It’s Not Keto

Posted on 16/09/2020 by Grumpa Joe

What a great day! The sun is shining, the temperature is in the seventies, and I am sitting cooped up inside writing this post. I’m busy eating snacks made with my Keto bread that I baked yesterday. Today, at the Dollar store, I bought a smaller bread pan for my next try. I am convinced that I can make a bread that will satiate my hunger for bread.

It is the time of year when the days grow shorter and the body craves food. I feel like a bear who is eating anything and everything to get ready for winter. The problem is that the bear loses all the weight he put on while he hibernates, but I won’t. My weight and waistline will continue to grow all winter. Unless of course, I fight off the urges and continue with my Keto diet.

Without my bike riding activity, I have packed on an extra thirty pounds and it really affected me in many ways. First, I was so heavy that riding my bike was a great effort. I had to buy clothes that fit at least three times, and I felt crappy all the time. My back aches increased in frequency and severity, nothing I did would make it go away worked. I was afraid to bend over for fear of getting the pain that resembled an ice pick in the back. The more I ate the more I wanted to eat. I was sleepy all the time, even after sleeping for ten hours. I tired easily on walks, therefore I didn’t walk. The weight gain was a death spiral for me. I had to do something.

One of Peg’s grand daughters who is skinny told me she was on a Keto diet. I asked her why she wanted to lose weight when she didn’t have any to spare. She told me it wasn’t for weight loss, but for feeling better. I liked the name Keto and began looking into it. I learned that in my lifetime I had used the Keto diet several times, and each time I lost substantial weight. In my day it was referred to as the low carb diet.

Ketogenic Foods

People now get sick of me telling them “it is not Keto” when they tempt me with some scrumptious pastry or potatoe dish. I do it as a positive reinforcement for myself. I notice that as soon as I stop saying it is not Keto that I begin to cheat. I cheat enough as it is because I refuse to give up drinking wine. I gave up wine for a month and it didn’t affect my weight one ounce, so I continue to drink wine in moderation. I also find myself switching to the hard stuff which is Keto. The hard stuff like vodka or scotch has a noticeable effect on my feelings. Like I get hangovers after a night of martinis. Although I felt weird and had a hangover after drinking more than my usual glass of wine after my last Lions Club meeting.

One day soon I will reach my weight goal, and I wonder what I will do then? In order to stay Keto, I’ll also have to cut calories to match my activity. In other words, I’ll be be starving, and starving is not a good feeling.

What I need is Keto.2

. . . and that is all I have to say about that.

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Baking Day-Bread & Brownies

Posted on 15/09/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Being on a Keto diet has made me wish for things like bread, pastries, pasta, and all things that I ate while growing up. Earlier in the week I got the bug to research some recipes for Keto breads made from coconut flour. I found one or two that I liked and watched a video or two about making the breads. I picked up one hint from a baker which made perfect sense to me and today I tried his idea. Basically there is no yeast in Keto breads, there is no real sugar for the yeast to process and to make the bread rise. Keto breads are somewhat flat and are denser than regular breads. His secret improvement came about because there are so many eggs in the bread that the bread tastes “eggy” by adding the yeast you give the bread a more yeasty taste. It works.

I made one fatal error in making this loaf, I set the oven time for 55 minutes when I should have taken it out at 50, or even 45 minutes. The crust is very dark brown but the bread is baked through. The crust is very crunchy and grainy. The inside is a little dry near the crust but okay at the center. Another error was in using too large a bread pan. It will be better with a 3 by 7 pan, I used a 4 by 8. The batter was spread too thin and thus my slices are only two inches tall.

After baking the bread I immediately started a recipe for keto brownies, also made with coconut flour. This is the third time I have made brownies and this time I paid attention to not make the mistakes of the previous batches. One major mistake was in over baking the recipe, i.e. too long in the oven. Like the bread, my early batches of brownies were too dry around the edges and very nice in the center. This time the batch came out of the oven looking great all the way to the outer edges. I was surprised when I cut it. It is very rich with a creamy chocolate center.

In the major leagues that is batting one for two or .500 batting average, I would make millions if this effort was in the National League.

And that is all I’m going to say about that.

