Rambling with Words

Sunday, January 12, 2003

Cooking

I went to donate blood yesterday and was turned down because my iron was too low. I've been trying to eat more vegetarian because it's suppose to be so healthy and it feels so much more light than eating meat. Every time I try being a vegetarian my iron drops. Not bad, not precipitously, but just enough to put me under what the Red Cross requires. I always feel embarrased when this happens even though it's just because I'm eating like we're told to. Cut down on meat, eat vegetables. They gave me a sheet with high iron foods and I eat a lot of them. I love kale, I eat beans. The only one I never seem to eat is cream of wheat mainly because I never think to get it. Oh well, I'll go back to eating meat and my iron will go up so that's that.

Actually I've heard several places lately that eating a lot bread binds the iron in our bodies so our usable iron goes down and whenever I quit eating meat, I end up eating a lot of bread. I do not want to give up bread entirely but I suppose I need to eat less.

I did a lot of cooking today, a whole lot. I not only need to cook up more meat so it's ready as I just don't when I get home and eat crap, but I'll bein class the next five days from 5:30 pm to 9:30 pm, so I need to get as much done today as I can as I won't have time this week to do anything in the evening. I'll be getting home about 10:00 as I have to ride my bike home and will only want to go to bed.

Yesterday I read "Bill Bryson's African Diary" by Bill Bryson, of course. This is a tiny book following Bryson on eight days that he spent in Kenya with CARE. It's a delightful book about the horrors of Aids and refugees and famine, not because these things are delightful, but because Bill gives a human face to the people and showed they were more than faceless statistics. Well worth reading.

I also read "Obernewtyn" by Isobelle Carmody. This is an after the holocaust/nuclear war/whatever, it's just called the Great White, story. Anyone who wasn't "normal" was classed as a misfit and burnt. Some like Elspeth had parents who were killed because they talked about things that you weren't allowed to talk about. Elspeth desperately tries to hide that fact that she can read people's minds and even influence their minds. She is still considered different enough and is sent to Obernewtyn in the remote mountains where misfits are used for labor. Once she gets there she finds that some are also experimented on. It's a nicely done book but it left too much hanging so I assume there will be a sequel.