Spontaneous ∂erivation

There is this thingy, instant flavored mashed potato packages. Boil water in the electric kettle, then pour it into bowl, then pour in flakes. The brand I buy, Idahoan, comes in a few flavors, some bland but also “Loaded Baked” which has little bacon pieces in it and four kinds of cheese (probably not good for nausea). Idahoan is supposedly among the most decent of the instant mashed potato brands.

The following Idahoan flavors seem to work when you’ve gotten back to medium nausea:

• Baby Reds
• Butter & Herb
• Roasted Garlic
• Original (of course)

Other flavors include “Southwest” and “Four Cheese.”

This is so nice. It takes less effort than rice or rice porridge, and it’s more variety, of a sort. Recently my diet consists of table water crackers, rice with butter and salt, instant chicken noodle soup, and plain digestive biscuits. Today (well, yesterday now) I ate one of the Nile Spice instant soups (chicken-flavored vegetable) and I haven’t thrown up, which is a vast improvement.

I plan on working my way up to pasta with butter and soy sauce, the spicier Nile Spice soups, flavored yogurt, toasted home-made bread with yogurt-based spread, and then back to normal. I’m going to so want pizza after all this, even greasy fast foods in general—teriyaki chicken and dumplings in particular—but I daren’t eat anything even remotely rich for a while. I remember the last time I got flu, even after I got better (or… something), I still threw up in the evenings for about three weeks after.

On my very bland diet, I haven’t thrown up, even when codeine is tossed at me. So… I guess more of this.

Sigh. I guess an upside is that when I eat bland food, I don’t care very much about it, and don’t eat very much of it. It becomes fuel and nothing more. I do need to eat more fruit soon. I tend to binge on it though—good fruit is very flavorful and hella snackable. There are few things I love more than those little mandarin oranges, home-made applesauce, and little strawberries.

I also used to experiment with veggies for dinner, like take home anything and cut it up and microwave it according to that red-checkered Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook, which has all the basic American cookery stuff in it. Tasted very nice; I started to crave turnips, kind of strange. I lost a lot of weight, and should look into doing that again. Every night’s dinner was a fillet of salmon, half a cup of cooked rice, and a veggie experiment.

And bento lunches… I want to get back to those. Especially with the Laptop Lunch containers, they were perfect for a not-too-large lunch and some snackery during the day… also bento breakfasts. I miss that stuff!

A month back I started baking my own bread.

You may ask, and I certainly asked this of myself a lot before I made the decision, “Why do this in our busy world today, especially with [an] unforgiving job(s) and little time, really, spent at home?”

My reasons are simple:

• Very different from my day job; a change of thinking process.

• With a bread machine in particular, it wasn’t much more effort than actually buying bread once you have the ingredients around.

• More variety in bread type, without paying $6 or more for something more interesting than Wonder Bread.

• Smaller loaves, so that bread doesn’t go to waste, as I’m single. This was the strongest motivating factor.

• More control in what goes into the bread. Even the better packaged breads have… interesting ingredients. Which I’d prefer to contemplate when I’m not eating them.

I got what I wanted—with unexpected extras.

Most notably, I lost weight. Which makes me somewhat suspicious of store-bought bread now; surely they can’t be packing that much extra sugar and whatever in. But there it is.

According to Associated Content, store-bought bread’s most likely suspects of extra fattening include: high fructose corn syrup¹, sodium stearoyl lactylate, ethoxylated mono- and di-glycerides, thiamin hydrochloride, monocalcium phosphate, ammonium sulfate²

A lot of the above sounds like different kinds of sugars/sweeteners/salts/milk/fats. Some of that is likely not really harmful nor culprits in and of themselves, and some are just the chemical names for common, everyday ingredients; but these ingredients are likely to be present in greater quantities, because gods know that Americans love their sweets far more than most other countries.

Home-made bread ingredients rather surprised me: it’s usually just flour, water/milk, maybe eggs but not commonly so, butter or some kind of oil³, normal sugar, salt, yeast. Not at all like the above store-bought ingredients, even with “normal name” substitutions.

When I started eating my own breads (as well as meals I started cooking myself), I also stopped getting sick as much, and I usually get sick at the drop of a hat long after cold/flu seasons, plus my stomach can be very sensitive. I’m pretty sure this has to do with sick people preparing food (and since people can rarely afford to miss work days, it’s an unavoidable problem) more than the supposed intrinsic healthiness of organic ingredients or whatnot.

And of course, there’s the money savings. I wasn’t expecting much when I started. But here’s the cost of baking a small loaf of plain white bread (it’s about half the size of a full loaf of bread people buy at the store):

• 2 cups of bread flour: $0.45⁴
• 2 tablespoons of sugar: $0.30⁵
• Up to 1 cup (usually less) of milk: $0.60⁶
• 1 tablespoon of butter: $0.02⁷
• 1.5 teaspoons of yeast (from a small jar, rather than the more costly packets⁸): $0.05⁹
• 1 teaspoon of salt: $0.02¹⁰

Total: $1.44. Let’s round it up to $1.50. That still beats $2 for a full loaf of very cheap bread that dies before I even get through half of it, and home-made bread actually keeps well for a week, which amazed me.

