meat once in a while if you eat it at all (and really, no one NEEDS to eat it), so spending the extra money once in a while won't break the bank. So stop bitching.
And eat your damn vegetables.

Picture of cows: David McNew/Getty Images (on nytimes.com)

Strange Frukht

I have an unnatural attachment to NPR. I think I may be addicted and it's affecting my music listening. The weekends are the best. If you haven't listened before, you have to check out "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" and "This American Life". Actually, do this right now. Go here: Scroll down and click "Full Episode" on the right side. Then fast forward to 41:05 to listen to "Babies Buying Babies". Stick with it. It's 16 minutes long and it's brilliant. You will thank me! I promise. I really do.

And now for your weekly nutrition update. Last week we answered the question "What the fuck is a whole grain". This week I'm going to answer "How the fuck do you expect me to eat 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables (f/v) everyday?"

First, I'm going to assume you have no idea what a serving of f/v looks like, do you? Don't lie to me. A serving of is generally one cup. This is about the size of a baseball.
The serving size is less for dried fruit (~1/4 cup). So for those of you who whine that it's just too hard to eat all of your f/v, here are some tips to show you why you're wrong:

-Add blueberries to pancake, waffle, or muffin batter
-Mix raisins, diced apple, or dried apricots into oatmeal
-Add pepper, onion, spinach, broccoli, or shredded carrot to a morning omelet
-Make a smoothie with frozen fruit, low-fat yogurt, and milk
-Top French toast with warmed applesauce (and use less or no syrup)
-Put a slice of avocado on a regular sandwich
-Add mushrooms, peppers, onions, or diced carrots to spaghetti sauce
-Add some extra mixed vegetables to soup
-Top pork chops with apples, pears, or raisins
-Top a baked potato with salsa
-Use applesauce to replace half of the oil in any recipe
-Mix dried fruit with almonds and a few M&Ms® as a snack
-Add broccoli or diced pepper to macaroni and cheese
-Blend cooked cauliflower into mashed potatoes
-Roast pears with honey and a sprinkling of ginger
-Eat a frickin' salad.
(Above information adapted from RD411.com)


Next week's topic? Fuck if I know. Probably something about vitamin D and bone health, or maybe something about probiotics and intestinal health.

Noshing around

I made the greatest unnecessary purchase this week and I'm very excited about it. It's an air popper. For popcorn. For snacking
I suppose it's the result of 1. an insatiable craving for popcorn, and 2. having no microwave. I've been microwave-free for 1 year and 8 months now. This is also the amount of time I've been t.v.-free, and the amount of time I've been diversity-free (read as: a NH resident). In July I will have lived here for 2 years. That's a lot of time to spend in one place. Well, a lot of time for me to spend in one place. I'm getting that springtime urge to move. M is applying all over this here grand country for jobs, so we may end up in NM or CA or MI or CO or FL or MN or NY or IL or, well, you get the idea. Half of me wants to get the fuck out of NH, while the other half wants to stay and be cozy with my friends, familiar places, and jobs. He's also applied locally, and I guess I'd be OK with staying. Maybe. Not sure. Perhaps.
If we do stay, I have some potential good stuff that can happen for me job-wise. If I go, I can start fresh and maybe find one full time job with benefits, instead of 3 part time jobs with crap.

In other news, my eyes are still itchy as hell. It looks like I got beat up, resulting in two black eyes, and then rubbed lipstick all around them. Pleasant, no? I'm going to the eye doctor tomorrow cause the dermatologist can't see me until April, and that's just ridiculous.

M handed in the 3rd draft of his 403 page novel to his professors today. Then he got a little loopy and started mumbling and then fell asleep. He'll be all better in the a.m. I would say lovely things about how wonderful and talented he is, but he reads this blog too and I don't want him to get a big head.

This is the time in the blog when I give out free and unsolicited nutrition advice (I thought I'd start a new trend). Here you go: Make half of your grains whole grains. What the fuck does this mean, you may ask yourself? Well, if you're supposed to have 6 servings of grain/day (grain= bread, rice, cereal, etc), three of those servings should be a whole grain (whole grain= whole wheat bread, whole grain cereal, oatmeal, quinoa, barley, brown rice, etc.) What's so fucking important about whole grains, you ask me? Well, whole grains have fiber. You need 25-35 grams of fiber everyday. Getting enough fiber can help prevent heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, help with weight management, and it can even make you fly. OK, I lied about that last part. Oh, and guess what? Popcorn is a whole grain. I'm not lying this time.

Maybe I'll start a blog called "Ask the foul mouthed dietitian". What do you think?

Tune in next week when I'll answer the question "How the fuck do you expect me to eat 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables everyday?"

mamzer

My eyes are so itchy I want to stick needles in them.
I hate winter skin.
I'm starting to dislike snow. We've had 100 inches this winter. 100 inches is, like, a lot of snow.
Moving to Miami sounds kind of nice right now. But apparently they're really into appearances down there. I feel attractive in NH. I might be ugly by Miami standards.
I have a John Mayer song stuck in my head, which is awful, because I passionately hate John Mayer. "Your Body is a Wonderland" makes me want to cut myself.
M is almost finished with the 3rd draft of his novel, which means he's going a little crazy. He's in the kitchen talking to himself.
I have three jobs but I only like one of them. I'm not going to tell you which one.
My eyes are still itchy.
My body is not a wonderland.
John Mayer is a bastard.

Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

CLICK HERE.

Republicans say the darndest things

"I supported the president in the war before you did," -Huckabee to Romney (Yeah, that's something to brag about.)

"Don’t make the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys." -Romney (Ask your doctor today if BeingAnAsshole XR is right for you.)

"If [Americans] want a president who doesn't believe in god there's probably plenty of choices" -Huckabee (All of the candidates, republican and democratic, believe in god you asshole, not that it should matter anyway).

So here I am in NH, two days away from the primary, drowning in blue political signs, and I haven't made up my mind yet. At least I know it won't be a republican.

Later.