Joy Zone Blog: Food-Cooking

Showing posts with label Food-Cooking. Show all posts

Cooking In Our Genes

By White Feather

I was thinking about how the love of food and cooking passes down through families. So I decided to take a peek at the kitchens in my family tree.

The farthest I can go back is my maternal grandparent’s kitchen in their apartment in the old town part of Heidelberg, Germany. It was actually my grandfather’s kitchen since he did most of the cooking. He had a very strong passion for cooking and I think I may have inherited that from him since no one else in my family tree had the same passion.... Keep Reading

Can a Weed Keep You Healthy?

By DoctorLynn

Photo courtesy of Unsplash

When we think of weeds we usually think of them as something that needs to be removed so plants can grow. But many weeds are actually medicinal and health supporting. One such weed is watercress.

Although watercress is a weed, it’s not just any weed. It’s packed with youth giving antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. This wondrous weed can be found growing alongside streams and riverbeds in nearly every U.S. state..... Keep reading

Impress Your Dinner Guests With This Recipe From the Movie 'Burnt'

If you have not yet seen the movie, Burnt, then you should.

If you are a foodie in any way it is a must-see movie.

And if you are planning a dinner party with friends who are movie buffs

then here is an opportunity to impress them

with this recipe from the movie starring Bradley Coooper

that has been a huge hit among both movie-goers and foodies....

Awesome recipe from the movie, Burnt.

Fried Baloney Sandwiches

By White Feather

Have you ever had a fried baloney sandwich? When was the last time you had one?

What is a fried baloney sandwich, you ask? It involves two slices of bread, two thick slices of baloney, two slices of American cheese and a healthy dollop of Grey Poupon mustard. The baloney is fried in a skillet. After it turns a slice of cheese is put on it to melt. Once the baloney is nice and almost crispy and the cheese is oozing they are placed atop each other between two slices of untoasted bread with Grey Poupon mustard dumped liberally to the underside of the top piece of bread.

That is how I used to eat it as a kid anyway. I have no idea how other people make them.

I was a kid and was profoundly ignorant of any connection between food and health. To me, then, they were a celebratory treat, reserved for special occasions. Can you imagine that? Fried baloney sandwiches being 'special?'

Now, as a know-it-all adult, I can't imagine putting one of them in my mouth. I mean, really! But there have been a few extremely rare occurrences when I threw caution to the wind and succumbed to the allure of the fried baloney sandwich for the sake of nostalgia.

One of those times was when I found myself staring at a package of baloney while shopping at the grocery store. I don't know why I was looking at the baloney because that is something I never buy. I don't know what I was thinking. Perhaps the stars were all out of alignment that day or something. That's back when I was a stay-at-home parent being a servant to a five-year-old girl.

When I got home from the grocery store the baloney was in one of the bags. And yes, it was on the long curly receipt. In trance, perhaps, I purchased baloney and then I prepared fried baloney sandwiches for lunch one day for my little girl.

To my horror, she really, really liked them! I slapped my forehead, "What had I done? Was I planting the seed of unhealthy eating patterns? Was I opening the door to a lifetime addiction? Was I setting a bad example? Was I compromising my daughter's health in any way? As you can see, my noggin was quite active back then. I couldn't get it to shut off sometimes.

Luckily, I did not panic. I resolved to eat the rest of that package of baloney and then be done with it. So for three days my little master and I lunched on fried baloney sandwiches. We never bought baloney again.

Well, except for that one time..... My daughter was nineteen, fresh out of high school. She was living with her soul-mate/husband to be. This was after her parents divorced. She would regularly visit both parents and when she came by to have lunch with me one time she had a grocery bag with her. Inside it was a package of baloney.

With the package of baloney in one hand and a smile/smirk on her face, she said, "I want you to teach me how to make fried baloney sandwiches like you made for us that time."

That was about as close to a heart attack as I've come. I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. She remembered.

She remembered!

Without giving any thought whatsoever to the vital nutritional and vibratory state of baloney, I eagerly indulged an impromptu fried baloney sandwich making class then pigged out on fried baloney sandwiches with my grown-up daughter. She remembered! Fried baloney sandwiches may not be very healthy but that particular day they were extraordinarily healthy.

She remembered.

I've been thinking about calling my daughter all day today. I want to ask her if she has ever made fried baloney sandwiches for her two daughters. If not, I think I'll invite them all over for lunch someday soon.

© Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.

