Category: Uncategorized

Happy Belated Birthday, Crock-Pot!

Join me in wishing your crock-pot a happy belated birthday. About a week ago, this slow cooking device turned 50. Well, technically the device itself is a little over 80, but its incarnation with the name crock-pot began in 1971.

I’ll confess that I primarily use my crock-pot for parties. I’ve owned the brand name and something similar that doubled as a griddle. Both work similarly. They cook food at a slow pace.

My first crock pot lived in my college dorm room. We used it to make cheese dip out of cheddar cheese soup and RotelR tomatoes and peppers that we greedily dipped original Doritos into. While the thought of that cheese dip now makes me cringe, I miss the buttery flavor of those original tortilla chips.

Next, came the wedding gift crock pots. I think I received three. One was huge. I still have it. As much as I like one pot meals, you’d think I would have put a lot of miles on these pots through the years. I haven’t, which seems odd since I love one pot meals. I think it’s because I view one pot meals as something quick I can throw together last minute. Crock-pot cooking requires forethought.

Perhaps that’s why many of us opt for the convenience of fast food rather than the convenience of a crock-pot. But there’s no question that crock-pot cooking can be healthy and easily adapted to any dietary restriction.

As a recent convert to braised beef, which I’ve discovered is much like my grandmother’s pressure-cooked beef, I increasingly appreciate slow cooking. It’s great for pulled pork, ham & beans, chili, and vegetable soup. The home economists who developed recipes for the crock-pot swear it’s the best way to bake cheesecake.

It can also be used to bake pineapple upside down cake, chocolate lava cake, banana nut cake, and breakfast foods like cinnamon rolls, French toast casserole, and scrambled or boiled eggs. Clearly, I have not allowed my crock-pot to fulfill its potential.

Like any small electric appliance, part of that is due to access. A crock-pot is the kind of thing that needs a place to live that’s convenient or I forget to use it. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess and mine lives near the back of a shelf in a closet in the dining room.

It seems fitting to attempt a cake in the crock-pot to celebrate its birthday. Although I’d love to test that claim that it makes the best cheesecake. And I used to ask for lemon meringue pie for my birthday, so birthday cake doesn’t have to be birthday cake!

Anyway, I’d like to salute Irving Naxon who patented the Naxon Beanery that became the crock-pot. He created an efficient way to slow-cook food that costs only pennies a day to operate and does not heat up the house. His machine may not have been a commercial success until it was bought by Rival, but without him we might not be able to buy one of the 12 million units that are still sold each year – 50 years later.

So, thank you Irving Naxon and happy belated birthday, crock-pot!

Grocery Delivery Update

In 2018, I was eagerly awaiting availability; today, I have a grocery delivery update.

Delivery finally became available in my zip code just before the pandemic. Ordering was easy. It was a natural extension of the grocery pick-up I’d been doing for a couple of years. The first available service was Walmart. Next came Kroger® via Instacart®.  Then Whole Foods Market entered the picture.

My first delivery order with Walmart went smoothly and the merchandise was consistent with my pick-up experience. Whether you choose Walmart, Instacart, or Whole Foods, the ordering experience is similar. Each interface has a feature that shows items previously ordered, allows for substitutions, and has a space for special delivery instructions. The look is different for each, and the items captured by a search will vary in range.

Walmart’s search captures a wider group of products than I would prefer. A search for gluten-free cereal yields many varieties that aren’t gluten-free. That’s annoying, but okay. I want search results to be wide. The problem is that the gluten-free items aren’t always grouped together at the top of the list. Instacart works similarly. Whole Foods captures items beyond gluten-free cereal but seems to group and prioritize better.

September 13, 2021 update: I feel compelled to note that Walmart recently updated its website. Now you must choose pickup, delivery, and (for most items) shipping for each item before you add it to the cart. It’s cumbersome. It’s easy to accidentally end up choosing multiple delivery methods. And it feels like there are less products available for delivery. I don’t know if there are fewer, but it seems that way. Because of additional delivery problems and this website update, I have subscribed to Imperfect Foods. My first order will be delivered this week. We’ll see how that goes.

