Colorful Food

My son is so creative with his food sometimes. He made me oatmeal.

Isn’t he so sweet? I tell him he should be a cook. Or maybe a car mechanic. That way, I won’t have to fork out the thousands to have my car fixed. Yeah. Too many young people want careers in computers today. A nephew of mine is interested in making computer games– drawing the animated characters and designing stuff for them. What kind of career is that? I don’t know, maybe I’m showing my age, but making games isn’t a REAL job, it’s a hobby! At least they’ll keep the document scanning software companies in business….

We’re reading in our health book that colorful food, which is naturally attractive, is very healthful. Not artificial colors, of course! The bright reds, greens, purples, yellows and pinks of food. YUM. By the way, did you ever stop to realize that very few foods are truly blue? There’s blueberries, and …. and… I can’t think of anything else. Can you???

Anyway, colorful foods contain antioxidants and phytonutrients and all sorts of yummy stuff that your body needs. Raw is better for most fruits and vegetables, too.

Oddly enough, I like the appeal of bright red foods, but I don’t like to eat them very much. I like the colors of tomatoes, red peppers, etc, but I don’t like to eat them. However, I do like strawberries. I’ll eat anything green.

How about you? Are you attracted to one color over another? Do you like the color AND the taste, or just one over the other?

Four Foods on Friday #141

Time for the FFoF meme!

1. What color is the rice in your favorite fried rice?
2. Does your favorite fried rice have bean sprouts in it?
3. Does your favorite Chinese food come in a carton or a plastic container?
4. How long does it take for Chinese takeout from your favorite place to be delivered?

1. This question surprised me. How many colors could it be, white or yellow, right? Or maybe, if you’re an artist or something, you could describe the color as “eggshell” or “ochre.” But then I read Val’s reply and she said “brown.”

Brown?

Ew. I don’t know if I could handle brown fried rice. Brown as in…. dirt brown? Brown the color of horse equipment? Or brown as in chocolate milk brown? I am not much for rice as it is…. I don’t think I could handle brown! The fried rice I get is yellow, a nice egg-yolk yellow.

2. Gee, no. You guys must have some fancy Chinese establishment out there! Here, our fried rice is either plan, veggie, pork or shrimp. And “shrimp fried rice” is an overstatement. It should be labeled as “plain fried rice with maybe half a shrimp.”

3. The rice comes in cartons; the meat and veggies come in plastic containers. BOY are those things hard to rinse (we have to recycle them). How much grease is in that food, anyway???

4. Well, they SAY “Ten minute.” Usually, it’s about 11.45 minutes. Haha, kidding! Not like I’ve ever timed them! hahaha!

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

Half of All Grocery Meats May Have Staph Germ

My mind did a few freaky little somersaults after reading this headline today: Nationwide study finds U.S. meat and poultry is widely contaminated. :-O

The Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona performed tests on meat and poultry in several grocery stores throughout the country, and discovered that half of all meat tested were tainted with drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus. And “DNA testing suggests that the food animals themselves were the major source of contamination.” Let me guess what that means: animals are living in filthy conditions where disease spreads, or are so glutted with antibiotics in the feed that the germs are gaining the upper hand.

It makes me totally disgusted.

By the way, the U.S. occasionally tests for the presence of various staph germs in consumer meat, but the more dangerous Staphylococcus aureus isn’t one of them.

There are ways you can protect yourself from food-borne bacteria. The Department of Health issues these guidelines:

1. Wash your hands, all food contact surfaces, and fruits and vegetables. Do not wash raw meat and poultry. Washing meat can allow most bacteria that are present on the surface of the meat or poultry to spread to ready-to-eat foods, kitchen utensils, and counter surfaces.

2. Separate raw, cooked, and ready-to-eat foods while shopping, preparing, or storing foods.

3. Cook foods to a safe temperature to kill microorganisms. Bacteria grow most rapidly in the range of 40°F and 140°F. To keep food out of this danger zone, keep cold food cold (below 40°F) and hot food hot (above 140°F).

4. Refrigerate perishable food promptly and defrost foods properly. The refrigerator should be set at no higher than 40°F and the freezer at 0°F. Toss out leftovers after 4 days!

5. Avoid raw (unpasteurized) milk or any products made from unpasteurized milk, raw or partially cooked eggs or foods containing raw eggs, raw or undercooked meat and poultry, unpasteurized juices, and raw sprouts.

Four Foods on Friday #140

What a slacker I am! Yep. I’ve missed so many questions for this meme, I don’t think I will bother catching up. Instead, I chose the most interesting question (interesting to me, anyway!):

This week there is one question about Chinese food.

1. What are your four favorite foods from a Chinese restaurant?

Oooooohhhhhh, Chinese food… yummmmmm. I never tried it until I was engaged. I guess my parents never bought it because it was too expensive for a large family? I don’t know. We almost never ate out, never did take out, either. My poor mom, LOL! We never traveled much, either. Can you imagine the travel expenses and motor home repairs for a huge family?

Anyway. I love Chinese food. I haven’t strayed very much from my favorites– they never grow tiresome to me and I really like them. So I haven’t expanded my horizons much. Here’s the stuff I like.

1. Vegetable fried rice, with either roast pork or broccoli. I LOVE broccoli so much– there never seems to be enough of it in the rice!

2. Beef and snow peas. I prefer Chinese beef to chicken. Chicken is always mushy and tasteless. The beef is good (or maybe it’s just the sauce?). Anyway, I adore snow peas. Yum!

3. Garlic broccoli. It’s VERY spicy, and I really don’t handle spicy food very well. But when I mix the garlic broccoli with the Chinese veggies, it’s so good.

4. Beef and broccoli. Boring, I know. But that broccoli is SO SO GOOD!

I heard the next FFFF will ask about Japanese food. Uh oh! I haven’t tried much Japanese food, except sushi from the grocery store (OH YUM) and saki, like 23 years ago.