I Was a Teenage Mascot 01 : One Tough Tomato

All I wanted was a job. I had spent a couple of summers picking up aluminum cans along roadsides, and while I did enjoy the fruits of my labor, at 15 years old, I was ready for the big time; the kind of big time that only three-dollars and thirty-five cents an hour would bring. A boy my age with that kind of summer money was surely just one step away from a mustache, muscle car, and all the girls he could ask for.

My first attempt to secure employment was unsuccessful. A man by the name of Mr. Turbeville raised tomatoes on a plot of land just a block or so from my house. He'd turned his panache for gardening into a thriving, roadside enterprise that required several summer employees. He provided my older brother with his first job, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I'd always heard that Mr. Turbeville was a bit on the rough and tough side. He was a hard-as-nails tomato man, so its no wonder I don't remember meeting the man. My mom walked me over to the Turbeville field, and that's when my memory goes blank. I can imagine him hunched over me in his dungy, fatigued overalls while pointing his cricked, dirt caked finger nail at my nose. Looking at my chubby cheeks, my soft, rotund body, and clean hands, me must have looked at me and said, "So, ya think ya can pick my tomatoes, huh?"

"Uh… well, I… uh…," I responded.

"I bet you're in the school band, ain't ya?" he taunted.

Well, as a matter of fact… yeah, I was in the band. But I played the trombone. I mean my right arm was exercised everyday in the tomato picking motion. But that didn't matter. I wasn't Turbeville material. I'm sure I walked away from that field slouch-shouldered and dejected. In the end, however, it was probably best for us all.

While being the type of kid that was in the school bad was a detriment to working for Mr. Turbeville, it was an in for another money making opportunity. The local Amvets owned a building in town that was once a mid-size grocery store. They held bingo games there five nights a week and needed floor workers to sell pull-tab games and bingo cards for extra rounds. I don't know about the legality of it all, but the Amvets had worked out a deal with our school band where they donated funds, and band members volunteered to work the floor at the bingo hall. We weren't employed, per se, but anyone who volunteered did get a little kick back.

"It's bingo, right? How hard can it be?" I thought. I remember my mom driving me over to the bingo hall and dropping me off by the front door. I pulled it open wide and couldn't believe what I saw on the other side.

Best Summertime / Hot Day Songs

The current national heatwave produced an all-time record high for my hometown yesterday. 108F. Wow! What's your musical soundtrack for these hot, summer days? Here are some songs to prime the pump. These are mostly about summer and heat. What are your favs?

A Hundred and Ten in the Shade - John Fogerty

Hot Hot Hot - Buster Poindexter

Heat Wave - Martha & the Vandellas

Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer - Nat King Cole

Summertime - Will Smith

Hot Fun in the Summertime - Sly & the Family Stone

In the Summertime - Mungo Jerry

Boys of Summer - Don Henley

Rock Lobster - B-52s

Under the Boardwalk - The Drifters

Summer in the City - The Lovin'  Spoonful

Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran

Too Darn Hot - Ella Fitzgerald

Summertime - Janis Joplin

Summer Breeze - Seals & Croft

Don't Be Ignorant: Know Your Food Portions

A friend of ours recently purchased a food scale and started weighing her food in order to determine portion sizes. Here’s what she said: “Got a food scale last week to get correct portion sizes. This has been an eye opening experience. No wonder I have had a weight problem, lol!”

When it comes to eating, ignorance is not bliss. This is especially true when you have food in abundance, as is the case in America. Most of us get up every morning and basically eat whatever we want, not knowing or ever considering how much food we really need. So why is knowing correct portion sizes important?

Because you only need so much food per day. How will you know if you are getting enough or, as is most often the case, too much if you have absolutely no system of measurement?

Food is enjoyable. Food is a cornerstone of social interaction. Food is comfort. But first and foremost, food is fuel. It provides energy for the body to support daily life functions in addition to any other activities we do. If you take in too much, the excess energy is stored as fat. If you continue to store fat day after day, well, you get fat.

