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Every man needs to have a couple things they can cook up in the kitchen. Sure, we can usually handle a “steak on the barbie,” but short of charing animal flesh over flames, being able to prepare a delicious meal for the family is the thing of legends. Thanks to boy scouts and a junior high chefs club (read: luring boys into the home-ec department to make cookies) I can actually prepare a number of meals that can fool the world into thinking I know what I’m doing. Now I’m sharing my knowledge and recipes with you.
Warning: Do not showoff your culinary interests and abilities too often! Otherwise your wife will begin to think you want to take part in the meal planning and preparation. That is a very slippery slope and you need not venture close to the edge. You can tell that you’ve crossed the line when your hand writing is all over the shopping list and you’re rushing home early from the gym to put the rice on. Be careful.

Maintain just a few secrete recipes. Make sure they are truly pleasing to the whole family. Since you aren’t going to be doing this too often, don’t worry about stuff like sugar, fat and salt. Personally, I never use non-food stuff like artificial flavors, colorings or shortenings…the idea is to wow them, not kill them.

Finally, You will have to clean up after yourself. Nothing ruins a delicious event-meal quicker than a fight about a dirty sink or flour on the floor. Just remember, the goal is to always keep the family wanting the experience and the delight that comes with your cooking. For some reason it’s not the same when the oregano is put back in the wrong spot. In fact…nothing will be said…it will just remind her that you are a great guy. I know women are complicated and even after twenty-five years of marriage I’m mostly clueless, but I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. Leaving the salt on the wrong side of the flour is pardonable and maybe even endearing, but leaving potato skins in the sink stainer is an unforgivable sin.

Lets start with a sure-thing; chocolate chip pancakes. This recipe will make enough for six or seven people (don’t be afraid to half it). It’s a big hit with the kids when they have sleepovers. You instantly become the coolest Dad around.

Chocolate Chip Pancakes:

Start by heating griddle to 350 degrees. This is a good time to grease it with vegetable or olive oil or butter, wipe off excess.

I have mixed it into a big bowl by hand or with a electric beater, but I normally blend it on slow in a vitamix…fewer dishes, easy cleaning.

2 eggs

1 Cup buttermilk

1 and 1/2 Cup regular milk

4 Tablespoons of butter – melted (Lately I’ve been substituting Coconut oil amazing!)

1 teaspoon sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix or blend ingredients listed above
1 Cup whole wheat flour

1 and 1/2 Cup white flour

Mix or blend at slow speeds: Batter should pour easily

Make sure griddle is hot enough (a drop of water should spit on contact)

Pour slowly onto hot griddle (The secret for round pancakes is to let the batter flow out from the center)

Throw about a half dozen chocolate chips into the freshly poured pancake.
When bubbles form throughout pancake get ready, when some of them begin to pop, flip with a spatula or flipper. For extra drama flip lumberjack style with a frying pan. It takes forever to cook one at a time so I save the drama for camping.
Substitutions: No buttermilk? Use 1/2 Cup plain yogurt and two Cups of milk. No yogurt? Don’t fall into temptation to just use milk only. Go to the store and buy buttermilk. Remember it must be really great to make it worth doing. (Warning: Don’t ever let the kids smell or taste buttermilk it will ruin their appetite…besides your recipe needs to be kept a secret so mix it all up while they sleep.)

Blueberry’s can be used the same way, but then they wouldn’t be chocolate chip pancakes, would they?

Extra Special Occasions:  Pour regular sized pancake, then quickly pour two equal sized smaller ones at ten and two that will fuse into the main pancake…bingo you have a Micky Mouse pancake and a child’s heart. On cold winter days fuse three in descending order and you’ve got a snowman. Warning: Don’t do this more than once a year or on birthdays…trust me. Extra Warning: Generally it’s not ever a good idea to make food caricatures but for some reason it’s fine when it come to pancakes.

This is a joke that was mailed to me by a friend. She probably knew that my wife and I are writing a new program on fitness. This is not an endorsement for sending large numbers of joke oriented emails, but it does seem worth passing on here.

Not long ago a fellow wandered into the local library. After a considerable wandering-around period he finally decided to ask for help.

Seated behind the desk was an intimidating librarian who looked as though she had been there since at least the end of the civil war.

“Excuse me,” said he, “But could you tell me where the self-help area is?”

The librarian considered him over the top of her glasses for a few moments and then replied,

“Of course I can, but that would defeat the purpose, now wouldn’t it?”

