I Will Not Eat My Greens

Posted on 30/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

In many movies and comedy sketches I have often heard the line “eat your greens.” I had to look up what greens were. My source labeled greens as collard greens. They are in the same source of greens as kale and broccoli. I found them disgusting. I suspect the vegans in the world think they are delicious, not me. A week ago I wrote about my virgin experience with kale. I love kale, especially when it is drizzled with salad dressing. The collard greens supplied in my Green Chef dinner package turned me off. Maybe they will grow on me if I eat enough of them, fat chance of that happening.

Collard
Kale
Close up of a bowl of Italian boiled spinach

Each time I cruise through the vegetable aisle at my local grocery store I am amazed at the quantity of green leafy lettuces and other strange looking eatables from around the world. On a good day I will pick something I have never tried before just for the sake of experimentation. I can tolerate the lettuces, but when it comes to the heavier leaved darker green things like collard I pass by. As a kid I hated spinach. That is because my mother had only one way to prepare it, by boiling. Boiled spinach leaves are the world’s worst resembling some very old and wet sea weed. On the other hand fresh spinach leaves are excellent in a salad. The best is baby spinach drizzled with poppyseed dressing and with sliced strawberries on top. The chef who invented that combination should be in the Chef Hall of Fame.

Baby spinach with strawberries and poppy seed dressing

I find that the Green Chef meal plan is making me a better cook, and making me develop a more refined pallete. I hate waste and will never throw anything away, I’d much rather make it the way they instruct me to and try it. So far I am batting 5/6, only the collard greens have been a loser. In major league baseball a batting average of 5/6, (0.8333) would command a hundred million dollar contract. I’ll stick to keeping score with my selections from Green Chef.

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COVID Will Make Me Fly

Posted on 30/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

This morning on my way into Home Depot to pick up some huge trash bags to stuff used winter coats in an idea popped into my head. I struggled while installing my face mask, and it occurred to me that my ears are out of capacity. My hearing aids hang off my ears, my glasses find a home there too, now when I hang on the elastic face mask keepers my ears begin to flap out. The vision of Walt Disney’s flying elephant Dumbo flashes through my mind. When will I be able to fly? My prediction is that if COVID-19 lasts much longer that I’ll fly pretty soon.

Alfred E. Neumann the cover boy of MAD Magazine has ears that project from his head like mine do with all the shit hanging off them. The prospect of flying by flapping my Alfred E. Neuman ears seems very possible.

What I fear more than anything is another shut down of business and a decreed lock down of citizens. The health effect on me has been noticeable. Mostly in my positive mindset. I seem to have taken huge steps backward into negativism. At an earlier age I realized that positivism beats negativism by a huge margin. BUT, in this environment the dark force of negativity seems to control. I see and hear Darth Vader speaking to Luke Sky Walker, and predicting his demise. Poor Luke had to fight off the evil empire all by himself, a task which seemed impossible, but Luke overcame the negative force and prevailed.

We too will prevail, but we need to remain positive to beat the evil curse of COVID. Once we take control we must then regain our drive to punish the real evil empire China for releasing this curse on the world. One tiny step I am taking to beat them is to avoid buying products originating in China. That is a chore, but it is possible.

As I write this the governor of Illinois J.B. Pritzker has decreed a shut down of indoor seating at restaurants. What that does is cripple the restaurant businesses. I don’t know about you, but the prospect of eating outside in thirty degree weather is not appealing. Even in a tent with three sides and portable heaters blasting away I can’t see myself enjoying a meal in that environment.

I finally hung a mask on my face when I confronted a huge sign on the door of Home Depot. “All customers must wear face mask covering their mouth and nose.” How simple a way to control the virus, I thought. A company makes a simple request and their customers comply. So why is the Democrat candidate for president making a huge deal about passing a law to make us wear masks? He truly believes this action will kill the virus. I’m afraid that the only thing to kill this virus is to flood the world with sanitizer, and even then the sanitizer kill ratio is 99.9% with leaves 0.1% to keep on coming at us.

What is scarier than a new shutdown is the prospect of Joe Biden winning this election and then retiring from the presidency. His successor will be Kamala Harris, and that is more scary than a witch flying across the sky on a broomstick. Even more scarier is if Kamala dies in office and Nancy Pelosi becomes the next leader of America.

All of these thoughts are causing me to have insomnia which is not healthy for a senior citizen.

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An Interesting Perspective

Posted on 30/10/2020 by Grumpa Joe

I received this post from a friend who got it from a friend. Just who wrote it is unknown. I do know that I have seen these figures before and believe them to be accurate. I have also heard this argument before, and it is plausible.

NUMBERS TELL TRUTH   These numbers help explain why these last eight years prior to DJ Trump were disastrous for the USA. I read the last item and then looked at Trump’s Cabinet. No wonder Washington, DC is in turmoil. Trump’s picks are bosses who expect their employees to work. These are Eye Opening Numbers. This is what bothers a lot of people about Trump. He won’t accept a can’t do attitude, or inexperienced, incompetent performance. He will get results; it just might not be smooth or pretty.    Here are some amazing stats: Make sure you read to the bottom. An eye-opener!

 1 . These 10 States now have more people on welfare than they employ!

 California, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, New York, Maine, and South Carolina 2 . Last month, the Senate Budget Committee reports that in fiscal year 2012, between food stamps, housing support, childcare, Medicaid and other benefits, the average U.S. Household below the poverty line received $168.00 a day in government support. What’s the problem with that much support? Well, the average household income in America is just over $50,000, which averages out to $137.13 a day. To put it another way, being on welfare now pays the equivalent of $30.00 an hour for 40 hour week, while the average job pays $24.00 an hour.

 3 . Check the last set of statistics!!   The percentage of each past president’s cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet. You know what the private business sector is: A real-life business not a government job.

 Here are the percentages:

38% T. Roosevelt 
40% Taft 
52% Wilson 
49% Harding 
48% Coolidge 
42% Hoover 
50% F. D. Roosevelt 
50% Truman 
57% Eisenhower 
30% Kennedy 
47% Johnson 
53% Nixon 
42% Ford 
32% Carter 
56% Reagan 
51% GH Bush 
39% Clinton 
55% GW Bush 
8% Obama       
90% Trump     

   This helps explain the bias, if not the incompetence, of the last administration: ONLY 8% of them had ever worked in private business! That’s right! Only eight percent – the least, by far of the last 19 presidents! And these people tried to tell our corporations how to run their businesses? How could Obama, president of a major nation and society, the one with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk about business when he’s never worked for one?? Or about jobs when he has never really had one? And, when it’s the same for 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers? They spent most of their time in academia, government, and/or non-profit jobs or as “community organizers.”    

I hope you are including DJT in your daily prayers, because if he fails to be President for the next five years, we may never be the same again at any time in the future save an armed revolution, and today, even that would be an iffy proposition..

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