Size Matters

The size of your bento box determines the number of calories it contains (now that makes sense). So you choose your box by the diet you are on and who you are -elderly lady bentos, little kid bentos, man bentos, etc.

My Latest Obsession

Bento

Wikipedia's definition is, "Bentō (弁当 or べんとう, Bentō) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. The Bento is still used by workers as a packed lunch, by families on day trips, for school picnics and sports days etc."

In Japan, bento box size is described not by its dimensions (inches or centimeters), but instead by its volume or capacity (in milliliters — ml). Why? Because a rule of thumb in Japan is that when you pack a bento box normally (A: 3 parts grain dishes, 1 part protein dishes, 2 parts vegetable dishes; B: without candy, junk food or fatty food; and C: without empty space), calories correspond directly to capacity. So a 600ml box should hold a 600-calorie meal.

Of course, I'm not this ambitious yet.

My Wounded Westie

Who bit Harry?

A Whole New Onion World

I'm just learning about the Egyptian Walking Onion.

The name "Walking Onion" was given to this plant because it literally walks to new locations. When the cluster of topsets becomes heavy enough, it will pull the plant over to the ground. Depending on how tall the plant is and where the bend occurs, the topsets may fall between 1 to 3 feet away from the base of the plant. Here they will take root and grow new plants. When these new plants mature their topsets will eventually hit the ground and start the process all over again. Egyptian Walking Onion plants can walk between 1 and 3 feet per year!

FYI

Arthur Hays Sulzberger (12 September 1891 – 11 December 1968) was the publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961.

A Prettier Picture

Gotta cook these...

Garlic scapes are the seed head and stalk that emerge in early June from garlic plants.

"O.K., O.K., what is a garlic scape? In her column “Simply MJ,” Mary Jane Butters writes, “scapes are the flower stalks found on members of the Allium family (onions, leeks, chives, and garlic). Garlic scapes, which only appear on the finest hardneck garlic varieties, curl upward as they grow, ultimately straighten, and then grow little seed-like bulbs. When the garlic scapes are still in full curl, they are tender and delicious....She also thinks they’re beautiful. “You can wear them on your arm like a bracelet,” she said. 'They’d make nice artwork.'"

Don't Look in the Closet

She used to give me nightmares.

Progress

Above the ceiling, behind the walls ... who knows what evil lurks.

Scapes

These are garlic scapes which I bought at the Farmers Market this morning. Evidently the long green part is edible. We shall see.

Basement Progress

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody.
Stanislaw J. Lec

Turns out this bar of flea soap (unopened) was left behind the wall sometime around 1940 when it cost just 25 cents. Sort of cute, don't you think?

Who's Guilty?

One of Jupiter's two main cloud belts has disappeared. Did you take it?

Drill, Baby, Drill????

Show this to your kids, Sarah Palin.

Thomas Newman (1955-)

"Thomas Montgomery Newman (born October 20, 1955) is an American film score composer. He is one of the most respected and recognised composers for film and has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.
Throughout his career, Newman has received a total of ten Academy Award nominations, although as of 2010, he has yet to win the award....Newman was educated at Yale University, and began his film-scoring career in 1984 with his score for Reckless. His breakthrough came in 1994, when he earned two Academy Award nominations for his scores to Little Women and The Shawshank Redemption; he was the only double-nominee that year. His critical and commercial success has continued in recent years with his scores for American Beauty (winner of the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media), Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Pay it Forward, Erin Brockovich, The Good German and WALL-E....Newman has composed music for television as well, including theme music for the series Boston Public and the miniseries Angels in America. His theme music for the television show Six Feet Under won two Grammy Awards in 2003, for Best Instrumental Composition as well as Best Instrumental Arrangement."

Before

OMG

Asbestos Removal
What fun we've had this week. All taped up with a bleeping beeping monitor checking our air. The dogs are going mad and there's all this pounding down below in case it's not noisy enough. They are removing the asbestos. Here's what I found out: "If removal is to be performed when users are still present in the building, it is usually necessary to relocate some users temporarily. Typically, the part of the building from which asbestos is being removed has to be sealed off in order to prevent contamination of the other areas. Methods of sealing off an area often include the use of Polyethylene film, duct tape and negative air pressure machines which are fitted with HEPA filters. The idea is that the contained area is pulling fresh air in as to not allow asbestos fibers into the surrounding environment. Only a special vacuum cleaner that's designed for asbestos containment (class H) can be safely used when cleaning up during and after asbestos removal. Ordinary vacuum cleaners cannot be used, even those fitted with a HEPA filter. An ordinary vacuum cleaner will expel the asbestos fibres into the room air.
If the building is closed to normal users, it may be necessary to seal it off from outside atmosphere so that no accessible air is contaminated. Examples of asbestos removal enterprises include the Jussieu Campus (begun circa 1996 and still going on as of 2005) and the Tour Montparnasse (in 2005, projected duration was three years if the tower was emptied of its users, and ten years if it were not). ... The asbestos removal may take longer and cost more than the actual demolition. For example, the former seat of parliament of East Germany, the Palast der Republik, was stripped of most of its asbestos between 1998 and 2001, before it was finally demolished starting in 2006."
So, how long will this take? Before demolition.

Must Try

Shropshire Cheese

Feet, Cheese, Mosquitoes

From The Independent:
"A cheese which reeks of smelly feet is being bought in bulk by some scientists travelling to Africa because mosquitoes appear to prefer its odour to that of the real thing.

The scientists says that Limburger cheese may help to develop a "mosquito trap" using the cheese- based bait to lure the malaria-carrying insects away from potential human victims.

They have discovered that the African mosquito is particularly attracted to the smell of human feet, and concentrates its biting activity on the victim's exposed ankles and feet.

Dr Bart Knols, a Dutch medical entomologist working in Tanzania, and colleagues found that Limburger cheese, well-known for its smelly-feet odour, was also attractive to anopheles gambiae.

Writing in tomorrow's issue of The Lancet, Dr Knols says that the bacterium which is used in the production of the cheese belongs to the same genus as a micro-organism which lives between the toes on human feet.

Dr Knols says medical entomologists are buying Limburger cheese and taking it to mosquito-infested areas around the globe, while his own team are working on a mosquito trap baited with fatty acids.

"Wouldn't it be something to have a simple mosquito trap in one's bedroom baited with a scent that can best be described as synthetic human?" he writes. "No buzzing, no sleepless nights, and, more importantly a new tool to interrupt the transmission of important vector-borne diseases such as malaria."

Dr Knols poses a further fascinating question. Since humans are the only primates to produce fatty acids on the skin, then the evolutionary relationship between the African mosquito and homo sapiens, suggests that Lucy, the earliest human ancestor, probably suffered from smelly feet."

Ab-Fab(ulous)?

I love discovering something i never knew existed. That's what "The Comic Strip Presents" is- was- one of those Brit skit humor spoofs (like a panto) that only they get. You may love it (or may think it's totally ridiculous). It depends how much of an Anglophile you are. I've only seen the first one and haven't reached a verdict yet. I'm thinking it may be an acquired taste. Here's a description from BBC:

From the moment the first film Five Go Mad in Dorset: a hilarious and merciless Enid Blyton parody screened on Channel 4's opening night it was plain that there was a new force in comedy, concentrating on matters social and political and steering clear of the then comedic standbys of sexism and racism.

In the ensuing episodes and series (many written by Richardson and Richens), The Comic Strip Presents... would cover everything from criminals on the run (Gino – Full Story and Pics) and the life story of an evil South African chatshow host (Eddie Monsoon – A Life?) to a Hollywood portrayal of the Miner's Strike (Strike).

After several series and specials for Channel 4, The Comic Strip... moved to the BBC in 1990

And yes, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders are in it.

Embroidered Wonder Bread and More

From "Eat Me Daily" which has some other great food art.

Past Points To Ponder

+My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. -Benjamin Disraeli
+Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. -Albert Camus
+The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget. - Thomas Szasz
+Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. -Christopher Morley
+In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. -Aristotle
+It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it. -Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine
+To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent. -Robert Copeland
+The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. - David Russell
+Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. -Abraham Lincoln
+Eat before shopping. If you go to the store hungry, you are likely to make unnecessary purchases. -American Heart Association Cookbook
+Only the shallow know themselves. -Oscar Wilde
+All phone calls are obscene. -Karen Elizabeth Gordon
+No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one. -Elbert Hubbard
+All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. -Mark Twain
+An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. -G. K. Chesterton
+You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. -Vernon Howard
+Some days you're a bug, some days you're a windshield. -Price Cobb
+California is a fine place to live- if you happen to be an orange. -Fred Allen
+There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read. -GK Chesterton
+There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.
- Edith Wharton

How True

We are none of us infallible--not even the youngest of us.
- W. H. Thompson

Pretty much what Mark Twain said.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Who the heck is W.H. Thompson anyway?

Happy Mother's Day

The best Mother's Day - Moses turns 3!

Or... (re. the purchase of an iPad)

He can use it as a nametag.

Thought Provoking

Our libraries are getting new hours starting July 1; hope our little branches don't get closed permanently.

Should I Or Shouldn't I?

I'm thinking of buying someone an iPad. But then I'd have to buy him iPants and I'm just not sure about that.

It's Official

May 5

Bet they're not celebrating in Phoenix!

Worrywarts

Sometimes I think that I am a bit quirky, but then I hear from one of my friends and...

Getting Ready

for Cinco de Mayo

Thomas Szasz (1920-)

Thomas Szasz is or was a Professor at SUNY Syracuse. His main arguments are:

"Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between (mis)behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts. By calling certain people "diseased", psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them....According to Szasz, to understand the metaphorical nature of the term disease in psychiatry, one must first understand its literal meaning in the rest of medicine. To be a true disease, the entity must first, somehow be capable of being approached, measured, or tested in scientific fashion. Second, to be confirmed as a disease, a condition must demonstrate pathology at the cellular or molecular level. (Furthermore,)...’mental illness’ is an expression, a metaphor that describes an offending, disturbing, shocking, or vexing conduct, action, or pattern of behavior, such as schizophrenia, as an illness or disease. Szasz wrote:

'If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.'

While people behave and think in ways that are very disturbing, and that may resemble a disease process (pain, deterioration, response to various interventions), this does not mean they actually have a disease. To Szasz, disease can only mean something people have, while behavior is what people do. People who are said (by themselves or others) to have a mental illness can only have, at best, a fake disease. Diagnoses of mental illness or mental disorder (the latter expression called by Szasz a 'weasel term' for mental illness) are passed off as scientific categories but they remain merely judgments (judgments of disdain) to support certain uses of power by psychiatric authorities. In that line of thinking, schizophrenia is not the name of a disease entity but a judgment of extreme psychiatric and social reprobation.

Szasz also argues that individuals should be able to choose when to die without interference from medicine or the state, just as they are able to choose when to conceive without outside interference. Death control is analogous to birth control; he considers suicide to be among the most fundamental rights, but he opposes state-sanctioned euthanasia.”

Eating Out?

The World's 50 Best Restaurants

May Flowers