Preparing to lose your luggage

No, I am not suggesting that you should lose your luggage. However, after my mother's luggage was lost on the outbound trip, and mine on the way back, and since everyone we talked to had similar stories, and as there was a line when I went to report my missing bag, well, it's at least wise to consider the possibility. There are things I would have liked to have done differently.

First of all, I really wanted my toothbrush. I grew desperate for it. And there was no reason not to have it. You can get a toothbrush through security. When packing, it just made sense (I thought) to keep the toothbrush with the toothpaste, and face cream and hair conditioner, because those are all things that I use in about the same time and place.

Wrong! Because while toothpaste without a toothbrush has limited value, it can nonetheless be a huge relief to be able to brush your teeth in the absence of toothpaste, and it is more practical to borrow someone else's paste than their brush. Keep it in your carry on.

Secondly, if you have multiple checked bags, it is a good idea to split up clothes among them. I felt guilty having fresh clothes when my mother didn't. We could have shared that burden. Is it more work? Yes, but seriously, this is really common. The staff doesn't even feign sympathy at this point. Granted, I don't want fake sympathy nearly as much as I wanted that luggage, but this happens! Protect yourself!

Also, consider at least putting a change of underwear in  your carry on. There's not a lot of room, and it's a pain, but there is worse pain, lurking around the baggage carousel, and it's coming for you.

Okay. I'm a little scarred, and possibly a little paranoid now. It doesn't mean I'm wrong.

Really getting serious about food storage

This post is inspired by this article, especially the headline:

"We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say"

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/we-are-now-one-year-and-counting-from-global-riots-complex-systems-theorists-say--2?

The problem is that it seems so close, and so completely logical. Certainly, it is likely that it will hit other areas before it hits here. Even with the issue of how misapplication of the Farm Bill leads to the bread basket of the USA being planted with corn crops that are unfit for consumption except as converted into high fructose corn syrup, I love in the beautiful and farm-friendly Pacific Northwest. However, the changes in the weather patterns are causing problems for them too. Sometimes you don't remember how fragile everything can be.

Something I had been thinking about doing lately is making up a list of what I would want in a year's supply, and then acquiring it. We have food storage now, but it could be better organized, and more complete.

So that's the next project. I will calculate the amounts and items that we want, and start building that up. It won't be that different from what I have been doing, but this is a higher level of organization, commensurate with the higher level of urgency.

I'm going to have to look at gardening too, and clearing out spaces for storage. Some things seem impractical, but I will take that as it comes. A year is not a bad amount of time for getting a good supply in, but the clock is ticking.

Preparing to leave the country

I just think you should always have a passport. I have written about this before, but it's been a while, and it's worth revisiting.

It started when an exchange student from Oregon turned up missing in South America, and one news item I read about was a senator helping her parents expedite their passports so they could go down there. That's right, to get out of the country, you need a passport, and it takes time to get one. That time can be shortened with the help of someone in Congress, and honestly, you don't have to know them personally, because in the case of a high profile story like that, pathways will open up. However, that's still a delay.

Think how much easier it is to just have your passports on hand! Passports are an excellent form of picture ID that are good for ten years. Not having a driver's license, I use mine for everything, but it will also let me leave the country, which your driver's license would not.

What the exchange student's case teaches us (and she turned up fine, so that was okay) is that sometimes you need to leave suddenly, for someone you care about. You could have children as exchange students, siblings in the military, parents on a mission, or good friends on vacation, and something suddenly comes up where you want to be there. That is going to be stressful no matter what, but this is one hurdle you can easily remove in advance.

And then, once you have the passport ready in case of emergency, you can also leave just for fun. Seriously, sometimes there are great travel deals, and you can go to Iceland for $400 or something ridiculous like that, and you are ready, because you have the passport. Those really good prices are often time dependent, and it can take a few months to get a passport, or you will have to expedite, which is expensive. Just get it now and be ready.


So having your passport ready is sound advice, and the key point I wanted to make. It is certainly not the only thing that is valuable for traveling overseas, but then once you open up the broader topic, there are a lot of variations. Traveling to Canada has some differences from traveling to Cambodia or Cameroon. However, you can look up all of those at http://www.state.gov/.