Online shopping carts have taken the place of my grocery lists. When I recognize the need for an ingredient or cleaning product, I add it to the cart. I also add personal care products, flowerpots, potting soil, garden trellis, tools, hardware, RV supplies, and toys when shopping Walmart grocery delivery. At the end of the week, I review the cart and place my order.

Walmart, Whole Foods, and Kroger carry basic grocery items and store brands. And all three rotate through other offerings. During the pandemic, it’s sometimes been hard to tell if an item has been discontinued or will be back when inventory is available. We all experienced the shortages of toilet paper, paper towels, and disinfecting wipes. Laundry sanitizer, rice, beans, and other staples were also in sort supply. That has gradually improved.

But while some things have gotten better, the Walmart produce quality has continued to deteriorate to the point some items are now spoiled upon delivery. The good news is that my garden, the farmers market, and Whole Foods have filled the gap.

Whole Foods delivers cold food in insulated bags. Some frozen items come in additional wrapping. I recently threw away a pint of ice cream that was so well wrapped I missed it. (Oops.) Today, I received some pre-washed lettuce from Whole Foods that has some browning on the stems, but still smells fresh. The sugar snap peas and raspberries in my order are perfect.

Occasionally, I try ordering produce from Walmart to see if they have fixed the freshness problem, but last week, the stench of spoiled vegetables greeted me when I opened a bag of sugar snap peas minutes after they were delivered. I empathize with the difficulties working around a pandemic brings, but I’d rather not have to throw away food the minute it arrives at the door.

For the past month or two, I’ve been splitting each week’s groceries between Walmart and Whole Foods. I order the majority of my produce from Whole Foods along with Imagine Chicken Stock and raw nuts.*  While I sometimes supplement with a Kroger order, those instances are limited. I don’t enjoy the voluminous number of texts included in the Instacart experience. I also feel like there are always more substitutions from Kroger.

There are rare exceptions, but most orders arrive within my chosen time frame no matter which store I choose. Walmart sometimes sends me surplus items or doesn’t deliver my whole order. I haven’t had this problem with Whole Foods or Kroger.

For the past year, I’ve relied on three vendors. I now have more options. Natural Grocers, The Fresh Market, Costco, and another locally owned franchise recently joined the mix of available delivery. Drugstore delivery choices have also multiplied along with discount and big-box warehouse stores.

I’m happy the choices are increasing because I like grocery delivery as much as I believed I would. It’s allowing me to stay in when the heat index is 110⁰ and that feels good.

For younger moms, it can mean shopping while the kids are asleep or working on virtual school. And it eliminates the need for putting a toddler in a hot car seat.

There are so many pluses to this service, grocery delivery will remain my primary means of shopping when in-person purchasing becomes safer. If you live in a location where it’s available, I recommend giving it a try.

*Raw nuts from Walmart are another item that’s become questionable. If I need a variety of gluten-free flours as well as nuts and/or dried fruit, I order from Nuts.com. My whole family gets excited when they see a bright colored bag from Nuts.com. It’s one place I can find dried mango and papaya without added sugar.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I Don’t Want to Doctor Myself

During a conversation about an injury last week, a friend said, “I don’t want to doctor myself.” That both surprised and stuck with me. I totally agree with that statement when you’re struggling to get a diagnosis. Patients don’t have the knowledge, training or equipment to diagnose a condition. But there are many times when doctoring ourselves is exactly what is required.

If the doctor diagnoses pre-diabetes, the best thing we can do is doctor ourselves by increasing activity and making dietary changes. In fact, we may even be able to avoid diabetes by turning these changes into lasting habits.

The same is true of strengthening muscles after a knee replacement. At first, you may participate in scheduled rehabilitation at a clinic. Once that ends, you may still need to continue to work on strength and flexibility on your own in order to have full range of motion, increase stability, and prevent pain.