And of course, better breads usually start ticking up to $3.50 to over $4 per loaf, whereas a full loaf of the white bread above would be about $3.

Foo! Not great savings, you say. But now you can do things like adding rolled oats, or substituting honey for sugar, or adding herbs or chocolate or whatever…. and those kinds of “fancy” breads will definitely hit you at $4 per loaf and even higher.

Also, if you’re a geek, making bread is highly fascinating in terms of combinations of ingredients and the results thereof. It’s rather like chemistry that you can eat.

And the last but not least: fresh bread tastes very good. So very, very good. Oh my. Even from a bread machine, believe it or not. You still need good recipes, of course, but that’s what Bread Machine Magic is for (its recipes are even devised to work well in cheaper bread machines).

And that’s why I bake my bread, and have even become a bit obsessed about it, to the point where I once baked six loaves of different kinds in one week (another advantage of making small loaves: more room for experimentation). So I made bread pudding. Yum.

1. Not that this is worse than sugar, despite all the hype against HFCS these days. HFCS is 55% fructose, 42% glucose; table sugar is exactly 50% fructose and 50% glucose. They’re almost exactly the same. [↩]
2. Apparently to feed the yeast, kind of like extra fertilizer. Actually, literally fertilizer. Yeast already eat the carbohydrates in bread flour—that’s kind of the point—but I suppose this way you can save money by using less yeast, at the cost of… well, introducing ammonium sulfate. [↩]
3. Replaceable, apparently, by unsweetened applesauce! And not badly so, I must say. [↩]
4. Based on $5 for a 5lb bag of flour, and 22.5 cups in that bag. [↩]
5. Based on $3 for a 5lb bag of sugar, and 180 tablespoons in that bag. [↩]
6. Based on a high price of $5 for a gallon of milk, and obviously 16 cups in a gallon. [↩]
7. Based on a high price of $3 for a pound of butter, and 32 tablespoons in that pound. [↩]
8. And you can save even more if you buy yeast in bulk and freeze the amount you won’t use for a while. [↩]
9. A high estimate. I have a small jar of Red Star yeast, have baked over 20 loaves, and only gone through 75% of the jar. [↩]
10. High estimate. [↩]

Warning: language.

The first and national item is that voting for the President was obviously important. Obama won. And in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, and New Hampshire, voting really mattered; it was OH, PA, and FL that finished off McCain. In Missouri, Montana, Arizona, and other traditional red states, where red had a hard time fighting blue, voting still sent a clear message—if you want to impress us, said the American people, please fucking address this fucked-up economy. Oh, and get around to Iraq. Soon. And this torture shit needs to stop.

The second item, local to California but of grave interest to the nation, was Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage. It passed—and unfortunately while the margin was thin, it was still a margin that passed the amendment to the state’s constitution. Voting again really mattered.

The third and last item, local to Washington and of a little bit of interest to the nation, was Initiative 1000—the right to assisted medical suicide. Like many controversial laws and amendments, this also passed with a thin margin, though not as thin as that of Proposition 8.

My personal tally: (1) Obama for varoius reasons people are tired of hearing, (2) n/a though I wished I could vote NO for various reasons people are likewise tired of hearing, and (3) I voted YES, because death by bleach is not a pretty thing, and people who really, really, really want to commit suicide due to medical reasons tend not to be stopped by laws that ban suicide. What interests me is that some people would say it’s not proper to vote YES, not so much because it’s OMG suicide, but because this is submitting a moral issue through humiliating medical and legal processes unnecessary if medical prescription laws did not require doctor’s approvals. Which I do agree with to some extent, but still: better than fucking bleach.

Addendum: Looking back at 10 years of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act.

Tonight: puking rather than writing

A Chinese friend of mine recommended I start taking a Chinese tonic soup, meant to boost the immune system, improve breathing, and increase energy. I didn’t believe it would work, but I was willing to try a recipe out. I’m susceptible to colds and flu year-round, but especially in the fall. And I have asthma problems, among other things (I do a little cough of death as I settle in for the night).

After one night of soup (I accidentally put in enough herbs to double-dose myself), the next day I already felt healthier. Breathing better (no cough of death), and lots of energy in the morning–and I did not wake up sick. It was as if I had taken a double-dose of all my inhalers.

Another day later, I felt even better, despite not having had tonic soup again.

So perhaps this soup will help you too.

WARNING: do not take this soup while you are sick. It boosts up your immune system, which is good, but taking it while your sick will boost your immune system a bit much and make you feel worse.

Anyways….

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