Happiness is when weather radar tries to write in musical notation

 

Ta dah!

Happiness is Papa Oom Mow Mow, the 1962 Rivingtons' hit covered by The Beach Boys in 1964

 

Board Certified Psychiatric Pharmacist with a PharmD not an MD says gluten might make some people crazy, cites unsubstantiated leaky gut syndrome

Not enough bread can make you crazy, too.

Mobile Alabama bread riot of 1863

 

Why this scientist believes bread is making us sad: If you’re feeling depressed or run down it might be time to avoid gluten

... “I would have been sceptical if you’d told me I’d end up studying this connection,” says Kelly. “My line of thinking was therapy and medications; I didn’t know food and diet could actually be good medicine.” ...

“It’s challenging for someone to be diagnosed with non coeliac gluten sensitivity,” says Kelly.

Gluten was only introduced into our diets about 6,000 years ago. “The idea of breaking it down is really challenging for our bodies and it never breaks down completely,” says Kelly.

When a person with gluten sensitivity eats something with gluten in it – even “healthy” brown pasta or bread – their body produces antibodies to fight against the gluten.

While two types of protein join to make gluten, gliadin and glutenin, it is the former that induces an immune response. This can cause inflammation and contribute to damage in the gut, which leads to the development of “leaky gut”.

The weakened gut wall allows the antibodies to gliadin to leak from the intestine into the general bloodstream. “When it gets across the stomach lining, the body sees it as a foreign substance for some people,” says Kelly.

Consequently inflammation may occur in other parts of the body, including a person’s brain. When the antibodies’ fight gets to the brain, symptoms that develop may include not only foggy thinking, and lack of energy, but also poor emotional control, anxiety, mood changes, hallucinations and/ or seizures, that are often resistant to treatment with medications.

“There’s a specific peptide sequence called 33-mer [found in wheat] that is highly associated with an immune response,” says Deanna. “If you look at the structure of that, it’s very similar to one of the structures of the GRINA receptor, a receptor in the brain. So our bodies potentially can’t tell the difference.”

It is one of Kelly’s theories that in some people their immune system might be attacking some of the tissue in the brain because it looks like gluten.

“We have a paper showing that these antibodies to the receptors to the brain are higher in people who have the antigliadin antibodies.” ... 

Of course, not everyone with psychiatric and neurological issues is gluten sensitive. ...

Gluten-free lasagna

 

 A medical diagnosis of celiac disease is no barrier to making lasagna in my experience. These gluten-free pasta sheets by Chickapea, made from chickpeas and lentils, fit the bill perfectly.

Make your tomato sauce from whole peeled tomatoes and fresh carrot, celery, onion and extra virgin olive oil, and your ragu from ground meat without fillers.

Grate your parmigiano reggiano cheese from wedges, and use fresh mozzarella if that's in your recipe. 

Substitute a seasoned whole milk ricotta sauce with nutmeg for the béchamel normally made with wheat flour and butter, and you are good to go. I save salted pasta water left over from making other shapes of Chickapea pasta for other dinners to dilute the ricotta.

Your gluten-free family member will thank you for the effort. 

Happiness is ice in July

 

 Yonder the harvest of cold months laid up,

Gives a fresh coolness to the royal cup;

There ice, like crystal, firm and never lost,

Tempers hot July with December's frost. 

 

-- Edmund Waller 

I'm guessing that the Dalai Lama hasn't contemplated the fate of Cowboy Slim

 

Dalai Lama Says He Plans to Reincarnate, Ensuring Institution Will Continue

AP 

 

 

YouTube is awash in cooking channels, one hardly knows where to begin

 But it's nothing new:

Ev'ry one to cookery pretends.

-- William King, The Art of Cookery, 1708 

 

 

 

Don't believe the haters, seed oils are safe, and canola oil is especially good for you

 

The Forgotten History (and Slippery Science) of Canola Oil  

 

... Twilley: In other words, cutting out seed oils is not going to help boost your omega-3 levels. For that, you have to eat more omega-3s. And, outside of oily fish, which are delicious but which most Americans consume very little of — and outside of tofu and chia seeds and flaxseed, which are also pretty underrepresented in the standard Western diet — canola is actually a bit of a omega-3 superstar. ...