Eating without any frame of reference is just a bad idea. So how do you approach portion control so you don't eat too much? You have to start with the basic unit of energy measurement for food: the calorie.

A calorie, when it comes to food, is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1 °C. It is a measure of energy. Food has potential energy that can be converted to real energy in the human body. The science behind calories have been around since the late 1800s, and just about every food imaginable has a determined calorie count. And the information is readily available to most everyone at any given time.

So how many calories do you need a day? The answer depends on certain variables such as your age, sex, and activity level. It is easy to determine your basic calorie needs through many different websites. Just search calorie calculators. If you are trying to lose weight, you need to use more calories a day than you take in. You should try to lose no more than 1 to 2 pounds a week unless cleared by a doctor to lose more. A handy webpage for figuring what you need and tracking food is MyFitnessPal.

So now you know how many calories you need in a day to lose weight. A pound of body fat equals about 3500 calories, so to lose a pound a week, you need to take in 3500 less than what you use. Most all packaged foods come with the calorie count for that food printed on the label. For instance, I am looking at a can of soup that contains 2 servings. Each serving has 120 calories. When I eat the can of soup for lunch, I will have taken in 240 calories. If I needed to measure out a serving, the label tells me that one serving is one cup. Here comes the need to track portions.

If you know the calorie count in a certain amount of food, then you need to know how much you are taking in to correctly track your intake. It may need to be measured in volume or in weight. The soup I have tells me the number of calories in each cup. Less liquid foods may be labeled by weight, usually in grams. I purchased a food scale at Wal Mart in order to better track portion sizes at home.

If you have a food such as produce or meat that is harder to determine due to no label information, the USDA has thousands of foods and their calorie values on their website.

So there you go. Can you see why portion control is so important? A food that is very dense in calories can get you in hot water very quickly if you eat too much. One of my favorites is peanut butter. Just two tablespoons contains about 200 calories! It's a great food and is not necessarily bad for you, but the calorie count is high. I could easily eat 8 tablespoons in no time. I need to be sure I am portioning it out when I eat it so that I don't go over my daily limit for losing weight.

Our problem in America when it comes to portions and what we need is sheer ingnorance. Most of us don't know what we need each day, and we merrily shove into our mouths whatever we want based on how the food makes us feel. Don't be misinformed! Take charge of your health and know what you are taking in.

Poland 09 - I am a Lingual Loser

Naivety. I’m not sure it can be helped when one travels abroad, especially on the first international trip.

Upon learning that I would be going to Poland, I did what I am sure many people do. I researched the food, photos of the cities I’d be visiting, and the language.

“I’ve got plenty of time,” I thought. “I can learn some of the language. Yeah, if I really work at, I can be at least fairly functional by the time I go.” Oh you stupid, stupid boy.

Yes, like many a noble yet unlearned ideas I’ve had, I really didn’t have any intentions of giving this my full effort. It wasn’t even going to be a good college try. Half-baked is probably too good a term for my effort. But in my defense, I did look it up on the internet. Isn’t that close enough?

Plus, Polish is one of the most difficult languages in existence. It usually ends up in the top ten of difficult languages to learn on many experts’ lists. The main hope for English speaking people is that most of the letters in the Polish alphabet are the same as ours. It isn’t a completely foreign looking language like Arabic or something Asian.

There are more than 26 letters in their arsenal, however. The extra letters are diacritics. These are existing letters with marks above, below, or through them. One example is the Polish letter Ą. Now you may think that is a variant, or at worse a deviant A. Nope. It is a completely different letter.  They have an A already. This is distinctly a Ą. Why? I don’t know! They also have letters in their alphabet that are not used in native Polish words. They are only in their alphabet for the sake of words that are imported/adapted from other languages and only make appearances when those foreign words become a part of the Polish language.

Polish is also one of those Slavic languages where you’ll find a string of consonants without vowels to break them up. So if you think you are going to pronounce things phonetically, you’ve got another thing coming. To an English speaking person, that many consonants without a vowel break is a code that that can’t be cracked. It’s like driving a car that can go 300 miles on a tank of gas, and the gap between gas stations is 400 miles. The tongue just needs the vowel break. I think the most consonants I saw in a row was four. Wow.

