Drinking Water

I am thinking about water and the problems connected to drinking municipal tap water. Water is very important for life, especially my life.

Last week's Isthmus has a short article about bottled water. The article tells a partial story about water. It pointed out the advantages of consuming local tap water, along with ways in which bottled water is bad for people and the planet. The occasion was a free screening of the documentary film Tapped, sponsored by the City of Madison. I missed the movie, but am thinking about the water problem.

The article quotes a couple of city people. According to the city recycling "conquistador", municipal water suppliers must meet higher standards than bottled water producers; some bottled water is actually filtered tap water from municipal systems; only a quarter of plastic water bottles are recycled and the others go to the landfills; the bottles are made of "petrol", which I believe is a petroleum product; the bottles must be trucked to stores.

The article points out another issue, the ethical concern that water belongs to all the people, and is being privatized, and in some cases it is being hauled away from populations that need it.

What the article does not point out is the other side of the story. I am not in favor of privatized water, and I do believe that the earth's water belongs to the people. The thing that bothers me is that apparently tap water isn't as innocent as the Isthmus article suggests.

Municipal water is treated with chlorine and fluoride. I can see the need to chlorinate it for health reasons, even though chlorine is a poison. I take issue with fluoridation. It is said that fluoride is good to prevent tooth decay. Okay, I say, so let the kids get their fluoride in their toothpaste and mouthwash rather than in their drinking water. I don't want to see the whole population dosed with fluoride in the water when people can fluoridate themselves with other products.

I say this because I love my thyroid, and fluoride is not good for it. People don't advertise that. I have read about this in several sources, one of which I quote here: "...despite its wide use in preventing tooth decay, [flouride] can act as a metabolic poison and damage your thyroid. Thyroid impairment is a serious problem affecting millions of women. (In Europe, after much research, they removed fluoride from their water supply.)" (Dr. Joseph Mercola, the No-Grain Diet; Penguin Group, 2004, p. 151.) Mercola has a large following on his website Mercola.com, with articles about drinking water and many other health matters. In the portion of the book quoted above, he points out that tap water is toxic because it contains both fluoride and chlorine. He suggested that glass bottled spring water, not drinking water, is a "safe but costly alternative." Mercola is not the only doctor to talk this way.

That leaves people like me with a dilemma. I live in the city with municipal water, not my own well. I can not put a filtration system in my home water supply due to it being a condominium. I can put a carbon filter on my faucet, but carbon filters do not remove fluoride. I can bow to the capitalist system and buy privatized water in plastic bottles that will leach chemicals into the water and fill the landfill unless I recycle them. Fortunately, I have the alternative of cheap reverse osmosis city water at the grocery store, which I put into reusable bottles. It's not ideal, but it provides water with the poisons removed. I would be happier with unfluoridated water from my home faucet. That would help with the ethical problem of privatized water, and it would be very convenient.

I was glad to see that the village of Poynette was not adding fluoride to its water supply, at least for a while. About a year ago the village had a referendum, in which the people there voted overwhelmingly in favor of fluoridating the water. Alas. They did it.

If populations can willingly be fed a poison like fluoride through the drinking water, what will they put into the water supply next?

Dessert Thoughts and Actions

I spend a bit of time thinking about dessert, especially when I am in the supermarket. The aisles of frozen desserts are awe inspiring as they wait for us to pick up something sweet and feed it to the waiting mouths at home. The shelves of fresh desserts beckon us with aromas and visual appeal. A bakery is another spot to find great quantities of mouth watering goodies for every meal of every day.

Who do these supermarket and bakery people think we are? For one thing, they cater to people who don’t like to cook, don’t have time to cook, or buy on impulse. The marketing people are very good at enticing people to take home extra calories.

In addition to marketing, science has come a long way. Food scientists know how to produce sugar, fat and salt in delicious proportions. I am in the process of reading a fascinating book about this, The End of Overeating, by David A. Kessler. He says that it’s not surprising that we are getting fatter as a nation, because of the ubiquitous availability and ingenious combining of high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods and fake foods.

I am in favor of dessert. I know that the food hucksters are trying their best to manipulate my taste buds and pocketbook. However, the dessert that I think is best is the dessert I can make at home. On its downside are: (1) sugar and empty calories are still waiting to fatten me up; (2) it takes some time to make dessert; (3) sometimes the pie gets overdone. On its upside are: (1) I have some control over how much I am poisoning myself with sugar, fat and salt; (2) I like to cook, which is why I would make dessert rather than buy it; (3) I can downsize a dessert recipe to my small household standards; (4) like most people, I feel better when I have dessert that pleases me.