The State Department web site lists travel advisories, embassy locations, visa and immunization requirements, and this will give you a good starting place for wherever you want to go.

There is something to be said for being a ready-for-anything kind of traveler too, even in Canada, and so I have a few book recommendations there. And really, these books are good for non-travelers too, but I think it's fair to say that any survival abilities that are good for everyday life are doubly valuable for you when you are abroad and out of your comfort zone, so here we go.

The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence, by Gavin De Becker
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why, by Amanda Ripley
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht (they do have a travel-specific version, but there are travel tips in the original)

Bon Voyage!

Efficiently inefficient

I have not weighed myself for a few weeks now. I had said the date that I would weigh, and I wanted to get into that a little.

On May 15th my mother and I take off to see her family in Italy, and then we come back on the 22nd. I want to weigh on the 15th, and then the 23rd. I just want to see how my weight does on vacation.

The reason for this is that I usually lose a little or at least hold steady on vacation. We may be eating really good food, and we usually are, but I am moving around a lot. It turns out, I probably should have been a park ranger.

Working fast food and retail at the start of my work career, my feet and legs would be dead after standing at a cash register for hours at a time. A desk job seemed really appealing. At one point though, I noticed how well I was doing on vacations, for both weight and blood sugar, and how much getting out in fresh air cheers me up, regardless of the weather, and yeah, park ranger.

It is a little bit late for me to reinvent myself that much. Most of the things that I am good at, and a lot of the things I love, are things that are done sitting down. What I am trying to do now is to not get into these ruts where I do not move, and to move more, even at times when I don't have to.

Drinking a lot of water can be good for that, because then you remember needing to get up. Also, and this is kind of what the title is getting at, sometimes it is best to be inefficient.

Sure, I could fold all of the laundry, sort it into piles, and then stack the piles and take them to their destinations, and that is faster. Maybe there is more benefit for me in taking things as I fold them, and making many trips.

(I can't make this work for unloading groceries though. There are some weird pride things going on there, where I need to be carrying four bags or it doesn't feel right.)

Sometimes you are simply remembering that one goal (getting the work done) is not your only goal (being fit, being happy). This is why sometimes I have projects I want to work on, but I realize my family needs me, and I watch television with them. Yesterday I came home from getting things done and fell asleep for two hours. It wasn't what I planned to do, but I was exhausted, and I felt better afterwards.

I cherish my accomplishments, but they can't be all I am. I have to have my relationships, and my health, and my balance.

I'm not doing a good job of explaining this, but maybe this will help. I was reading a book about fossil fuel use, and the author's point was that efficiency gets you used up. If you efficiently harvest all the fish or all the trees or all the fossil fuels, that just gets you depleted faster. The inefficiencies that are built in are what preserve the balance. Some fish get eaten, but some escape and breed. The trees die slowly enough for new ones to grow. The difference forces balance each other, and this balance leads to sustainability.

So, I am trying to be sustainable, and that means many different things.

Fruits and vegetables in season

I sort of wanted to finish up going over other ways of adding fruits and vegetables to your meals. We haven't really covered roasting, soups, stews, or casseroles. It just doesn't feel right to do it now.

I suppose some of that comes from recent experience. There was a recipe that I wanted to try for soup where I actually had all of the ingredients. It had baking potatoes, sweet potatoes, and ham, as well as some milk and broth. The weather had been fairly grey and cool, but the day when I actually cooked it, it started to get sunny and bright, and it just wasn't as well received. It wasn't exactly too warm to cook or eat soup, but it was getting there.

With a slow cooker you can in some ways get around the issue of heating the house too much in warm weather, but still, there is a feeling that it is not the right time of year for pork roast with carrots and potatoes. Now, if instead that was slow cooker pulled pork, and you served it on hamburger buns, it feels completely different.

Obviously, a lot of it is psychological. And, yesterday I was talking to someone who had just come from Montreal where everything is frozen, and some double potato and ham chowder would probably be well received there. Here, I think we are just going to have French toast tonight, but I am planning on cutting up some bananas and oranges.

