Growing Blog, Top Post And Blog Forecast For 2008

I’m amazed and also quite pleased to see that I continue to make the Growing Blog list on WordPress despite the exponential factor which should make it progressively more difficult to be on this list.

To remain a growing blog, you not only have to grow, but you have to outdo your own growing rate and the rate of others each time, and I’ve started the new year with a bang not only being one of the WordPress Growing Blogs, but also having one of the Top Posts on WordPress.

At last count my post Organizing Household Resources In An Address Book was the 99th Top Post on WordPress out of more than 2 million blogs and an unknown bazillion posts.

I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again that I thank my readers.  I’m so glad that you find my blog to be interesting and useful.  I’m so glad when I look at my statistics and see that you came to my site from a link which was e-mailed to you or when I read my own e-mail and there’s a note from you telling me that you are putting me on your reader so you won’t miss a post.

As you saw with yesterday’s post, I don’t like to make New Year Resolutions because so few people can keep them and if I’m going to have a resolution or a goal, why wait for January 1, but here are just a few of the directions I see my blog going in the coming months.  I have other plans too that I’ll let you know about as the year unfolds.

If you’ve made the resolution to be organized, this blog is quickly becoming the place to find easy tips and solutions.  I’ve even created pages at the top of this blog for Household Tips and for Organizing so that you can easily find my posts at any time.  To help you with that there are also a search feature and a calendar in the sidebar.

I’ve noticed that you are also especially interested in my posts on healthy eating and cookies (not so healthy but yummy) as well as other recipes.  So I’ll give you a bit more in these areas too in the coming months.

I’ll continue to post about religion, God and my opinions on the topic.  The Lenten season is approaching quickly.  For the past two years I have used the book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren to prepare for Easter by reading his book and reflecting on his 40-day spiritual journey.  I found different insights each year as I have grown and changed, and for 2008 I hope you’ll join me on-line.  I highly recommend this book which according to Publishers Weekly has become “the bestselling nonfiction hardback book in history.”  So come find out why with me and my other readers.  If you don’t already own it, you can check it out from your local library when the time comes, or you can purchase it.

Today and anytime, feel free to leave me comments.  Comments help us get to know each other and to build a community.

In the meantime, thanks a million to all of you for reading my blog, and I wish you and your loved ones a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2008!!!

Thursday Thirteen #13 — 13 Resolutions And Why They Will Fail

Wow, 13 Thursday 13s already.

I never make New Year’s Resolutions other than resolving NOT to make resolutions! Here’s 13 reasons why the top 13 resolutions around the world fail.

