Just Too, Too Cold

The current temperature is minus five Fahrenheit.  With the wind it feels like minus twenty-one.  Of course, I have to take the word of the weather service since I have not been outside yet today.  And at those temperatures, I many not make it out at all.  A good thing I can read my newspaper online, as my print copy is still down at the end of the drive.

The cold is pretty bad, but at least we are not buried in snow as we were last winter.  The same cannot be said for the East Coast.  Do you wonder how much snow they would have if we were not in the clutches of 'global warming'?

Staying in gives me plenty of time for reading.  While reading my newspaper, I couldn't help but notice that the top-selling non-fiction book is about something called the '20/20 diet', which sounds a lot like the Paleo diet, which just happened to be the worst diet of 2014 according to US News and World Report.   No grains, dairy or legumes.  Yuck.

Incidentally, the number ten bestseller is also a dieting book.  If everyone actually followed all of these diets in books that become best sellers, I cannot imagine how we could still have an obesity problem in this country.

Hot tea, a good book and I am in for the rest of the day.  Pardon the cross-hatch of the screen, but I was not going outside to capture this beautiful blue sky.

A Friday the 13th Post - Superstition Free

I am not in the least bit superstitious.  As proof, I moved into my home on a Friday the 13th in 1972 and am still here.

I had not even realized it was Friday the 13th until another blogger mentioned it.  And since this is February with 28 days, it means that we will have another FTT in March.

I have been so busy preparing my A to Z posts that I have had little time for blogging here.  So, as a means of catching up, here are a few items:

I have, as of this very moment, 4,000 pins on Pinterest.  The great majority of them are recipes.  And yet I still have recipe files to finish sorting.  Certainly no reason for me ever to get take-out or eat a frozen dinner.  Right!

Speaking of recipes, I am absolutely sick of all the gluten-free recipes I receive in emails.  To read the web you would think this is a condition of epidemic proportions.  Yet, only about 1% of the public has an issue with gluten (according to what I have found online).

But, 25% of the public has diabetes.  Yet, I do not get bombarded with sugar-free recipes, not do I see meaningless labels on foods I buy that are sugar-free.  I bought guacamole, consisting of avocados, tomatoes, and olive oil that was labeled gluten-free.  Really?  Just where would the gluten come from anyway?

Many folks seem to be willing to jump on the bandwagon of any fad diet that comes along.  Gluten-free, Paleo, eat your blood type...  Now comes a report that our cautions about eating foods high in cholesterol are all wrong.  Well, this agrees with what I taught my chemistry lab students back in the 1970's.  I told them that dietary cholesterol is flushed through the body and eating eggs will not harm you.  But, if your liver is prone to producing cholesterol, that is a more serious issue.

And just in the past few weeks I saw a report on the decrease in milk consumption because it is touted as not PC.  Certain folks don't think we should consume the dairy of other animals.  I guess they are related to the non-meat eaters.

I guess I should just go have a green salad for dinner and be done with it.  No meat, eggs, dairy, grains...  Sheesh.

Who has time to be superstitious when all this foolishness about food and diet is going on?

Here is an Arthur video about Friday the 13th: