Finding Your Own (Slightly) Club Med

 

Well, this is fun! 

In last week’s edition, I mentioned that retirement homes are considered by many to be your last stop in life. People when you confess your new living arrangements look at you with barely concealed pity, mixed with slight shudders. Will they end up in the same sad “fate?” 

Decisions, decisions...

For some reason it’s the same online. After last week’s blog  I had many emails expressing  shock at my decision to live in an independent living situation. Curiosity. Sadness. Bewilderment.  

After all, some folks have known me and my writing for many years. I guess this new step in living is part of me confronting the fact that life changes happen. 

Newsflash! 

Changes come fast and furious as you age! So amazing. So much to deal with. Such different perspectives that occupy your mind, if it isn’t in the process of being clouded by dementia. No one really knows what’s happening to others at that point. After all, not all dementia symptoms are created equal. There aren’t any dementia folks at my facility. Remember, it’s independent living.

There’s lots to love about being in my new situation. I’ve not met one person  who isn’t extremely grateful and proud to live here. Everyone lives here because of their life circumstances. Mostly it’s because of a bereavement in their lives that made them unable to continue living in their habitual ways. A few, like me, decide to jump in the deep end and learn to swim. 

Carolyn: Artist, friend to many, 7-year resident

One such person here started as one of my table mates, and has become a much-admired friend. She is 94, an ex-teacher, who used to ride a horse to a rural school for her classes. Carolyn has a wicked sense of humour, a deep appreciation of life, and loves to incorporate swear words into her conversation, “for emphasis” as she says. 

My friend, Carolyn, pictured in our diner/commercial kitchen area. The more formal dining room is one floor up.

She tried marriage once, as a very young girl. After ten years she decided it wasn’t for her, and divorced. After several more years she thought maybe it wasn’t as bad as she remembered and married again. It was. After another ten years she divorced. 

Now she has macular degeneration and a hearing deficit. But she also has a passion for both music and art. Go into her suite, and you are assailed by her wonderful paintings and numerous artistic model ships made from found pieces of bark and twigs. She has all the drawings for a children’s book that she plans. She just has to tell me the story!

Some snippets from this great artist 

Carolyn--the artist at work in her den

A small sample of her glorious art

Landscape–such a different mood

Interpretation of family kids as they’d look in a band

A collage of multimedia pieces

A singular multimedia piece

This is the wonderful thing about living in a caring, loving independent living facility. The major rule here is that you should feel happy, enjoying each day as you choose. Kindness to others is a given.

Choose a home that’s well established and has staff who’ve been in it for a long time. Many of the staff have been here for 4-7 years, and even longer.

You have time to enjoy your hobbies or work. You just show up for meals, no dishes to wash, no planning. No building maintenance, no taxes. Just concern for you and pampering if you need it. Hugs are always encouraged.

This is your very own quasi Club Med.

Edible eye-candy

In keeping with her free spirit, this year Carolyn has carefully tended an extravagant mixture of pumpkins, squash, runner beans, sweet peas, trumpet vine and other assorted flowering plants. This is guaranteed to fill your heart with joy and wonder. If you’re a humming bird it is pure delight.

Thank you!

Your comments and questions on this post are always appreciated and add to interest! Many thanks for coming here. Want to be notified when I write a post? Hit Subscribe and you’ll go on my weekly mailing list. It’s free, and I’m not selling you anything!

VickiW

Retirement Home Living: Is it easy?

 

The decision

I never thought I’d end up in my eighties renting a space in an independent living facility. It sounds so bleak, when you think of it that way.

There might be no better way to come fair and square against the circumstances that have brought you here. It gives you a gentle and very different look at the reality your own life. Everyone here is here because of life circumstances. Suddenly a new life appears in front of you.. If you had one in which every day you  became a caregiver, that’s gone. Isolation at home? That’s gone too. Your circumstances can be good, bad or very ugly. Up to you how you deal with being ripped from your routine.

