Boating

All of this crazy cold weather got me day dreaming about boating again, you I figured to make myself feel better I would do a blog about boating food.

My family and family friends all enjoy boating on the Mississippi, the reservoir and any other body of water that allows for it. Anytime that you drive all of the way out to a body of water you want to stay out all day, and that means not coming home to eat, and that means you either have to bring your own or stop at a very greasy dinner on the water.

The point of boat food is to be more like snacks, not be to messy (as to not mess up the boats interior) and very unhealthy. All of those things are more like guide lines though, because there are exceptions to all o them.

One of my favorites is caramel chex mix, as the name implies, it is chex mix that is coated with a caramel. It is made on a cookie sheet and is one of those foods that once you start eating it, you cannot stop until the whole bowl is gone. A great advantage to this food is that you don’t have to refrigerate it, this leaves more room in the coolers for things like pop and beer.

Another thing that is wonderful to have on the water or on a sandbar is deer. Most of the people with whom I boat love to hunt, that means that even if I didn’t have a great deer season, someone else always has some deer sticks or deer jerky to pass around. Unlike the caramel chex mix, this does require refrigeration which is the only draw back.

Chips are also a great way to slowly give yourself diabetes while you are boating. They taste great, require not cooler space, and everyone loves them. The only down side to chips is that they break apart and get every where, thus breaking the rule that they cannot be messy. But the mess is made up for by how convenient they are and also how you don’t have to make anything or kill anything to get them…they are just easy. (369 words)   

Eggs

With college coming up faster than I like to think about I have been improving my egg making game. So I thought that I would share my knowledge with anyone who will read this.

Fried- This might be the easiest egg to make in the world. If you can mess this up, you have some issues that you need to work out. You turn the burner on and you crack the egg and let it fall into the pan. Next you break the yolk, and some salt and pepper and wait or it to solidify. Then you flip it over for a few seconds and you are good to go.

Over Easy- once again, you first have to turn the burner on. Quite similarly to the fried egg you have to crack the egg into the pan and add some salt and pepper. But then it starts to get crazy. This time, don’t pop the yolk, leave it be. Continue to cook it as if it was a fried egg until the white part starts to become solid. Now it gets tricky. Gently flip over the egg, being sure that you do not pop it. Let it cook up side down, but only for a very, very short time. If you let it sit up side down for to long then the yolk will not be runny and you will feel stupid. A small disclaimer, you may or may not get semolina from cooking it like this...so be aware of that.

Scrambled- This will probably be one of the more difficult things that you will ever try to cook in your life time, so pay attention. First you want to crack your eggs ..IN TO A CUP. I know that this is getting crazy so try to stay with me. Then you are going to want to add some milk to the mix to give it some fluff. There is not really a set amount of milk to add, so you will have to try it a few times until you get the ratio that you like. I prefer a quarter cut for every egg, or about an eighth of a cup per egg. Then it starts to follow like the rest, put it in the pan. Then simply let it cook until you have the consistency that you want, then enjoy. (393 words)

Taste

A question that has been on my mind for a long time is why such few children seem to like vegetables but like almost every sweet thing. It turns out that there is a scientific reason for this.

In nature when things are not very good for us to ingest they typically like to let us know. By this I mean with there taste. Think about it, if you are a poisonous plant it does not do you much good to be eaten and killed and also kill what ever ate you. You would much rather have the animal take a bite, taste your poison and spit you out. Not only do you get to live, but that animal probably won’t try to eat you or anything that look like you. But this only works if the animal that is eating you can taste and can recognize that you are not a good thing to be eating. Poisons do, or at least did, taste like the things that small children do not like. Unfortunatly for us, some plants that are not bas for us, but actually good for us are also not very attractive to children (like broccoli or some other green vegetables).

The reason that children are drawn to sweet tasting things like candies is because fruits were (and still are) a great way to get many of the different vitamins that your body needs. Because of this you have evolved to crave the taste of sweet things so that your body can get the nutrition it need (today however, this love of sweet things does more bad than good). But now you may be asking your self “if being sweet causes the organism to be eaten, why would anything want to be sweet?” The reason is because they want to be eaten. You heard right, they want to be eaten. Let us say that a long time ago one of your ancestors eats a strawberry. They eat many more because they are just so good then they go back to there cave and go to sleep. The next morning, as so many of us do, your ancestor drops a duce behind a tree and goes about his day. Inside of his droppings are the reminisce of the strawberries, including there seeds. Now the seed have a new place to grow, a nice pile of fertilizer and not have to compete with their parents for resources (since the guy probably did poop right under the strawberry bush).

