cheez-it vs cheese-nips

And old friend, who is now dead, told me there is a vast difference between Cheez-its and Cheese-Nips.

They look alike, have almost the same box, share the same location in any store, and share the same price, have nearly the same name, but they are night and day in quality.

I haven't had Cheese-nips for a long time and gave in to the temptation a week ago and got some.  So much heaven in one box, I consumed the whole thing.

A week later i found myself in the cracker isle looking for more but all I found was Cheez-its.  I mean, there was three shelves full of Cheez-its of all kinds of flavors and sizes and absolutely no Cheese-nips to be found anywhere.

I figure one of two things... They didn't carry them anymore.  They sold out and were waiting to re-stock.  Either way, my choice was Cheez-its or nothing.  I chose Cheez-its.

Ok... Cheeze-its lack flavor and don't have near enough salt.  It was like eating road kill instead of a steak.  I choked them down just to get rid of the box.

Today I opened a box of Cheese-nips.  I still had the memory of Cheez-its on my salivary glans as I took the first cracker between my teeth.

Night and day, baby.  Night and day.

   

ask the Q

lost shekina found

I was scrounging goodies for my next bubble project.  Things like a mobius cable, living water, diatomaceous earth ormus, magnets, and stuff like that.  It struck me I had a solution I made back in 2015 that's been sitting in the cabinet where I store my pilsner glasses, untouched since I made it.  I could use this for the base of the internal succor punch.  It really made the double mobius mexican hat kick ass.  It should work even better in a bubble.

About this solution... Five years ago, several of us in various parts of the world, were making these and comparing notes through email.  It was supposed to be a manifestation device and we were all eager to try it.  We were told this device was called shekina 

The process was a full pint of a vinegar/salt solution, two copper pipes set up in a colloidal silver fashion, and hooked up to a 9v lantern battery to create a colloidal copper from the vinegar/ salt solution.  You keep the process running until the solution turns green.  When that's done, you add male and female DNA.  Male and female DNA spin in opposite directions and putting them in a sterile solution will create a minute chaos field vortex that grows exponentially.  It's designed for long term use and the longer it sets, the stronger it gets until manifestation becomes easy.  At least, that was the theory.

Anyway... I got the jar with the solution and saw it was dried up.  I mean, this was a sealed mason jar and all that was left was some crap on the bottom.  Only this wasn't just crap.  It seems the whole solution crystallized into one big crystal with a green tint.  What you see here is small chip about an inch long.   

I'm not sure how it happened but it looks like I found the crystal for my bubble internal mobius.         

avocado discovery

I've been eating avocados since I picked my first one in Puerto Rico decades ago.  Like many things in life, the first was the best and a fresh picked avocado is hard to beat.  After that, they've all been somewhat mediocre.  But I like em just the same.

My preferred method of consuming a ripe avocado is cutting it in half and eating it with a spoon.  Simple and easy.  That's the way I roll, baby.

The last time I got avocados, I picked out some fairly firm ones only to realize those things were far from ripe.  It took some effort just cutting it in half and I had to quarter it just to get the pit out.  This was inedible but instead of tossing it I saw an opportunity for experimentation.

I peeled and diced it and sauteed it in butter with a little salt.  After a few minutes it began to look like home fries.  Would you believe it even tasted like home fries!  I mean, damn good!

I've had ripe avocado lightly sauteed that tasted like warm avocado but only the very unripe fruit seems to take on the characteristics of potato when browned.  It makes sense that unripe fruit would have a lack of flavor and just a bit of cooking could resemble a potato taste.  In my opinion, potato is pretty much tasteless, compared to other produce, anyway.  

For anyone involved in a ketogenic lifestyle, this is a godsend.  After a few minutes search I couldn't find anything on the internet associating avocados with potatoes.  I can't be the only one who tried working with extremely unripe avocados.  There seems to be no mention of it anywhere.  Lots of recipes using potatoes and avocados but nothing about avocado as a potato substitute but it got me thinking of other ways to turn avocados into au gratin, mashed, or as a potato substitute for Hungarian goulash. 

Avocados could be the healthiest fruit out there.  Most of the calories in avocado come from fat. A whole avocado contains about 21 grams of fat, but mostly in the form of healthier monounsaturated omega-9 fatty acid containing oleic acid which is beneficial in reducing inflammation, cardiovascular health, and to some extent, dealing with cancer.

Avocados contain large proportions of fiber, which also helps in controlling blood sugar and lowering insulin levels.  The fiber also lowers the carbohydrate count making it a perfect keto food.

Avocado has been tested to be effective in controlling cholesterol.

In a ketogenic diet, your carb count should be 20 grams or less per day.  That's seven avocados or one medium potato.  Seven avocados also has the added benefit of supplying a days worth of potassium as well.
    

 avocado macros 1 medium

• Calories: 227
• Fat: 21g
• Sodium: 11mg
• Carbohydrates: 12g   (subtract fiber from carbs gives you  2.8 grams)
• Fiber: 9.2g
• Sugars: 0.4g
• Protein: 2.7g 

 potato macros 2/3 cup

• Calories: 87
• Water: 77%
• Protein: 1.9 grams
• Carbs: 20.1 grams   20.1-1.8=18.3 grams
• Sugar: 0.9 grams
• Fiber: 1.8 grams
• Fat: 0.1 grams

Truly, a super food worthy of praise that can possibly be a potato substitute.  I can't say the same for potatoes.