Routine

In my facility your ordered breakfast is brought to you each day, much nicer than you used to make. Beautiful lunches and dinners served by folks who love their jobs and the residents. No dishes to wash, so your cute little dishwasher (just in case you decided to do some cooking) gets fairly minimal use.

What is independent living?

Let’s face it....

It’s a four-story, fairly large building, situated next to a busy highway. It used to consist of apartments, so essentially I have a full kitchen, combined dining/ living room, my own washer and dryer, and a den that I use as an office. There’s a bedroom, big enough for a single bed. 

When you go into independent retirement living you’re literally thrust into a situation where you make numerous considered daily choices to try and regain a certain balance in your life. You’re living in private, yet your meals and some activities are shared with 64 others. They don’t have to be; you can decide to retreat into your space with your food. But the downside of that is you may be losing out on making some really great friends.

The social scene

We have what can only be described as a large living room beyond the entrance to my independent living home building. Comfy, soft,  light coloured ( I don’t have to worry about cleaning them, thank goodness) chairs and sofas that invite you in, against  a backdrop of library books, and a pedal machine that you can use while reading, or whatever else.  

To complete this social space is a barista machine. Starbucks, eat your heart out. We can get any fancy drinks, or plain, at the touch of buttons, and they’re all free! A Our cooks provide cookies and other pastries, for residents, just in case you may need a snack before the next meal time.

A big basket of fresh fruit completes the picture.

Image via VickiW

Chatting to new friends is always good and interesting too. 

What do you think?

I’ve been here now for several months. Before I decided to try this independent style of living my mind had a preconceived opinion that it was one of many similar places that  folks would go to die. Yep, time to cast the old folks out and confine them to a shut in space. Out of sight, out of mind, until the funeral.

Reinforcing this idea is common in our population. It’s an unfortunate truth that our bodies do weaken in many respects as they age. Added to this is the annoyance of not being able to continue working for a wage. Often instead, you’re relegated to simply trying to make life less boring in your home, and realizing you need help with things you managed easily before.

Stay healthy!

I’m guessing though that folks don’t realize the difference between independent living and assisted living places. A qualifying mandatory medical examination by your doctor helps you understand whether you can manage this change in your living style.

Love the charity shop I’ve used to furnish this new living space! I had my original own bed, and my own recliner chair. Beyond this I was able to buy everything ( top quality) in the furnishings needed for less than $400. That didn’t include a brand new smart TV, a gift from my loving family. 

How much space do you need?

My space here is  smaller than I was used to. No question that being open and willing  to downsize is valuable, and can be a remarkably freeing experience. Just like most folks living in the outside world, you’re seeking happiness in your day to day life. But you’re the only one able to find it. It’s your very own Yin and Yang. 

Where’s the happiness?

Your happiness is unique to you. It helps to start finding it if you are able to define what you need as against what you’d like to keep. In my case for this move  I’ve stuck to this philosophy. So many things I thought I needed in the past have been donated to charity. No doubt they will fill the needs of others. 

There’s a lot to unpack here about independent living. If this interests you I’d love you to subscribe (it’s free!). That way you’ll be on my mailing newsletter each week.

Coming along beautifully!

Remember the spindly little acorn squash I put in my independent living garden bed in July after getting here? It grew! Looks like I’ll end up with four or five squash for Thanksgiving and overwintering.

July 21, planted in half my garden space

Same plant today

The other news about this is I harvested two of these lovely squash today. They will now be kept dry and warm on my little balcony before storing inside.

I knew they were mature because their skin is so hard my fingernail couldn’t penetrate! I made sure to cut a long enough piece of their withered stems that no unwelcome bacteria could enter them.

Images via VickiW

Thank you!

As always, many thanks for visiting and reading my posts, and I encourage you to share your thoughts on this week's subject in the comments!

VickiW

Chorleywood: Ultra-fast bread!

 

Image via VickiW

Strange how memories from early life return as you age. Short-term ones would be nice, and are actually more important, day to day, but those long-term ones from so long ago keep on thrusting themselves forward.

