Is Organic Really Good?

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An article in Slate comments on Whole Foods marketing and reality.

If you’ve ever wondered whether organic food is more than just marketing, read this:

Is Whole Foods Wholesome? by Field Maloney.

I do have a mildly amusing story about organic food, so I may as well tell it here.

Years ago, Mike and I went for a week-long vacation in Hawaii with Mike’s cousin Ricky. Ricky is heavily into health foods and the like — or at least he was back then — and insisted that we buy organic fruit for snacking while we traveled.

I had a terrible cold and we bought some oranges at a supermarket so I could suck down the vitamin C and soothe my sore throat with the juice. They were delicious oranges, sweet and juicy, and I really enjoyed them.

But because Ricky wanted organic fruit, we tracked down an organic food market and bought some extremely ugly — but organically grown — oranges. They were terrible. Tough skins and membranes, dry pulp, and not even sweet. Mike and I refused to eat them. Ricky finally threw them away.

He never bugged us about buying organic again.

Now I’m not trying to say that organic is bad. I’m just saying that it isn’t always good.

Atkins Eggs

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I go back on Atkins…and eggs.

I’m tired of being overweight. I’m tired of having only one pair of jeans that fit comfortably. And I refuse to buy new clothes in a bigger size.

So I’ll either have to continue to suffer, wear my Chefware pants all the time, or lose weight.

That said, I went back on Atkins today. While you’re free to use the Comments feature to tell me how bad Atkins is for me, I’ll probably ignore what you have to say. I lost 15 pounds on Atkins in a month two years ago and I’d like to see if I can do that again.

So here’s my very easy recipe for what I call Atkins Eggs.

  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup Atkins-friendly veggies, chopped. I usually use spinach, asparagus, or broccoli. To make it really easy, I buy frozen veggies.
  • 1/4 cup grated or shredded cheese. I usually use a “4-cheese Mexican blend,” which is pre-shredded and packaged in a zip-close bag.
  • Spray oil. I use Olive oil, but you can use any oil you like.

Use the spray oil to coat the inside of a large glass custard cup. Break the eggs into the cup and scramble them. Then add the veggies and cheese and mix well. Microwave the mixture on high for about a minute (to get it going) followed by about 5 minutes on medium. (My microwave is programmable, so I can get the whole 6-minute program in and make my coffee while I’m waiting.)

Of course microwave times vary, so you want to keep an eye on it the first time you do this. My microwave is about 20 years old now (really!) and I think it’s low powered. The idea is to cook the mixture through without drying out the edges.

When it’s done, let it sit for a minute or two in the microwave. That’ll help finish off the veggie cooking, which is especially important if you didn’t chop finely. Then use a potholder to pull out the cup, loosen the contents with a fork, and pop it onto a plate. A little salt and pepper won’t hurt a thing. You can also top it with salsa, if it’s a low-carb mixture. I don’t go for that, but some folks like it.

The good thing about this recipe is you can really alter the flavor of the finished product by varying the vegetables and types of cheeses. I’m going to try some Saga Blue tomorrow morning. You can also add cooked or smoked meat — like ham or Canadian bacon to the mixture before cooking it.

If you try this, let me know how you do. Use the comments link or form for this post.

Just Say No…

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…to taking kids on helicopter rides over one hour long.

Why? It’s simple. They puke.

It happened on Wednesday, during our Wickenburg to Meteor Crater to Grand Canyon flight. Christopher just couldn’t listen to Dad and take dramamine. By the time he did, it was too late. No barf bags handy, so he puked into my insulated lunch bag. But what’s worse is that he forgot to move his mike boom out of the way. Not only did he get kid puke all over the foam cover for my $1,000 Bose headset, but we had to listen to him puke as we flew.

And, of course, I had to get kid puke on my hand when I removed the foamy thing to wash it. And I had to wash it, too, so his sister, who sat in front on the way back, wouldn’t have brother puke near her mouth.

(One of the reasons I don’t have kids is because I never wanted to clean up kid puke.)

It happened again today. Paul did take the motion sickness pills in advance. But it wasn’t enough to stop him. Fortunately, I had a barf bag handy. His sister opened it up and handed it to him. He moved the mike boom. (I did remind him about six times, so he wasn’t likely to forget.)

