Here's a challenge to all of you foodies out there, trash your microwaves!
Really, what do you use it for on a daily basis? If you enjoy cooking, kitchen gadgets, slicing, chopping up vegetables, and fresh local ingredients where would the microwave play into your daily cooking routine.
I decided about a month ago to relegate my microwave to the basement, I needed it's valuable real estate for my very heavy stand mixer. The front of the microwave was starting to discolour and it really was eye sore in the kitchen. We'd only really used the microwave a handful of times over the past few months and all of those times were to re-heat a leftover meal, which we could have done in a pan or in the oven very easily.
Why ditch the microwave? There are a handful of reasons that you could / should ditch your microwave. For starters, if you are like me it's one of the largest and least used appliances in the kitchen. Secondly, it eliminates the desire and ability to eat microwave dinners which are some of the most nutritionally void food items on the planet. It certainly removes the ability to microwave foods in plastic or BPA lined packages / containers which are not doing your health any favours. Lastly, there is a great deal of speculation about the effect of microwaves on your food; as with most grey area health studies the findings are not conclusive enough to make any drastic changes. Essentially it's surmised that a very large portion of the nutritional value of the food that you cook / reheat in a microwave is destroyed in the microwaving process rendering it nutrition-less, kind of a drag if you're thinking of reheating that beet and spinach quiche you made yesterday.
Anyway, food for thought... If you don't use it why cling to it?
Regards,
Ps. Major producers to ditch BPA from packaging
Benner
@Bennercanuck
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Fatter UP!
I couldn't pass up the opportunity to comment on this debacle...
Did you know that effective tomorrow Tim Horton's is upping its cup sizing system, in other words if you order a large double double tomorrow (Monday January 23rd) then you'll receive a extra large instead...
Outstanding, the American food chain philosophy of upping portion sizes with waist lines actually applies here too.
If you didn't already know, what you drink can have a dramatic effect on your health just like what you eat, it's not a free ride just because it's a liquid. Be warned chocolate milk lovers; just because it's milk doesn't mean it's health for you either, look here.
Try this on for size, Tim Horton's freely gives out its nutritional information so there really isn't any work for me to do.
A XL (new L) double double contains: 280 Calories, 14 g of fat and 34 g of sugar. OMFG!
Anyway, now you know! I feel fatter just thinking about this, btw there are no calories in black coffee...
Did you know that effective tomorrow Tim Horton's is upping its cup sizing system, in other words if you order a large double double tomorrow (Monday January 23rd) then you'll receive a extra large instead...
Outstanding, the American food chain philosophy of upping portion sizes with waist lines actually applies here too.
If you didn't already know, what you drink can have a dramatic effect on your health just like what you eat, it's not a free ride just because it's a liquid. Be warned chocolate milk lovers; just because it's milk doesn't mean it's health for you either, look here.
Try this on for size, Tim Horton's freely gives out its nutritional information so there really isn't any work for me to do.
A XL (new L) double double contains: 280 Calories, 14 g of fat and 34 g of sugar. OMFG!
Anyway, now you know! I feel fatter just thinking about this, btw there are no calories in black coffee...
A tale of two cities...
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair…"
Okay so maybe there wasn't any despair but it certainly was winter and really really cold when this thought crossed my mind. This past weekend we went out in the town of Guelph; had a little dinner a few drinks, and responsibly called a cab to head off to Guelph Ontario's interesting downtown bar scene.
I guess as a side note / preamble to this story, I should tell you that I'm a Kitchener / Waterloo Ontario native, I've spent most of my life in this area and have called the city home for nearly a decade now. In KW we're used to a couple of truths. For starters if you park on the street overnight, especially in the winter, you'll be ticketed which is never fun about thirty dollars of not fun. On top of that cabs are pretty cheap and plentiful, other than New Years Eve you can expect to get a cab to show up to your location within minutes of the call, pretty much without exception.
Now, the first sign of trouble should have taken root in our minds when we called a Guelph cab at midnight and couldn't get through to the dispatcher. As in every cab dispatch in Guelph was overladen with calls as early as midnight even though bars don't shut down until 2:00 am. Insert big red flag here, when we finally got through to a cab company they dispatched a cab to us, probably took 20 minutes, wasn't really paying attention at that point.
Drinking, dancing, and a few hours later the bar shuts down and we join the throng of people outside in the downtown core of Guelph seeking out food, warmth, and oh yeah a ride home because we're all too drunk to drive. Unfortunately there are no rides home, people walk away from the downtown to snag cabs coming in or any cab that comes into the downtown area is already there to pick up somebody by name which doesn't bode well for the rest of us. Did I mention it's now even harder than before to call the cab dispatch, didn't get through once, not that it would matter because odds are someone is going to snag that cab on the way to us.