These days after the advent of computers, iPads, smartphones, internet, and the World Wide Web, things have changed so radically in present lives that you almost long for a break from it all.

It isn’t just those tech things that have altered life, so that it’s almost unrecognizable. It’s what has followed. 

Take bread for instance. See this loaf bought from the local supermarket 10 weeks ago? Yes, it’s stood on my counter, wrapped in its plastic bag, long enough to create blue mold on any other foodstuff you can think of.

Perfect, uniform, commercial bread slices

Image sofi5t of Pixabay

The thing is, it still looks as fresh as the day it was bought. Not only that, it feels just as fresh. I don’t plan to make a sandwich from it. But I’m completely overawed when I realize that technically, I could. When I make bread, as often as I can, I’m joining the ranks of so many others these days. These are the folks who just know from a health point of view that homemade is very much better for you. They are people who find the time in their 24 hours to make a batch of bread. It’s not that easy these days. People are struggling to afford feeding their families, or even themselves in many instances. Greedy landlords, voracious CEOs of major companies, all do their level best to ensure corporate profits remain astoundingly high, while they are also seemingly unable to think about the pain of so many folks these days. This is not the first time people have suffered from a shortage of, or inferior quality in their bread. Bakers used to grind their own flour, and they were heavy loaves, but nothing had been taken out or added in. Bread was indeed “the staff of life” and kept people healthy, with the addition of simple unprocessed foods.

Home-baked Image via VickiW

Faster isn't always an improvement...

Until the late 19th century milling flour was a slow process. But when a new commercial method was introduced in Chorleywood, England, all this changed. Suddenly mills could produce 20 tonnes of flour in an hour. This process also separated the different parts of the wheat grain, giving a lighter flour but without the health-giving bran and germ. The main part of the grain is about 90% endosperm, the starchy part.

Have you ever wondered why, if you read the list of ingredients on flour, vitamins are added? The answer is that the new and improved method of making bread in gigantic factories and supermarkets actually removes the nutrients that we expect to find in our bread. 

This coincides with the global health problems that societies face today. In an effort to replace the missing nutrients extracted with the modern bread-making methods they, plus dozens of other “improvers” and additives must be carefully weighed out and added back to the “no fermenting” time of the dough. This is by order of governments who realized health problems were escalating quickly.  

The baking that follows is quick. No messing around.

It’s very complicated, this Chorleywood high-tech machine process. Actually, more time is spent with cooling and packaging the bread than baking it. Forget about the hours of allowing yeast to slowly work its magic. That time is cut to ribbons.

After the 10 weeks that my little “whole-wheat” loaf has sat on my kitchen counter I looked at it again today. No change. Still soft, nice texture. Still brown, perfectly baked. Still smells okay. No mould to be seen. I’m wondering how long the supermarket bread is classified as being “fresh” after baking? Lots of folks buy it.

Should I do the taste test? I’m tempted, purely from a research point of view.

All good!

I did it! ¼ slice, with butter and my neighbour Jim’s strawberry jam made in October.  The bread tasted fine! It gives a whole new meaning to fresh. How would I ever know what that means now, with supermarket bread?

I didn’t get sick. I felt fine. But I have to wonder if I’d feel the same on a steady daily diet of it?

10-week-old “fresh whole-wheat” Chorleywood bread Image via VickiW

It’s not that difficult to see the possibility that profit might be the underlying cause of much illness in populations. The Chorleywood rapid bread-making process has spread throughout the world. The nutrients that once were in the grains are removed, then carefully replaced after treatment, together with dozens of additives. Swift baking follows. 

It’s always worthwhile to look at the labeling of food these days. But know that in modern, speedy baking, many of the ingredients simply don’t have to end up on those labels. 

It all started with Chorleywood…

Image via Google Maps

Christmas: Some hints for happiness

 

Image via neelam279 of Pixabay

How it feels depends on...

