Mundanity

Just trivial news of the moment:

Afghan finished!

A much easier "pattern" than the huge one I made before.  My concession to planning was to make the same three stripes on each end, but from there in, it's random! It's a much more reasonable size.  Those stripes that look white are actually light blue.  My camera's white-balance needs adjusting which I might get around to....

We're going on the Mediterranean diet.  Our first two meals were happily excellent!

Day One, and leftovers for another day, consisted of

Cinnamon Scented Chicken

and

Balsamic Roasted Vegetables.

My Opinion - Great!  And the two dishes were a nice complementary pairing.  The chicken was indeed mostly scented. It smelled but did not taste particularly cinnamon-y, but had a tart lemon/curry/herb sauce, while the veggies, despite the balsamic vinegar, were savory-sweet, possibly because of the vegetables we picked: butternut squash, beets, carrots.  Other choices might be more balsamic.

The chicken recipe came from this cookbook which we had on hand. It's older and out of print, though used copies are out there and I can recommend the healthiness and the tastiness of the recipes -- but not the "Quick" part.  Delicious recipes but the title lies about prep time!  Takes a lot longer.

 Roasted Vegetables found here.

Day Two -- also from our single Mediterranean cookbook, above, and also with generous leftovers -- was turkey cutlets and sauteed pears over couscous.

My Opinion -- Next time we will double the sauce.  But even with too little, it had an appealing flavor that seemed very mild at first, but still made me want more and more of it!

There you have it.  Needlework and cooking.  If they try to shoehorn me into the Proverbs 31 Woman Club, I will scream obscenities and declare my love for female leadership, sleeping late, and gay rights, and make sure they eject me. Oh, and I will fink on Larry, too, who did plenty of the cooking.

 Speaking of not toeing the gender-role line, people are changing their Facebook icons to support gay marriage, and I decided to participate in my own snarky way, though I am not entirely happy with my lopsided symbol drawing:

Dear Kroger - Thank you!

Dear Kroger Stores:

     Thank you for Nutty Nuggets.

    Original Grape Nuts is now the Late, Great.  But you still offer a version of it. Nice and simple and soy free. And I am grateful.

Sincerely,
A Happy Customer.

Now with Totalitarian Protein!

It might seem trivial, but one of the few favorite cereals I get to eat on occasion is now gone.

I really need to avoid sugar.  Artificial sweeteners are getting more and more bad press, and even health-food cereals tend to have allegedly-healthier sugar-products ("evaporated cane juice," etc.) in them.

But there was Grape-Nuts.  Yeah, yeah, and there's still Shredded Wheat but that's like eating all-weather carpeting.

When I wanted a healthy carb blowout, Grape-Nuts with a little stevia, some sliced peaches, and whole milk -- not cruddy skim -- were healthy and still a treat.

I ran out.  I went to the store. And there was the new and Damnably Improved Grape-Nuts, now infused with .....

soy protein.

Now it has been decided for me that I MUST have protein in my cereal.

If I want protein with my cereal, I will have a goddam egg. Oh wait, that means choosing for myself.  Whatever was I thinking?

I wrote them a letter. It's pasted here.  I'd have improved the wording some if I'd taken more time, but it's adequate:

I am furious to discover that you have put soy protein into Grape-Nuts cereal.  Many of us are allergic or sensitive to soy.  You seem to think that i must have protein in my cereal. Soy gives me migraines and digestion problems. Soy is being forced on consumers in products to which it has NO relevance and does not belong,

I cannot understand this. Adding a protein-infused product would make business sense but REPLACING basic Grape-Nuts with this grain-plus-soy product does not.

It matters because there are not many unsweetened cereal choices.  Cereals without *any* sweeteners do exist, but there aren't many, and Grape-Nuts was my favorite. Nothing was better with some peaches and milk.  Now I have to give it up.

PLEASE restore original, SIMPLE Grape-Nuts to your product line.

I expect to get nowhere, and can always go to the health food store, or to another grocery that stocks a whole foods section. Cascadia Farms or Health Valley, or whatever brand does their own barley-nugget-cereal version, does exist and is still nice basic "It's carb because carb is what cereal is, OH-frikkin-Kay?"  

I hope and pray.  Because natural-food producers are apparently as much in the soy-lobby's iron grip as Big Food is. The soy lobby isn't funny.  They see to it that their beans are forced on us in every bizarre way, shape, and form.  They convinced Amy's Organic foods to add tofu, of all obnoxious things, to bean-and-cheese products, like those aren't basic vegetable protein, some with dairy protein, dishes already.

Ever looked at your salad dressing label?  Most of the organic/health food dressings are soybean-oil based, just like Kraft, Hidden Valley, et al. I found a couple that aren't, in 2 different stores.  Bless these companies, and bless any store that stocks at least some alternative to soy:

With canola oil!

Remember Mazola corn oil margarine? From back about 40 years ago? Have you tried lately to find any margarine that's not soybean oil?

I am fed up with soybean farmers and their stranglehold on US food production.

Fed.

Up.

All I can do is say my piece and then go buy something else. Maybe finding food should be a hard job again.  They make it easy for us First Worlders, and we just smile and put it in the shopping cart, and stop casting critical eyes on them.  I've been as complacent as anybody.