Jul 23, 2010

Five More Uses for Peanut Butter

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will never go out of style, but here are a few more things to do with peanut butter.

Replace butter in cooking recipes with peanut butter for a unique taste, especially brownies. Yum.

Dogs and cats love it. Next time wrap their pill in a spoonful, so you don't have to force it down.

It works almost as well as goo-gone to get labels off of packages.

After frying fish, drop a plop of it in the pan and let it melt. Takes away the fishy smell.

Remove gum from carpet or hair by rubbing it with peanut butter and wipe the whole thing off.

What's in a Name

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was nicknamed The Iron Lady and Imelda Marcos was known as The Steel Butterfly.

Jul 20, 2010

Doing Wrong

Fit as a Fiddle

This is another phrase where a single word has confused people – 'fit' in the context of this saying does not mean 'healthy', which is a 19th century definition. Its original meaning was 'suitable' – and it is still used in that context in the saying 'fit for a king'.

As fit as a fiddle means 'as appropriate as can be' – not “in excellent health”. The first use of the phrase was in the 16th century and it was originally 'as right as a fiddle'.

Cheesy

We all know that cheese is cheese and made from sour milk, but if you look at some packages, you find cheese products and cheese food. Here is the difference.

Cheese food is somewhere between 51 percent and 99 percent cheese. It is a food product made from regular cheese, and almost always with the addition of whey, emulsifiers, milk, salts, preservatives, and food coloring. Processed cheese is also known as “process cheese”, “prepared cheese”, and “cheese food”. American cheese and some 'squirt cheese' are cheese foods. James L. Kraft created the first commercially available sliced processed cheese.

Cheese product is composed of less than 51 percent cheese. More than half the product is made up of ingredients like emulsifiers, carrageenan (seaweed-extract stabilizer) and flavorings, like citric acid for that cheesy tanginess. Cheez Whiz and some varieties of Velveeta are cheese products.

Average Americans eat about 30 pounds of cheese a year.

A great cheese slicer when yours is in the dishwasher, use unwaxed dental floss.

Birthday Cake Tip

Just saw this interesting idea to keep candle wax off of your next birthday cake. Slip a lifesaver on the bottom and it will catch any melting wax. You can leave the lifesaver on the cake when you remove the candle so you don't get your fingers in the icing.

Jul 16, 2010

Food Excess

This is taking it too far, fake sandwich floppies.

Vitamin C

Linus Pauling, Nobel prize winner in chemistry touted that vitamin C was a cure-all for everything from preventing colds to curing cancer. He died of cancer in 1994. In spite of some other outrageous claims, vitamin C is still good for you, it just doesn't cure everything. Also, don't take the chewable kind, because it is ascorbic acid and will rot your teeth if you chew too much of it.

Common Cold

I 'caught a cold' a few weeks back, (actually it turned out to be pneumonia, contracted from a visit to the doctor and it is gone now). Anyway, it started me thinking about where the name 'common cold' came from.

The name "common cold" came into use in the 1500s, because its symptoms seemed to appear in cold weather. Of course, we now know that a common cold is not limited to cold weather. It seems more prevalent, because people spend more time indoors in close proximity to each other, sharing the virus.

It is difficult to catch a cold by eating something infected with cold virus. The secretions of the mouth tend to kill the virus and any that survive end up in the stomach where gastric juices quickly destroy them. Also, kissing a person with a cold will not cause you to catch it. The quantity of virus on the lips and mouth are miniscule.

There is no cure, due to the hundreds of varieties of viruses, but many medicines can mask the symptoms until it runs its course, usually a week or less. People are most infectious during the first 24 hours, even if the symptoms have not begun to show.

Zinc, echinacea, vitamin C, garlic, eucalyptus, honey, lemon, menthol, steam, hot toddies, alcohol, Zicam, chicken soup, and many other "cures" have been repeatedly tested and have been scientifically proven to not prevent or shorten the duration of a cold. At best they provide some physical relief. People believe these are effective because of the varied nature of colds. Some viruses only last a few days, while others last for weeks.

Flu shots are designed to prevent the most common type of virus and are effective for only that type. Antibiotics do not cure a cold as they work on bacteria and most colds are caused by virus. However, if it is bacterial, such as half of pneumonia strains, it does help. Bacterial pneumonia usually comes on suddenly and viral types take some time to develop.

Imagine a person with a four-day form of cold. If he does nothing he will be well in four days, but he immediately drinks a gallon of orange juice. A couple of days later he feels great and tells everyone that the vitamin C in the juice killed his cold. His story quickly spreads and everyone starts drinking orange juice. The vitamin C didn't cure it.

On the other hand, people who try a cure and find that it doesn't work aren't as likely to report it, because most folks do not brag about failures. Human nature and the variability of the cold virus create a situation where beliefs in cold cures persist in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.