As you should now be able to see, disliking the things we do and liking the things we do is an evolutionary advantage. It not only helps us, but also the species of plants that eat and do not eat. (458 words) 

Chick Fila

For the longest time the only place that you could get authentic Chick Fila was at the mall, but recently a new one has opened near the mall. It was the biggest news in Cedar Rapids for the six months leading up to it being built and is now a popular place to go to eat. The things that make it such a nice place to grab a bite to eat are the little things. For example when you are sitting there and there are not customers keeping the staff busy they will come around and ask you if everything is alright and offer to get you a refill. Also another thing that really makes me like the place is that they have a cow walking around sometimes. Speaking of animals that walk around in there, they have this manager who has the name of Gator. Gator is always very friendly and very willing to make sure that I am enjoying my visit. Another little thing that they do is use real flowers in there vases. At first I thought they were fake until I found water in the bottom and discovered that they were not made of plastic.  Something else that I very much enjoy is the fact that they have a play place for kids in the back. Not because I like it (they always kick me out) but because all of the kids who want to play in it sit in the back together so there is only one part of the restaurant with a bunch of shouting kids. They also did a good job picking their employees. All of them pretend to be super happy to be working there and they always say “my pleasure” with a smile. Also the employees take you seriously no matter what you say your name is (because I think we all know that it’s really fun to say your name is Lavarious or something like that). One last thing that you cannot forget is how great the food is. Everything that you order is great, unless you don’t like pickles. One thing that I like to get is get a sundae that is half strawberry and half cookies n’ cream. I like to call it “a Matts blood”, it’s an inside joke so don’t feel bad if you don’t get it. So to conclude this bog, I would highly recommend Chick Fila to anyone who likes good food and nice people. (411 words) 

Drinks

Food: any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/food?s=t). When I saw this it made me realize that I have almost completely forgotten about the other half of food that is not really thought of when you think of “food”. Dinks.  So I will do just that.

When I was trying to think about what to write about on the topic of drinks the first thing that came to my mind was the age old debate of skim, one percent, two percent, or whole.  I personally prefer skim and based on some not very scientific research that I did while working last night (I stock milk amongst other things) I determined that skim milk is also the preferred milk of the people who shop at hyvee drug store number six. There is only one or two arguments for anything except skim and they are “it tastes better” and “it has more vitamins in it”. Neither of them are very good. Taste is just an opinion and skim milk is almost always vitamin fortified. Plus skim milk has a lot less fat in it.

The next thing that came to my mind was how annoyed I get when people talk about how they do not like water. Water can be the best tasting thing in the world if you want it to be, for example if you go outside in 90 degree weather and do wind sprints for an hour I guarantee you that when you’re done that water will be the best tasting thing in the world. Another way to make water taste better is to imagine a child from a third world country standing next to you when you say “no thanks, water is to boring”.

The last thing that I would like to speak about is the difference between Poweraid and Gatorade. There is a difference. Gatorade is owned by Pepsi and Poweraid is Cokes attempt to get in on that market. I have had quite a bit of both and I think most people agree with me that Gatorade is definitely better tasting, but what I didn’t know until I took a class was that Powerais is actually better, in terms of what’s in it. It has more sodium, a large part of what you sweat out, and also it has more potassium which helps prevent cramps. So I suppose Poweraid is actually that more intelligent choice. (415 words)

First World Food

One of the great things about modern America is that, unlike in the old days, you can now just eat for the heck of it. By this is mean that food is no longer seen as a means of survival, we no longer eat because we need to in order to survive, now we eat because we want to. Think about the last time you ate something, what was going through your head? Was it “I need to eat these skittles so that I can survive and reproduce” or was it “I really like skittles so I’m going to indulge even though they are very empty calories”(https://www.google.com/search?q=define+empty+calorie&oq=define+empty+calorie&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2.8370j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.)? I am going to take a shot in the dark and say that is was more than likely the latter of the two. This is thanks to how much cheap food we have in this country and dates back to the begging of the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution people and products were moving faster than ever before thanks to inventions like the rail road and the insulated rail car that allowed meat to be shipped anywhere in the US from cities like Chicago that were very big in the meat business. Meat and other foods were becoming easier and easier to get and at cheaper prices than had ever been seen before.

All of this incredibly cheap and easily accessible food has led to another problem, obesity. Today in American an estimated two third of adults are overweight or obese and about one third of children are overweight or obese. The problem is (for the most part) not that healthy food is not easily accessible, the problem is that it is much more expansive than less healthy food and also healthy food (at least in my opinion) doesn't taste nearly as good as unhealthy food.

Another problem is how much less people are doing these days. Way back when people would eat a pound of bacon for breakfast and other bad things like that all day. They would die at about fifty from heart attacks but for the most part people weren’t obese. Why is that? I have theorized that it is because people back then were working on the farm for eight teen hours a day, or working in the steel mills or doing some other strenuous job that burned a lot of calories. Unfortunately for them these jobs didn’t help them with their terrible cholesterol levels. (407 words)