Skip to main content

Braces, Coffee, Bedtime, and Cooking Like a Swede

Four More Weeks
My orthodontist wants to wait four more weeks to take my braces off so that I can get a new crown. Meantime, my insurance is actually considering paying for some of this expensive dental work. Hot dog.

Acid reflux, acne, and upset stomach down to flavored coffee
I just tried to expand my food horizons and once again, ended up with problems. It took a few months to figure out it was flavored coffee. It's not the caffeine or the acid, since regular coffee and tea doesn't bother me, or anything I put in it (I take it black). It's not any natural flavors, since nuts, vanilla and cocoa don't bother me. It's the chemicals. According to enotes.com,

Flavoring oils are combinations of natural and synthetic flavor chemicals which are compounded by professional flavor chemists. Natural oils used in flavored coffees are extracted from a variety of sources, such as vanilla beans, cocoa beans, and various nuts and berries. Cinnamon, clove, and chicory are also used in a variety of coffee flavors. Synthetic flavor agents are chemicals which are manufactured on a commercial basis. For example, a nutty, woody, musty flavor can be produced with 2, 4-Dimethyl-5-acetylthiazole.

The pure flavor compounds described above are highly concentrated and must be diluted in a solvent to allow the blending of multiple oils and easy application to the beans. Common solvents include water, alcohol, propylene glycol, and fractionated vegetable oils. These solvents are generally volatile chemicals that are removed from the beans by drying.  

What a way to start your day!

Getting more sleep
A few weeks ago, I read a (sort of) scientific book, did a lot of thinking and made a plan to get to bed earlier. The big plan: start getting ready for bed at 9:00 to get enough sleep and have the stamina to go out on Friday. It's working. I've gone to bed by around 10:30 every night except for those that I either went out or didn't have to get up early the next morning. (It's a bit after 9:00 now, but I've already packed a lunch.) But because of my sore stomach from the coffee, I haven't gone salsa dancing on Friday.

If you've got the meat, eggs, cream and vegetables, Chef Niklas the recipes.
Image from Barnes & Noble

Chef Niklas Ekstedt wants to preserve Sweden's food culture. "I fear that otherwise, we will drown in a sea of sweet chili sauce, pine nuts, and liquid smoke," he says in his cookbook Scandinavian Classics. "A great way to get inspired is to flip through old cookbooks, perhaps written during the last century, by writers who knew how to cook real food, from real ingredients." There's much in the book about Swedish history, traditional foods, seasons, selecting ingredients, and even the wood stove. There's no talk of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, zucchini pasta or low-fat ingredients. The pork loin recipe, for instance, calls for "1-3/4 lbs pork loin, center cut with a thick rind or fat cap, skin intact." Charts show the different cuts of meat of pigs and cows, and with 52 recipes for preparing fish and sauce, a few dozen meat recipes (including a few for making sausage), and several ways of cooking cabbage, root crops and other vegetables that flourish in the far north, and the simplest hollandaise recipe I've ever seen, this should be a staple for paleo and low carb cooks. It's more accessible than The Odd Bits, whose recipes take a lot of preparation, but it has instructions for cooking odd bits like oxtail, liver and ham hocks. The recipes mostly call for short lists of everyday ingredients. I've only prepared a couple of dishes, and had to substitute an ingredient here and there (like finely shredded steamed cauliflower for rice and butter for cream to make sausage rolls), but they were terrific. Having cooked for over 20 years, I can tell these recipes would turn out well.

1. Enotes.com, "Flavored Coffee Bean." Accessed April 2, 2013. http://www.enotes.com/flavored-coffee-bean-reference/flavored-coffee-bean

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

HHS Doctor on Hidden Camera: "The Vaccine is Full of Sh!t"

Jodi O'Malley, a registered nurse at the Phoenix Indian Medical Center (part of the Department of Health and Human Services), teamed up with Project Veritas to expose severe COVID vaccine reactions occurring but not being reported to VAERS, the vaccine adverse event reporting system, even though medical professionals are legally required to report such injuries. During the filming, a man in his thirties with congestive heart failure was being treated; the doctor believed the cause was his COVID vaccination. O'Malley says she's seen dozens of adverse reactions. "The vaccine is full of shit" and the government wants to "sweep it under the mat," the doctor says on hidden camera. We finally know what's in the vaccine. Screen grab from Project Veritas video . The video also shows a pharmacist stating that off-label medications such as ivermectin were forbidden to be prescribed on pain of termination.  Project Veritas is a nonprofit organization that does ...

COVID Test Result is In

I don't have COVID.  On the one hand, it would have been a relief to have finally caught COVID and gotten natural antibodies, especially from having a mild case of it. On the other hand, I was concerned about my dog catching it from me (he's healthy, but nine years old) and it might have interfered with Thanksgiving plans.  Until I'm well, I'll stay home.

Gaining Strength, But...

I had a pleasant surprise when I got out the sawzall today to finish repairs on the front door. Not the way it cut the new door sweep--I probably should have used the jigsaw. It was how easy it was to put the blade in. You have to turn a part on the saw, which I could barely do two months ago when I had nails to cut off . Today--probably thanks to spending my spare time since August working saws, sanders and paintbrushes--it was no harder than turning a knob on the stove.  So I've built up some strength in my hands and probably elsewhere, but my adrenals aren't keeping up with cortisol production. After a day's work (well, three or four hours, to be honest), my neck, back, jaws, and sinuses all hurt and they don't feel better until use a dab of hydrocortisone. Other pain relievers don't help much. This isn't normal muscle stiffness--the kind you get from working out--it feels like I'm inflamed. Last weekend in particular, after a flu shot and a few days of p...

Cigna is Making Progress

Yesterday as I put my lunch in the refrigerator at work, I noticed a bunch of unfamiliar people in the break room. One of them, Pepe, started in: they were there for the health fair, they would check your cholesterol, the sugar in your blood, your height, your weight, and it would just take six minutes. A coworker asked him if he'd ever considered a career in sales. Just for blog fodder, I participated. They really were fast, and one even found me at my desk (in an office nearly half the size of a city block) after the tests were finished. My HDL cholesterol was 65--up from 42 from a year and a half ago, and up from 57, where it was last year when I'd been three months a low-carb diet . A level over 60 is considered good. I haven't taken any medication to make this happen. I went on a low-carb diet and eliminated wheat. I also take vitamin and mineral supplements in addition to a high-nutrient diet. What impressed me more, though, was that the nurse (and Cigna) said that bl...

Thanksgiving recipes for Pumpkin Pie & Cranberries--printable!

If you'd rather read a printed recipe than watch a video, here are my recent recipes for Better than Grandma's Pumpkin Pie and Probiotic Cranberry-Apple Relish.  Hat tip to Dana Carpender, whose pumpkin pie recipe inspired this one. The cranberry-apple ferment is entirely my own creation.  Pumpkin Pie--no grains, sugar or emulsifiers Crust 2 cups shelled raw pecans 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon monk fruit powder* (or 3 tablespoons sugar substitute) 4 tablespoons butter, melted 2 tablespoons water Pumpkin Pie Filling 1 pie pumpkin 1-1/2 cups half and half (with no thickeners) 3 eggs 3-4 teaspoons monk fruit powder* (or 3/4 cup sugar substitute) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice Preheat the oven to 350F. Stab the top of the pumpkin all the way through the flesh in a few places at the top. Place the pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 hour. Let cool. While the pumpkin is baking, put the pecans in a food processor with the S blade and run until they are finely...