After my post on Ritalin, I’m feeling a little guilty about reporting on “medical breakthroughs”. So, I’ll admit right from the start: this is not entirely new. But, it is very interesting and could be important to you.

Catechins in green tea are 20 times stronger in their antioxidant properties than vitamin E. Here is the useful part. Green tea has been shown to protect the skin against direct damage to the cell and moderates inflammation. The fascinating thing about green tea is that it helps [the skin] whether it is applied topically or when consumed as a beverage.

New York’s Columbia University, Department of Dermatology did the lead research here, but its only one of many such studies that point in the same direction. There are plenty of claims and some supporting data suggesting green tea is also helpful in preventing cancer, but the official FDA take is that green tea and cancer prevention is bunk (June 30 2005)

Once again it is my nature to question all sides of the sphere, but I cannot help but focus on the FDA at this moment. “Do we believe them because they are looking out for our interest?” or “Should we not believe them because they get it wrong more often than the National Weather Service. Perhaps, we should not believe them simply because they are looking out for our interest!

What a country. Ever wonder where you sign up for a job you can get paid for not showing up, then, when you do show up, they encourage you to not care about the people you serve, and then you get to keep your job even if you’re correct only half the time?* Try our Government at USA JOBS.

*sick days, antiquated holidays, “personal health” days, family leave…“Take a number and wait.” “Sit here.” “Fill out this.” “We’re closing now.” “That’s not my department.” “Payment is due before we give you an application”….government efficiency; and it only gets more so.

Right now I’m kind of hating the media. I know that’s a sweeping statement and I apologize for being so general. A couple weeks ago I came across an article about a subject I posted in May; If I Were King, which was about education concepts. I highlighted the efforts of Nicholas Negroponte, the former MIT Media Lab director and founder of the One Laptop Per Child project.

Quickly (actually too quickly), huge amounts of disparaging news items and lots of opinions flooded the presses. Mostly about Negroponte’s efforts and his ineffectiveness in delivering the goods for the price that he named. They ranged from a “raised eyebrow” about his inability to make a quality laptop for under $100 (Ever try it?), to making the whole project out to be a complete failure. Finally, I came across a fare minded article written in the Boston Globe.

Progress is always saddled with resistance and hurdles and the people who write about it, in the media, are not the ones who must overcome. Often the visionary never even gets to see the results, (but they sure get the criticism) and seldom are they the ones that end up carrying the project to a point of flourishing. Yet they are the ones that start the process.

Q: How can you tell a leader?

A: He’s the one with the arrows in his back.

The One Laptop Per Child project seems to be going through one of these inevitable rough times. I for one am enjoying the view and learning about innovation and creative efforts as they persevere (Be assured that if they don’t, someone will. Probably by standing on their shoulders). Lets keep an eye on the concepts and see what we can learn about perseverance (never a popular topic in a time of war). In the end let the Project be it’s own judge.

Compare the V-22 Osprey. Time Magazine just trashed it in it’s article called A Flying Shame. Come on! I have high hope’s for this amazing aircraft. It might be many years, but the non-military applications are what will be really exciting. Like the “laptop problem” we are assaulted with a catchy title and a stated failure with no mention of the future other than doom (Brings back memories of global warming).

History is full of examples of enormous successes which look like failures at many (sometimes any) points along the way. Navigation, Medicine, Engineering, Politics….
Sounds like the Media is on a rampage of judge-it-now-pessimism. Guess they always have been.
I’m reading The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. Mostly, I love it. He details avenues to totally eliminate unnecessary outside information from the world the Media shows us. If things continue, I might just have to join him in his well-thought-out approach to eliminating negative media input.

Perhaps we all can take a lesson from HappyNews.com.

Things that we give little thought to when we are young often have a way of creeping into focus later in life. For instance, there is a certain age (you must fill in the number yourself) when healthcare all of a sudden become a valid topic of discussion.

There is the joke about the organ recital at the local nursing home. “My stomach hurts so much I…blah blah, blah”, “Oh I should be so lucky. My heart….blah blah, blah.” and on and on….

A friend of mine, (Let’s just say he listened to Winston Churchill’s radio addresses during WWII) sent me an email asking my opinion on energy medicine.  It was a good question.

Here was my response:

As for energy medicine, that all depends. Our bodies and actually the entire universe is energy (ie. atoms are not exactly solid stuff), MRI’s read energy, drugs effect change through energy and chiropractic restores energy flow to and from the nerves. That said “energy medicine” has become a “code word” for some occult practices that really are no more energy related than more traditional therapies.

