miscellany day

The blogosphere is comparatively quiet on weekends; nobody has written anything since yesterday that really compels me to put in my two-cents'-worth!  :-)  I guess this has to fall into the "no news is good news" file.

So i think this will be a "miscellaneous" day for me, a chance to mention little things that don't have enough meat on their bones to warrant a real post.

RANT WARNING!  Doncha HATE how easy it is for men to lose weight???  A certain paleo blogger who devotes a day a week to "success stories" has rather alienated me for that.  WAY too many of them tell a story of people who have no intrinsic problem with weight-loss bragging about their progress.  ["succulent raspberry" blown here -- how do you spell that?]  Oh, i'm very glad to hear when people with actual illnesses have their health resurrected through diet and supplementation, but DAMN....  My husband is no exception to the male weight-loss norm -- one week into a cleaner diet, and he lost more than twice as much as i was able to.  All he has to do is cut junk and alcohol from his diet, and the pounds melt away.  And if you think this is sour grapes, you're bloody well right.  :-P

Something i can be much more cheerful about:  if, like me, you miss cream in your coffee while on a strict paleo diet (i CAN drink my coffee black, however i don't enjoy it much), you do what's allowed and substitute coconut milk, right?  But though the taste isn't significantly impaired by it, the oily slick on top is a bit off-putting.  The day was saved for me when i remembered a "toy" i received for mothers' day last year, a milk-frother to go with my cappucino machine.  Voila -- a thick creamy sea of bubbles on top of my coffee again!  I'm happy!  Mine is a Nespresso, which either heats the milk or allows it to stay cold, and i LOVE it.  There are some frothers which look like a stick blender -- i assume they'd do the job fine, too.

Following links to old postings at one of my favorite blogsites the other day, i came upon a very interesting concept....  Everybody knows that children don't gravitate to eating vegetables they way they do to a lot of other foods, that you have to keep presenting them, frequently with butter- or cheese-bribery, before the kid caves in and "learns to like" them.  Perhaps this cajolery is an exercise in stupidity on our part.  See, the evolutionary reason for their dislike is solid:  what gives these strong-flavored vegetables the antioxidant properties (or should i say, hormetic properties) are actually TOXINS which their little bodies aren't yet able to handle well yet.  (Furthermore, having accumulated less lifestyle-induced oxidation than adults have, they probably don't NEED them, anyway.  A child eating meat, fruit, pleasant veggies and NO GRAINS has a significantly lower need for those strong-flavored things.)  "From a toddlers perspective eating veggies is suicidal."  :-)  I sure wish i'd known that 30-some years ago!

But there are a s*-load of things i wish i had known....  One of the many reasons why middle age is a MUCH better than it's given credit for!