Avocado salad?  Hmmm...




          

petition the lord with prayer

at the funeral

Something funny happened on the way to the funeral.

an appetite hankering

For two weeks I've had this hankering for anchovies.  I can't explain it.  I always hated anchovies but I had this serious drive to consume those salty, oily little fishes.  I also hate eating sardines.  Kippered herring is great but those sardines and anchovies are enough to make me hurl.  But have em, I gotta do, so I got a 2 oz. can and tonight I decided to do it with a little rum chaser.

Oh my god... As soon as I opened the can I knew I was making a big mistake.  The smell was turning my stomach but I was past the point of no return. I pulled out a slimy little anchovy from the can and ate it.  It was fuckin gross but I couldn't stop now.  I ate another, and another, until the can was nothing but oil. 

I had this crap anchovy oil on my hands and desk and immediately washed it off and drank a glass of rum.  I can still taste the anchovies.

I figure my body needed whatever is in anchovies and rather than fight it, I went with it.  Ya gotta follow your appetites.  For what it's worth, I feel lots better than I did, so I must be doing something right.

Next time I get an appetite hankering I hope it's for something like bananas or mangoes, or something I can deal with.  

      

the golden globes

wine diamonds

When I made the Rubicon a couple years ago I added 10% Cabernet Franc to mellow the blend, making the Rubicon the best tasting wine I ever had.  Because even a very dry Franc still has a most delicious flavor, I figured Franc should be my go to wine for the winter.  Last year I made 12 gallons of the stuff.

I bottled it in July, let it rest for a couple months, and by September it was ready to drink.

A few days ago I pulled a cork on a bottle of Franc and found wine diamonds on the cork.  Wine diamonds are crystallized tartaric acid or simply tartrates.  they're sometimes present in white wines but not so often in the reds due to the lower levels of tartaric acid.  To find them on a cork means the bottle was aged on its side or upside down to keep the cork wet.  It also means the presence of tartrate crystals is viewed by many winemakers, sommeliers and academics as a sign of quality, indicating that the wine was not overprocessed. Wine crystals never impart an unpleasant taste, so it's all good.

During storage, tartaric crystals could form if the temperature goes below 40F.  Not the case with this stuff.  Where I store the wine maintains a temp of 55F to 60F.  It's not only Franc that's stored here but cases of Rubicon, Sangiovese, Merlot, Petite Syra, Sauvignon Blanc, and a number of different blends, none of which have tartaric crystals.    

I look for these cork crystals whenever I pull a cork, and I pulled lots of corks in my lifetime.  Before the Franc, I was able to find only one cork that had crystals and that was from a bottle of Ergo Roja.  Apparently, wine crystals are somewhat rare.  All the more reason I got so excited when I found them in my wine.

Yesterday, I pulled a cork on another bottle of Franc and found some tiny crystals.  So far, four out of four bottles have cork crystals, making wine diamonds on the Cabernet Franc not a fluke but a consistent thing. That's four in a row and it's only aged for six months.  I'm betting the whole case is like this.  Not trying to brag but this proves my wines are not only exceptional but absolutely superior to anything else I've had in the last couple of decades.

I guess I do deserve bragging rights.



     

good vs evil mindset

1812 rise of the nwo

This is a long video but well worth it.  Static managed to pull it together to form a damn good hypothesis as to how we got here, where we're going, and why.  The information is out there, hiding in plain sight. 

it's perspective

I saw The Departed, Martin Scorsese's crime/drama, when it was released in 2006.  I remember I rooted for the Matt Damon character back then and thought the Mark Wahlberg character was way out of line when he killed Damon in the final scenes.
I saw the movie for the second time tonight and came away with a different point of view.

Let's back up a bit.  It's Boston and Jack Nicholson is a big crime boss who takes Matt Damon under his wing as a child and trains him to a life of crime and sends him to cop school so he can be an informant on the inside.  Leonardo DiCaprio is from a crime family but goes to cop school to be a cop and fight crime and becomes an undercover cop in Jack's gang.

For reasons I can't explain, I never liked DiCaprio.  No specific reason.  I just didn't like the guy so I didn't like him in any movies he was in, including Titanic.  I would have preferred Billy Zane as Jack and DiCaprio as the rich, pampas ass.  Even a bald Billy Zane would've been preferable as the Jack character.  In my opinion, the best part of Titanic was DiCaprio freezing to death in the arctic waters.

But now it's 2019 and I have a different attitude.  The whole premise of The Departed is the cops had a mole and the bad guys had a mole and both sides were trying to find out who the respective moles were.

The second time around I found myself siding with DiCaprio.  This guy was in constant danger and surrounded by murderous psychotics for years.  Matt Damon was in the cop shop, adored as the perfect Irish cop.  Did I mention all these people, good and bad, were all Irish?  When Mark Wahlberg killed Matt Damon in his own apartment, the first time I saw it, I hated what Mark did.  The second time around I cheered.

That's kinda like Trump. 

Something to think about.                 

no country for arnold

south of the grapevine

stayin alive

impeachment backfire

quid pro joe

biblical stuff

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
 
Jules Winnfield

it's gonna be biblical

Remember this December 9th.

joe's leg hair

I'm voting for Joe Biden in the primaries.  Joe is the quintessential example of a true democrat.  I encourage everyone to vote for Joe in the primaries.  I know you want to.  Just do it.