That probably still sounds not as healthy as it could be, but we are looking at working with what you have and then making improvements. As we move into summer, we use the oven less and skillets more, and that feels right. Because of this, we eat a lot of breakfast type meals. We never actually have these things for breakfast (no time), so it works out. We will also do more sandwiches, and stir-frys, and salads. Some of these will be fairly healthy, some of them will be delicious, and if I can hit both healthy and delicious, it feels like a win.

Part of this is being able to enjoy what is fresh and in season and local. Clearly, our oranges and bananas are not. However, I have found that it is never worth buying strawberries from California. Wait until they are in season here. We used to freeze them, but they don't thaw well, so all you can do is make jam, pouring in a lot of sugar, and we like raspberry jam better anyway. So, we eat fresh strawberries for about a month and then we are done for the year.

I do still freeze blueberries and blackberries. They thaw differently, especially depending on how you freeze them, and they make good pies. This does involve a lot of sugar, but feels worth it.

As you focus more on fresh and local, you can work out a nice variety. Asparagus are special when  you have them, because in a little while, you won't. However, then you start getting summer squash, and corn.

It will not always make things less expensive, but you should find your produce to be better tasting, and that makes getting it eaten easier.

Obviously a garden can be a great way of having fresh produce and being in touch with the seasons. I have been very happy with Early Girl cherry tomatoes and Quinault strawberries. I have also not kept either of them going, and gardening is a weak point for me. I should fix that, but for now, at least we live in a great area for agriculture. There are farmers' markets, fruit stands, and U-pick fields all over the Metro area, not to mention multiple options for Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs).

http://www.tricountyfarm.org/

You can find something that will work for you.

Smoothies and purees for camouflage

These are the two that I don't personally do, but it's because I don't necessarily need them, and other people might.

The purees came from a cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld, Deceptively Delicious. Two of the Seinfeld children were very picky eaters, and there was an enormous amount of frustration in getting vegetables into their growing bodies. Noticing once that the pureed squash that she was making for the baby was the same color as the macaroni and cheese she was making for the rest of the family led to a new strategy.

I feel some sympathy because I had some strong food prejudices as a child. Actually, I still have a few left. Since there are several vegetables that I will gladly eat, though, and since there is some initial prep work involved, I have not gone ahead and tried any of the recipes.

However, if you have vegetable averse children, this could be a great option, and the initial work of pureeing the various vegetables so you can add them while cooking is probably a good time investment. I have to say that the book is well-written, and gives you clear steps. Vegetables you will use include avocados, beets, broccoli, butternut squash, carrots, cauliflowers, peas, red bell peppers, spinach, sweet potatoes, and zucchini and summer squash. (There are also some fruit purees, which I do not consider as significant, and I will get to that in a moment.)

There are recipes I would like to use, for my own specific needs. Truly, I have no problem eating carrots and sweet potatoes. We do that all the time. I also do not want to eat cauliflower under any circumstances; I don't care if it has a disguise. Spinach and squash are things that I eat, but I don't really like to. If disguises would make them more palatable, there could be something to that.

Also, there are foods where extra nutrition might be valuable, so brownies with carrots and spinach, or cupcakes with pumpkin and squash, might have some merit, both by adding vitamins and ending up with less calories. So, that's something to think about.

The reason I don't worry about fruits so much is because people tend to like eating them. They have higher amounts of natural sugars, making them sweeter, and usually the way they get prepared, whether for baking or preserving, is to add significantly more sugar. It seems best to just eat them fresh, or to add them into salads.

So, while I enjoy the occasional fruit smoothie, it's not something that I need in my life to increase my fruit intake, and it's not a way that I want to take in vegetables. Nonetheless, smoothies were quite popular in the group I was working with, especially green smoothies.

Part of the deal with this is that kale thickens up really nicely, making it easy to work with in terms of getting the right smoothie texture, as well as being high in calcium, beta carotene, vitamins C and K, and other nutrients. It sounds great, it's just not a direction I want to go.

I still see it's value, especially after a friend had a child with an overly sensitive gag reflex. Various food textures would trip him up, and she needed to find ways to make it easier for him to eat, and that involved a lot of pureeing and blending.

So, even though I am not using these two methods, I appreciate them. If they will work for you, I want you to know about them. I do not believe in only one true way to eat vegetables. I think that's rather mature of me.

