Trash Talk

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It’s Ann here today. Andy is over in OurLittleCorner psychoanalyzing cats.

It was Andy who suggested the perfect title, “Trash Talk,” for today’s blog. I had considered “I Can’t Wait to Be an Old Lady.” Or maybe “It’s Salubrious” or “Unexploded Ordnance.” My suggestions are all quotes from the recent NYTimes article that inspired this blog. It’s an article about a group of women in Massachusetts who call themselves “Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage.” Since 2018 this group of about 30 women has retrieved 6000 pounds of trash from ponds in Cape Cod. Members have to be at least 64 years old, able to swim half a mile in under 30 minutes, and “free dive” to eight feet. I’m impressed!

Susan Baur, 86, is a retired psychologist and founder of the Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage

I think we older women – and men- can totally appreciate and take to heart this excerpt from the article about Ms Baur: “And, as leader, she’s had to squelch her proclivity to get anxious and complain about physical discomforts, she said. ‘Now it’s like suck it up, because they are watching,’ Ms. Baur said. ‘I’m going to show them that being old is OK.‘”

And this is possibly the highlight: “Ms. Baur said that the husbands of at least two members had thanked her. Diving for trash offers great stress relief and tends to have a salubrious effect on the mood back home. ‘You don’t really want to live with unexploded ordnance, if you know what I mean,’ Ms. Baur said .”

The OLAUG are getting trash out of their environment, one dive at a time!

I wish I could join their group. I’m certainly old enough – but I can’t swim; I obviously don’t dive, and I don’t live near Cape Cod. Clearly, I need to find something equally challenging here in the Sonoma area. After reading the article, I know that my group would need to have three important goals: (1) to bring older women together; (2) to physically strengthen these older women; (3) to help the environment. That’s a pretty perfect list and one to work on!

This un-landscaped, very-noticeable strip just as you drive into the town of Sonoma has been bugging me for years. I think I need a group of Old Ladies to tackle that gardening project. We’ll haul in bags of amendment, plant 1,2, and 5-gallon drought-tolerant, native shrubs to attract pollinators, master the use of a (small) tractor, bake in the Sonoma sun, bond with each other… and leave exhausted, a little sun-burned, and filthy…but it will be the “best feeling,” as one of the OLAUGs said. Plus, we’ll routinely pick up any trash that annoying passersby may toss into it. And we might share a bottle or two of Sonoma wine while we chat – after finishing the labor-intensive work.

I love, love, love this quote from Suleika Jaouad (Jon Batiste’s wife): “There are versions of ourselves we only meet by doing things we aren’t sure we can do. Not the prepared version. Not the fearless version. The one who pushes the heavy wheelbarrow. Pulls the stubborn root. Waters at dawn and dusk. Tends to what needs tending. The one who figures it out as she goes. Who dreams of a garden not as it is, but as it will be someday.“

A look at “trash fish” is the perfect finale for this trash-focused blog and also for my recipe. Mind you, “trash fish” is a frowned-upon expression. Read this great article from Nature Conservancy if you want to know more. And this article entitled “Trash Fish Tuesday” – with the photos below- has even more to say about the “PR” problem that these fish have.

Photos from TheMeateater.com

It’s almost impossible to find “rough” or trash fish being sold in markets. And Andy didn’t offer to go fishing to help me out here. So I decided to use catfish, even though my ideal catfish is farmed in the U.S., not the gafftopsail or hardhead catfish that are wild and bottom-feeders. But our lovely Oliver’s market in Santa Rosa didn’t have catfish on my shopping day, so we ended up with basa from Vietnam. Though basa are catfish, in 2003 Congress passed a law preventing imported catfish from being called “catfish.” Hence, the term “basa”…or sometimes “swai.” Even with the tariffs that have been applied, I was shocked at how inexpensive the basa was. It’s also low in calories and carbohydrates, yet high in protein.

Mississippi State U did a small study in which researchers did a blind taste test and found that the taste of basa from Vietnam was preferred 3 to 1 over U.S.- raised catfish. Andy and I did our own little home study, and Andy was quite fond of the very-mild basa, while I will never give up my preference for U.S. catfish (once you’ve cut out the too-fishy-flavored red streak down the middle).

According to The Marine Conservation Society, you should know that with “Basa…sustainability varies. It is a whitefish that is farmed in ponds in South East Asia. The Best Choice’s are basa that has been certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), GLOBALG.A.P., or Global Seafood Alliance Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP).”

If you want to bring together a group of Old Ladies to fish for U.S. catfish, here’s a site with suggested guides.

Lightly-spiced Catfish recipe – using basa fillets

Lightly-spiced Catfish

You can use basa instead of catfish, but check to see if it’s certified by ASC, GLOBALG.A.P, or BAP. Recipe adapted from LanasCooking.com.

  • 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
  • 1 1/2 tsp Diamond kosher salt
  • 3/4 tsp paprika
  • 1/2 tsp dried thyme
  • 1/2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1/2 tsp dried basil
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
  • about 1 1/2 lbs catfish fillets 
  • 2 T melted butter
  • 2 T lemon juice
  • 1/4 tsp garlic powder

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the parsley, salt, paprika, thyme, oregano, basil and pepper in a small bowl.