There are also multiple genders in the Polish language. In many languages, every noun and/or pronoun is assigned a gender such as male or female. To me it seems arbitrary, but it does affect how you refer to the noun and/or pronoun with other words. That is why in French you have la and le in front of nouns, for example. Polish has three genders (or more, depending on who you ask).

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it: A distinction is also made between animate and inanimate masculine nouns in the singular, and between masculine personal and non-personal nouns in the plural. There are seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. Yeah, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.

Then there are rules that aren’t really rules yet they are rules. They aren’t just suggestions but they bend and flex in so many different directions based on the situation. Situational grammar. How fluid. Even Przemek had a book that he had to refer to from time to time to make sure he was getting his own language right. And he wasn’t writing a thesis!

So I didn’t learn much of the language before I went. I did try, however, to learn some while I was there.  I managed to master a couple of words, but that’s about it. I was often met with the same reaction when I asked a Polish person to teach me to say a word or phrase. It was a shaking of the head, a sympathetic expression, and a hand on the shoulder. They all came together to say “Don’t even try, you stupid American boy.”

It all ended in disaster. They will often give you a word to repeat, and I would repeat it just the way I thought it was said. They would say no then repeat it again. All I could think was, “Wasn’t that what I just said? It sounded the same to me!” Yet they heard a big enough difference to say that I didn’t even get close. What a lingual loser.

Przemek’s wife Gosia did try to teach me some words. One came across to me to sound like MEOWCHOW. I repeated it a few times, and Gosia just stared at me. She then said, “You speak better cat than Polish!”

Ode to a Jilted Lover 05 - My First Attempt

I am not a song writer. I don't compose melodies, which seems to be a major component of songs. But I  do have some ideas for song lyrics. Here's my first attempt at a jilted lover song. It is inspired by the annual Superman festival in nearby Metropolis, IL. I wondered what kind of love could originate from a chance meeting on a hot June day.  I don't have a definitive title, so the working name is The Lonely Life of a Superhero's Gal. Please, review and critique!

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He burst on her scene from the deep of the blue sky,

they found one another on that day, hot as all July.

Some would say destiny, others say fate,

she just hoped that it wasn’t at all too late.

He was her Clark Kent, she was his Lois Lane.

They spoke of various pasts and heroes fast as trains.

Their ice cream melted as they walked the Metropolis square.

The two were the perfect festival pair.

The lenses of his costume glasses

were as hollow as his heart,

but she was sure the S on his chest was real.

Oh how lonely a super hero's gal must feel.

The days flew by, and the comic book ink rubbed away.

Like a flash he was gone, never to stay.

The rescue was good, and superman’s not a bad guy,

but once the work is done he’s gone. It’s the blink of an eye.

She’s a lonely fan in a perilous world,

just another awestruck fandom girl.

The gal of a superhero feels the sting of the one who strayed

long after the dye in the costume starts to fade.

Poland 08 - Killing Me Softly With Their Food

Restaurant in Ciechanow, Poland

One of Przemek's favorite treats was sweet, however. He seemed to have a craving... no, craving isn't the right word... maybe an insatiable, unrivaled longing... yeah, that's it... for the uniquely Polish candy bar Prince Polo. You won't find as many varieties of candy bars in Poland as you do in the U.S. Most of the ones you find are chocolate coated wafers, something akin to Kit-Kats. There are many different companies that make them, but Przemek swears that Prince Polo is the absolute best. "I ate these as a child," he'd say.

The first time we got one was right after we'd eaten at a pizza place together. Przemek wanted one, and he treated all of us to a taste of this Polish tradition. And, it was good! The chocolate coating is more on the dark side of the chocolate spectrum. If you've ever had the chocolate coated gem donuts, then you're pretty close to knowing the exterior of a Prince Polo. He was right. They are very good!