1. Lose weight: Doomed from the start because it’s almost impossible to escape corn syrup. It’s in everything! Statistics show that weight gain in the United States has gone up 4000 percent since the 1970s and it correlates exactly with the 4000% increase in manufacturers’ use of corn syrup since the 1970s. Corn syrup also increases cravings!!
2. Exercise: Most people are too tired all day to exercise and when you add to the equation that you have to drive both to and from the gym (in my case it would be a 25 mile round trip to the nearest gym) it makes the whole thing futile unless you can give all of us a few more hours in the day.
3. Diet: We all have the best intentions until our ALREADY STARVED stomachs get tempted by the aroma of pizza or warm chocolate chip cookies.
4. Write to far away relatives: Tomorrow I’ll write to my aunt, but when tomorrow comes, well my dear, Scarlett said it best, “Tomorrow is another day!”
5. Be a better spouse/child/friend: If we couldn’t do it on Thanksgiving or on Christmas Day, what makes you think that we can miraculously do it by procrastinating waiting until January 1.
6. Stop procrastinating: Some people do procrastinate because they just don’t want to do something, but most of the time, people just don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on the TO DO list. Give all of us another few more hours in the day AND the energy to do it, and I guarantee you we’ll all procrastinate a whole lot less. Until then, that resolution is guaranteed to be broken quickly.
7. Get more sleep: If you live in the city, be sure to pass a law forbidding garbage trucks to stagnate under your window and beep when they back out with a 13-point turn. While you’re at it, pass a law to forbid all traffic, all honking, all loud neighbors, all barking dogs until after you have woken up on your own and are well-rested. If you live in the country, make sure the rooster is blind and your neighbor has agreed to milk the cows and do all your morning chores. And above all, regardless of where you live, be absolutely sure that you do not have any children under the age of 50.
8. Keep a clean home: Unless you want to get rid of the dirt-tracking, slobbering dog, get rid of the germ-carrying, toy-scattering kids, maybe even the food-eating, clothe-wearing spouse, that’s going to be a tough one. Even at the Carlsbad caves in New Mexico, they have to spend thousands of volunteer hours dusting and picking dirt and lint out of the stalagmites each year and nobody even lives there. You do LIVE in your house, don’t you?
9. Quite smoking/drinking/and God-forbid taking drugs: These are all substances which affect your brain receptors. You not only have to get rid of a nasty habit, but you have to get your brain and your physiology to stop reacting. With very hard work and lots of will-power you might be able to quit, but your body will always be addicted. It would be much easier to resolve to never use and abuse these substances in the first place.
10. Reduce stress overall: LOL! LOL! When I hear people say that it reduces MY stress because it makes me laugh so much. Of course this is probably the easiest resolution to achieve. All you have to do is die and go to Heaven. That’s all. Now, be careful! Make sure you DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, commit suicide under any circumstance, because then you’ll die and go to hell!
11. Reduce stress at work: If you work with people, it’s impossible. Unless maybe if you work with French people, because I seem to recall Napoleon saying “Impossible is not French.” You can’t work with machines or robots because they are designed and programed by people. Now maybe if you want to follow in Jane Goodall’s footsteps and go to the jungle to live with animals. They say animals reduce stress — as long as they’re not trying to eat you!
12. Get out of debt: First thing is to sell your house because a mortgage is a 30-year debt. Sell your car too since you don’t want car payments. Cut up your credit cards which will of course wreck your credit score, but that’s OK since you don’t want any debt.
13. Save money: That is another way of saying join the rat race, because to save money you have to earn money with a job and you have to work your little rat wheel faster than INFLATION. Also, don’t believe all those commercials that say you can save money if you go to their stores, because what they conveniently forget to tell you is that to save that money, you have to spend money first, so you’ll have to stat in that giant rat race.

If I didn’t deter you from making resolutions, just remember that it takes at least three weeks to form a good habit, so don’t give up before then, and best of luck and Happy New Year to you and yours!

If you want to see the list of Thursday 13 participants, just click here.

Reader Asks Where To Purchase Quality Foods Online

As my regular readers know, healthy and quality foods are important to our family. One of my readers has asked if I know of quality food sources online, and yes, I do know a few, but I wonder if the rest of my readers know of any others.

So please help us out by commenting. Here is Leo’s complete question posted in response to yesterday’s Wow! Every Cookie Imaginable!:

wow…thats all I can say…wow! I love this blog!!!!
Do you by chance, know of any quality online food services? I am starting to order all my food online because of various reasons. (Health being one of them) So far I have found 2 services, Fresh Dining (an LA company) and Celebrity Foods, but you have to call them so they can talk to you about your need. I would really like any suggestions that you may have, so I can widen my list of quality places online where I can order healthy food from.
Thank you and have a great night or day…depending on when you read this. LOL!!!!

Nov 30, 1:33 AM — [ Edit | Delete | Approve | Spam ] — View post “WOW! Every Cookie Imaginable!”

Leo, here’s the sources I can personally vouch for. (Click on the links.)

1. Whole Foods Market — They are headquartered in Texas and have regular stores throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. While they do deliver, their delivery policy however varies by store so you need to check with your local stores. Whole Foods carries a wide variety of foods, cleaners and body products.

2. Country Sun Natural Foods is a small, very friendly store in Palo Alto, Calif. Their online store carries groceries, organic wine, vitamins, herbs and body care products. They have monthly sales and they provide senior discounts. If you don’t see what you want, but they carry that item in the brick and mortar store, they will usually add it online just for you. If they don’t carry it, they will often special order it or at least point you in the right direction. Yes, they really are that friendly. You can see what I said about them in the post Flavor and Flowers at Farmer’s Market. Your previous shopping carts will be remembered for 60 days for faster reordering too. They also publish Taste For Life Magazine which is available instore and shipped with every order.