Place the fillets on a baking pan that has been coated with non-stick cooking spray.

Sprinkle the spice-herb mixture over both sides of catfish fillets.

Add the melted butter, lemon juice and garlic powder to a small bowl. Mix well to combine.

Drizzle the butter-lemon-garlic mixture over the fillets.

Bake uncovered for 15-20 minutes or until the fish flakes easily.

The cooking time for baked catfish depends on the thickness of the fillets. A general guideline is 15-20 minutes; however, thinner fillets will cook in about 12 minutes.

Recipe brought to you by BigLittleMeals.com and Andy and Ann.

One Potato, Two Potato

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It’s Andy here today. Ann is spacing out over in OurLittleCorner .

The website Science  recently posted an article about how scientists are exploring the viability of growing potatoes on the moon. The research is part of NASA’s long-range plan to establish a base on the moon for launching astronauts to Mars.  

Why potatoes for our astronauts?  They are calorie-dense and  provide essential carbohydrates and nutrients. What particularly interested me was the claim that the versatility of potatoes may help prevent astronauts from getting “menu fatigue.” So rather than getting the same dish over and over on that long journey to Mars (which takes an estimated 6 to 9 months) astronauts plausibly can have their potatoes baked, boiled, mashed, smashed, hashed, roasted, scalloped, or fried.

Will there be potatoes growing on this envisioned future moon base? (illustration from devx.com)

While I am no expert on astronaut nutrition, I do know something about potatoes — I grew up with them. In the early 1950s my hometown Chino had fewer than 6,000 residents but about 4,000 acres of farmland devoted to potatoes. The Chino Champion, the local newspaper, reported that in 1951 a total of 1,434 rail cars full of potatoes were shipped from town.

I recall the corrugated metal “potato sheds” along the tracks which provided summer jobs for high-school-aged kids who would sort, wash, and bag potatoes for about a dollar an hour (which was big money in those days). Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to take advantage of this potential financial windfall the potato industry was withering away, being replaced by a burgeoning dairy industry (which I wrote about in an earlier blog).

Boys mostly from the Chino High football team pack  potatoes in the Mazzie potato shed (circa 1954). Photo from the Chino Champion

Even though I never got a job in a potato shed, I did get to accompany my mom to Dodge’s Grocery in downtown Chino where she would buy potatoes for the family. In those days grocers usually sold potatoes by the 10-pound bag. I don’t recall what we paid, but according to Infoplease.com the average price of a 10 pound bag of potatoes in 1950 was 46.1 cents. That sounds incredibly cheap — until you consider that one dollar in 1950 had the buying power of 13 dollars today, which means that a bag of potatoes cost the equivalent of about$5.85 (I figured this out using this handy inflation calculator).

The potatoes we brought home from the store were a mainstay for our evening meals. We truly were a meat and potatoes kind of family. Supper wasn’t supper if there were no potatoes on the table. And, with the exception of special occasions like holidays or birthdays, the potatoes always came to the table straight from our pressure cooker and were always peeled and quartered. Talk about menu fatigue.

Our 1950s National Presto Model 60 Pressure Cooker  was a potato-cooking workhorse (photo source Etsy.com)

Although I’m not sure if this counts as legitimate potato nostalgia, I have to mention something about the Mr. Potato Head toy I got for Christmas when I was a kid. For those not familiar with Mr. Potato Head, in 1952 Hasbro began marketing a toy kit consisting of plastic face and body parts with pushpins (including ears, eyes, shoes, hat, nose, mustache, and even a pipe) that could be pinned onto a potato. Wikipedia claims that a million of these kits were sold that first year, which was probably when I received mine. I got a kick out of creating all kinds of funny faces on our potatoes — that is, until my mom put the kibosh on “wasting” so many potatoes from our larder.

According to Wikipedia, in 1952, Mr. Potato Head became the first toy advertised on television and the first to be aimed directly at children.  The commercial revolutionized marketing by focusing on children as a target audience and encouraging them to convince their parents to buy the product (a concept that came to be known as the “nag factor”).

Mr. Potato Head enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the 1990s after appearing as a main character in Disney’s animated feature filmToy Story (as well as in the four sequels to that movie). In the films Mr. Potato Head becomes friends with a fellow toy character named Buzz Lightyear — an astronaut or “Space Ranger.”

Toy Story‘s astronaut Buzz Lightyear and Mr Potato Head (available on eBay).

This got me to wondering if the NASA scientist who hatched the idea of raising potatoes for astronauts could have been a Toy Story fan as a kid. Although we will probably never know, I do know that if I were asked for my input on the potatoes-in-space program I would suggest that NASA astronauts be equipped with Mr. Potato Head kits. Then, if while on their 9-month journey to Mars the baked, boiled, mashed, smashed, hashed, roasted, scalloped, and fried options fail to stave off the dreaded “menu fatigue,” the astronauts could always make funny faces on the potatoes and let them float around in the gravity-free space craft. That would certainly bring a few laughs and raise morale.

