It’s Almost Pepper Time

I have this habit of growing hot peppers in a couple of large pots in the driveway. I cram several plants in each pot and use the red Miracle-Gro™ plant food. What I end up with is something that looks like pepper bushes. I have harvested a lot of hot peppers over the last few years. Being from the South I won’t plant anything until after Good Friday.

Year before last I looked for cowhorn peppers but was unable to find any. I grew a variety of hot peppers which resulted in some decent pepper sauce but not what I was really wanting. Habaneras, jalapenos, banana, cayenne, Serrano and some called Mississippi hots. I did end up with some dehydrated pepper flakes which will knock your socks off. Tonight I was transferring this dried mixture from a sealed zip lock bag to an empty plastic herb container and both my wife and I were subdued by the pungent dust.

Last year I found cowhorn peppers, so I planted a pot full of them and a pot full of jalapenos. I made up lots of pepper sauce. Matter of fact, I have too many jars of peppers in stock. I even made three quarts of hot sauce, a red, green and one that is orangey looking. The reason I wanted cowhorn peppers so bad was that years ago I planted a plant and ended up with these extra long hot peppers in abundance. I thought it would be cool to fill up a gallon glass jug with these hot peppers and make this gallon of pepper sauce with these long peppers. I sealed up and left this jug in the kitchen for about a year mainly as a decoration. Then one day after I had exhausted my regular pepper sauce supply, I decided to crack open this gallon jug and decant off some pepper sauce. Wow, it was good. The heat was just right, the taste was just right and the aroma was great. Give me more “Cow-Horn.” It took me a while to use up all of this pepper sauce and I think I gave some of it away. So begun my quest for more cow horn pepper sauce, you know for peas and greens. Last year I had me some and made up a bunch of pepper sauce.

Today I decanted some of my first batch that has set since last July. The first time I simply used white vinegar but this batch was made with apple cider vinegar. Yes, I did it. I now have an empty (cleaned and vinegar rinsed) olive oil bottle full of some aromatic pepper sauce; time for a pot of peas. (Do the happy dance) Now that I am cutting back on sodium, fat, sugar and calories, the taste factor means a lot. Today we made a pot of low sodium spaghetti sauce with organic tomatoes and no “friggin” salt, so Christy put a half teaspoon of my pepper flakes and that provided plenty of heat and taste that I didn’t miss the salt. We even used ground turkey but I did use real Parmesan, damn if I am going to commit a food sin. I am sure that I cut back enough on the sodium in everything else that the cheese didn’t kill me. Now I have to come up with a way to cook a pot of peas without the salty hog meat.

You know why they don’t serve turkey bacon and turkey burgers in prison? Riots. Cause a turkey burger will get you shanked. I think they use turkey bacon to train suicide bombers as well. I gave a piece to our dog and she acted like she was being punished. I do believe it is on record that dieting and healthy foods are the chief cause for profanity. I did order this “healthy” entrée in a restaurant yesterday for lunch. There wasn’t enough chicken on the plate to excite a vegan and mostly “blankity-blank cuss that doctor", broccoli. I didn’t use to mind broccoli until I was told that was all I should eat. This low sodium “quest for new cuss-words” diet has been interesting. I found a zero sodium organic peanut butter that is pretty good, expensive but good. Which brings to mind, why do foods with “less” or “zero” amounts in it cost more? Its ground friggin peanuts, no salt, no chemicals, and no additives, so why $3.89 for this little jar? Before long, fat people will have to start killing skinny people and selling off their healthy bodies on the black market just to afford the additional food costs of being on a diet.

