Yesterday and today I received six new projects. The economy is heating up: the Central Bureau of Statistics today reported that Israel's GDP grew by 4.4% at an annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. Also TASE rised today. I bought a large piece of Brasilian beef and boiled it in a pressure cooker. I succeeded in eating a mouthful before my wife returned home and took it away. She hates passionately animal fat.
Update: NASDAQ is exploding. Credit Suisse + 6%, Orckit +5%, Internet Gold +6%. Optimism and faith in the future is returning. The bulls are stampeding.
17 comments:
I have just the device for your wife - it is a special glass pitcher where the spout is formed by a glass tube leading to the side of the vessel near the bottom. You pour the gravy from the meat into this pitcher and allow it to settle for a minute. Because fat is lighter than water, it floats on top, but when you pour from the pitcher the tube draws from the bottom, therefore only fat free juices flow from the spout and the fat remains in the cup. When you see that the fat is approaching the spout, you stop pouring.
Another alternative is to allow the cooked meat to chill overnight - all the fat solidifies at the top and can be removed. You then reheat the rest.
K
I see you are good at topology and know the applications of the Klein bottle. But this is not a technical problem, it is that she hates my eating sweets, fatty foods, anything gut und taier. We feed on sour pickles and "healthy" salads of leaves. I am still alive thanks to the vodka.
Not quite a Klein bottle but close:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/416s96Ks%2BwL._SS500_.jpg
I understand what you mean - every day my wife will see something on TV or read in the paper and tell me that I must lose weight and eat "healthier" or I will die immediately (even though I am only slightly overweight and most studies show no effect from slight overweight). The most recent studies on alcohol show decreased heart disease correlating with higher consumption. I think the researchers would have preferred if there were some leveling off after 2 or 3 drinks/day but no, the data is that the more you drink the less artery disease and this effect persists up to very high levels of consumption. The effect on your liver is another story.
I am determined not to outlive my time in any event. Recently due to the snow my inlaws lost power and came to stay with us for 4 days. The man (my wife's stepfather - her father died young) @ 89 wears diapers, walks with a walker, needs help to bathe, his mind is not 100%, etc. I have no interest in living such a "life" and would prefer a quick ending to such a gradual deterioration.
K
I know that I'll need help and probably use diapers too, but that doesnt bother me. I want to live till I am of help to my family. To say it cynically, both my parents died before they ended their usefulness. My mother was a great moral support for my wife and daughters, they talked off their problems with her, she celebrated their birthdays, she gave the girls pocket money and so on.
I know what you mean. My mother was the same (though I'm not sure my wife felt that way). I suppose in the case of my wife's step father there is no blood tie between me and him (or even between he and my wife) and he is not a warm person (an engineer) plus his mind is slipping somewhat so it is easier to dismiss him as an alte kaker whose time has passed. If he were my own father (or even my wife's father) I might feel differently.
I don't know whether we are really equipped to judge whether we are more benefit than burden to our children. I know in my father in laws case, he seems quite oblivious to the amount of effort that is required to keep him going (most of which is borne by his wife. Maybe he is lucky because his mind and body have both gone at the same rate. My mother's body was worn out but her mind remained sharp, with the result that she was fully aware what a physical mess she was and it depressed her.
K
That sounds like a life of eating rice cakes. Ecckhh.
If you weren't a Jew I'd recommend eating some bacon while your wife is out. The grease would do you good.
Once your sense of humour goes, then it is time to quit.
Anon.
Ronduck,
I grew up on beef in Argentina, when the best beef was marbled with fat. It was novillo meat, from Shorthorn animals fattened on grass and alfalfa. What we have now are lean Brahman hybrids, that have grow no fat on them. Today people looks to buy only the leanest, fatless (and tasteless) cuts. The world has changed but my taste is very old fashioned.
J - you are making me nostalgic. I hate to be chauvinistic but the US once had even finer beef. The Black Angus cattle were, before slaughter, taken off pasture and fed corn in feedlots until their meat was very well marbled with fat. This was called "Prime" beef. Then the sides of beef were hung in a cooler to age and tenderize. Some of the water in the beef would evaporate so the flavor of what remained was more intense. Today such meat still exists but is sold only in the most expensive restaurants, but once upon a time this was the ordinary meat that every neighborhood butcher sold. The meat that is sold today in supermarkets is a big watery mess. Not only is it lacking in marbling but the "wet" aging process (where the beef is vacuum packed in sealed plastic bags so that no evaporation occurs and the maximum salable weight is maintained) means that the meat is so waterlogged that browning (which give meat flavor) is impossible. When you try to brown the meat huge puddles of water emerge instead so the beef steams to a tasteless grey. All in the name of "progress" which is really an excuse for new ways to cheat the customer. Any butcher who tried to remain honest would go out of business because his prices would have to be higher.
K
Ok.
If you are going to anger your wife over eating fat, you might as well just go all out and go non-kosher as well.
If you do get any bacon, don't involve your wife in cooking it, since she is a believer in low fat cooking. My grandmother has a little bacon cooker that that goes in the microwave that is designed to let the fat run off the bacon as it cooks. After taking the bacon out of the microwave, my grandmother will then place it on a paper towel, fold the towel over and press down in order to get the last of the free fat off the bacon. Based on what my grandmother feeds my grandfather I could almost swear she is trying to kill him.
Given time some low fat form of pork will probably come on the market and women will flock to it - like pigs to shit. Maybe such has already reached the market and I haven't been paying attention.
There is already turkey "bacon" which is low fat. Israel was actually a pioneer in processed turkey since they don't require as much rangeland as beef and could be locally grown. Before the lowfat craze such ersatz products were seen as inferior and the Israelis ate them not due to health concerns but because they were what they could afford, long before you could get turkey "salami", etc. in the US.
K
We have also "Hungarian" salami made of chicken and soya bean meat substitute. Not bad. Terrible.
I actually prefer some of the turkey substitutes such as turkey kielbasa and turkey sausage to the real thing made from pork, and not because of kashrut. If made properly they are juicy and tasty and yet low in fat. The key is to find products which do not contain "mechanically separated turkey". In this horrid industrial process, the carcasses of turkeys that have already been stripped of all their meat by normal means (i.e. cut away with a knife) are put in a hydraulic press and squeezed until a sort of pink goo exudes - this product in no way resembles actual meat. Needless to say, nothing made from soy resembles actual meat either.
K
K wrote...
Needless to say, nothing made from soy resembles actual meat either.
I don't know if you've seen it featured on the nightly news, but one year the idiots on the national news profiled "tofurkey". Since Thanksgiving is such a meat-centered holiday, some meat-fearing whackjobs decided to create a fake turkey made of tofu. The fake bird even has light and dark "meat" so that you can carve out a piece according to your liking. I'm not going to go into theatrics over this crap, but man these people should be forced to eat a cow - the whole thing.
I said...
I'm not going to go into theatrics over this crap...
Ahh what the hell, I can't resist.
Eewwwwwww.
The soya bean "meat" generates much methane gas. Lovers of the Earth should not eat it and pollute the atmosphere.
J, lovers of the Earth should just kill themselves now in order to save Gaia. Just think of all of the cars they will never buy, children they will never raise, Haitians they will never adopt, and meat they will never eat.
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