respublica

Want better quality sleep?

Have trouble sleeping or not getting a restful sleep. Well, here come the experts with another piece of advice which involves fruit. Forget sleep aids and turn to pineapple.

Yes some experts believe eating pineapple before bed helps you get to sleep faster and helps you sleep deeper. the fruit increases the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone, in the body.  One expert said, "Eating pineapples or drinking fresh pineapple juice before bed has been shown to raise melatonin markers in the brain by up to 266%. Tryptophan (an amino acid present in pineapple) naturally boosts melatonin levels (a hormone that signals sleep to begin) and serotonin levels in the brain, causing a calming, sleepy, relaxed feeling."

If you have trouble with sleep, this may be worth a try, better than chemical sleeping pills.

What's happened Olives?

This just shocks and maddens me. Been buying black olives recently? Well, for whatever reason the producers are calling tiny olives large olives. The large olives are no where near the size we used to get. They are smaller than the normal small olives.

Can we blame this on Covid too? Has there been a problem with growers? Bad year for some reason. But it hasn't been just this year, I've noticed this size reduction for some time. I'd like to know the reason and may buy a can of small olives and compare the size.

It's just darn annoying.

Why mess with tried and true cookies

I came across a post this morning touting a cookie recipe. Zucchini Cookies with cream cheese frosting. Frankly, my feeling is vegetables should stay out of desserts. Maybe someone was desperate to use up an over-flowing garden of zucchini. The list of ingredients made my head swim.

All purpose flour

Baking powder

Baking soda

Salt

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Ginger

Unsalted Butter

Granulated Sugar

Light brown sugar

1 egg

Vanilla

Fresh zucchini

Cream cheese

Powdered sugar

 

 

Picking out ripe melons

It's watermelon and cantaloupe time right now, but it is not always easy to pick ones which are ripe. They aren't known for ripening off the vine like many other fruits are. The other day I bought a cantaloupe at the grocery store and as I was cutting it i found the actual fruit was hard as a rock. It was useless. So this article on how to pick a ripe watermelon when at the store was right up my alley.

For watermelon it advises to use two finger trick. However, the finger trick only works on striped watermelons. Look for nice, even green stripes. Each green stripe should be about the width of your pointer and second fingers together. I will probably test this out in the near future.

Another way to do this is to feel the weight of the melon, it should be heavier than you would think by just looking at it. And the ground spot is probably most important for judging ripeness. 'This faded area on the bottom of the watermelon ranges from pale cream to deep butter yellow and even light orange. "choose a melon with a rich yellow spot.

Now about cantaloupes. Don't choose one that has any green on it. Look at the stem end. it should not still have any part of the stem and the stem area should not have any rough edges. It should be more open. There is also the smell test. Pick up the melon and smell the end opposite the stem end. A ripe melon will have a sweet smell. And the famous tap the melon routine. tap the cantaloupe and listen for a low sound. Also as with watermelon it should be heavier than it looks. 

I should have done one or all of these cantaloupe tricks the other day,

Yes We have No Bananas

For the last couple of days our local Schnucks has been out of bananas. This struck me as very odd the first day I saw the empty shelf. Then I noticed a sign telling shoppers there was supply issues with bananas. Bananas are a big seller I've noticed over the years, just about every third shopper is picking up bananas, including me. Today the store had the same empty shelf. I wondered if this was happening in other grocery stores or was it just Schnucks and maybe only our Schnucks.

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Also, I needed a couple of limes and the 5 ir 6 they had were horrible looking.  Not green at all, brownish yellow. What is going on?

I bought one awful lime just in case I could not find a decent on somewhere else. The Walmart Neighborhood Market just down the way from Schnucks had lots of limes and lots and lots of bananas.

Here is a photo of the awful lime from Schnucks and the Neighborhood Market limes. It is very disappointing to see what Schnucks has and doesn't have.

 

Almonds, oh nuts

I came across an article on Almonds touting their health benefits.  We eat lot of nuts around here, I always have a couple of small bowls of mixed nuts and dry roasted peanuts on the coffee table. What irks me somewhat is the mixed nuts. I'd guess almonds make up more than half of the mix. I'm not a big fan of these nuts and although Dale claims to like them, at the end of most days almonds are what is mostly left.

I remember a few years ago there was an almond shortage due to bad weather where they are grown. It was a big deal in news stories. But I guess there is not a shortage now because they dominate cans mixed nuts.

In other nutty news, cans of the Schnucks Culinaria nuts are the best of most canned nuts. Way better than the national brands. The same is for the Schnucks brand bottled dry roasted peanuts.

Air Fryer Hacks

Many of us have an air fryer and use it for many different things so many items on this list of 35 air fryer hacks may be old news. But I was taken by the advice for making hard boiled eggs in an air fryer. Dale loves hard boiled eggs and I make a few every week which isn't difficult but means standing around the stove as the water boils and simmers and watching the clock for time.

I may try the air fryer just for fun. Preheat to 250 degrees, put in the eggs and go for 17 minutes for normal sized large eggs. We shall see.

Some of the other air fryer hacks are worth a look.

Funny onion advice

We've been growing onions for a couple of years now and they do well, both red and yellow varieties. But the question always is, what should we do with them after we pull them from the ground. The past two years I've been hanging them to dry on the back deck (which is covered) and then comes the "what then"?

Last year I bought a few white netted vegetable bags which worked fine, but today's article has another suggestion. Put them in old, clean panty hose.

"Pantyhose, with its tiny holes, allows enough room for air to get through to keep your veggies nice and dry. Plus, if you stack your onions in a pantyhose leg, you can easily hang them up and keep them out of the way. The only catch? The smell will catch on (and you'll be cutting them up), so you won't want to wear them again."

Well, who'd want to wear them again anyway, hopefully they are old but clean. I doubt I'll do this, but it seems a decent idea if you can't find those produce bags.

 

A Tedious Gardening hack

Ok, gardening news advice has now shifted from how best to plant to how best to protect the vegetables and fruits which have begun to form. This is one of the more absurd things I've come across. We are advised to bag each formed vegetable or fruit with a mesh drawstring bag to keep insects and critters from getting at them. I don't know who this person is who suggested this, but he or she must have a lot of time on their hands and a lot of mesh bags. Or, really good knees to stay bent over for the time it would take to do this.

We have a strawberry patch in our yard and I cannot conceive of doing this for each berry. Or tomato or anything else.

 

Unexpected Spring Cleaning advice

CNN posted an advice story which made me groan. Seriously? The title is "Reset Your Body and Mind With 10 Spring Cleaning Tips". Spring Cleaning our bodies and minds, I mean come on.

Four of the ten have to do with movement. Exercise, movement, Exercise, movement.

Then there comes body cleansing which deals with food and drinking water. "Naturally cleanse by eating more plants." I don't know about you but when I hear eating plants I think of geraniums and potted plants. But I guess they mean broccoli, tomatoes and potatoes etc. Plus seeds, nuts and legumes, grains and fruits and vegetables. Nothing about meat but don't eat the good stuff like crackers, cookies, baked goods and fried food. I will never give up baked goods from Kruta Bakery.

After all this, drink water and more water. No alcohol.

Sounds like a boring way to live. I'll spring clean our house but not my physical self if all that is what it takes.