It's 2:30, around -14 degrees Celsius and my comrades are not dressed for an arctic adventure. We wonder around, ask for assistance or any tips on how to get a cab to pick us up and the best we get is wait in front of the cab company office for an indeterminate amount of time or catch the city bus that goes out near where we've got to get back to. The bus line is easily 45 minutes long and standing around isn't an option we want to entertain.
Here's where my wheels start turning; there are few ways out of Guelph's downtown after hours but there is something that they have plenty of... COPS, there are literally dozens of officers and cruisers in and around the downtown waiting for something to go down. Ps, cops won't drive you home, I asked several and they could care less what you feel about getting home; super depressing when a guy who is getting paid at the moment to do nothing says he can't help you out of a cold bind.
The big question/statement?! Do the fights in the downtown break out because there is no good way for people to get home? Compared to the city I live in where cabs line up in front of the bar, a safe ride home is a rare commodity in Guelph and should be a pretty embarrassing issue. Perhaps if you get the drunks out of the downtown in a timely manner maybe you'll have fewer issues after the bar; won't need to pay for the overtime for so many officers. I'm not looking to present a theory or a solution but I am trying to express how pathetic a problem this is. Perhaps the city of Guelph could start it's own safe ride home cab company that would operate during bar hours to take the strain off of it's obviously overtaxed cab companies and overworked police officers.
Anyway, I digress, just a thought... From this man's perspective I think they're going about dealing with this situation in entirely the wrong direction. If your downtown is full of drunk pissed off kids after the bar, figure out why those kids don't want to go home and sleep / drink / do whatever kids do after the bar. Fix that issue don't just put officer band-aid on the job and call it better.
Oddly I can't find anything related on this online, I doubt I'm the first or only person that finds this annoying.
Okay so maybe there wasn't any despair but it certainly was winter and really really cold when this thought crossed my mind. This past weekend we went out in the town of Guelph; had a little dinner a few drinks, and responsibly called a cab to head off to Guelph Ontario's interesting downtown bar scene.
I guess as a side note / preamble to this story, I should tell you that I'm a Kitchener / Waterloo Ontario native, I've spent most of my life in this area and have called the city home for nearly a decade now. In KW we're used to a couple of truths. For starters if you park on the street overnight, especially in the winter, you'll be ticketed which is never fun about thirty dollars of not fun. On top of that cabs are pretty cheap and plentiful, other than New Years Eve you can expect to get a cab to show up to your location within minutes of the call, pretty much without exception.
Now, the first sign of trouble should have taken root in our minds when we called a Guelph cab at midnight and couldn't get through to the dispatcher. As in every cab dispatch in Guelph was overladen with calls as early as midnight even though bars don't shut down until 2:00 am. Insert big red flag here, when we finally got through to a cab company they dispatched a cab to us, probably took 20 minutes, wasn't really paying attention at that point.
Drinking, dancing, and a few hours later the bar shuts down and we join the throng of people outside in the downtown core of Guelph seeking out food, warmth, and oh yeah a ride home because we're all too drunk to drive. Unfortunately there are no rides home, people walk away from the downtown to snag cabs coming in or any cab that comes into the downtown area is already there to pick up somebody by name which doesn't bode well for the rest of us. Did I mention it's now even harder than before to call the cab dispatch, didn't get through once, not that it would matter because odds are someone is going to snag that cab on the way to us.
It's 2:30, around -14 degrees Celsius and my comrades are not dressed for an arctic adventure. We wonder around, ask for assistance or any tips on how to get a cab to pick us up and the best we get is wait in front of the cab company office for an indeterminate amount of time or catch the city bus that goes out near where we've got to get back to. The bus line is easily 45 minutes long and standing around isn't an option we want to entertain.
Here's where my wheels start turning; there are few ways out of Guelph's downtown after hours but there is something that they have plenty of... COPS, there are literally dozens of officers and cruisers in and around the downtown waiting for something to go down. Ps, cops won't drive you home, I asked several and they could care less what you feel about getting home; super depressing when a guy who is getting paid at the moment to do nothing says he can't help you out of a cold bind.
The big question/statement?! Do the fights in the downtown break out because there is no good way for people to get home? Compared to the city I live in where cabs line up in front of the bar, a safe ride home is a rare commodity in Guelph and should be a pretty embarrassing issue. Perhaps if you get the drunks out of the downtown in a timely manner maybe you'll have fewer issues after the bar; won't need to pay for the overtime for so many officers. I'm not looking to present a theory or a solution but I am trying to express how pathetic a problem this is. Perhaps the city of Guelph could start it's own safe ride home cab company that would operate during bar hours to take the strain off of it's obviously overtaxed cab companies and overworked police officers.
Anyway, I digress, just a thought... From this man's perspective I think they're going about dealing with this situation in entirely the wrong direction. If your downtown is full of drunk pissed off kids after the bar, figure out why those kids don't want to go home and sleep / drink / do whatever kids do after the bar. Fix that issue don't just put officer band-aid on the job and call it better.
Oddly I can't find anything related on this online, I doubt I'm the first or only person that finds this annoying.
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