I have some standards for dessert making.
My dessert must be sweet but not oversweet. I like cherry pie that is somewhat tart. Supermarket pies often are sweeter than my exacting standards. They also have lackluster, un-flaky crusts, but that is a different issue. Cheesecake is rich enough in its various incarnations to be indigestible even though it is beautiful to behold.

My dessert must be easy to make and not require any equipment that an old fashioned cook wouldn’t have. Electric mixer, yes. Beyond that, probably no. Spoons are still great tools. A little basic knowledge of cooking can produce adequate pies and pastries, and even home made ice cream. It’s not hard.

My dessert isn’t made of fake ingredients. For instance, there is a recipe for Gumdrop Cereal Bars in my Taste of Home’s 5-Ingredient Cookbook. Three of its five ingredients are manufactured items. They include gumdrops, miniature marshmallows, and Corn Pops cereal. Come on, people. Give me basic ingredients that my grandmother would recognize.

Your reward for reading this far is the recipe for yesterday’s dessert, chocolate soufflé, which I modified by reducing the quantity listed in my big fat cookbook. Before you get excited, you must know that a soufflé is very easy to make. You just have to remember to serve it immediately after it comes out of the oven because its beautiful puffiness will fall very quickly. You can skip the gourmet suggestion of putting a collar around the top of the soufflé dish.

I made this chocolate soufflé after watching a Martha Stewart rerun on television where she and a cook whose name I forgot made one together. As a form of intimidation, they called it soufflé au chocolat, which dressed it up but left it otherwise still easy to make. If you don’t finish it in one sitting, it is good for breakfast the next morning, even if it is cold. That is, if you believe that breakfast food isn’t just eggs, cereal and pancakes.

Chocolate Souffle
(adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book 12th edition, 2002.)

Butter
Sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1 ½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate pieces
3 beaten egg yolks
3 egg whites
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons sugar

Butter the sides of a 1 ½ quart souffle or baking dish with high sides. Sprinkle the inside of the dish with sugar (bottom and sides). Set the dish aside.

In a small sauce pan melt the 1 tablespoon butter. Stir in flour. Add milk. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Add chocolate. Stir until melted. Remove from heat. Gradually stir chocolate mixture into beaten egg yolks. Set aside.

Beat egg whites and vanilla until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, beating until stiff peaks form. Fold a small amount of beaten egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold the chocolate mixture into the remaining beaten whites. Transfer to prepared dish.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Serve immediately. To serve, insert two forks back to back; gently pull soufflé apart into serving size wedges. Transfer to plates. If desired, top with whipped cream.

Happy Birthday

Today is my father's 100th birthday. I hope he is enjoying it in heaven.

My father, Ed Allen Jr., was a creative, entrepreneurial person who was interested in everything, although less so when he was old. He's the man who retired and then went to work every day anyway. He died while getting ready to go to work. He was an enormous influence on my life.

We called him Poppy and then Pop. He loved broadcasting. He built a career in radio in Chicago and was proud to have worked for the NBC network. His Early Bird Show on WMAQ had a great following, and listeners sent him quilt squares which my grandmother assembled. I still have the early bird quilt. He started station WDOR in Sturgeon Bay in 1951. It was an adventure that he loved. He started a radio station in Manitowoc with a radio partner, which they sold.

WDOR was a corporation of local people, and it also was our family enterprise. We did commercials. Mother and I worked in the office. My brothers were regulars on the air as soon as their voices changed. David worked hard on the Saturday morning Countdown program of current popular music. Eddy became an excellent sports announcer. An assortment of local programs were tried, including Santa Claus (local doctor), and Mother's recipe program known for most of the years as Five Minutes With Dolores Allen. I think it is the longest runnning program in Wisconsin radio history. Eddy continues to be the manager.

Pop was the religious leader of the family. We all went to the Episcopal Church, whether we wanted to or not. He grew up going to the Moody Sunday School in Chicago, with perfect attendance. We grew up knowing that we should want to be in church. When he didn't like the sermon, he would ostentatiously clean his fingernails to let the priest know that it was pretty dull. Once he asked the priest how long he prepared for his sermon, and was told it was about ten minutes. He then said that it had sounded like it.

When I was a teenager, he let his opinions about my dates be known. He usually wanted to know who the father of each boy was. He usually read the clock wrong when I returned home from dates. He went to bed early. Once I came in at 10:10 p.m, and he sleepily insisted that it was ten minutes to two a.m. If I lingered in the car in the driveway with a boy at the end of a date, Pop would blink the yard light to let us know that the date was finished. I loved him anyway.