Grilling and stir frying vegetables

We actually don't have a grill, so this is not something I work with a lot. However, I know there are people who love it, and grill meats all the time. As long as you're out there, why not add some produce?

Yes, you can have your salad, and tomato slices and lettuce leaves to go with your hamburgers, and that is something. Realistically, though, for your best health you should be eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, and that does not come naturally to many. Adding variety, and making things more delicious, helps a lot.

Since we want the results to be delicious, a little preparation, rather than randomly slapping anything out of the vegetable crisper on the grill, is advisable.

http://www.recipetips.com/kitchen-tips/t--857/grilling-fruits-and-vegetables.asp

I like this page because it gives a general overview to keep in mind what your principles are, and then it gives you some specifics. With a little searching you can find many more recipes. For just a few other thoughts, grilled fruit served with ice cream can evoke pie, while being less work than pie, and skewers are fun to eat, and can be a balanced meal on a stick.

Do plan in advance. If vegetables are better grilled over medium heat, and fruits are better over a lower, indirect heat, then you are planning a progression, including the meat, for what goes on when.

I do stir fry. One of the great things about stir frying is its flexibility. You can do all sorts of combinations. It can be vegetarian, or not. You could do a surf and turf stir fry if you wanted to, with steak strips and shrimp, and it would work. You can probably sneak in new vegetables for experimenting, without causing too much trouble. You can add noodles for starch, or serve it with rice. This is a great chance to customize, and find the combinations that work best for you.

The main thing to be aware of is that based on density and water content, different things have different cooking times. For example, one common combination I will do is chicken, mushrooms, and spinach. The chicken goes in first, making sure it is thoroughly cooked. (Always make sure your meat is cooked!) Then the mushrooms go in, getting done much more quickly, and then the spinach is done almost the moment it goes in, as it starts to wilt.

There are probably some ingredients where pre-cooking, like blanching or steaming, would make them work better, but I like keeping things easy, so I stick with foods that I can just throw in the pan.

Speaking of pans, you may be tempted to use a wok. A wok was designed for sitting in a depression, where the heat would be coming up all around. On a regular stove, on a stand lifting it up, you're missing out on a lot of the heat. I just use a nice big skillet with high sides, because low sides let a lot out of the pan as you're stirring, which is messy and annoying.

One interesting thing that I read when I was preparing for the presentation is a suggestion that it is fine to cook the different elements separately and then mix them together if you are worried about undercooking or overcooking something. If that will make you feel safer, do it. (I cook boldly, which generally works well but I have had some spectacular fails.)

Again, you can find a lot of recipes here. (You can also find frozen kits that are ready to go.) I don't think I've ever looked up a recipe for a stir fry, but if you are looking for ideas, I recommend visiting your local Mongolian grill, which will not really be representative of Mongolian food or grilling, but that's okay, you know what I mean.

Notice that carrots are sliced paper thin. You can do that, or slice them into slivers. Anything bigger and they will not cook well fresh, though if you have frozen diced ones, they may do okay.Broccoli is pretty solid, so it takes longer to cook. Slicing it down into smaller bits helps. The sizes and thicknesses of their vegetables are based on what will work well.

Their meat is different, because they have it sliced more like cold cuts almost, but you will notice that they separate the meat from the noodles and the vegetables, so that they can make sure the meat gets thoroughly cooked. Nothing makes you regret a meal like food poisoning.

(Also, you will see that even though they focus on the meat first, and then the vegetables, everything is on the heat at the same time, and you really don't need to worry too much about overcooking.)

There will be good suggestions of sauces there. Some people measure very carefully, and they are probably wasting their time. You can experiment and see how much of a difference it makes. A good base for cooking at home is teriyaki sauce, but when we were out of that I did some research and found out that is just soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, so I added sugar to soy sauce, which we had a lot of.

The down side of this is that you may be horrified by the amount of sugar you are adding. Another good base is oyster sauce. I can see where different fruit sauces would be good, though probably also somewhat sugary. That is going to be very much a personal choice, and there is not a thing that you can eat that no one will be able to criticize. However, now that we have some ideas floating around, and ways to get more ideas, you start doing what works for you. It's all anyone can do.