Please avoid things like New Age Healing, Reiki and Pendulums as any power they have to heal is not universal (at best it’s psychological and at worse it’s demonic).

On the other hand, there are subtle healing techniques that could be classified as energy medicine that should not be discounted. Some interesting and legitimate examples are cold laser, infrared (and other light energies) some massage therapy, some acupuncture, and some magnetic devices (beware of some multilevel vendors).

I hope this will help you. I might write a post on this. It’s a good topic and we are always learning the value of energy in healthcare practice. But if our minds are too open our brain falls out…something to avoid.”

Not many things will cause me to get up at three in the morning. Even fewer will cause me to set my alarm.

An awesome celestial event is usually one of those things. First, before I wake up the household, I always check the night sky to make certain we’re not socked in with cloud cover. Then around I go in a hushed excited voice, “Wow, you need to see this. It’s amazing!”

Like the pied piper I amass a dependable following. Our blanket wrapped bodies press tightly together on the back deck. “It’s so still and quiet out.” My daughter remarks as she huddles down content to hang in there until she’s seen it all.

If “eager to see” and “craving sleep” can be used in the same sentence it would explain why our youngest son quietly repeats my wakeup call of, “It’s amazing!” (read: conservation of thought). Like my wife, he doesn’t want to miss out on the experience, but is willing to grab it in a sleepish state and get back to bed.

Seconds before the total eclipse of the moon our daughter says, “I thought animals go crazy and do strange things before an eclipse.” Pulling from my knowledge on such matters, I explain that solar eclipses do that. When the moon is eclipsed by the earth it’s just slow and subtle. Probably doesn’t disturb the natural instincts of any animals. Just then the coyotes in the woods below our house erupt into eerie howls and yelps. We had to laugh at their timing. They humble me and correct my assumption on the spot. We both smile armed with our new knowledge that coyotes are like druids announcing signs they cannot understand.

Our dogs stir uncomfortably, a lone car drives by and for an instant we forget about the moon as it continues its majestic dance with the Earth. We comment on the lights around our rural neighborhood. “Do you remember how dark it used to be when we first moved here?” I ask her. “Kind of.” She says.

The kids were very little when I woke them to see their first meteor shower. She admits little recollection of those early nighttime events. It’s not surprising; she was usually snuggled in my arms more asleep than awake.

Many years have passed since it was really dark at night around our Island home. Next month she’ll start her junior year in college and I have the bitter-sweet realization that she’ll be moving away soon. She must be thinking that too as she begins to reminisce about family, camp fires and points out new homes that have been built around us as she has grown up.

The stillness returns and our gaze is drawn back to the spectacle of the orange-red disc that looks too unreal to be our moon. Truly amazing! The event is not fully over, in many ways it never will be, but we decide to call it good and return to our warm beds.

At first I cannot sleep, but I’m happy I set my alarm. There’s a peace which fills my heart as I’m willing to accept the predictable order and infinite magnitude of the heavens. I’m happy to be allowed to hear God’s quiet shout with my own eyes…

This is my tapestry. I am the creator. I made this for you and all of mankind.

With all my Love, God

During my second year as an ocean lifeguard, the North Beach Lieutenant (my boss), paired me with a rookie who was an amazing loser. It would have been one thing if his only vice was being hung-over when he came to work; or if he was just preoccupied with talking about girl’s boobs; or if he wore mirrored sunglasses so he could nap without anybody knowing; or if he simply never watched the water. Any one of those irritants, I could have dealt with.

Phil came with ALL these problems at once. Oh, and one other interesting handicap as well. It’s one you probably won’t believe, but its a major part of my story so I’m going to tell you anyway …he couldn’t swim.

Sure, it seemed incongruous to me too. People go to the beach and think that the lifeguards are highly trained professionals who will be there at a moments notice when needed. In fairness, you’re mostly right if you think that. Out of the seventy member of our Beach Patrol I would have trusted everyone with my life, except the incompetent who sat next to me.

To give credit to my boss, there was some logic to the Pope – Loser combination. I was one of the better swimmers on the beach at that time. The street at which my stand was positioned was in close proximity to the channel which separated North Wildwood and Stone Harbor. A strong swimmer was ideal for this position and it was also the place for an extremely attentive guard who could keep bathers away from trouble in the first place.

So, here is why it makes some sense to place someone with their “beginner’s card” on my stand. Since the water got so deep so fast not much swimming was required to get totally wet.