In the good news department, after our healthy lunch, my bride and I stopped by the Tuesday Morning store in Tupelo. It has to be another buy-out type store because of the stuff in it. It’s decent and I have found some interesting cooking items in there before. I made a “Find.” I was looking at the bamboo cutting boards, like I really need another one, but just looking. I lifted this one cutting board and underneath I found this black box with “Culinary Institute of America” on it. Well, this looks interesting, so I open this fancy black box and Wow! A ten inch Chef’s knife with Culinary Institute of America labeled on the blade. Ok, now this is really interesting. I took it out of the box and flipped it over and saw that the steel was the same German steel the Wusthof knives are made with. Even the handle was styled like a Wusthof. I have an eight inch Wusthof chef knife that I really like. Here was a ten inch knife, not as wide as my eight inch model and the steel wasn’t as polished. But wow. I returned the knife to box and turned it over to see a price tag of $39.99. I latched on to the thing like a kid in a toy store. This made up for all that evil broccoli I had just consumed. I drove Christy crazy all the way home with the excessive repeating “Did you see my new knife?” bit. This knife probably retailed for about a hundred bucks, so I figure I got a decent buy on it. I own several good kitchen knives and enjoy using them. I believe anyone that is going to cook at home should invest in at least a couple of decent knives and some good cookware. It does make a difference in your enjoyment in preparing dishes. Looking around for bargains can also be fun. My buddy just brought me a ceramic knife back from his vacation, which makes a really handy slicer for vegetables. I already own a five inch ceramic Santoku knife which is great to use and stays very sharp. Ceramic knives require knowing what you don’t want to use them for so you don’t break them. They are fairly tough, but will break. I really enjoy using my two primary eight inch chef’s knives, which are my Wustof and Ken Onion Shun. I also like this five inch Global knife we have for making thin slices. It seems to have a thinner blade profile and you can turn a single apple into a plateful. I have this Japanese six inch blade that is perfect for jalapenos. Now I have to find something to cook that I can use this new ten inch model on.

Well, Happy Easter everyone, Lent will be over and I am going to eat me a dessert. Maybe a piece of healthy dark chocolate or something but I won’t overdo it. So at my next doctor’s appointment I can not only say I have lost weight, but I have also provided medical science several useful skinny cadavers. “See my new knife Doc?”

“Health Care – We been re-formed”

This month I put my Shrine Club newsletter out a few days earlier because we are having an Easter Egg hunt before the end of the month and I wanted to get the notice to my readers in time. Last month I didn't write an article and I wanted to get back on track for the April issue. I always try to produce an article that not only will interest readers but promote the cause of Shriners as well. After a couple of weeks being ill from a virus both my wife and I contracted as dealt with, I also had some hypertension issues. I take five different blood pressure medicines, both inherited and resulting in a lifestyle from my disability. My regular doctor asked me to see a specialist which turned out to be a bad experience and several days of harsh side effects from a new medicine. Things have balanced out and I have actually lost eight pounds and revised my diet to an even lower sodium and healthier choices. Not as much fun, but healthier.

So I decided to make my article about an aspect of health care most people don't consider. Since 1922 Shriners Hospitals for Children has given free specialized medical care to close to a million children. Our hospitals have a budget of around 2.2 million dollars per day. Obviously it is something I believe in. I hope you enjoy this month's offerings.

“Health Care,” you can’t escape the words anymore. Every day we are bombarded with news and discussions about Health Care. In between the talk about health care you get the commercials for the drugs which will vastly improve your life, so just ask your doctor and by the way this drug could also cause stroke, heart-attack, nausea, suicidal thoughts, death and a desire to gamble. That’s alright the next commercial is a 1-800 number for a lawyer to contact if you had a problem from taking a drug. Then you can cash in your structured settlement and buy more drugs so you can hire another lawyer and start the whole cycle again.

Recently between a virus and updating my prescriptions I have been involved in a health care reform of my own. My regular doctor sent me to a specialist, even though I clearly told him that the last specialist I saw was an idiot. This specialist wasn’t much different and I really felt the need to punch him in the head. I tried to talk to him but he wasn’t listening, he already knew it all. Even though I had given him my entire medical history, he told me to walk; then when I got up and left the room he said, “You can’t walk.” Duh? I had just told him that. Health care is a maze of variables, vastly confusing; full of doubts, speculations and apprehensions. Imagine a parent trying to find help for their child with a burn injury or orthopedic condition, legs, feet, arms, back, etc. Who do you talk too? Who cares about the patient rather than the money?