Christmas is an emotional time. Depending on what your childhood was like, your work situation, your health and that of your loved ones, it can be a real mixed bag this year. 

Finances seem to come heavily into it too. Enough? Too little? For what? This is a good time to face your reality, and set out to enjoy things, no matter what blocks seem to be in the way. You really don’t need to spend a lot for folks to like you.

Food is important too. Turkeys and ham dominate of course, and this is a time when you can either congratulate yourself on putting away a little in your budget for the past eleven months, or rack your brains to find alternatives. It is possible.

Thanks to our traumatic move this year we will be able to share our Christmas celebration with our family members, and it is such a special thought. The other good thing was that I’m completely unmotivated to feel pressure in gift-giving this year. The move saw to that!

Some things are treasured by family, no matter how humble. This is a good time to dig them out and look at them in the light of day. One of them in our family is the old button box. 

The family button box, about 60 years old now. Still a treasure of memories for a daughter, granddaughter and now great-granddaughter!

Images via VickiW

Then, this Christmas some carefully sorted bigger ones for my lovely little great-granddaughter. She’ll probably add them to the big box as she gets older and less likely to put them in her mouth.

All gift-giving was of “stuff” that someone else could use and enjoy. I have given some money to those who seemed to really need it, and for those who live out of Canada. Simply no point in paying huge postage bills, and adding to the landfills with wrapping. 

Fav dishes

Food now, that’s a whole different thing! 

Yes, my kitchen still begs to have the renovation begun, but I don’t think that will happen until the workmen have recovered from their Christmases, and the municipality experts have given our condo project their blessing.

But thanks to my beloved pressure cooker I will be contributing some rather nice-looking Brussels sprouts to our feast. I had prepared myself for a huge uptick in their price, but wow, the first thing I spied in the supermarket was a huge pile of them at a special, very low price.

Just in case you might like to try this fabulous way of preparing them, I’m sharing this old recipe with you! It does need a slow cooker/ crockpot, so I hope you have one.

                

Image via VickiW

For the twelve folks that I hope will enjoy this, I used the following...

First step ingredients

About 4 lbs Brussels sprouts, washed, bottom edge trimmed off, and cut in half.

½ cup pure maple syrup

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil 

1 tsp salt

About 1 tsp ground pepper

For later on

1 ½ cups cranberries

1 ½ cups feta cheese ( crumbled and divided)

(Oh dear! Forgot to include the feta in the above ingredients pic! Must have been thinking of my son-in-law, who hates it!)

The first step ingredients are all going into the slow cooker, with the lid on.  My slow cooker cycle is on my pressure cooker. Now they’re just going to cook slowly for about 2 ½ hours. You’ll find they still need more cooking until they are tender, so please test them by poking a sharp knife or a skewer into them.

After this first time, the sprouts need a gentle stir with a metal spoon.

At the same time, you’re going to put the cranberries into the mixture, and if you wish you can also add half the crumbled feta cheese. 

Continue cooking until your test poke shows the sprouts are tender all the way through. 

When you want to serve, add the reserved feta crumbled on top. This dish is best served warm, but it is easy to reheat, either in the microwave or on the stovetop.

I believe you’ll have great enjoyment from your company with this simple dish. 

To all my dear friends and readers throughout the world - please know how much you are appreciated! 

Image via VickiW

Until next time...

May you have the best possible Christmas, wherever you are. My heart aches for those of you who experience less fortune at this time. My biggest gifts this year have been to food banks.

Diet Drinks: Do they make you fat?

Image via DesignDrawArtes of Pixabay

I often shop at our lovely, local supermarket. While choosing some veggies and fruit, one of those forklifts they use for big crates of stuff appeared next to me. 

Then a gray-haired shopworker ( have you noticed, these places are employing many people now, who are past retirement age?) started offloading huge amounts, cases in fact of “diet” drinks. They made up a solid block of “special deal” offerings. 

