Happiness is filing income taxes with TurboTax . . . eleven years in a row

And to think I did it with paper and pencil before that. Perish the thought! 

Happiness is John Prine singing "Dear Abby"

Here.

Happiness was flying Economy Class . . . in the 1960s

Happiness is reading the Bible like General George S. Patton

Every . . . . . . . day.

Here.

Happiness is a Joey Bag O' Donuts

Here.

Goodbye WLUP.

Happiness is Tiangong-1 impact in the Pacific Ocean, not in my backyard

Happiness is salmon patties which don't fall to pieces in the frying pan

The reason?

Because I've stopped putting them in the frying pan, silly.

I bake them on parchment paper on a sheet pan instead.

They're healthier that way, too, baked, not fried in oil, and make a lot less mess.

I use a big can of wild sockeye salmon drained, a couple of eggs mashed in, and a cup of prepared rice folded in to make about four patties. Then bake on the pan on the parchment at 375 F for thirty to thirty-five minutes.

Serve topped with your choice of lemon pepper seasoning, apricot preserves, ketchup, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, etc.

You have choice! 

Happiness is learning that it's the protein in milk which makes it froth well, not the fat

Recently I purchased fat-free milk for the very first time, in my quest to reduce my intake of saturated fat for the sake of my heart.

I was skeptical, but lo and behold, it froths wonderfully well for the morning cappuccino. I should have known. When I had switched to 1% from 2% a while ago the 1% had frothed just fine. Obviously the reduced fat content had not been a factor.

This woman explains it well: "One of the many amazing things about milk is that it can be transformed into silky foam. This happens because of its protein content, without which milk would be like water, i.e., with zero chance of frothing up. ... Skim milk ... tends to produce more foam than fattier milk does."

Read it all at this link. 

Happiness is the must-watch 1974 Michael Parkinson interview with the hysterically funny Peter Sellers

Impersonations, anecdotes, giggling and some singing with his ukulele.

Here.

Happiness is Lucy and her bittle lottle of Vitameatavegamin

Here!

Happiness is sweet fruit in winter, and the heart to eat it

 

 

A stingy narrow-hearted fellow, that had a deal of choice fruit, had not the heart to touch it till it began to be rotten.

-- Roger L'Estrange

The first men on the moon were beaten there by a woman

The lesser happiness of the starry, starry night

 

 

You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes,

More by your number than your light,

You common people of the skies;

What are you when the sun shall rise?

-- Henry Wotton (1568-1639)

Happiness is a morning fagel with your coffee

The fagela is something else entirely. Don't go there.

You take half a plain bagel and toast it. Meanwhile gently nuke a dried Turkish fig, about ten seconds. When the bagel is ready, cut the warm fig in quarters and spread out the gooey pieces on the bagel. Simple and delicious.

Dried figs are loaded with more dietary fiber than any other fruit, and also offer potassium, Vitamin K, calcium, magnesium and antioxidant phenols.

Happiness is mutton chops

 

 

 Old Cross condemns all persons to be fops,

That can't regale themselves with mutton chops.

-- William King, The Art of Cookery, in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry (Humbly inscrib'd to the Honourable Beef Steak Club), 1708

When it's flooding like it's been, happiness is Johnny Cash singing "How high's the water, Momma?"

Rare footage including June Carter, Pete Seeger and Johnny, here. The song, "Five Feet High and Rising", was originally released by Cash in 1959.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happiness is a chart showing lower carbohydrate vegetable, fruit and nut choices

Happiness is a hobby, the occasional little biddle bottle, exercise and coffee

For when you want just one . . .

People with hobbies are 21% less likely to experience premature death, who drink a little 18%, who exercise 11%, who drink coffee 10%, who are slightly overweight 3%.

The story is here.

When choosing carbohydrate-rich foods, pick the ones with lower glycemic loads, which tend to have more dietary fiber

Happiness is a morning smoothie

Forty grams of banana

not imported from Havana,

Yogurt, flax and berries bluey

all went in my morning smoothie,

Here in Michigan, not Montana.

Happiness is remembering Phyllis Diller

Phyllis Diller in her 40s

Paint, patches, jewels laid aside,

At night astronomers agree,

The evening has the day bely'd,

And Phyllis is some forty-three.

-- Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

America has become inured to the idea of mercury pollution in tuna

Why would you eat ANY?

Happiness is any machine at work

In a watch's fine machine,

The added movements which declare,

How full the moon, how old the year,

Derive their secondary power

From that which simply points the hour.

-- Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

The healthiest apples by concentration of phenols and antioxidants in the skin . . .

. . . are, as reported here:

crabapple

ida red

red delicious
honeycrisp
granny smith

cortland

braeburn
gala
empire

golden delicious
mcintosh
fuji
golden nugget

Happiness is John Pinette saying "Nay, Nay!" to salad, sushi and skiing, among other things

Here.

Happiness is Much Ado About Nothing

 

 

 

 Sing no more ditties, sing no mo

Of dumps so dull and heavy;

The frauds of men were ever so,

Since summer first was leafy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

Into Hey nonny, nonny.

-- Balthasar, William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act II Scene 3

Happiness is an extra fine tea infuser from Yoassi

Fits right in your tea cup, into which you add your preferred amount of loose tea. Pour in the water and cap, and three minutes later you lift it out and have your own nice customized cup of afternoon tea.

I just had one with Twinings Jasmine Green, with some fresh squeezed lemon juice. It is said the lemon juice improves antioxidant absorption by up to 80%.

Happiness is about four ounces of mushrooms a day

From the story here:

"[T]he difference between the countries with low rates of neurodegenerative diseases is about 3 milligrams per day [of ergothioneine], which is about five button mushrooms each day."

Happiness is a birthday card "blast from the past": OOGA OOGA OOGA SHAKA!

The ever popular opening lines from Blue Swede's version of "Hooked on a Feeling" from 1974 here, the year I graduated from high school. Am I really that old?

The card spells it "Shaka" instead of "Chaka", perhaps for copyright reasons, but the audio in the card has the latter from the original.

On the inside, it says the words translate from "witch doctor" to "Happy Birthday". And he does a little dance! So politically incorrect, so amusing.

Happiness is blanched and sautéed Broccoli Rabe with tonight's pasta and sausage

Otherwise called rapini, the whole business is eaten so there is no waste, just the ends of the stems which are cut off before washing and soaking in cold water to freshen and then blanching in salted boiling water. About 4-5 minutes does the trick, in about three batches.

Plunge the cooked rapini into an ice bath in the sink to stop the cooking, then drain on a rack and use immediately, or refrigerate overnight for the meal the next day. They are sauteed in olive oil with garlic and hot red pepper flakes, but with a hot Italian sausage and fresh garlic already in the pasta, I like the greens just in oil. They are loaded with good things. The nutrient balance score is 93 out of 100 and the protein quality score is 98 out of 100 at nutrition data.self.com .

I paid $2.69 for the bunch at Meijer.

Happiness is perceiving what opposites have in common

Come what come may,

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3

Happiness is a low-sodium cinnamon roll at coffee break, without the roll

1/ toast one slice of Koepplinger's 100% whole wheat bread
2/ slather with Really Raw Honey from Baltimore, Maryland
3/ on a large plate sprinkle the toast liberally with ground cinnamon
4/ chop one ounce of pecan halves fine and top the toast

120 mg sodium, 2 g saturated fat, 7 g protein

Happiness is a butter cutter, to help one ration the consumption of this delicious saturated fat into teaspoon-sized patties

The butter sliced into teaspoon-sized patties can be laid out on a sheet of wax paper and folded and stored in the butter locker in the fridge.

One teaspoon of salted butter contains about 32 mg sodium and 2.33 g saturated fat.

Patients with cardiac disease typically limit daily saturated fat consumption to 15 g or less.

Happiness is Starbucks Christmas Blend varieties in festive holiday colors

Happiness is a low-sodium, low-fat supper with rainbow trout fillet from Canada

About 40 mg natural sodium, 1.1 g saturated fat.

Oil the fillet on both the skin side and the flesh side in extra virgin olive. Season the flesh with salt-free lemon pepper. Bake at 450 F in a heavy pan for about 10 minutes. Serve with sautéed brussel sprouts and some basmati rice.

