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Sue Spitulnik

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We Eat That on Purpose

Do you like moldy cheese?  Not the kind that isn’t supposed to be discolored, but that beautiful blue color we look for on purpose to add to the Italian dressing on a tossed salad; you know, that costs anywhere from seventy-five cents to almost two dollars extra in a restaurant.  My husband and I do.  We also go to the public market to get a good deal on five-year old extra sharp cheddar cheese.  Yum.  My kids call it “stinky feet” cheese!

One advantage when you like moldy blue cheese comes when you are at a large party at a convention center or other large party place. It’s usually the cheese on the big cheese and cracker tray that is chosen least, so you can get your fill without a fight.  The only problem is it sometimes leaves a sour lingering aftertaste in your mouth.  The solution to that is another glass of good wine.  After all, it is a party.

I’m an old-fashioned wife, I still get up every work day morning with my husband and make his lunch while he showers.  It is always a salad; we buy those ingredients at the public market too.  The topping changes each day.  It could be tuna, beef, salami, left over Chinese, herring, salmon, chicken, whatever protein I can come up with.  The dressing is most often a homemade balsamic vinaigrette.  The cheese is alternated, Blue one day, and sharp cheddar the next.  He’s not a fussy man, and will eat most anything, that’s a blessing.  The only time I hear a complaint is when I forget the moldy cheese, or the onions!

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Double Bubble and Baseball

Today is National Mulled Cider Day.  I had intended to write about that yummy, refreshing cider that you simmer on the stove with orange peel, cinnamon, nutmeg and any other spice of your choice to fill the house with scents of fall and then enjoy the hot spicy flavor as it trickles down your throat, maybe accompanied by a fried cake doughnut, but Chewing Gum has much more interesting facts.

When I was a kid we had to choose between Double Bubble or Bazooka if we wanted a chewing gum to make big bubbles with.  I have a lot of hot air,  I was good at big bubbles.  Used to drive my mother nuts.  “If you are going to chew gum, KEEP YOUR MOUTH CLOSED!” I’ve become her, there is nothing more irritating to me than someone chewing gum with their mouth open and cracking it with every chew.  If I owned a retail store or a sports team, my employees would not be allowed to chew gum while on camera or while taking care of a customer.  In the dugout, or on the bench would be allowable.  According to the following facts, chewing gum is a stress reliever.  I’ll accept that, my rules would stay the same.

Various forms of chewing gum have existed since the Neolithic period. In 2007, a British archeology student discovered a 5,000-year-old piece of chewing gum which was made from bark tar with tooth imprints in it. Presumed to be the oldest piece of chewing gum, it was found in Kierikki, Yli-li, Finland.  Made from bark tar, the gum was believed to have antiseptic properties and other medicinal advantages.

  • Many other cultures chewed gum made from the resin of the mastic tree, from plants, grasses, and other resins.
  • In 1848, John B. Curtis developed and sold the first commercial chewing gum which was called “The State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum”.
  • Around 1850, a gum made from paraffin wax was developed and surpassed the spruce gum in popularity.
  • December 28, 1869, William Semple filed an early patent on chewing gum, patent number 98,304.
  • Studies show chewing gum helps improve memory, reduce stress and increase alertness.
  • Chewing sugar-free gum improves overall oral hygiene while also helping to curb cravings and improving digestion.

Do you know if you ever get lost in the woods and are thirsty or need to freshen your mouth you can take a wad of pine pitch off a pine tree and chew it.  If you happen to swallow it, it will pass through like other things do.  The myth that gum stays in your intestines is not true.  Have a colonoscopy and you can verify that.

Back to baseball.  There are less than five games left of the regular season, then the playoffs, and finally the World Series.  If you notice when they show the dugouts, where the teams sit for you non sports people, there are plastic buckets of  Bubble Yum.  The players seem to always be chewing on something.  I have even seen them popping a big bubble all over their face and trying to get the gum off before their next at-bat.  Keep in mind, they are mostly between the age of 20 and 40. (How they chew those sunflower seeds and spit the shells, I haven’t mastered.)

I should also mention Black Jack, Juicy Fruit, Spearmint, Dentyne, Big Red and Teaberry gum.  You have to be my age to remember some of those.  They weren’t good for blowing bubbles, and they lost their “flavor on the bedpost overnight”.

Afterthought….my husband’s favorite baseball team clinched their division.  He’s now rooting for best record.  Then we’ll move on to football coaches chewing their cud!

 

 

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VFW or Coffee? Why Not Both?

September 29, is National VFW Day and National Coffee Day.  It was hard to choose which to write about, so I decided to do a little of both.

The VFW was established on September 29, 1899, by a group of veterans from the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection. It has since grown to be the nation’s largest group of combat veterans. They continue “to honor the dead by helping the living.” The VFW promote patriotism, good will and youth scholarships. They also provide military assistance and community service programs, promote youth activities and volunteer many hours in their local communities.

VFW membership since its inception has been instrumental in the establishment of the Veterans Administration, the creation of the national cemetery system and passage of the GI Bill. Through the VFW, veterans honor veterans and serve their communities.  On National VFW Day, take a moment to recognize all the VFW does in your community.

I borrowed those two paragraphs from the National Day of calendar because I wanted to share the background of the organization and what it does.  The one common statement I keep hearing in the Veteran’s Writing group I attend is that the military is a brotherhood, in combat you take care of the guy next to you because you have to and he does the same for you.  People that have never served will never understand that brotherhood and when a military person leaves service that is often what they miss most, someone they can talk to that “gets it.”  The VFW provides that unified group working together for the good of others.  The American Legion is another brotherhood of veterans.  They have my utmost respect and you can bet they all stand at attention when the National Anthem is played!