Now I don't know if Przemek is this way all the time or if he used our visit as an excuse to indulge in Prince Polos, but after that first encounter with the royal candy, he always seemed to be on the hunt for another. Like a junkie after the next fix, Prince Polo was on his mind. On one of our travel days, we stopped a shop to get our mid-afternoon Prince Polos. Much to his chagrin, they didn't have any. We then went on a search that got more and more desperate as we visited shop after shop that didn't have them. Finally, sweet relief! A shop had them!

In his defense, they are very good. We brought a box home to give to people we know. Everyone who sampled a Prince Polo quickly understood how it could become addictive.

In our research before we went to Poland, we read over and over that pierogies were a major part of Polish cuisine. Pierogies are not uncommon in the U.S. In fact, frozen pieroigies are available at most grocery stores and in big bags at Sam's.

Pierogies are like stuffed dumplings. Perhaps wontons are a decent comparison, although pierogies are not fried. Ravioli is close as well. They are stuffed with a variety of things. We encountered mostly meat and/or cheese stuffings. They are closed on the side and generally take on a semi-circular shape. Most often they are boiled then baked. The ones we had were usually oniony as well.

They cropped up at more than one meal, and we noticed many restaurants that touted their pierogi prowess. We also saw food trucks with pierogi advertising on the sides. It's serious business in Poland, and it should be. I found out later that the pierogi originated there, and to be Polish is to love pierogies. In fact, there is an annual pierogi festival each year in Krakow. So when you go to Poland, prepare to get your pierogi on!

And as with all the rest of mankind, food is the international symbol for hospitality for the Poles. They may not be outgoing, overtly friendly, or extremely cordial, but you can be assured when you are a welcomed guest in a home, you will be fed and fed well. There were some days we'd visit several different families. Food was always a cornerstone of each visit. It isn't that I didn't appreciate their hospitality, but I don't think each of our culinary benefactors realized how many others were feeding us as well. Eating, at times, seemed to be a job. I think you could kill someone with food. I am quite assured of it.

Poultry liver & onions. Yum!

One culinary highlight for me occurred at a restaurant in Ciechanow. I could not read the menu, so Przemek translated for me. When he got to the poultry liver and onions, I knew he need go no further. Yes, I admit it, I love liver. I like chicken liver, I like beef liver; I just like liver. Big whoop. I was brought a plate of cooked liver and onions and fries, and boy, were they good! I don't think they were chicken livers because of their size. Przemek guessed they were goose or turkey. The dish is probably not uniquely Polish or a national favorite, I suppose. When Przemek ordered for me, the waitress made a slight face of disgust and asked him a question that I only presume was, "Is he sure? Does he know what that is?"

Finally, I want to conclude with a comment not on the food but on how the Polish people eat. EVERYONE I had the opportunity to eat a meal with held a fork in the left hand and a knife in the right (unless they were eating soup, of course). These utensils stayed in place at almost all times, and they used them like their bodies were machines and the knife and fork were the business end of said machines. The only way I can describe how they eat is efficient. Nearly every Pole would finish a meal before any of us Americans. Each movement was precise, unwasted, and with purpose. It was something to watch. And because they all eat the same way, they must be formally taught as children. I know no other explanation. I tried to learn the skill but failed. It is probably something best learned in private.

Oh, one more thing. The Poles love their pizza places. In Ciechanow, there were not a great number of restaurants. There were certainly no American chain joints. But there were pizza places everywhere. I was jokingly told that Poland had more pizza places than Italy. They like 'em large too. Take a look at the pics. One restaurant boasted a 57cm pizza. The American equivalent is ginormous. Wow.

Poland 07 - Eat, Drink, and be Merry, for Tomorrow We May Diet

Food. It is truly phenomenal. It serves so many functions in the human realm. First and foremost, it is fuel to keep the body going. Many who are fortunate enough to have more than we need rarely see it in that light. We utilize its other functions: celebratory device, source of pleasure and comfort, and a communication tool to express love, courtesy, and even sympathy.

So it's no surprise that when I found out I was going to Poland, one of the first things I researched was Polish food. So did my friends and family. And they all reported to me their findings. Food is not only essential to human life, it is so near the center of all we do.

So here's the skinny on Polish food: it's really not that different than some traditional southern U.S. food traditions.