More Articles By White Feather

Pricks and Pain

By White Feather

The neural synapses in our noggins that register sexual pleasure also register pain. There is no difference in the initial registration. It's the same thing. Subsequent noggin activity then measures the impulses and gauges them as to how they fit into the spectrum, or octave, of vibrations. The noggin then goes through its files to see what matches up with the particular vibration and then responds accordingly. The files we have for any level of vibration generally are a history, or conditioning, of how we have reacted to that particular vibration in the past. That conditioning is very much tied into our belief system. We can say that beliefs are thoughts that have been repeated so many times that they become automatic responses. They are like a file that immediately pops up in reaction to certain vibratory impulses registered by the noggin.

So if we believe that if someone hits us with a hammer that we will feel intense pain then we will experience intense pain. If we believe that if someone hits us with a hammer that we will get sexually aroused then we will get sexually aroused.

I recently read an article about hot chile peppers that was written by someone who abhors hot chile peppers and hates any food that is "hot." In the article, they said that our tongue has taste receptors and it has pain receptors. "Normal" food is sensed and tasted by those taste receptors but the hotness of hot chile peppers is registered by the pain receptors. The person who wrote the article said that anytime he ate anything that was "hot" that it "hurt." The pain receptors in our mouth were registering pain, not flavor. So therefore anyone who likes the hotness of hot chile peppers likes pain and is a masochist.

Well! You can just call me a masochist then because I love hot chile peppers. But the way I see it, when we eat food that food has vibrations that run the full length of food vibrations. Sweet foods vibrate at a certain level, salty food vibrates at a certain level, and so forth. Likewise, spicy hot food also vibrates at a certain level. The sensors on our tongue are equipped to register the full spectrum of vibrations. The sensors sense but it is the noggin and its conditioning that classifies and responds to the vibrations being sensed. Most people are conditioned to partake of only a narrow part of the overall spectrum of food vibrations. Hot chile peppers vibrate at the far end of the spectrum while most people are conditioned to stay within a narrow band in the middle of the entire spectrum. So anything outside of their conditioned comfort zone of vibrations is seen as "bad" or as a threat or as pain, which is seen as "bad." So what this article writer was classifying as pain was something that was simply outside his conditioned comfort zone of vibrations. What to him was pain, to me is an orgasmic culinary experience.

It all depends on how one looks at things and that is usually determined by how one is conditioned to look at things.

While we are on the subject of noggins I want to relate something I learned recently. There has been a lot of scientific breakthroughs in recent years concerning noggin science. One particular research study was attempting to figure how long it took for a nerve impulse to travel from a finger that had been pricked to the noggin and then how long the noggin took to assimilate the impulse and react. It was believed that as soon as a finger was pricked a nerve impulse immediately traveled from the finger to the brain where it was registered and then another nerve impulse would shoot back down to the finger where it registered as pain. This happens so quickly that it seems instantaneous.

Well, the researchers wanted to find out exactly how quickly this happens. To their surprise they learned that the sequence of events is not what we thought. They discovered that the noggin actually registered the finger prick BEFORE it happened and it sent the nerve impulse down to the finger just in time to meet the actual pricking.

Isn't that interesting? Does it mean that we are all psychic? Is it indicative of the possibility that we all create our realities? By the way, the test subjects were blindfolded and had no way of knowing when the prick was coming. Could this be an important discovery with mind-blowing consequences?
I guess it all depends on how you look at it.

© Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.

P. S. By the way, chile (with an e at the end) refers to a vegetable known as a chile pepper. Chili (with an i at the end) refers to a tomato-based meat stew (such as that found on a chili dog). This has been the proper usage of the two words for many, many years but chili (with an i at the end) has been incorrectly used so much in recent years that the newest dictionaries have started to accept it as a spelling attached to the chile pepper vegetable in addition to the meat stew. I may be silly but I am a hot chile pepper afficionado and I cling tenaciously to the older correct spelling usages.

More Articles By White Feather

The Thai Mango

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The Thai Mango

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Do you like Thai food? Do you want to eat less meat?

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The Health Benefits of Buckwheat Honey

If you are a honey-lover you will find this article most interesting:

The Health Benefits of Buckwheat Honey

Do You Eat Sprouts?

After reading this delightful and informative article

you may want to start eating more sprouts:

Sprouts Nutrition: The Health Benefits of Eating Sprouts

Seafood Risotto: An Interesting History

How much do you know about seafood risotto?

Seafood Risotto: An Interesting history

The Food of Northern Thailand

The foods available in Northern Thailand must rank among the most interesting and amazing in the world. There are influences from throughout Asia including China and India and the fragrant dishes of Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and Southern Thailand (the old Siam). It is a giddy mixture and a life's work to get to know and understand them all.....

Keep reading: The Food of Northern Thailand