Long Shadows, Warm Breeze

Very nice weather today. It was 10 degrees warmer than usual this morning and its 77'F outside right now. I've got windows open to let it just slide on through. The breeze is coming from the Southwest, gentle, dropping leaves off the oak trees. Ideal weather to wash my car, so I did. If it rains a few days I will be sure to post about it. Its been a fairly dry Fall so far. Great patio weather, great for wine and cheese on the terrace. A book to read. Dad is still enjoying his Kindle Fire (non-HD), reading from it daily when he doesn't have an actual paperback. He's become a fan of those Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. I'm kinda unsure how I feel about his writing style and morals, having only read one of them. Reacher comes across as a bullying psychopath convinced that his way is the only way that matters. In the real world, guys like that end up in jail.

Anyway, I wanted to polish off some of the iron-sap freckles off my white Honda paint, but its so very bright I can't hardly see so after washing I gave up for the day. Tomorrow I should be able to do more. This evening we're going for Mexican food on Broad Street in Nevada City. Not sure what I'll order, but I generally go for things too much of a pain to make myself. Enchiladas are too easy, so I usually order something with a long cook time or exotic ingredients I don't typically carry. And avoid the rice and beans. The bloat from those is terrible. They always do that at every Mexican restaurant: strip of food down the center of a big plate with rice and beans taking up either side of the actual meal. I makes me miss Indian food, but good luck finding a good restaurant for that up here in the Gold Country.

I am planning to make chicken soup with sausage in the next few days. I bought ingredients so it will be tasty, including Posole, aka Hominy, which I first learned about as a soup ingredient 20 years ago in New Mexico, which is not the same as Old Mexico if you didn't know. The security guards at the Atlanta Olympics had no clue. I think I will make cornbread to go with it, instead of fry bread because I don't want to waste all that oil.

Speaking of oil, did anyone else roll their eyes at the FDA moving to ban trans fats from processed baked goods sold in the USA? I realize they're bad for you. I avoid them. But banning them? That means no more potato chips, no more french fries, no more oreos. They'll reformulate them but they will taste different. And the soybean farmers will be pissed since soybean oil is the primary source of these transfats and a reason to sell them since they have to grow them anyway for crop rotation reasons. We can use soybean oils for biodiesel, but the price to farmers is far less profit, low enough they may as well burn them as sell them. Yet another way the govt hurts people. And why is the FDA doing this? Because transfats drive up health care costs and since govt is now mandating healthcare standards, like they mandated the banning of alcohol during prohibition, they get to tell you what you can or can't eat. I wonder how long before what you eat is officially tracked? Will FDA work with NSA to get your food records and then deny you health care, or worse what you want to eat for dinner, based on what you purchased at the grocery store or restaurants?

Is this really a joke? Or is this the future? Laugh now, but that technological singularity with AIs watching us like zoo animals? Not so far fetched. We might end up feeling like test subjects in Portal after a while.

Just think: Aperture Science, Inc, might be your outsourced Health Care provider. Think twice before you eat that Chimichanga. They fry that in transfats.

Its a burrito that fell into a fryer, by accident, served as a joke, originally, given a silly name. Huell Howser interviewed the waitress/fry cook that invented it in LA years ago. Maybe I'll have one today, for the humor value. Enjoy your Thursday, friends. And remember: CHIMICHANGA! Say it again! 10 times fast!