And with allergies or food sensitivities, doctoring ourselves is sometimes all we have. If you have adult onset peanut allergies, avoiding peanuts and peanut products is currently the best way to doctor yourself. Celiac disease is no different. Eliminating gluten from your diet is the most immediate, effective, and least expensive way to heal and stay healthy. This is a form of doctoring yourself.

We give our children meds for fever. And if they have lung disease, we check their blood oxygen level and choose a setting on the oxygen concentrator. Even when my son was in a wreck, we had to clean his wound and change his bandages twice a day until he could have a skin graft.

This meant pulling back the skin at the edges of what looked like raw steak. When we pulled, it hurt and we had no way to deaden the pain. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was necessary.

You’re certainly no stranger to patient care if you have an ailing elderly relative. No matter the diagnosis, it’s not uncommon for much of the doctoring to be done by the patient and family at some point.

While much of what I’m describing may be nursing care, when you’re at home you also make the decisions. You come up with the plan for each day for following the actual doctor’s orders.

All of this seems so obvious, I was taken aback by my friend’s statement. But he has no children, has never cared for an elderly relative, and is bombarded by the same pharmaceutical ads we all see on TV and in magazines.

The overarching message we’re presented is that there’s always something that will fix things. All we need to do is take medication.

So what happens when a virus comes along and there’s no medication to prevent or treat it? Will we be willing to doctor ourselves by wearing masks and changing our social habits?

We’ve been learning the answer to that every day for the past year-and-a-half. We’re still learning it. And it seems that a large portion of the population agrees with my friend.

But no matter how advanced the technology, how powerful the drugs, and how skilled our doctors, a treatment plan has much less chance of being successful if we’re not prepared or willing to doctor ourselves once we’re prescribed a plan. The best outcomes come from all of us working as a team.

Go team!

It’s March. It’s Madness. It’s Teamwork at its Best!

The above is not meant as medical advice, nor is it meant to discourage you from visiting your doctor. The references to “doctoring yourself” refer to actions individuals must take in order to follow their doctors’ orders.

Doomsday Vault

A year-and-a-half into a surging pandemic it may feel like you’re living in a doomsday vault, but that’s not what this is about. In fact, it’s about a system that’s in place to ensure an ongoing food supply even if, at any point, it turns out we are living in a doomsday scenario.

Part of a system of 1700 gene banks across the world, the Global Seed Vault is often called the Doomsday Vault. Located on a remote island in the Svalbard archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole, the vault is managed and operated in a partnership between the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen), and the Crop Trust. It serves as a backup for other gene banks.

This backup was designed to provide an extra layer of protection after other gene banks suffered losses. Its inventory is intended to serve plant breeders who develop new crop varieties. But it’s also to ensure a food supply in the event that all that crops in a region are destroyed by disaster.

Seeds enter the Global Seed Vault via donation. Nobel laureate and Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai made the first deposit in 2008.

Once there, the seeds are stored in vacuum-packed silver packets at -18⁰C. If you’ve ever pulled last year’s seeds from under the sink and planted them in the garden, you know from the results that storage conditions matter.

Beyond the remote Global Seed Vault, seeds are stored in seed banks like the Colorado Vault at Colorado State University. In the US, many seed gene banks are located at state land-grant university sites that contribute space and staff while run by an organization managed by the US Department of Agriculture called the National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS). NPGS is a collaborative effort between public and private sectors to safeguard the genetic diversity of agriculturally important plants.

Across the world, there are scientists and environmentalists who understand the importance of protecting and preserving a wide variety of viable seeds. They have created a system to help ensure that we can restart the world’s crops and develop plants more tolerant to changing environments.

In a doomsday scenario, they will be our heroes. But these forward thinkers are making sure the system is in place BEFORE we need it. Let’s see them as the heroes they are now!

Can Food Win a War?