3. Infinity Goods — Yes, that’s us! We are an online Amazon Affiliate store. Amazon now has a grocery store. We have requested more health foods and quality foods for our affiliate store at infinitygoods.com. For now we carry products in our gourmet foods section like Alaska wild salmon, Omaha Steaks (and other Omaha foods), maple syrup, stevia and even whole black winter truffles direct from France, and much more. We will start carrying more foods as Amazon makes it available. If you want a specific food which Amazon carries, but we do not have listed, we will add it to our products for you, just let us know. When you shop at Infinity Goods, you use the same Amazon shopping cart, products come to you directly from Amazon and we have the same Amazon return policy. So be sure to shop with us whenever a product attracts your eye. You’ll be helping me and my small family.

4. Fabrique Delices — It is a French charcuterie or delicatessen. It’s not a one-stop shopping since they only provide deli products, but they are excellent. They serve the Pope and the White House, but remain a good value for the quality. I also mentioned them in my Farmer’s Market post, along with a couple of small family businesses with online stores, Prevedelli Farms and Bolani and Sauce.

Dear Readers, if you can, please don’t forget to post your own suggestions for Leo and all of us. It will be greatly useful to all who visit here. In advance, I thank all of you.

Thursday Thirteen #2 — What’s Important In My Life

Welcome back to Thursday Thirteen where you get to know details about my life.

Here are 13 items for you to get to know what is important in my life.

1. God

2. Family

3. My pets

4. Friends

5. Reading

6. Learning

7. Writing

8. Blogging

9. Traveling

10. Fine Art

11. Photography

12. Cooking

13. Cross-stitching

Be sure to visit www.thursdaythirteen.com to find all the T13 participants.

The Votes Are In For Organic Meat

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Follow up on Blog Action Day post from Oct. 15. To make more sense of this post please click Blog Action Day — Environment and Organic Foods.

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Organic meat tastes better. The verdict is in. Our family votes thumbs up for the taste of organic meat. The woman we met at the store who recommended organic meat was absolutely right. Though we vote thumbs down for the inflated price tag. Yet, I must say that just as with organic fruits and vegetables, I noticed that my family felt satisfied far quicker than with non-organic foods.

While I was concerned that we wouldn’t have enough to eat with this special birthday meal, as portions were smaller than we are used to, we ended up with left overs. I have noticed this before with fruits and vegetables. While the organics taste far better and some might think we would eat more, we in fact eat less. I am guessing because the nutrition value is higher.

So this interesting finding makes me wonder if it would follow that as we eat less yet have better and more nutrition, we would also lose weight?

We have seen our country as a whole gain more and more weight since the ’70s. At the same time our quality of food has degraded more and more with each passing decade.

Not only have our foods been pumped full with more and more chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics, but also many additives like artificial and engineered flavorings and corn syrup. Actually, corn syrup is known to make us gain weight, eat more and crave additional corn syrup, but I will leave the side effects and evils of corn syrup for another post (stay tuned).

In the meantime, eat healthy and be well!

Blog Action Day — Environment and Organic Foods

The environment is at the forefront of the news these days, but today the issue was right in front of me at my local grocery store, and the opportunity for an instant consumer poll arose.

As I was looking at my choices in the meat and fish cases, I noticed a woman reaching into the new organic meat section. Having wondered about it myself, I asked her if she had tried it already.

Well, her face lit up and a giant smile emerged. “Yes, it is soooo good,” she said closing her eyes to savor the memory. She told me she was surprised at how much of a difference “organic” made. She had bought organic meat originally as more of a whim than anything else. She now uses it for all her special dishes and said even just a spaghetti dinner is brought to a whole new level. It is well worth the extra money, she advised, especially when considering the health benefits.

Double the money to be exact. The beef had a much more intense color, much darker. I thought it was just like the difference between farmed salmon that is pale despite the artificially added coloring, and wild salmon that is a dark reddish orange.

The label stated, “raised without antibiotics or added growth hormones, in pastures free of chemical fertilizers and fed only certified organic feed.”

And as I thought, “Shouldn’t it always be like that?” I recalled the cattle we see for miles as we go up the state on Highway 5. Those poor beasts do not have a pasture. They are sitting — sardine style — in mud, and the stench is sickeningly powerful even when the cattle have long gone out of sight.