Right away, customers came to put these caseloads of pop into their shopping baskets. Later, at the checkout, a woman in front of me had two cases. Her son, about 10, carried another. There were no fresh ingredients in their cart. Just boxes of packaged items. Snoopy of me, I know, but I’m constantly amazed at the stuff that people eat and drink.

Image via CorrieMiracle of Pixabay

Statistics

According to 2019 stats, Mexico, with an average of 634 per person, per year is a world leader in consumption of carbonated soft drinks. USA follows closely with 618. India, with a very high population, ranks last with 18.

So this week we’re having a conversation about what is known in the food labs’ as Non-Nutritive Sweeteners. (NNSs). You find lots of these artificial chemicals in your drinks and your food. They are sugar substitutes.

All NNSs are developed in laboratories. They are hundreds or even thousands of times sweeter than sugar, so only tiny amounts have to be used for any given purpose. They serve the main goal of food manufacturers and retailers; profitability.

When you read your labels and see modified starch as an ingredient on your sugar-free drink, translate that to mean fillers of maltodextrin and dextrin. These lab-created substances contain about ¼ of sugar calories. So they might be sugar-free, but they are not calorie-free.

The fizzy drink manufacturers love the word “natural” on their labels. It makes everyone feel better about things. “Natural flavours” sounds healthy enough, even though it is usually last on the label list. 

For instance, stevia, the incredibly sweet plant, is used often, but not as a plant. The sweet substance is lab-extracted. The leaves are steeped in acids and solvent first, to achieve the chemical glycosides extraction. This happens in labs of course. 

Then those active compounds are further refined, purified and concentrated to the point that there are only minute amounts of the original stevia plant left. But that’s enough for the label. There are other chemical compounds too, that are not labeled, because their addition is deemed to be not necessary on the label.

Most of the time natural flavours conjure up a healthy image in your mind. But there’s little difference between the lab procedures to extract from plants, and artificial flavours derived from the thousands of available chemicals. It’s all in the wording.

Image via VickiW

Why would you pay four, good Canadian dollars for this? We have water. We can grow stevia in a pot if you don’t have a garden. We can mash up the leaves and put them in the water. But it might be way too sweet! Add some fruit for flavouring. Just one leaf can be all you need in your tea. I plan to grow another plant in a pot next year.

Decisions, decisions...

You’re between a rock and a hard place with this dietary “problem.” Go for a can of sugar-sweetened soda, and in the one above you’ll be consuming more than 9 teaspoons of sugar, to counteract the 12% bergamot, a type of bitter orange.

The plastic bottles and cans that contain soft drinks cause huge pollution in most countries and oceans.  Soft drinks are very popular everywhere! I don’t know how many countries are even able to deal with the enormous discard/littering problem.

Let’s be honest. Soft drinks, meaning non-alcoholic, usually carbonated (fizzy) drinks, have no nutritional value at all. In fact, some studies show that rather than helping your thirst they can even cause it to become greater.

There’s a lot of controversy about this. 

Image via VickiW

Microbiomes

Years ago, (2015) I read that there were real concerns about aspartame (ASP) being used in soft drinks. Then Pepsi announced they were discontinuing it in their Diet Pepsi. (Their sales were down.).Instead of it they would use a mix of sucralose and acesulfame potassium ( ACE-K) in their USA manufacturing.

Big mistake. Pepsi market shares nosedived. They brought back the original Pepsi diet cola in 2017, after numerous complaints about the new improved taste. The bottom line always rules.

Most folks decide to drink diet sodas because of their determination to lose weight. After many studies though, it seems there is a definite correlation between diet sodas, sports drinks and obesity. 

In a previous post, I discussed the existence and function of your microbiome, a major collection of microbes in our bodily systems. 

When you subject your microbiome to a constant supply of sweeteners in your diet your digestive microbes ultimately get interested enough to try using them, even though there is absolutely no nutritive value in them. 

The microbes have a collective goal. Use what is fed to them as real food. If they can’t, because of different chemicals, the glycogen usually stored as glucose in the liver will instead be released straight into the bloodstream.