I used to go fishing with him, just to be with him. We would go out in his boat, and he would fish and I would draw pictures of the nearby scenery. When he drafted me to work in the radio station office in summer as a teenager, we would go out in his boat and have lunch.

He was Republican chairman of Door County for several years, member of the Door County Chamber of Commerce, Sturgeon Bay Rotary Club, and occasionally played golf. I remember that he would lie down on the green while the other golfers with him did their putts.

He and Uncle Frank Dorn built the family cottage at Clark's Lake. After that he was always doing some construction on it. He moved the kitchen into a former bedroom. I remember when he put electricity into the cottage. Prior to that we had kerosene lamps and a kerosene stove. Later he and Mother sold that cottage and bought an A-frame at Washington Island.

Life with him was always interesting. He was a great person and a great father. Happy birthday.

Medical Insurance Overhaul

Here is what my congresswoman, Tammy Baldwin, says about the proposed "health care" (i.e. medical insurance) bill. Note that she doesn't say when these things will be in effect, if passed. She also doesn't point out that the clause about pre-existing conditions currently is applicable to children and not adults, as I have heard. However bad the bill is, it has some good parts. I heard one legislator call it a quarter of a loaf. I think she should and will vote yes.

Tammy's thoughts, from her newsletter, start:

After decades of unfulfilled hopes, and a year of intense study and debate, the House plans to vote on a health care reform bill on Sunday.
Health care for all is the issue that brought me into public service. As long as I've been your Member of Congress, I've been working to answer your call to reform our health care system.

What this health debate boils down to is one, simple question: Whose side are you on?
Are we going to improve the lives of Wisconsinites and all Americans; or are we going to improve the bottom line of the insurance industry?

My answer is clear: I stand firmly on your side.

I stand with all of you who have struggled to afford your health care premiums, and copays. I stand with all of you who have been denied insurance coverage, or dropped in your time of need. I stand with all of you who have had to declare personal bankruptcy because of the medical bills from a serious illness, and all of you who face this possibility. The health reform bill that I support addresses all those problems and then some. It’s not perfect, and it's not all I wanted it to be....but it is a good start.

I am eager to pass this measure that will help us move forward and put our families and our economy on safer, healthier ground.

Sincerely,
Tammy BaldwinYour Member of Congress

As we prepare to vote on health care reform, I highlighted specifically how the reform measure will benefit the people I represent in the Second Congressional District (South Central Wisconsin). Under this reform measure:

539,000 people in South Central Wisconsin will see improvements in their current health care coverage;

7,400 with pre-existing conditions will be able to obtain coverage;

Up to 162,000 families will get tax credits and other assistance to help make health insurance more affordable;

Up to 16,800 small businesses will get tax credits and other assistance to help make health insurance more affordable for their employees;

97,000 Medicare beneficiaries will see better care and pay less for prescription drugs because the Medicare Part D donut hole will be closed;

68,000 young adults will be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance policy until their 26th birthday;

13,500 uninsured people will have access to health care coverage;

1,100 families won’t have to file for bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs;

6 community health centers in South Central Wisconsin will receive millions of dollars in new funding to care for thousands of new patients.

Under the bill, if you like the insurance you have now, you may keep it and it will improve. The insurance reforms will prohibit annual and lifetime limits, eliminate retroactive cancellation of insurance policies for individuals who become ill while insured, ban coverage denials for pre-existing conditions, and reduce the cost of preventive care.

Equally important, the health care reform bill will cut the nation’s deficit by $138 billion in the first 10 years and $1.2 trillion in the second ten years – the largest deficit reduction measure in 17 years.

Two dietary planets

I am living on two planets.

One says these things: put fluoride in water systems to benefit children's teeth, with no adverse effects; eating cholesterol is bad and will raise your cholesterol level and raise risk of heart disease; polyunsaturated fats are good for you; it's ok to drink a lot of soda pop; saturated fats are bad for you, including coconut oil; canola oil is good for you; high carb, low fat diets will result in weight loss; the government's food pyramid is a good guide for healthy eating.

The other planet says: don't put fluoride in water systems because it will damage thyroid function; eating cholesterol is not bad because your body produces and uses it apart from dietary intake; polyunsaturated fats are not good for you, olive oil is better; it's not ok to drink a lot of soda pop because high fructose corn syrup gives a major assist to some diseases including diabetes (so why is the government subsidizing corn growers?); saturated fats are not the artery cloggers they are said to be (see cholesterol above), especially coconut oil; low fat/high carb diets are responsible for the obesity epidemic in the US; the government's food pyramid is strongly influenced by food manufacturers and will encourage poor health.