We can’t tell what they are fed when we drive by at highway speeds, but if these cattlemen “care” enough to make their cattle sit in mud and breathe in highway pollution, I can imagine they also care enough to feed them all sorts of hormones, chemicals and perhaps even the best recipe for mad cows.

I’ll be cooking the organic beef tonight for a special birthday dinner and I’ll let you know what we all thought tomorrow.

In the meantime, please let me know what you think of organic meats and foods in general and if you’ve tried organic, how do you think it compared.

Personally, I can’t wait for the prices to get lower as more people start using organic meat and it stops being some exotic product. Good, natural, organic foods should be the norm, not the exception. Where has the pride of our cowboys and cowgirls gone? Isn’t that what America was made of? Our cowboys and our farmers made our country what it is. So why the negative, greedy trend of late?

We need to be conscious of the total disregard for healthy foods by growers and manufacturers across the board unless they think they can “make a buck.” We need to stand up and demand that we not be fed hormones, chemicals, pesticides, cloned meats, engineered flavorings, engineered trouts to turn them into salmons, etc., etc., etc.; the list of Frankenstein science experiments that turn up on our table without our direct approval is too long and much too frightening.

For my related posts, please click on the following:

Salmon + salmon = trout

Popcorn lung

You can’t trust anybody

Farmer’s Market

Blog Action Day is October 15, when bloggers around the web unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. All bloggers post about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topics. The aim is to get everyone talking toward a better future.

For more information about Blog Action Day or to participate next year, please go to their website at blogactionday.com. And beside their acronim, B.A.D., it is a good thing.

Popcorn Lung Yet Another Example of Big Business Greed

With all the news about diacetyl causing swift and severe lung problems which can result in death, I see yet another example where big business turns a blind eye to medical and scientific research in favor of greed, wanting ever more money even at the expense of human life.

It turns out the manufacturers of diacetyl and other food flavors have had workers becoming sick and dying since 1985. Many of these workers need lung transplants. The factory owners were too greedy to even provide their employees with masks to prevent breathing in the vapors. Did they stop producing the butter flavor to protect their employees or consumers? Of course not. It would mean less profit if they had to switch to a more expenssive real ingredient rather than their man-made garbage unfit even for rats, who also die when they smell diacetyl for as few as 4-6 hours.

A few popcorn manufacturers are now deciding to stop using diacetyl because of the public outcry. Now that they’ve been caught red-handed they are worried about what negative consumer opinions will do to their profits.

And our government agencies who should be protecting both consumers and workers have done nothing in the last 22 years either. Government is nothing but a big money-generating business too afraid to lose funds from powerful special-interest groups.

Even when Cecile Rose, M.D., MPH, a global leader in lung, allergy and immune diseases with the National Jewish Research Center and associate professor of pulmonary medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in July alerted the Food and Drug Administration, the CCD, the EPA, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of a case of a consumer, not a worker, becoming sick with “popcorn lung” they did nothing. They did not bother to investigate. They did not even bother to ask her for more information.

The Pump Handle, a public health blog, made the issue public by publishing Dr. Rose’s letter. It is run by David Michaels, Ph.D., MPH, who is associate chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational health at George Washington University.

Dr. Michaels told WebMD that “the key issue is, are there susceptible populations — children, asthmatics, people with existing lung disease — who are more at risk?… Dr. Rose is a leading lung expert who knows that diacetyl vapors cause lung disease. But will the average pediatrician who sees a child with what seems to be worsening asthma be looking for microwave popcorn exposure?”

The whole affair is sickening and revolting. It also confirms my belief that as we find more and more food products manipulated with man-made chemicals but lacking in nutritional content, we need to become all the more vigilant about how we choose the food we put on our family’s table. We must look for foods which are all natural, organic or even Kosher even if we are not Jewish. Our well-being and our very lives are going to depend on it.

Please see the following interesting documents:

ConAgra letter dated 11/29/2004 to the EPA regarding the need for study of Microwave Popcorn Emissions Released During Cooking and Bag Opening.

Cecile Rose, M.D., MPH, letter dated 07/19/2007 to the FDA regarding the case of a consumer with symptoms of “Popcorn Lung.”