It takes some while, but in some individuals, after constant exposure to NNSs, there is a build-up of glucose in the blood. Next stage is glucose intolerance, then full-blown type 2 diabetes. 

There is still ongoing research into this. Scientists are beginning to think that the brain reacts to the stimulus of artificial sweetness by skewing your need for food. To the brain sweetness equals energy. The NNSs overstimulate you to think you need more food than you actually do.

Obesity is a worldwide scourge now. The chemical extracts and other chemicals are difficult to avoid, not only in sodas, but just in almost every commercially produced foods. That means you don’t only ingest from one source. It may be several each day. 

Still want a fizzy drink? Save the money you’d spend on buying them for a time, and you’d be able to buy a machine that would fizz your plain old water! Add a slice of lemon, or other favourite fruit. Want it sweeter? Grow a pot of stevia, and throw in a couple of leaves.

Or…just learn to love water without the fizz!

Purple Mountain Majesty

Not quite in the boundaries this week, but those mountains are still to be seen from the balcony. 

If you look carefully, you’ll see a little snow on the top of the peaks!

Image via VickiW

Sugar: Is it truly, scary stuff?

 

Image via Pasja1000 of Pixabay

Tragedy? Indeed!

The workers at Canada’s massive Rogers sugar factory workers are on strike. Thank goodness though everyone managed to get through Hallowe’en, and children could get their bags of sweet goodies safely home. 

But now there’s a sugar shortage starting. Over the years I’ve cut down on sugar in our house. A five-lb bag will last us a year. But I still love creamy cakes. Love the way you have to smash through a solid sheet of sugar on the top of crème brûlée for dessert. So sugar in the pantry doesn’t count!

We often don’t know how much sugar we consume. This stat from the American Heart Association is quite interesting.

“American adults consume an average of 17 teaspoons of added sugar every day, more than 2-3 times the recommended amount for men and women respectively. 

“This adds up to around 60 pounds of added sugar consumed annually. That’s like six 10lb bowling balls”. Sounds extreme, doesn’t it?

Has sugar changed?

I ask this simply because growing up in Zululand, South Africa, I recall eating a lot of sugar. It was just what you did. 

Meals were never complete until you had the dessert after your lunch or dinner. It gave the parents ammunition to exhort children to eat their vegetables and main meal ingredients, otherwise “no dessert!”

In our large family hunger before a meal would drive you to get a slice of bread, open a can of sweetened condensed milk, and spread a couple of liberal spoonfuls on it. I know now that amount would have been about 60 mls. The sugar content then would have been about 6 teaspoons of sugar per snack slice. Yikes!

We used to frequently make fudge. It was of course almost pure sugar, mixed with cocoa, and a bit of water, brought to “soft ball” stage over heat, then spread out on a pan to cut into sugary squares. Yum!

Now, with a microwave, you can make lovely, perfect fudge in just a few minutes. You need the can of sweetened condensed milk of course, and some chocolate chips. Add pure vanilla, just to feel virtuous. Microwave 1 minute, then let it all melt together. When that’s happened, spread it quickly into a 9x9” pan. Restrain yourself, wait until it has cooled, then cut it into squares.

So, going back to those early days…what happened, health-wise? Nothing, short and sweet. We all grew up slim and healthy. So did everyone else I knew. But this was in the days before development of many food chemicals that are now interspersed with the sugar, in food as well as candies.

Obesity was such a rarity that I only knew one fellow student with it. My parents spoke to us about it, explained she had a medical condition, and told us very firmly never to mention it to her, and to be very kind.

These days, I see so many folks obsessed with different diets. Obesity is a huge concern in developed countries. Sugar is blamed for so much of the ills of society. But is it the main culprit?

I’ve never really been able to square away those early sugar habits and complete lack of obesity with what I know to be true at this much later time, the 21st century.