I opened the vent to let in fresh air. Paul got cold. I closed it. His sisters begged me to open it back up. I smelled it, too. Paul got and stayed cold.

At least he got it all in the bag.

In both cases, we’d been airborne for more than an hour. I think it was the first two times time I’d had a kid on board so long. And a puker each time. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a trend.

So no kids on flights lasting longer than an hour.

The rule has been made and will not be broken.

I Never Thought…

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…I’d ever have to complain about too much flying.

I am exhausted. During the past three days, I flew 11.5 hours of revenue time. That’s time that people are actually paying me to fly. I flew 6 hours just today.

All of a sudden, everyone wants to go flying. I’ve done charters to the Grand Canyon, Scottsdale, Sedona, and Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. I’ve done real estate developer land tours, tours around Mesa, and tours around Wickenburg. And that’s after last week’s two photo shoots, a Grand Canyon charter, a Sedona charter, and an ash scattering. Where are these people coming from? And where were they in January and February when I was wondering where my next payment was going to come from?

I made my next payment. And the payment after that. Heck, I might even have June’s payment lined up — I have another tour tomorrow and a 2-day outdoor gig next weekend.

I need a rest. This helicopter charter business is starting to get like a job.

Nothing by Chance

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I reach for a book on my shelf and am pleasantly surprised.

I had a Grand Canyon charter the other day. Although most Canyon visitors like to walk along the rim and enjoy the view, I’ve been so tired from work lately that I thought I might like to spend my wait time in a comfortable chair in a hotel lobby, reading a book. So before leaving home on Wednesday morning, I went into our little library and pulled a paperback I hadn’t read yet off the shelf. The book was Nothing by Chance by Richard Bach.

I was introduced to Bach’s writing when I was in high school. His book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a huge bestseller back then and all the students who liked to read read it. (Wow, is that a weird sentence construction: “…read read…”) I don’t remember the book very well and plan to read it again soon.

This book, which was published in 1969, is one of Bach’s flying books. He wrote several of them and they’re carried by most good pilot shops. I bought this copy at least two years ago from Aero Phoenix, the wholesale pilot supply shop I used to buy products for resale in the little pilot shop I had at Wickenburg Airport. I’d bought two other books by Bach on the same shopping expedition, but had chosen the wrong one to read first and hadn’t gotten any further.

The subtitle of the book, which doesn’t appear on the cover, is “A Gypsy Pilot’s Adventures in Modern America.” It pretty much sums up the nonfiction story. I’m almost halfway finished and the story so far has been about Richard and two friends as they “barnstorm” around the midwest, attracting crowds with aerobatics and parachute jumps, making money by taking people for rides in their two airplanes. The book is no longer “modern” — unless you still live in the 1960s — and the idea of $3 airplane rides takes you back to those days. It certainly takes me back to those days: my first ride in an aircraft was in the late 1960s, when I got a helicopter ride in what was probably a Bell 47. That ride, which I took with my dad, cost only $5 per person.

Bach’s writing borders on amazing. Take, for example, the very first paragraph of the book:

The river was wine beneath our wings — dark royal June Wisconsin wine. It poured deep purple from one side of the valley to the other, and back again.The highway leaped across it once, twice, twice more, a daring shuttlecock weaving a thread of hard concrete.

I read that paragraph and suddenly felt ashamed to call myself a writer.

Fortunately, the whole book is not like that. It’s a story that moves forward, with brief interludes of wonderful imagery and flashbacks to other times in the author’s past.

I can identify with the story. I often make extra money with my helicopter by bringing it to county fairs and other outdoor events. He talks about the spectators who watch but don’t step up with their money. About how dead business can be until a passenger or two climb aboard and get the whole thing started. About flying for hours with a long line of people waiting. About waiting for hours with no one wanting to fly. He talks about trying to keep count of the passengers, about their reactions to seeing familiar terrain from an unfamiliar perspective. About the responsibility of the pilot and the joy of flight through someone else’s eyes.

It’s clear that Bach loves (or is it loved?) to fly. We have that in common.

I’m glad I pulled this book off the shelf on Wednesday. But now I’m wishing I could write its sequel, as a barnstorming helicopter pilot in the 21st century.