What about the child, a four or five year old trying to understand why these people in white coats are looking at them and talking about things they can’t understand? Shriners Hospitals for Children have Child Life Specialists which are pediatric health care professionals who work with patients, their family and others involved in the child’s care in order to help them manage stress and understand various medical procedures; minimizing the negative impact of situational disruptions while maintaining individual growth and development and family relationships. Child Life Specialists collaborate with parents and other health care professionals to meet the distinctive requirements of individual children. Because a child can feel overwhelmed, child life professionals help children gain a sense of familiarity and control of this new environment through play and exploration inside the health care facility. Although child life specialists typically function in the hospital setting, their skills make them especially trained to support children and families in other settings. Because of the physical, emotional, and cognitive stressors that accompany a hospital stay they use child-centered interventions and pain techniques to work with the patient and family members to help our children cope with hospitalization, surgery and medical procedures. The child life specialists I have met with Shriners Hospital are extremely impressive. That’s what I needed the last couple of weeks, a low sodium/sugar-free/low-fat grumpy old guy specialist to help me cope with my health care. Maybe I wouldn’t have snarled at that skinny person when I left the doctor’s office.

What about Health Care reform? What about Health Care costs? Look on the Shriners web site or any Shriners publication and you will see these words.
“Shriners Hospitals for Children® is a health care system of 22 hospitals dedicated to improving the lives of children by providing specialty pediatric care, innovative research and outstanding teaching programs. Every year, Shriners Hospitals for Children® provides care for thousands of kids with orthopaedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate, in a family-centered environment with no financial obligation to patients or families. It's how Shriners Hospitals for Children® has been Changing the World through Caring for Kids since 1922.”

Since 1922! Think about it, how much money have the Shriners Hospitals and this fraternity saved families, insurance companies and governmental services since 1922? (Billions) We have provided specialized care for children since they were a few weeks old until after their eighteenth birthday. We have several children in the Hamasa area alone we have treated for fifteen years and longer. We have treated children from every state in the union plus about 49 different countries, all at no cost to the patient. The recent economical times is requiring us to start taking in third party pay, such as insurance and Medicaid. Still we will not have a financial requirement to the patient or family. Talk about your health care reform, Shriners since 1922 have done more than talk.

Shriners Hospitals is not just a pediatric clinic; it is a full blown international health care system. In 2009, we had 111 research projects, 31 research fellowships and 20 shared research facilities. This innovative research has benefited not only our patients but the entire world. In the past 20 years alone, more than 8,000 physicians have received residency education or postgraduate fellowship within the health care system. Talk about your health care reform, Shriners since 1922 have done more than discuss which political party favors what.

I know the readers of this newsletter have seen me repeatedly state that every Shriner and his wife need to visit one or more of our hospitals. I know you have read about the top quality pediatric care provided by our hospitals. That is because every Shriner and his family are involved in something major, something life changing and something so huge, it fathoms the imagination. It is worth repeating and witnessing.

What is Shriners health care reform? It is those Nobles from Laurel selling ribs to raise money. It’s the people in Meridian standing on a street corner selling onions and the Pontotoc Shrine Club members turning in a big stack of sold raffle tickets. It’s setting up somewhere with an information paper in hand giving out hamburgers to shoppers just so they will know we exist and can help children. Health care reform is every hospital application sent in and every child helped. It is also that smiling guy in a red fez saying good morning to a Shriners Hospital employee after a seven-plus hour drive; smiling because he knows the real truth. He has seen the miracles happening daily at our 22 facilities. Health care reform is participating by attending club and temple meetings and functions, you don’t have to dedicate your life, but you know you can attend when you can. Personally I have sponsored 15 Shrine patients all because someone encouraged me to get involved.

When people start talking about health care, you can always mention Shriners Hospitals for Children and the vast amount of children helped since 1922. You never know, someone might know of a child we can help and improve their life. You want to be reformed? See that mother with tears in her eyes because finally someone is helping her child. Let people know how Shriners Hospitals for Children has reformed health care since 1922.

Me? Well if you see me flogging the salt, sugar and fat out of a skinny dude with a salad bowl; it’s just me working on my health care reform. Hey, he said to get some form of exercise. “Having fun and helping Children.”