Life has sped up since I became an adult. It’s hard to get a break from the relentless speed of it. But strangely, in between gym sessions, or lounging in a recliner, depending on your choice, people seem to feel virtuous when they manage to shy away from sugar. It has become a “guilty pleasure.”

I must admit I find the practice of trick-or-treat quite deplorable. Yes, it’s fun for everyone to dress up, but really, should you send your children to beg for copious amounts of candies to put in huge bags? What does it mean? The sad thing is, this year folks had to decide between their need for groceries and buying candies at exorbitant prices to please their kids.

It might have been easier on the wallet to make some treats, but the sad truth is that is no longer acceptable. Anything homemade will be weeded out and discarded by caring parents who know that dangerous things can be included in homemade “treats”.

Inside those beautifully wrapped, delicious and harmless-looking Mars bars you have other interesting ingredients though.

Ingredients: Sugars (sugar, corn syrup, lactose, malted barley extract), Milk ingredients, Modified palm oil, Cocoa butter, Cocoa mass, Cocoa powder, Salt, Soy lecithin, Dried egg white, Artificial flavour. Please refer to the product label for the most accurate nutrition, ingredient, and allergen information.

Let’s look at Twix

Ingredients: Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Skim Milk, Lactose, Milkfat, Soy Lecithin, Pgpr, Artificial Flavors), Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Palm Oil, Corn Syrup, Skim Milk, Dextrose, Less Than 2% - Salt, Cocoa Powder, …

So some of this stuff I'm willing to bet you’ve not heard of, and most definitely don’t have in your home kitchen. Pgpr isn’t a word, for starters.

Unfortunately, for the following information, it’s hard to translate this science -speak into language that most folks can understand.

PGPR is a mixture of esterified products manufactured by the esterification of polyglycerol with condensed castor oil fatty acids. The brief 3-step manufacturing processes is as follows:

1. Polyglycerol preparation: Glycerol is heated to above 200 ℃ in the presence of an alkali catalyst to produce polyglycerol. 

2. Condensation of the castor oil fatty acids: Castor oil fatty acids (synthesized by hydrolyzing castor oil in water) are heated to above 200 ℃ to create interesterified ricinoleic fatty acid chains of varying lengths. 

3. Esterification: Then polyglycerol mixed with interesterified ricinoleic fatty acids to produce PGPR with different chain lengths. (1)

Voila! There you have your unpronounceable polyglycerol polyricinoleate.

Sugar is indeed the first prime ingredient in these candies, and of course that’s a whole lot in those bags of candies. 

Palm oil farming is causing rapid deforestation of the tropical forests of Brazil, and other tropical areas. This destroys animal habitats, in addition to wreaking incredible damage to life on our planet and climate change.

There is a really good discussion of this here: What is Palm Oil? Facts About the Palm Oil Industry

Image via VickiW

So, there’s a lot going on in those bags of candies! My parents used an opportunity to help us become aware of a problem. They trusted us to use it wisely and kindly to help someone.

Can you teach a child to recognize some words on a label when they shop with you? Sugar is one. Palm oil might be a good choice for discussion of their future. Just hope they don’t ask you about any of the mysterious other ingredients in the lists above!

Children love discussion with parents and grandparents, or any adult prepared to give back-and-forth friendly talk with them. It lasts so much longer than chatting on social media.

Time passes quickly. Always seize the opportunities to talk with children. They are your future.

Regarding sugar: my parents taught “moderation in all things”. 

A special week!

I love to walk down the little creek. Imagine my delighted surprise to see that salmon are returning to spawn. What an interesting amazing show from Mother Nature. 

Then, amid the splashing of tails on the gravel rock bed, there are amazing reflections and colours in the water, away from the fish.

Image via VickiW

Thanks for your visit and hope you'll be back soon!

VickiW

Beef & Barley Soup: Some thoughts...

 

Image via IndigoBunting of Pixabay

Chilly weather perfection...

Dearly Beloved has been looking forward to some hearty beef barley soup. Trouble is, I couldn’t find the barley, and the beef is now incredibly expensive. I wondered if there is such a thing in a can. There is. Of course I read the labels! I’ve even provided a couple of the ingredient lists for you to read.

