healthy

Thursday Inspiration — Cooking with Gas

Fandango12 Comments

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to write a post using the word “cook.”

Ever since I got married almost 46 years ago, my wife has been the chief cook — and I’ve been the bottle washer, so to speak. She is a very good cook and I am fairly confident that had I not married her, I’d be dead my now.

My pre-marriage bachelor diet was primarily fast food, fried food, and beer. But Mrs. Fandango began preparing healthy, nutritious, delicious meals. She made sure I got a balanced diet with veggies and fruits and food that was mostly organic.

One of her requirements wherever we lived was that our home had to have a gas range, rather than an electric cooktop. She felt that she could cook with much more precision with gas than with electricity. And since she took pride in preparing her meals and I loved eating her meals, I made sure to accommodate her gas range demand.

In fact, she loves cooking with gas so much that this is one of her favorite rap songs.

Now I don’t want you to think that my wife prepares everything I eat. I make my own cold cereal breakfasts and when we have eggs, I am often the one who cooks them. And I’m also the outdoor grill master, grilling hod dogs, burgers, steaks, and even seafood to perfection.

So I’m not totally helpless in the kitchen.

WDP — Early to Bed and Early to Rise

Fandango20 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?
View all responses

Ben Franklin, an American printer and publisher, author, scientist and inventor, and diplomat, allegedly said, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Like Ben Franklin suggested, I am an early to bed, early to rise kinda guy. Well, at least now that I’m in my 70s.

I usually am in bed by around 9:30 pm, but I typically spend the next hour-and-a-half to two hours on WordPress, mostly reading posts from bloggers I follow that I didn’t get a chance to read during the day and sometimes drafting posts that I will be publishing in the future.

As to the morning, my typical wake up time is between six and seven. If it’s closer to six, I may turn on my iPhone and check the overnights on WordPress. If it’s closer to seven, I’ll just get up then and start scanning WordPress with my first morning coffee.

Full disclosure: I usually have to get up to pee once or twice between the time I actually fall asleep and the time I wake up. I call that “Old Man’s Syndrome” and I wrote about it here.

So, early to bed and early to rise, like Ben Franklin suggested. Unfortunately, unlike Ben suggested, doing so has not made me healthy or wealthy or wise.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — June 30th

Fandango11 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (30th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on June 30, 2017.

Like Father Like Son

candy and cookies

Danny was sitting at the dining room table doing his homework. “Mom, can I have a snack?” he called out to his mother, who was fixing dinner in the kitchen.

“Danny, I gave you some milk and cookies when you got home from school. Your father will be home soon and we’ll be having dinner in a little while,” Danny’s mother answered.

Danny loved snacks. Dinners not so much. The main dish, usually chicken, steak, meatloaf, or fish, was tolerable. But then she’d pile onto his plate things he didn’t like: broccoli, asparagus, brussel sprouts, cauliflower. Yuck.

Why couldn’t she let him have cookies or Pop-Tarts or a Snickers bar or a pile of M&Ms on the side? Why force him to confront those yucky veggies that he had trouble chewing and swallowing because they tasted awful?

“Because they’re healthy and they’re good for you,” she’d answer when he asked why she made him eat those things rather than giving him snacks as side dishes. Danny never really understood why she always said that. Who cares, he thought, if food is “good for you” if it doesn’t taste good?

“When I grow up, I’m going eat nothing but snacks,” Danny announced, a tone of defiance in his voice.

“Okay, I tell you what,” his mother said. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll let you have a snack now, but then you can’t have dessert after dinner.”

Danny’s six-year-old mind started churning. “What’s for dessert?”

“I cut up some fruit,” she said, “and I’ll put a dollop of whipped cream on top just for you.”

“Okay, fine,” Danny said, returning to his homework.

At about that time, Danny’s father walked into the front door of their apartment. He walked over to his son and ruffled his hair. Then he called out to his wife, “Honey, can I have a snack?”

This post is in response to today’s Daily Prompt: Snack.

FFfPP — Hey, Bitch!

Fandango8 Comments

“Hey, bitch, get your hands off of my pizza,” Jason yelled.

“But you said we could share,” Anita said, letting go of the slice she picked up.

“No I didn’t,” Jason corrected Anita. “I said if you ordered a pizza we could share each other’s pizzas. But you chose to order rabbit food instead. You know I don’t eat salads. So you go ahead and enjoy your salad and keep your grubby paws off my pizza.”

“Just give my salad a try, Jason,” Anita said. “It’s really quite tasty and, best of all, it’s healthy. It’s actually good for you.”

“I’ll tell you what, Anita,” Jason said. “If you want to have some of my pizza, go ahead and pull off those green, leaf-like things. I don’t know what they are. Maybe spinach or arugula or some other type of rabbit food. I don’t like that shit. But as to the rest of my pizza, that’s off limits to you.”

“You are one selfish bastard, Jason,” Anita said.

“Yeah, well you knew that when you opted for a salad instead of a pizza. You made your bed, now you gotta sleep in it.”

“I’m not sure that particular metaphor applies here,” Anita said, “but fine, you can eat the whole damn pizza by yourself. But you’re getting to the age that you should consider adding more greens to your diet.”

“Maybe in my next life,” Jason said, picking up a slice of his pizza and taking a big bite.

Written for the Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner prompt from Roger Shipp. Photo credit: Christian Mackie on Unsplash.

Truthful Tuesday — Whitest, Brightest

Fandango16 Comments

Melanie, of Sparks from a Combustible Mind, is still filling in for Frank, aka PCGuy, who is taking a temporary (?) hiatus from his Truthful Tuesday prompt. This week Melanie asks…

Is there too much emphasis on having the “whitest, brightest smile”? Is that a mainly American thing or has it caught on globally?

Alas, I was a cigarette smoker for about 30 years and I’ve been a coffee drinker my whole adult life. Hence, my teeth are, regrettably, anything but white and bright. And yes, that’s my mouth and my teeth you’re seeing in the photo above.

Were I a movie star or a model or engaged in some other activity that required really white teeth, then perhaps it would be important for my teeth to be their whitest and brightest. But I’m just an everyday, ordinary guy who is retired. I’m just happy that the teeth in my mouth are my real teeth and that they are in good shape. I haven’t had a cavity since I was a teenager, so I’m happy about that too.

To answer Melanie’s question, despite the fact that my smile could probably be the before picture in an ad for tooth whitening procedures, yes, I think there is too much of an emphasis on having a white, bright smile and not enough on having a healthy smile.