On to coffee…before someone doth protest….American’s are obsessed with coffee, why do you think we have a Starbuck’s, Dunkin Donut’s, and Tim Horton’s on  every other corner. And we all know about McDonald’s extra hot coffee.  Personally, I make mine at home and take it with me.  I’d rather spend five dollars on a single serving of ice cream.  We all have our priorities.

May I suggest, to celebrate VFW Day and Coffee Day, you share a cuppa with a vet and say, thank you.

 

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Share A Cold One

In my life, there are a lot of beer drinkers.  A greeting when we visit someone, or they visit our house, is, “Ya wann’ beer?”  Our second fridge in the garage has a few kinds of beer in it.  Some of the new exotic stuff for my daughter and good old-fashioned Budweiser for my husband.  My son has just switched to Miller, and to do away with gluten I have switched to hard cider.  There’s nothing better on a hot steamy day, than a cold refreshing long neck. (For you non beer drinkers, that term refers to the neck on the bottle.)

When my husband and I first started dating, he and his co-workers went our for Friday happy hour without fail.  Sometimes there were just six of us, other times there would be close to twenty.  I would start watching the clock at my job, waiting for the phone call to tell me where everyone was meeting.  That was fifteen years ago and I can still tell you some of the exact conversations that took place and what we laughed about.  The crowd dwindled when one of the young ladies got pregnant, a couple guys decided to loose weight, and others changed jobs. We miss those days, and the closeness of that group.  We have a reunion twice a year just to stay in touch.

We have some very close friends and relatives that have had the opportunity to travel Europe and parts of Asia.  The young men involved rate the countries according to how well they like the beer.  I haven’t heard much about food except the meals in Germany.

My grade school chum and I get together for lunch about every three weeks.  We don’t sit in a chain restaurant with a cup of coffee, we sit in a bar, eat chicken wings or burgers and drink beer.  Yes, there is now gluten-free beer.  We have a lot of laughs, we tell each other our secrets, new and old (which no one else can hear over the music) and we forget our responsibilities for awhile.  We talk about current events and the family members we have buried.  We’ve known each other a long time, she’s my best friend.

And don’t forget it’s football season.  Who in their right mind would watch a football game without a cold beer to go along with the snacks.  I know, a lot of people would, but generally not in my realm.  Go Bills!  (We never lose hope!)

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Recycle That Can!

I’m guessing just about every household in the U.S. has some aluminum cans in it, probably filled with beer, tea, soda, or pop (depending on your locale).  I can’t speak for other countries, because I don’t know for sure.
The following facts I took from the National Day of Calendar.  I share because they are particularly informative.  This is talking about just aluminum, but I encourage you to recycle all your cans.
Interesting Facts:
  • If you laid all the aluminum cans recycled in 2010 end to end, they could circle the earth 169 times.
  • In America, 105,800 cans are recycled every minute.
  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy it would have taken to process the same amount from a virgin source.
  • Your television can run for 3 hours from the energy saved by recycling one can.
  • Aluminum cans are worth about a penny each.
  • The industry pays more than $1 billion annually for recycled cans.

In  New York state, we pay a five cent deposit on aluminum cans, then get it back when we turn the cans in.  Some recycle centers will pay six cents a can on certain days.  It’s worth it to save them up if you have the space and are a pre-planner to take them back on the right day.  At some large supermarkets there are machines you insert the can into and it is immediately shredded, the crux, it can’t already be crushed.  When you are finished you get a receipt for how much money you have coming back to use toward your groceries.

So next time you have a nice cold beverage out of an aluminum can; recycle that can to add to the above statistics.

 

 

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Freedom Isn’t Free

Currently there is a national push to thank our military personnel, past and present, for their service.  That’s a wonderful thing, because freedom isn’t free.  Sometimes it’s hard to understand why we have “boots on the ground” in some places we know little about.  Our government makes the decision where our troops go.  We don’t have to agree with that decision, but I ask that you support the troops regardless.

Have you ever noticed a small rectangular white flag in the window of a house in your neighborhood?  If that flag has a blue star in the middle it means an active duty military person calls that address home; one of the parents hung that flag with a feeling of pride.  If the flag has a gold star, it means the military member made the ultimate sacrifice with his or her life for the United States of America.

Think about that a minute and relate it to your own life.  Can you call, skype, text, or visit your child at will?  Some parents can’t.  They go to the cemetery and cry, shake their head with disbelief, and imagine the next holiday without their child in attendance.  Does the hurt of losing a child ever go away?  No.  It becomes tolerable over time because you learn to deal with it, but it never goes away.  (We buried a daughter, 13 years ago, when she was 27, after an auto accident; that’s how I know.)

We have many freedoms in this country that other countries do not enjoy.  Are we perfect? Far from it.  Probably never will be, but at least we don’t have a civil war tearing at us night and day like Syria does.  Be thankful for that.  Be thankful for the relative peace we do have.  Be even more thankful for the military that keeps us safe in ways we will never know about.  And the next time you see a little white rectangular flag in someone’s window say a silent prayer the blue star never gets replaced by a gold one; if it is already a gold one, remember, freedom isn’t free and that family has paid the price.

There are Gold Star Mother groups in many cities all over the country.  Visit   http://www.goldstarmoms.com    to find one near you.  They can help a parent deal with loss.

I wrote this from a parent’s point of view because that is what I am.  It can also be turned around that it is the child going to visit their parent in the cemetery.  Again.  Freedom isn’t free.

 

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