Happiness is a really absurd expiration date

 

Happiness is January, right Jack?

 

Happiness is an extremity you'll do well to avoid

 The East and West

Upon the globe, a mathematick point

Only divides: thus happiness and misery,

And all extremes, are still contiguous.

 

-- Sir John Denham (1614/15-1669) 

Happiness is roast beef and gravy on a Tuesday, a lousy Tuesday

 

Happiness is my green tambourine: The Lemon Pipers, November 1967

Drop your silver in.

 

Happiness is a black-hearted kitty cat ear

 

Happiness is watching the president make a complete fool of himself by memorializing himself when he isn't even dead yet lol

Or maybe that guy we see walking around who looks like Trump isn't @realdonaldtrump after all.

 

Happiness is Kenji's Ski Lodge Chili

 

 Adapted from the recipe here.

Kenji's Ski Lodge Chili

Ingredients in the order I used:

2T avocado oil

1 lb ground beef

1/2 large white onion, diced

1 garlic clove, diced

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and diced

2T tomato paste

 

Seasoning blend (my basic rule of thumb is 1/2-t per pound of ingredients, adjusted later to taste): salt, black pepper (1/4-t per pound), chili powder, red pepper flakes, cumin powder, oregano leaf. 

 

1 can Original Ro-Tel Tomatoes

1 empty Ro-Tel can chicken stock

1 lb already prepared black beans from an Instant Pot or canned

3 bay leaves

3 oz shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese

sour cream

2 diced green onions

1 handful chopped cilantro 

 

Method:

 

1-Brown meat on one side on high heat in oil, spread out in the bottom of a porcelain Dutch oven or stainless steel Dutch oven, large saute pan, or heavy bottom stock pot, while you dice.

2-Turn the browned meat and add the diced onion, garlic, and jalapeno and finish the browning and sweat the vegetables for a few minutes.

3-Make a well in this mixture and briefly cook the tomato paste and mix.

4-Make a well again and briefly cook the seasoning blend in the juices and mix.

5-Add the Ro-Tel and mix.

6-Add the chicken stock and mix.

7-Add the beans and mix.

8-Add one more can chicken stock and mix.

9-Add bay leaves and cover to simmer on low for 30 minutes.

10-Stir, taste, adjust seasoning and liquid as needed.

11-Serve topped with cheddar cheese, green onion, cilantro, and sour cream, with corn bread and side salad.

Happiness is an eager bride

A bride

Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,

As souls from bodies steal, and are not spy'd.

 

-- John Donne 

Happiness is General Charles de Gaulle, who loved his Down Syndrome daughter Anne

 

Anne was "My joy. She helped me overcome the failings in all men, and to look beyond them."

Happiness is a man of maximum practical application

 

... His father, Ed Gelvin, was more diversified. Over the years, he had become, it seems safe to say, as much as anyone in Alaska an example of what Steve Ulvi has in mind when he speaks so admiringly of "the man of maximum practical application". Mining, as it happened, was what first drew Ed and his wife, Ginny, into the country. ... Trapper, sawyer, pilot, plumber, licensed big-game guide, welder, ironworker, mechanic, carpenter, builder of boats and sleds, he suffered no lack of occupation. ...

-- John McPhee, Coming Into The Country (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977, 1991 paperback), pp. 232f. 

Happiness is a truly gluten-free chocolate cake that you would swear is a real chocolate cake

 

I saw this on @emmymade.

The recipe belongs to The Pancake Princess. 

I mixed everything in a food processor. I used melted butter, beans I cooked myself, and plain old Hershey's Cocoa. I baked it in a 24cm Pyrex pie plate oiled with avocado oil. Just let it cool right in there. You can haul it that way to a party. The frosting isn't necessary. Sprinkle it with powdered sugar right before serving as you like. Or not. It's plenty sweet just the way it is.

Eat it for breakfast. You will not be hungry all morning, and you will be happy. 

 

thepancakeprincess.com

 

Happiness is seeing yourself revealed in others

 

Or . . . Why I Struggle To Write Blog Posts For 25 Forms Of Happiness 

 Robert Redford, Screen Idol Turned Director and Activist, Dies at 89

... “I was born with a hard eye,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “The way I saw things, I would see what was wrong. I could see what could be better. I developed kind of a dark view of life, looking at my own country.” ...

Throughout his career, Mr. Redford pushed and questioned and then questioned and pushed. His tenaciousness served him well as early as 1969, when he was preparing to play the Sundance Kid. The president of 20th Century Fox, Richard D. Zanuck, told Mr. Redford to shave the bandit mustache he had grown for the role. He refused.

“It was authentic,” Mr. Redford told Mr. Callan, his biographer. “I got my way.”

Happiness is my latest pie, a dilled salmon potato

Dilled Salmon Potato Pie

28 oz cooked salmon, flaked (I used canned, boneless, skinless, Atlantic, drained)

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, boiled, mashed

2 eggs, beaten 

1/2 stick salted butter

1/4 yellow onion diced

1 T sea salt for the potato water plus 1/2 tsp for seasoning

1 handful fresh dill fronds, chopped

1/2 lemon 

 

1- Set the oven to bake at 425F.

2- Start the water on the boil; peel and quarter the potatoes; boil covered by water salted with 1 T salt, about 20 minutes to fork tender; remove to a bowl and mash with a potato masher, plain, and let cool.

3- Meanwhile, dice the onions; melt the butter in a skillet and gently saute the onions until transparent, and set aside to cool.

4- Drain the salmon and flake it; add salmon to the potatoes, mashing in until thoroughly distributed.

5- Add the butter and sauteed onions to the potatoes and mash. Season with 1/2 tsp salt.

6- Chop the dill and mash it in.

7- Squeeze one half lemon with your hands over the mixture and mash.

8- Add the beaten eggs and mash.

9- Turn out the mixture into a large pie pan, sculpt until level, and bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven 42 minutes until golden brown on the top, because 42 is the answer to everything.

10- Let cool 5-10 minutes, slice and serve on warm plates with a fresh vegetable or a side salad.

 

Makes eight servings.

 

Two slices will stuff you with seven ounces of salmon, which is 40% of the US RDA for protein. You can fiddle with the quantity of salmon down, and the quantity of dill and lemon up, as desired. The last time I made this was with 21 oz of salmon and two slices seemed not quite enough at just over five ounces of salmon, even though it seemed to me that it should have been enough.

 

You could probably make salmon cakes with this, frying them in oil using one less egg and no lemon juice in the mixture to reduce the moisture content, since this is the bones of a Newfoundland cod cake recipe. But at the end of the day, I'd just rather shove it in the oven down here at 42.9704° N latitude.

 

IYKYK. 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Happiness is spendidly cool current conditions for a change

 

Happiness is a really good pun

 

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.