Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Popeye
Just got home from a long day at work and decided to watch a movie I haven't seen since I was a kid. I am sitting down to watch the movie "Popeye" from 1980 with Robin Williams as Popeye. I need a good lighthearted fun movie after the day I have had at work.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Back to work
Well, it looks like I will be going back to work today after being out sick with walking pneumonia for a week. I am still not 100% yet because it's still difficult to talk. I hope I don't end up having to talk much today.
The second passing family member in less than a year.
My entire family was shocked tonight to learn that my uncle had just passed away. He had no signs of illness at all. I just saw him at Thanksgiving and he was his usual jolly self. He seemed perfectly healthy. They say he died of natural causes. That doesn't make any sense to me. What does that mean? That could be any number of things. Why could't they be more specific? This is the second family member who has passed away in less than a year. With my aunt, it was expected. She battled lung cancer for over a year. With my uncle, it was sudden and totally unexpected.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Breaking up with Myspace
Hi Friends,
This week I will be leaving Myspace. I have completely made the switch to Facebook. Myspace has way too many intrusive ads and profile pages that take forever to load or crash my browser with all the bloated junk on Myspace profile pages. I am also sick of all the shameless music add requests, which most hardly have nothing to do with the music I listen to and I'm very sick of booty call messages. Myspace has become a huge annoyance. My friends on Myspace can add me on Facebook under Kelli Downing.
Kelli Downing
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Sharp Pain!
I woke up this morning to a sharp intense headache behind my eyes. This is the first day I have felt better all week since I have had Walking pneumonia. I took some hydrocodone about 1/2 an hour ago and the pain is finally subsiding. Maybe Ican lay back down and get some more sleep. Wow, the pain was so bad, I couldn't see straight.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Expiration dates mean very little. - By Nadia Arumugam - Slate Magazine
There's a filet mignon in my fridge that expired four days ago, but it seems OK to me. I take a hesitant whiff and detect no putrid odor of rotting flesh, no oozing, fetid cow juice—just the full-bodied aroma of well-aged meat. A feast for one; I retrieve my frying pan. This is not an isolated experiment or a sad symptom of my radical frugality. With a spirit of teenage rebellion, I disavow any regard for expiration dates.
The fact is that expiration dates mean very little. Food starts to deteriorate from the moment it's harvested, butchered, or processed, but the rate at which it spoils depends less on time than on the conditions under which it's stored. Moisture and warmth are especially detrimental. A package of ground meat, say, will stay fresher longer if placed near the coldest part of a refrigerator (below 40 degrees Fahrenheit), than next to the heat-emitting light bulb. Besides, as University of Minnesota food scientist Ted Labuza explained to me, expiration dates address quality—optimum freshness—rather than safety and are extremely conservative. To account for all manner of consumer, manufacturers imagine how the laziest people with the most undesirable kitchens might store and handle their food, then test their products based on these criteria.
With perishables like milk and meat, most responsible consumers (those who refrigerate their groceries as soon as they get home, for instance) have a three–to-seven-day grace period after the "Sell by" date has elapsed. As for pre-packaged greens, studies show that nutrient loss in vegetables is linked to a decline in appearance. When your broccoli florets yellow or your green beans shrivel, this signals a depletion of vitamins. But if they haven't lost their looks, ignore the printed date. Pasta and rice will taste fine for a year. Unopened packs of cookies are edible for months before the fat oxidizes and they turn rancid. Pancake and cake mixes have at least six months. Canned items are potentially the safest foods around and will keep five years or more if stored in a cold pantry. Labuza recalls a seven-year-old can of chicken chunks he ate recently. "It tasted just like chicken," he said.
Not only are expiration dates misleading, but there's no uniformity in their inaccuracy. Some manufacturers prefer the elusive "Best if used by," others opt for the imperative "Use by," and then there are those who litter their goods with the most unhelpful "Sell by" stamps. (I'm happy my bodega owner is clear on when to dump, but what about me?) Such disparities are a consequence of the fact that, with the exception of infant formula and some baby foods, package dates are unregulated by the federal government. And while some states do exercise oversight, there's no standardization. A handful of states, including Massachusetts and West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., require dating of some form for perishable foods. Twenty states insist on dating for milk products, but each has distinct regulations. Milk heading for consumers in Connecticut must bear a "Sell by" date not more than 12 days from the day of pasteurization. Dairies serving Pennsylvania must conform to 14 days.
That dates feature so prolifically is almost entirely due to industry practices voluntarily adopted by manufacturers and grocery stores. As America urbanized in the early 20th century, town and city dwellers resorted more and more to processed food. In the 1930s, the magazine Consumer Reports argued that Americans increasingly looked to expiration dates as an indication of freshness and quality. Supermarkets responded and in the 1970s some chains implemented their own dating systems. Despite the fact that in the '70s and '80s consumer groups and processors held hearings to establish a federally regulated system, nothing came of them.
These dates have no real legal meaning, either. Only last year, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner reversed the conviction of a wily entrepreneur who'd relabeled 1.6 million bottles of Henri's salad dressing with a new "Best when purchased by" date. Posner decided that the prosecutor had unjustly condemned the dressing as rancid, rotten, and harmful, when in fact there was no evidence to suggest that the mature product posed a safety threat.
Expiration dates are intended to inspire confidence, but they only invest us with a false sense of security. The reality is that the onus lies with consumers to judge and maintain the freshness and edibility of their food—by checking for offensive slime, rank smells, and off colors. Perhaps, then, we should do away with dates altogether and have packages equipped with more instructive guidance on properly storing foods, and on detecting spoilage. Better yet, we should focus our efforts on what really matters to our health—not spoilage bacteria, which are fairly docile, but their malevolent counterparts: disease-causing pathogens like salmonella and Listeria, which infect the food we eat not because it's old but as a result of unsanitary conditions at factories or elsewhere along the supply chain. A new system that could somehow prevent the next E. coli outbreak would be far more useful to consumers than a fairly arbitrary set of labels that merely (try to) guarantee taste.
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Nadia Arumugam is a New York City-based food writer and author of the cookbook Chop, Sizzle & Stir.Photograph of milk by Jan Stromme/Photonica/Getty Creative Image.
via slate.com
Monday, February 15, 2010
Medicine
Well, looks like I got walking pneumonia. I got a shot of antibiotics that burned like hell. I was also sent home with an albuterol inhaler, a course of antibiotics and prescription cough syrup.
Being sick
Being sick sucks. I just had a strep test, flu test, breathing test and a chest x-ray. I have been at the doctor's office all morning.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Google Chrome for Mac and Linux picks up extension support, bookmark sync | Gear Live
Google Chrome for Mac and Linux picks up extension support, bookmark sync
For all of you running the Google Chrome browser on Mac and Linux platforms, you%u2019ll wanna update to the latest version of the beta, which includes support for extensions, as well as bookmark syncing. There are already over 2,200 extensions available in the Chrome Extensions Gallery, so you can get a bunch more functionality in your browser, dare we say, a more Firefox-like experience, just by updating. Seriously, go do it. Oh, and if you need to see how it all works visually, hit the demo video above that Google put together.
| Google Chrome
via gearlive.com
I have been waiting for this.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Monday, February 08, 2010
Stash Tea: Stash Lemon Ginger Herbal Tea
via stashtea.com
I don't get colds very often, but I have come down with a awful one this weekend complete with a fever. I will be spending the next two days in bed drinking Stash Lemon Ginger tea. The lemongrass soothes my throat and the ginger soothes my tummy.
Monday, February 01, 2010
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