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A Little Bit Tipsy

Posted on 14/09/2020 by Grumpa Joe

What do you do when you are a little bit tipsy and you want to post for your blog? You write whatever comes to mind of course. That is where I am at this moment. In a few seconds the tipsy will wear off and I’ll begin to make some sense. Tipsy is a condition one feels immediately after a glass of wine with a pizza. The feeling can only be described as light headed, happy, whimsical. I will continue after returning from a two mile walk and a break with another glass of wine, that is if I get lucky with my drinking partner.

Well I’m unhappy to report that the drinking partner fizzed out and the walk took a direction away from wine and turned into three miles, not two. Returning home exhausted I watched my favorite series Heartland for a couple hours and then turned to Tin Star. I finished the first season of Tin Star and was totally surprised at how it ended. The writer of this program solves all problems with alcohol and murder.

I retired for the evening and slept hard waking only to relieve the pain of an over full bladder. I am so sick of eggs for breakfast that this morning I had some left over chili. The carbs in the chili have left me very sleepy. All I want to do is to rest my head on the keyboard and sleep.

This evening I meet with my Lions club; half of us will be in person and the other half will be with us on ZOOM. Our speaker for the night is also on ZOOM. That should make things very interesting. Think of twenty five people spaced apart for social distancing all straining to see a postage stamp size image on a computer screen to hear a speaker. If this works, I’ll proclaim it a miracle.

I anticipated the problem last week and have made arrangements with the Park District to borrow their fifty-inch TV for our zoom presentation. One of our members is an IT man and he has promised to hook the TV into the laptop and to connect our microphone and speaker. I’m hoping this will set a new trend for zoom-in-person meetings.

My job tonight is to recruit Lions for three service projects: the first being a paint party to coat Fort Frankfort with a clear coat of sealant. The second is to recruit Lions to plant a few trees in a newly rehabbed park. Lastly, I must form a committee to plan and run an eightieth anniversary celebration/fund raiser. The Frankfort Lions celebrate eighty-years of continuous service to the community in February, 2021. What better way to celebrate than by having fun while raising money to keep serving. The whole plan will be dependent upon us meeting State of Illinois guidelines for COVID-19. I’m thinking that by then Illinois or at least Will County will be totally free to do as it pleases.

I mentioned Fort Frankfort above. Let me explain what it is. Twenty years ago a group of citizens formed an organization to build a playground for the kids. This playground is huge and unlike any other in neighboring communities. It was funded and built by the hands of Frankfort residents. Fort Frankfort resides in the center of a very large tract of land which has since become a mecca of outdoor recreation with lighted ball fields, soccer fields, a splash park, a dog park, tennis ball courts, pickle ball courts, volley ball courts, basketball courts, frisbee golf, walking paths and more. All because a group residents wanted to give the kids a safe and adventurous place to play. The Park District developed a showcase facility around Fort Frankfort.

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Show, Don’t Tell

Posted on 12/09/2020 by Grumpa Joe

The month of September came to us in a blaze of glory. The weather was absolutely outstanding. Warm sunny days, and cool evenings, the kind you can sit outside in to shoot the breeze with friends over drinks. Then something changed and we now find ourselves in a cool spell with grey rainy days. My mood has changed significantly. I find it hard to be my usual gleeful self. Morbid is the word I would use today to describe mood.

Yesterday’s post reminded me of an english teacher I had in college. His last name was Walsh. I can still see his face and hear his voice. He was what I will call a dandy. His background before teaching was the US Military. How he survived twenty or thirty years with his effeminate manners and speech I cannot fathom. Nevertheless he was a great man. He must have liked me because he often used my writing as an example of what he liked in a piece. His likes, however, never got me more than a “C” grade.

One thing his encouragement did for me is to foster a notion that I could write, and tell a story. He never mentioned the current teachings of “show not tell” the story. When I read books today, I take particular note of how the author shows me what he is writing about. At first I didn’t understand what was meant by show. Now, I understand it, and recognize how it is done. Showing does make a story more readable, and more easily understood. Seeing a scene in your mind makes the story more compelling. Telling a story is often blah.