The whole dinner turned out to be just 78 mg sodium and 3.35 g saturated fat, mostly from the added butter and the canola oil used to saute the sprouts.

Salty things I ate at Christmas

A waffle (409 mg sodium) on Christmas Day. ... And that's after substituting the salt and baking soda of the Betty Crocker recipe with more baking powder instead. Otherwise Betty's version would have packed 522 mg sodium per waffle. Eat just two of those (without butter) and you're more than half way to the daily limit of 2000 mg. Add bacon at 220 mg per slice and . . . ouch, because no one can eat just one waffle or one slice of bacon. 

A slice of spinach pesto Sockeye pie (308 mg sodium) on Christmas Eve. ... The canned salmon is the killer here, as is the pesto. One can't do much to reduce the sodium in canned fish except to use fresh instead, which is kind of a waste. But the salt in the pesto recipe can be cut in half and still taste like pesto, especially if you use salty Romano cheese instead of parmesan. Thus prepared I ended up with nearly 700 mg sodium in 1/2 cup for the recipe.

Two slices of this savory fish pie are normal for a serving, so the ketchup condiment had to go (190 mg sodium in one tablespoon). I used San Marzano tomato sauce instead and that was fine (16 mg sodium in one half cup). A teaspoon of the pesto is also good on the morning egg (about 30 mg sodium), as it is on the Saturday pizza.  

A gingersnap cookie (66 mg sodium), from frozen dough bought for a fundraiser. ... I ate only two, because at fewer than 4 mg sodium per square I'd rather eat Lindt 85% cocoa chocolate instead.

Happiness is a Christmas-box

When time comes round, a Christmas-box they bear,

And one day makes them rich for all the year.

--  John Gay, Trivia: or, the art of walking the streets of London (1716)

Happiness is even lower sodium Racconto Whole Peeled Italian Plum Tomatoes

These have just 16 mg of sodium per half cup. Count 'em!

Happiness is killing Bambi with one of these, but the ole Olds keeps on keepin' on

1997 Oldsmobile

Model LSS

Apparently happiness is NOT Yogi DeTox Tea Healthy Cleansing Formula, according to doctors

A woman drank the tea as directed for a couple of weeks but ended up killing herself instead due to liver failure.

Doctors concluded after her death that three ingredients in the tea might have combined with her wine habit to do her in: gardenia fruit, skullcap root, and rhubarb root.

The only cleansing which occurred here was of a hapless consumer from the face of the earth.

From the story here:

Flummoxed, the doctors next turned their attention to the patient's consumption of Yogi DeTox tea. Apparently, she began drinking the tea fourteen days prior to her symptoms starting and drank three cups of tea each day as a "cleanse." The timing of the intake, as well as observed effects on the liver after halting use of the tea, soon convinced the doctors that the tea was the probable culprit. Unfortunately, almost two weeks into the ordeal, the patient's liver was wrecked. . . . On day 15, she was placed on the transplant list. Two days later, she died.

Happiness is low-sodium barley lentil soup for lunch

Barley growing in Provence to the right, lavender to the left

3 cups turkey stock from Thanksgiving, made from the leftover bones

6 cups water

3/4 cup green lentils, rinsed

3/4 cup hulled barley, rinsed

2 bay leaves

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 small carrots, chopped

1 large garlic clove, chopped

extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon French sea salt

2 teaspoons dried rosemary leaves

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves

 

1/ bring the stock and water to a boil and add the lentils, barley and bay leaves

2/ simmer at a low boil one hour, covered

3/ chop the onion, carrots and garlic and saute in the olive oil until softened, set aside

4/ to a spice grinder add sea salt, black pepper, rosemary and thyme leaves and pulse until powdery

5/ when the barley and lentils are soft, add the sautéed vegetables and the spices to the soup and stir occasionally while simmering, twenty minutes more

makes about eight cups, approximately 310 mg sodium per cup (lentils 15 mg, barley 15 mg, onion 10 mg, carrots 105 mg, salt 2325 milligrams = 2470 mg/8 = 308.75 mg/cup)

Happiness is Meijer brand San Marzano Whole Plum Tomatoes With Basil, surprisingly low in sodium

Just 35 mg of sodium in a half cup. Compare that to hundreds of milligrams per half cup from ordinary canned tomatoes.