Sometimes it’s tough to make sense of these ingredients, never found in a home kitchen, created by food scientists in their well-stocked labs. 

So this week we’re finding out if the veggies in my home fridge can be as tasty as their commercial competition, and how much effort I need to produce my version of Bob’s longed-for soup.

Convenience version: Mitchell’s beef-barley soup

Ingredients: Beans (navy, adzuki, mung), Barley, Soup base (salt, corn syrup solids, dextrose, wheat flour, sugar, canola oil, corn starch, onion powder, beef extract, guar gum, spices, herbs, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, natural flavours, turmeric, caramel), Red lentils, Dried vegetables (carrot, potato, onion, green pepper, red pepper, leek), Onion, Garlic, Herbs, Spices (mustard).

May Contain: Tree nuts, Peanuts, Soy, Eggs, Milk, Sesame, Oats, Sulphites.

Couple of interesting chemicals here. Always read the labels.

By the way…where’s the beef?

Progresso Beef-Barley Soup

Ingredients: Water, Beef Broth, Cooked Diced Seasoned Beef and Modified Food starch Product (beef, beef broth, hydrolyzed soy protein, modified food starch, salt, sodium phosphate, natural flavor, maltodextrin), Carrots, Barley, Tomatoes, Tomato Paste, Celery. Contains less than 1% of: Dried Peas, Modified Food Starch, Corn Protein (hydrolyzed), Sugar, Salt, Soybean Oil, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavor, Caramel Color, Potato Starch, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Spice, Maltodextrin, Beef Fat, Beef Extract, Calcium Chloride, Citric Acid.

Questions?

What is beef extract? 

It’s extracted by the test tube folks from porcine pancreas, bovine heart. Very tasty.

Hydrolysis means scientifically breaking the substance down into tiny pieces with water. No, You can’t do this in your kitchen. 

How much salt should you have in a day?
Less than 800 mg.

Canned soup is a processed food that owes part of its extra long shelf life to lots of added sodium. One cup of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup packs an amazing 960 milligrams. As with other prepared foods, try to find low-sodium options. When you make your own soup it has only the amount of saltiness that you choose to put in the broth.

My Beef Barley Soup

These are the fridge clearing ingredients today! You want to use whatever veggies you have in your fridge. This was my collection.

Image via VickiW

To the vegetables I added some prepared garlic, some barley,
and the remains of a bottle of strained tomatoes. You can feel okay about using some ready prepped ingredients. Just read the labels

The beef was an unusual bargain, so that was appreciated. It was ready cut, and four packs at $5 each. Bought two chicken and two beef. One teaspoon coarse salt, and a liberal amount of fresh ground pepper.

Image via VickiW

I used my trusty pressure cooker for this soup. Took me 10 minutes to prep everything, ready for the pot.

Final step–I added the barley on top, then mixed the whole thing up. Added the water mixed with the broth cube, about five cups. Sneakily added a big dash of Worcester sauce for its wonderful umami flavour.

You can use an ordinary pot, or a slow cooker, or like I did, use my beloved pressure cooker.

This was the moment of truth, and delicious aroma, not to mention taste!

You can always adjust the soup with more water if it is too thick, and add salt and other flavourings from your pantry.

Image via VickiW

But, this isn’t the end of the story. 

Those fridge leftovers have given us 8 good meals. Bob enjoyed a second-to-last cheese scone with our dinner tonight, zapped for 20 seconds in the microwave.  One left for tomorrow. This is really fast food.

These containers are frozen for the future.

Image via VickiW

Talk about convenient food. Reheating is easier and faster than bought soup. And we don’t need any chemical processes to give us flavour. 

A view from the balcony...

Image via VickiW

Just a peaceful duck couple today. There are many of them in the little creek just a stone’s throw from the balcony. 

The trees are losing their autumn coloured leaves. All too soon they will be bare again.