Then we have Michael Pollan, who advocates for eating and enjoying food as food and not as medical delivery systems.

For more than a year I have been reading about what happens to people when they stuff various foods and food-like products into their mouths. The nutrient of this decade seems to be fat. Food science and people don't agree all the time.

It all began with my discovery that coconut oil is a good fat even though it is saturated. The more I read, the more I found. It's a strange world of two planets.

The Politician, by Andrew Young

The Politician is a fascinating tell-all book that hit the best seller list immediately. Young tells of his strong desire to work with and for John Edwards for about a decade in the hoped-for ascent to the White House. Young was Edwards' most trusted aide and did what was needed for the Edwards campaigns for senate and President. It is a well written story of the seductive side of John Edwards and the enabling character of Andrew Young. It also is about dishonesty by the Edwardses and the pain of disillusionment for Young as he participated in the cover-up of Edwards' adulterous relationship with Rielle Hunter.

Young describes the close relationship he had with John and Elizabeth Edwards in their home and on campaign locations. As Edwards gradually exhibits what Young calls a sense of entitlement, narcissism and self-centeredness, Young shows his poor judgment in crossing employee boundaries to assist the Edwardses in many personal tasks. Young tells most of the story by letting events unfold into a novel-like tale. His commentary about events goes through the book and is more pronounced in later pages of the book as he reflects about the things he and his family lived through in service to Edwards.

John Edwards seems like a tragic character whose flaws overshadow his powerful charisma and talent. Edwards mistress Rielle Hunter is described as self centered and demanding. Elizabeth Edwards is shown first as a loving person who said Andrew was family, and later when the stress of terminal cancer and attempts to believe her husband's lies get the best of her, a nasty shrew.

In this book we see the clandestine romance of John Edwards and Rielle Hunter. We see Rielle Hunter spend the later part of her pregnancy in hiding with the Edwards family. We see Edwards denying the relationship and his child born to Hunter. We see Edwards denying paternity. We see Young's and his wife's difficulties in dealing with Hunter and Mrs. Edwards.

I don't often read tell-all books, but this one is a winner. It is eye opening for people who supported the Edwards campaign promises and then saw his fall. I, too, was excited by his campaign message.

It may be noted that at the end of the book, Young had possession of the Edwards/Rielle sex tape that has made the news, and John Edwards had not yet admitted that he was the father of Rielle's child. I believe that Edwards confessed paternity as the book became available to the public.

Cherry Cobbler

Now that I live alone, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to prepare food in small quantities, and how to do it with real food and not fake processed food. I love to find simple comfort foods in my collection of old cookbooks. Today I tried cherry cobbler. The young people of today might not have heard about cobblers, since I don't find them in many recently published cookbooks or in restaurants. This cobbler is adapted for my one person household (although it can stretch to serve two), from the original recipe in Prairie Farmer-WLS Cook Book, centennial edition, edited by Gladys Blair (Chicago, the Prairie Press, 1941).

This cobbler is from the era of using less sugar than is used today. With sugar, less is often better than more. I think it is very good.

I must give credit to Mrs. Robertson for the cooking skills that were taught to me long ago in seventh and eighth grades. She gave me a wealth of knowledge about basic food preparation in that home ec class of long ago. I didn't know how valuable her teaching would be for me for the rest of my life. Because of her I know that cobbler dough is biscuit dough and is to be treated as such so it won't be mixed to death. I salute you, Mrs. Robertson, wherever you may be, in Sturgeon Bay or in the great banquet in the sky.

Cherry Cobbler for one or two

1 cup (approx.) canned cherries
1/2 cup cherry juice (from can)
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup sifted flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 tablespoons milk (approx.)

I suggest using a baking dish that is like a loaf pan, or one of the old Corningware dishes we all got for our weddings fifty years ago, that is squarish and about 7x7 inches and holds about 1 1/2 quarts. If you lack this dish, go to the Goodwill store and buy one.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put cherries and cherry juice in baking dish. Combine sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons flour, and sprinkle over top. Put in oven and stir occasionally until the mixture is heated, about as long as it takes to mix up the dough that goes on top. (This recipe pre-dates microwave ovens, so I don't suggest using one.)

Mix together the 1/2 cup of sifted flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Cut in butter until it resembles pie crust dough. Add milk gradually until soft dough is formed. Do not stir excessively. Roll out dough 1/3 inch thick and place on hot cherry mixture. If dough is too wet to roll, as happened to me, drop pieces of dough on top of cherry mixture to cover most of it.

Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Serve plain or topped with whipped cream. (Commercial whipped topping didn't exist in 1941, either.)