My brain at 83: Millstone or Milestone?

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It’s Andy here today. Ann is in OurLittleCorner explaining how ice cream can be brain food.

Frank Bruni, one of my favorite NYTimes opinion columnists, recently wrote a piece entitled “The Brain is the New Belly.”  It hit close to home.

Illustration by Ben Wiseman from Frank Bruni’s NYTimes piece The Brain is the New Belly

Bruni notes that as we age (even though Bruni is only 61) we find ourselves and those around us increasingly obsessing about our mental state. The hyperbole and dark humor about our memory lapses reflect a widespread undercurrent of anxiety that our brains may be declining. Bruni contends that much of this angst is driven by a dramatic increase in media attention to the issue:

All around me I hear and see mentions of cognitive health, which, like early onset, is a term that wasn’t nearly as prevalent a decade ago. I trip across more and more articles about brain optimization. I encounter more and more ads for elixirs that promise to perpetuate my acuity and protect my precious thoughts. I’ve never been so conscious of my consciousness. I’ve never been so mindful of my mind.

I’m certainly not immune to this nagging fear of brain decline. And it’s the small things that get to me — like driving through Sonoma and remembering that I had set a pizza box on my car roof only after noticing other motorists frantically gesturing at my roof (which, by the way, happened just last week) ; or the many (many) times I’ve buckled up my bike helmet only to have to take it off again to check to see if I’d turned on its rear blinking light; or spending an entire conversation with someone I know while straining the whole time to recall the person’s name. Sound familiar?

These kinds of lapses are often referred to as “brain farts,” a term I’ve always considered to be a somewhat unsavory colloquialism. However, the topic of “brain farts” has received some serious science-based scrutiny . A good example can be found in a piece posted onVerywellmind.com entitled “What Happens During a Brain Fart” (I should point out that the article is undoubtably credible because it was “medically reviewed” by someone sporting “MD, PhD, and FAAN” after their name).

I was relieved to learn from that article that brain farts are not abnormal and, more importantly, do not necessarily indicate a declining brain — they are a normal part of how memory works. Furthermore, research has shown that common triggers for such lapses include being distracted, stressed, or bored. I don’t know about being bored, but who isn’t distracted or stressed these days? The article also points out that these mental lapses tend to become more frequent as we age — no surprise there.

From Brian Crane’s comic strip Pickles .

It seems to me that the skyrocketing anxiety about”cognitive health” that Frank Bruni mentions would be the source of considerable stress, which in itself ironically could contribute to age-related upticks of mental lapses. If this is so, for our own mental health we need to find a way to be less anxious about our aging brain’s well being. An article in The Guardian by Hanna Devlin reports on some recent discoveries about our brain’s structure that may help in this regard.

Her article outlines the findings from a recent Cambridge study that suggest that the brain’s development is not due to a process of steady progression as is commonly assumed. Rather, the the course of our brain development can be characterized as consisting of five distinct “eras” that come about at “pivotal turning points” in our lives: Childhood (Birth to Age 9), Adolescence (Ages 9 to 32), Adulthood (Ages 32 to 66), Early Aging (Ages 66 to 83), and Late Aging (Age 83 onwards).

In that I currently am at the “pivotal turning point” of 83, I thought it would behoove me read the original research article, published in the prestigious journal Nature, to learn more about this “Late Aging” era my brain now occupies . It didn’t take me long to realize that not being a neurosurgeon (or the like) I should never have asked my 83-year-old brain to try to make sense of the research. Check out the below excerpt to see why:

… the last epoch is 83–90 years old, which ranges from late aging individuals to the maximum age included in this study. Only subgraph centrality was significantly associated with age during their period... In addition, the regularization of the LASSO had to be weakened for any predictors to survive. With the less-sparse model, subgraph centrality was the strongest predictor of age… Importantly, subgraph centrality was only significantly correlated with age in 10 regions, including the cuneus (right and left), the superior (right) and middle (left) occipital gyri, and the postcentral gyrus (right).

I actually began to look up terms like LASSO , cuneus, and occipital gyri but found the effort to be so stressful and distracting that I gave up for fear of generating a slew of new brain farts.

I couldn’t even understand what wikipedia had to say about the cuneus: “the cuneus (Brodmann area 17) receives visual information from the same-sided superior quadrantic retina (corresponding to contralateral inferior visual field)…“

You must be wondering how I can claim that the Cambridge study can reduce my anxiety about my brain’s health. While I may not understand technical details of the how or why of the brain changes over time, I do find some comfort in the idea that the brain’s structure changes at “pivotal turning points” rather than through some incremental progression of development. Knowing that 83 ushers in the “late aging era” of brain development may seem a bit depressing to some, but to me knowing about this turning point in my brain’s life is more like a milestone than a millstone — it’s a milestone in the sense that I now can accept the fact that my brain will be a bit less efficient and a bit more scattered due to a natural process over which I have little or no control. And I will no longer have to consider my inevitable brain lapses as harbingers of brain doom.

Perhaps we all should relax a bit and embrace our brain’s stage of the structural development — and take some inspiration from Earl of the Pickles comic strip:

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