SOUP!

We were told off the bat that dinner (lunch) and supper (dinner) are both, at a minimum, two course meals in Poland. It is especially true for older generations. And the first course is always soup. It would be common to hear a Polish mother or grandmother asking a houseguest, "Are you eating enough soup?"

I was told over a good bowl of soup that soup is the national dish of Poland. For most, it is a necessary component of a good meal, and many are loath to think about how the young folks are forsaking the soup slurping ways of their ancestors. Many encourage the kids to eat plenty of soup and keep the tradition alive.

The soups are usually very brothy and not very heavy or chunky, so it doesn't get in the way of the main course. We experienced many chicken broth based soups, a few with beef origins, and one nice cucumber soup.

One of the other things we noticed is that they eat salad as a side with most of their meals. Now when I say salad, I know what comes up in your mind. You envision a bowl of leafy lettuce, maybe with some cheese, tomatoes, croutons, and blobs of dressing. Salad in Poland is different but not foreign to the American palate. Salad is normally shredded carrots made into a carrot salad type dish, or it is a shredded cabbage dish that gets very close to coleslaw.

Schnitzel, potatoes, & salad (slaw) made by two different
people who didn't know one another. Almost identical!

We had several main courses that were nearly identical to foods I've had many times at home. At a conference, we ate a lunch comprised of a lightly breaded and fried pounded chicken breast, mashed potatoes, salad (slaw), and, you guessed it, soup. It was chicken noodle. I was asked if I liked such Polish food. I replied that it was very good and really not much different than a traditional southern U.S. meal, especially those of the Sunday afternoon variety. In fact, I've had such meals many times at my wife's grandmother's house in rural Arkansas. In her home, the meat is usually deer, and in Poland, various meats are used. The pounded and fried meat is called schnitzel, by the way.

Dried sausages

Another natural question is: What about Polish sausage? The Poles are fond of their cylindrical meat, and it often shows up at breakfast. Polish sausage takes on a variety of forms and flavors, so don't pigeonhole it to be the stuff you find at fairs and carnivals. Some is of the refrigerated variety, others are air dried and eaten at room temperature. There was an interesting meat market in Ciechanow that is typical of others found across the country. Behind the counter was a rack of drying sausages. Przemek swore that the best ones were those that had been hanging there the longest. They were a little tougher but more flavorful. He bought us a variety bag, and all the meats were different and good. Some did indeed taste aged and smoky.

Speaking of meats at breakfast, the Poles don't think of eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast when it comes to breakfast. They think sandwiches. Everywhere we went we encountered almost identical breakfasts. Usually it is a plate of cold cuts along with some Polish sausages, a couple of varieties of bread, maybe some cheese, and a plate of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. It's a make your own sandwich bar every morning! Amazingly enough, each host even laid the meats, breads, and tomato slices out in identical fashion.

We did have one strange dish. Sylvia had breakfast out for us nearly every morning by the time we got ready. We went to the kitchen, and one of the dishes appeared to be chicken noodle soup. Michael began eating and liked it. I wasn't convinced the noodles were noodles. It seemed like a masquerade. I studied the "noodles" carefully. One side of them did appear noodle like. But on the other side, I saw little fringy, finger-like things. I wasn't sold. We asked Przemek, and he asked Silvia. He looked at us, laughed a little, and said, "haggis." While it wasn't the traditional haggis dish, he was trying to communicate to us that what Michael ate was tripe. Yup, cow stomach.

Speaking of Silvia, I had a bad cold early on in the trip, and toward the end was coughing quite a bit, even though I felt ok. She heard this, and brought a bottle up to the kitchen and proceeded to pour me a shot of a slightly yellow, milky concoction. I took a whiff. Wow. She did not speak english, so I couldn't find out what was in it. I drank it down. KA-POW! Talk about a shot! It immediately cleared up the congestion in my chest. I found out later it was "spirits" (I think vodka), with garlic and onion juices. Ahhhhemmmm. Try ordering onion-garlic shots at your local bar.

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(Notice the Polish Grandmother)