I rationalized that telling a story takes a bit of drama, but I didn’t understand that even when telling a story it is better if the listener converts what he hears into a picture in his mind. Seeing that picture makes things come alive for the listener. Of course the whole thing changes if one is writing non-fiction. In non-fiction the narrative is based on facts. I suppose it is possible to also include a show aspect to describing COVID-19 statistics in a dissertation on how the virus affects a body. It never hurts to spice up the numbers with gory scenes of internal mechanisms gone awry.

As an engineer I wrote many reports on experiments I conducted. Often I had to compare design A to design B. It was common to use third person in the narrative. Terms like “the sample was tested” or “the sample-A was conditioned.” My grammar checker always pointed out that using third person narrative was not as effective as using first person. That may be true when writing fiction, but I don’t think is is as effective when writing lab reports. First person narrative implies that you are in the act of doing something while third person describes what was done. It took several years for me to get out of the habit of writing in the third person narrative, and now I can’t write a very good lab report anymore, but I will never have to write another lone again so what does it matter?

. . . that’s all I have to say about that.

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Lessons From the Oldies

Posted on 11/09/2020 by Grumpa Joe

When I was in college one of my English Profs suggested a method to find a topic to write about. I won’t bore you with the details but it is simply to make a list of topics. Period. Then select one and begin. That is what I am doing right now. When I hit the very first key I had no idea what my topic would be for today. I still don’t, but eventually it’ll kick in and I will start pounding keys at a great rate.

I spent a few minutes reading other peoples BLOGS today. It always amazes me as to the variety. Some are so simple yet so entertaining, others are eloquent and just plain confounding. Some writers write words, words, and more words. Usually these are eloquently phrased words, and sometimes I even understand what they say. In most cases they read like an eighteenth century novel. The author is speaking English but with a different twist. It makes for very hard reading. During COVID I began reading books that I downloaded off the internet for free. The operative word there is “Free.” Many of them are extremely old. Like “South, the Story of Shackleton’s Expedition,” or “The Pioneers,” by James Fenimoor Cooper, or The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. The oldest and toughest to understand is the Kama Sutra.

Reading stories like these gave me a greater appreciation for our modern language. One thing I noticed throughout the works is the author’s use of vocabulary. I found myself constantly switching to the dictionary to learn the definition. In most cases I had a sense of the word, but not the exact meaning.

Currently, I am being visited by a friend who migrated to our country from the Baltic States. Frequently, during our conversations she will stop me and ask what does that mean? Every time, I have to stop and think about how I will explain the meaning of a word without using it in the definition. Most times I am able to finds simple words that I can use to explain. In rare cases I find myself going to the dictionary for help. Recently she asked me the difference between woods and forest. Again, I was challenged, but came up with the difference; “woods” pertains to a small grove of trees, while a “forest” is endless acres and acres of trees.

Another thing I am gleaning from these ancient stories is a better understanding of the hardships people lived with. For instance, In “Pioneers” by Cooper, the harsh temperatures of northern New York during the winters of the late 1790’s was explained in detail. Just cutting the amount of wood that was necessary to heat a small cabin during the cold months required continuous back breaking labor. Cooper also pointed out that if locals continued to cut down centuries old trees that soon there would be no more trees to cut. He further realizes that the trees they were using for heat take a hundred years to grow. He relates a similar concern about fishing. Instead of using the native Indian philosophy of, if you are hungry catch a fish, they used the more modern approach of let’s use a long net, sweep it through the lake and catch a bunch of fish. He questioned how long it would take the pioneers to fish the lake empty. Today, we ask the same questions not only about our inland lakes but about the world’s oceans as well. Thankfully, we have been smart enough to regulate fishing seasons and to put limits on fish populations.

All in all, I have enjoyed reading the oldies, but didn’t like the difficulty which I encountered trying to understand the written words and grammar of the age.

The most disappointing book I read was the Kama Sutra. Having heard so much about the work beforehand I expected something like an ancient Playboy. I’m sure in it’s day, it was that, but in my day it was not very stimulating, and I had trouble with the philosophy that led the authors to write this tome. I am also certain that the ladies of the world consider this to be a male chauvinist work because it is written from a man’s point of view with little regard for that of the woman’s

Here I am seven hundred and thirty-one words after beginning a post that had no direction at all in the first paragraph, and that is all I’m going to say about that.

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