When we had to go get somebody, Phil, my looser partner, would make a show with flags and whistles (read: stall) until the two requisite guards dove in from the adjoining stands. (Note: Beach policy was four guards in the water for the first victim.) Then at the last minute, he would plunge himself into the water holding on to his can (rescue buoy) for dear life and immediately kick back to the sandy bank. That way he got wet and could run over to the rest of us (also wet) and help escort the victim onto dry land. It was a great sham, but one day it didn’t work out.

Everything began as usual. I warned a bather, “The sand disappears about a foot from the waters edge.” I took my jacket off, got down from the stand and placed the whistle in my mouth and the bather responded back to me with a “Splash-Plop” and the ocean temporarily swallowed him up, just like all the others who didn’t believe me (It was always men). I called the run and reached the startled victim within seconds. A guard from each of the stand on either side of us was not far behind.

Normally, with a short distance, we’d all swim the victim to shore. Phil (dripping wet) would help us drag the victim out. A crowd would gather and always applaud our effort. (Once, an appreciative bather brought each of us a cold can of beer after a run. Phil drank his before the guy made it back to his blanket.)

But, this particular day the outgoing tide was at its peak and consequently we all got sucked out to sea incredibly fast. Our stooge held back as long as he dare, but if any should-be-rescuer was dry at the end of a run it could mean their job (unlike drinking a beer on duty – 1980). So Phil jumped into the water, kicked like hell to get back to shore, but he was no match for the strong current (none of us were). These washes don’t last forever and after about two hundred yards our ride was over and we were spit out of the torrent.

The victim stayed relatively calm as I had him in the official “bear-hug of life”, which was good since Phil was on the verge of panic as he hacked at the water with no effect. One of the other guards went to calm Phil and the two of them caught up to us when the current spit them out too. As expected, in a short time one of the beach patrol life boats (think row…row…row) approached our little clutch beyond the waves.

The victim always got a ride back to shore, sometimes the primary rescuer (to assist the victim in transit) but this time it was clear Phil had to go. Our Lieutenant was one of the guards who rowed out and he was clearly pissed off when Phil grabbed the gunwale of the boat and pulled himself in. He looked at me and growled, “Lead them back.”

Not one of us wanted to be in that boat. I had petitioned to get a new stand partner for most of a month and now I knew Phil was wearing the blue shorts and red top colors of the Beach Patrol for the last time.

I led a slow course diagonally into the shore to avoid the powerful current of the channel. When I got back to my stand all of Phil’s gear was gone.

Soon the lieutenant parked his blood red Jeep right behind my stand. It was a little unnerving as he didn’t get out nor utter a word. For hours he sat there. About fifteen minutes before knockoff, the lieutenant got out of the Jeep climbed up onto the stand and sat beside me. He stared at the waves for a few long moments. When he finally spoke, he granted me a rite that only the most senior guards had, “Who do you want as your stand partner?”

Ranald wrote me with this link since he is aware that I have an interest in Scottish Highland Cattle. It’s not as acute as my interest in other things that move among my Scottish genes — I pride myself as an amateur economist (a bow to Adam Smith) and delight the Scottish connection to everything important.  I felt compelled to, at least, pass on this ElectricScotland page with you.

I was immediately mooooved by reading the text. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) At first I just sped through it with casual interest, as one might read any agricultural bulletin. When I found my heart rate leaping and my eyes getting misty, I knew this was not your typical newsy farm read. Here is my proof; when was the last time you read something like this?

Altogether, it may safely be said that there are few breeds of cattle which are so graceful in form and colour, and so majestic in gait and movement as a thoroughly well-bred Highland bull or ox, cow, or heifer.

All I could do is take a deep breath, slow down and digest the detail and the passion of the author and his purposeful and insightful words. Now, you probably think I’m making fun…I’m not. This is amazing and if you like thoughtful, intelligent prose with a practical application and historical perspective you must give it a read.

Another aspect is that it is chock full of advice which is free of the harassment of political correctness. You cannot get that at any price in the United States of America any longer.

When winter snows occur, hay or even straw should be liberally supplied, for it is at such times that the animals need the support their own “niggard plains deny.”

As testament to the embarrassing, embarrassment that us yanks always seem to manage eg. The David Howard incident mostly because we place hyper-sensitive illiterates in high regard and in powerful places.

But alas, let all that fall away and just read and enjoy what happens when real people, write about real things that matter a great deal.

Enjoy!

The Link: http://www.electricscotland.com/agriculture/page8.htm

*Read it, and you’ll understand my title.