TracyFood

Monkey Monday: public service announcement edition. 10 March 2008 5:55 pm

Posted by Tracy in : advice, cooking, health, kitchen mishaps, meat, monkeys, news, nutrition, soup, whoops , trackback

Happy Daylight Savings Hangover Monday to all my U.S. readers, and happy feeling our envy to everyone else. While I’m mentioning the bad news first: I’m not revealing travel plans for any international adventures today, and there are sadly still no guitars. Instead, I want to share a few useful morsels of information brought to me by my friendly local Internet (also yours!)

First, the post that gave me the idea for this entry’s theme: A Public Service Announcement From Your Body by Peggy Nature, brought to my attention by the ever-awesome Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose. While you’re exploring the rest of Peggy Nature’s Mouthfeel: The Story of Fat (like I’m still doing), be sure to admire her position statement on health and nutrition. I know I do (admire it), and not without some envy, because I have been wanting to write a similar manifesto for quite some time.

Speaking of manifestos (manifestoes? No, that just looks like something you’d show a podiatrist), remember the the Ten Commandments of Dry Pasta and keep them holy. (Many thanks to Mr. Twisty Wurm for posting them to del.icio.us.)

“Unholy” is a good word for the still-developing Hallmark-Westland downer cow torture scandal, as well as the phrase “spent dairy cows,” further analyzed here on Eating Liberally. The really horrific news in that post, however, comes from the American Humane Society, who estimate that “Approximately 15 percent of the hamburger meat in the United States comes from ’spent’ dairy cows.” Let’s just say I’m having a hard time finding a way to look at the bright side of that statistic, and move on.

Finally, news from the Department of Kitchen Mishaps: when making soup (say, inspired by this one) to indulge your whim as one of the dozen or so people in the world who sincerely love lima beans, do not leave it simmering even on the very lowest burner setting when you go eat if there is any danger whatsoever of getting trapped under a cat. The damage wasn’t too bad, fortunately, but still I would prefer if it had been avoided. So learn from my mistakes, y’all! You can learn from and about my successes tomorrow.