Choices

Hot day coming, I can feel it; but not blazing hot, not yet. The heat is just priming for September. And so we’re a couple of months away from the super, duper El Nino which is said to bring us some super wet storms this Fall. Never a dull moment.

But outside, where I’m sitting today, the water feels good and the monarch butterflies are winging their way around the pool. I’m keeping up with the watering for my green buddies - those plants who are not attended by their own drip nozzle. But even for those on the drip line, I like to give them an extra dose of moisture on days that have been rather extreme if you’re sitting in the sun. And so far they are still my green buddies.

I watched a YouTube offering on Ringo Starr and his amazing diet. Ringo was my favorite when I was 13 and the Beatles were first a “thing.” My mother liked George Harrison! And it was strange that I remember thinking at that time that she didn’t get to weigh in because this was a band for my age group, not hers. Silly of me. It’s true that around that time or just before really as Elvis Presley and the Kingston Trio were popular with the youth, that would’ve been my brother’s generation actually music really began to cater to the teenagers. Before then teenagers weren’t really recognized as anything but kids in the process of growing up.

Ringo is in his upper 80s now and in very good shape and health. This program that I saw chalked it all up to his diet of green juice, first thing, and oatmeal for breakfast. Then a lentils, beans, or chickpea dish during the day as well as a handful of nuts. It was an interesting program as they stopped to say what a person “gets” from those particular foods and why they are helping Ringo stay healthy.

Of course there were a lot of avoidances and to things I like such as wine (but I only have one glass per day), animal product (I often have scrambled eggs), sugar (which I have jettisoned out of my house when my late husband became ill (20 years ago), and poor oils (I agree that a good olive oil is preferable).

And so I feel as though the reason I liked Ringo when I was 13 is that I saw in him a kindred soul. True, many years of hard Rock Star partying came in between the time I first saw him and the time he kicked alcohol and became healthy. And I, too, although not a rock star by any means, have done my fair share of experimentation with unhealthy substances! But I found it interesting that I was pretty much eating along the lines of his diet, except for the things I’ve mentioned (and Fri night Pizza with my son) but I think I might try the green juice first thing in the morning. I’ll have to search for the recipe. I bet Ringo has a cookbook! That seems in line with what celebrities do these days.

But this interest in tightening up my own diet even more comes at a time when I’ve ordered Crisko from Jeff Bezos. With all this Canadian family stuff, I dug out my recipe for Grandma Cassidy cookies which I knew as my grandmother’s recipe. But doubtless it goes farther back than that … maybe even to the old country!! They are a very wonderful cookie, puffy, soft as a mother’s breast, with the flavors of buttermilk and nutmeg held together by Crisko, sugar, and flour. Soul food, but not a healthy cookie by any means. In fact, I think Crisko was thought to be a healthier substitution for Lard which I believe was part of the original recipe. The funny thing is that given our current understanding of how unhealthy palm oil and hydrogenation is the tide is turning back to lard as the healthier substance. Go figure.

Anyway, my son remembers these cookies from his early childhood and so there was great support for my ordering Crisko and baking up a batch for the rest of the family here. Now that the Crisko is on the way, I’m getting cold feet about the whole thing. I thought of ordering Lard too and doing a kind of taste test. But I don’t want to use my elevated position at matriarch to instill in my younger family members a taste for Lard or Crisko not to mention the sugar-flour combination. Oh me, Oh my - Life is full of decisions. I hope I make a good one.