I run a couple of cans worth through iL Passatutto Velox and presto! I have velvety rich pasta sauce.

Happiness is lower sodium homemade Boston baked beans

We like Boston baked beans on Sundays with hamburgers on the grill, but the go-to brand in the can, Bush's original, has 550 mg sodium per half cup, which eats up a lot of the daily quota of 2000 mg.

The homemade version below adapted from Serious Eats has about 246 mg per half cup, almost 45% less sodium than Bush's. It takes a long time to make, but it's more authentic on top of being lower in sodium. It's also less sweet, so add your maple syrup to taste at the end. One half cup worked well for us, but you may like more than that.

Make it when you want the baked beans with tomorrow night's meal. For me that means starting on Saturday morning to be ready by Sunday night. For traditionalists eating Beans and Wieners on Saturday nights, that means getting started on Friday morning.

1 lb dried navy beans

6 oz. salt pork

0.5 cup dark molasses (not blackstrap)

0.5 cup pure maple syrup

about 3 quarts water

1/ soak the navy beans all day in fresh water (I don't use salt)

2/ at the end of the day pre-heat the oven to 250 degrees F

3/ drain and sort the navy beans

4/ cut the pork into lardons so that each piece has some meat on it

5/ add a quart of water and the molasses to a three quart dutch oven and stir until thoroughly mixed

6/ add the navy beans and pork and cover the beans with the rest of the water, and stir

7/ bake in the oven overnight* with the lid on tight/check the water level in the morning and add to just cover the beans, if necessary/after twelve hours overnight there should still be plenty of water in the pot without having to add any

8/ continue to bake covered another seven hours, checking about midway through to see that there remains enough water/you'll know to add if the beans are sticking to the bottom/after almost nineteen hours I didn't have to add any water at all, but I began with slightly more than three quarts water

9/ when done the beans supply their own paste and the mixture should stir freely but not be runny

10/ at this point add the maple syrup and serve

11/ if you like it runnier, cut the serving with some water and heat through

*Serious Eats doesn't recommend unattended overnight baking for safety reasons, and neither do I.      

Happiness is low-sodium split pea soup with smoked pork hock

1.5 lb smoked pork hock, soaked in water (about 115 mg sodium/oz = 2760 mg sodium)

1 lb split peas, rinsed (250 mg natural sodium)

3 carrots, peeled and diced (about 126 mg natural sodium)

1 medium yellow onion, chopped (about 10 mg natural sodium)

12 cups water

1/ bring 12 cups fresh water to a boil, add split peas and simmer partly covered about one hour

2/ meanwhile soak the smoked pork hock in fresh cold water while the peas simmer

3/ dice the carrots and sauté in extra virgin olive oil

4/ chop the onion and add to the carrots and sauté until soft-ish

5/ remove the pork hock from the soak and add it to the soup

6/ add the vegetables to the soup

7/ cover and simmer another hour or two

8/ remove the hock and when cool enough remove the fleshy meat, chop it finely and return it to the soup, heat through and serve

Makes about 12 cups (you can make this soup thicker by subtracting a cup or two of water at the start, but you will increase the sodium concentration accordingly)

Sodium per cup 262 mg (3146 mg/12)

Happiness is sodium-adjustable barley, beef and mushroom soup for lunch

6 cups water

.75 cups hulled barley, rinsed

1.25 cups leftover, strained and defatted beef stock made from a chuck roast

8 oz. leftover shredded beef chuck (braised in onions, rosemary, peppercorns and 1 T balsamic vinegar all day)

.5 cup sauteed baby bella mushrooms, sauteed in extra virgin olive oil and chopped

1/ boil the water, add the barley, and simmer covered until puffed up, about 1 hour

2/ add stock, beef and mushrooms and heat through on simmer, about 15 minutes

makes about 8.5 cups

contains about 32 mg natural sodium per cup

add 1/8 teaspoon salt per cup served or to taste (an additional 291 mg)

Welcome to December . . .

. . . the month when the icicle now taketh the place of the bicycle, or so said the Toronto Graphic in about December 1879, according to the pages of Puck.