 

Darriush Mozaffarian, Tufts University: This is, you know, one of the great Internet myths that’s out there, that seed oils are harmful. Canola oil has been studied in well over a hundred randomized control trials and overwhelmingly been shown to improve every risk factor that has been looked at, and never been shown to be pro inflammatory, which is kind of the theory. We have all the science. Like, we don’t need any more studies on canola oil. This is one of the most well established areas of science there is, is the health effects of plant oils. ...

Happiness is a cauldron of fat beef

 

 A caldron of fat beef, and stoop of ale,

On the huzzaing mob shall more prevail,

Than if you give them, with the nicest art,

Ragousts of peacocks brains, or filbert tart.

 

-- William King, The Art of Cookery (London, 1708),  p. 107

 

Happiness is 1965's Hang on Sloopy by The McCoys with Rick Derringer

The true identity of the “Sloopy Girl” dancer was revealed in September 2021.

 

That would be clearance, Clarence

 

Happiness is Hodge, Samuel Johnson's cat

 

Who, by his master when caressed,

warmly his gratitude expressed,

and never failed his thanks to purr,

whene'er he stroked his sable furr.

-- Percival Stockdale, 1778

The comedy of maternal love is that its seismic intensity is expressed, most of the time, in totally mundane drudgery

 Elizabeth Bruenig for The Atlantic, here:

... My mother used to pick me up from day care in paisley dresses or broomstick skirts with slouchy boots, hair hot-rolled and blown out, with the lived-in scent of faded perfume: full glam for an eight-hour workday with a 45-minute commute on either end and then a second shift at home, cooking any number of demanding meals—fried chicken, smothered pork chops, breakfast for dinner with biscuits and gravy—and then helping me and my brother with our homework and loading up the dishwasher, all before she took her makeup off. I used to sit beside her and talk with her while she took her evening bath, watching while she rinsed her mascara off and finally breathed. ...

Happiness is Edelweiss 1965

 

 

Decades worth of research concludes that happiness is the good mood you get from social interaction

How Nearly a Century of Happiness Research Led to One Big Finding: Decades of wellness studies have identified a formula for happiness, but you won’t figure it out alone

Which is fine if you're an extrovert.

But in former times happiness at its root was simply thought of as good fortune, or as escaping misfortune and accidents, which seems to me a more inclusive definition.

25% of a given population, after all, is composed of introverts, who feel drained by social interaction, not enriched. But they are just as happy to have escaped being hit by a car as any one else.

The field of psychology still seems biased toward the extroverts. 

 

 

 

Benny Hill's parody of Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones may be the greatest rock send-up of all time

 

Happiness is Apache by The Shadows, one of the best-selling singles of the 1960s

 

Happiness is Benny Bell's McCarthy and McGinnis

 

McCarthy is dead, McGinnis don't know it McGinnis is dead, McCarthy don't know it They both lay dead on the very same bed But neither one knows that the other is dead.

Before he died, this fellow McCarthy One Saturday night got drunk at a party He took a swing at Officer King The next day he carried his head in a sling.

McCarthy was always good to his wife He had to be so, or I pity his life Although she was only half his size She'd jump on a table and scratch out his eyes.

On Saint Patrick's Day he was there A shine on his shoes and oil on his hair He wore a green jacket and really looked swell With a genuine shamrock in his lapel.

One day he was taking his wife to a dance A dog took a chance and snapped at his pants McCarthy got angry and started to sneer Then lifted the mongrel and bit off its ear.

He drank like a fish, he ate like a savage His favourite dish was corned beef and cabbage He fought like a tiger, he hit like a mule And boy could he knock off a good game of pool.

McCarthy and Mister McGinnis next door Could never agree, they were always at war Said he to McGinnis, "The day when you die I'll buy everybody a strawberry pie."

Said Mister McGinnis to Mister McCarthy "You may be tough, and healthy and hearty But if you don't shut up and behave You'll soon be asleep in a seven foot grave."

One stormy night, they met in the hall To settle their argument once and for all Now one used a shovel and one used a rock And both were in heaven at seven o'clock.

So McCarthy is dead but McGinnis don't know it McGinnis is dead and McCarthy don't know it They both lay dead on the very same bed But neither one knows that the other is dead.

Trump tariffs make even middling Italian-sourced extra virgin olive oil out of reach for average Americans

 I ran out of this olive oil a few weeks ago. I had shepherded my three liter can over the winter to make it last. I paid $40 for it, now it's $55.

Fuhgeddaboutit.

 

 

You'd shriek too if it happened to you