Chickpea Sandwich Patties

For a while, when I was training, I was eating Morningstar veggie burgers for the extra protein.  It's tough to get 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight and do it without eating lots of meat.  They were tasty and lean and were excellent on a bagel with some cheese.

I was also polishing off about 6000 calories peak season each day, weightlifting five days a week, and skating inline around 100 miles a week.  I needed that protein.

But in the back of my mind I kept thinking "how tough could this be to make"?

This recipe is pretty good and quite tasty.  Add some chopped bell pepper and you'd get a taste that would be close enough to the MSF patties.  I wanted to add some sweet onions as well but I have a habit of adding onions to many of my main dishes.

On the other hand, they were so good as the recipe is written that I had a second one and called my lunch done.  On a homemade roll each they're excellent.  Add some extra sharp cheese and it's a pretty satisfying sandwich.

The prep?  Took me about 5 minutes in the food processor.  Don't have one?  Use a potato masher or a big stiff fork.  You do not want a smooth puree that looks like pudding.  The chunks of chickpea are a welcome texture.  It feels like you're eating a "real" burger.  It has a mildly spicy, more like a savory taste. 

Kevin kept calling it Falafel, so maybe that's what I'm making.  I don't know, I'm not from one of those cultures.  I did have it with a little canned spaghetti sauce on top and really did enjoy them.  After reading a few recipes, Falafel is a pretty good comparison.  Falafel is typically made with a similar recipe and deep fat fried.  The Pan Frying keeps the calories down.

Each pattie was about 150 calories, and it made four.

How tough can this be?  If you can pan fry something in a puddle of olive oil, you're good to go!

Ingredients:

• 1 Can of ChickPeas (15.5 Ounce Can)
• 1/4 Cup of Bread Crumbs
• 1 Egg
• 1 Tablespoon of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil plus some for frying
• 2 Teaspoons of Paprika
• 2 Teaspoons of Cumin
• Optional - Add chopped bell pepper or onions to taste

Preparation:

• Add all ingredients except the bread crumbs to the food processor.
• Pulse the mixture until the chickpeas are broken up, but not so much that you get a smooth mix.
• Add Bread Crumbs and pulse the food processor until the ingredients are mixed.
• Form four burger sized patties.
• Pan fry in some quality Olive Oil until golden.

Serve hot, or store in refrigerator and microwave when needed.  Excellent on a sandwich, with an egg dish, or any time you want something different and savory with a mild hint of heat.

Just a hint of heat.  If you want more "hot" add some Cayenne to the dish.

China Free, Grain Free Pet Food Vendor List

Disclaimer:  I am not a Vet.  I am not a trained expert in Veterinary Food Sciences.  All of this posting, and anything else on this blog is clearly My Own Opinion.  You must decide for yourself whether I am full of crap, or completely correct, or somewhere in the middle.  I am presenting this information simply because the next time my dog gets bored with his food, I want to refer to a list somewhere instead of having to do this research again.   It took me all weekend to find this short list, and I just would prefer not to go back and start over.

---

When I lost my dog Lettie due to Chronic Renal Failure after a lifetime of feeding her Purina Products, I vowed never again would I knowingly feed my pets anything from that vendor.

Cause and effect?  Perhaps.  I don't know.  But it is my opinion that since there was a spate of recalls due to Purina foods being tainted with Chinese ingredients and that as a result many dogs died of Chronic Renal Failure, that I will avoid anything of Chinese Origin when it comes to food.

The recalls have long since ended.  I am still not feeding my dog, Rack, anything with any Chinese Origin ingredients. 

Many people have the same attitude, and thankfully many pet food vendors have taken up the standard and proudly proclaim that their food is of the highest quality.  That is great, but not really enough. 

My own personal standard is that since Rack can not digest grain well, the food must also be grain free.  The company must clearly advertise that the food is "locally sourced", or preferably "No Ingredients of Chinese Origin".  For "Locally Sourced" I am accepting any ingredients that are Canadian, US, New Zealand, or Australia.  The laws in Canada are better than in the US for purity of pet food ingredients, so as a rule of thumb, if I am hard pressed to find a food, Canada is best.

If there is no clear announcement, I will simply pass on the company whether the company says their food is human grade, or whether it's of the "highest quality ingredients" because those words really do not mean anything.  The laws as I understand them say that if a food is human grade going into a pet food plant, they no longer are human grade when they get into the food.  It's nice to hear but doesn't mean anything really.

I'm not completely comfortable with US ingredients either since our laws here have been weakened and things do "get in" where they don't belong.  Personally I won't eat GMO if I can avoid it, and High Fructose Corn Syrup simply has no purpose in food, in my opinion. 

So why feed it to your dog who has no choice in the matter?

As to recalls, I will forgive any company who has had a recall that is older than 5 years and a reputation that is good.

How did I develop this list?

First I went to http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com and looked at their Dog Food Reviews lists.  I am concentrating on Dry Dog Foods only. 

The list that drove my research was their 5 Star Dry Dog Foods List.  I went top to bottom on that list.

While the list itself may have issues, I tend to agree with Dog Food Advisor's reasons for choosing one food above another and their ratings - Yes, this is my opinion, I am not a vet.

Furthermore, I read through the forums on each individual page.  Forums are tricky, there's a lot of people with axes to grind, and some will say I am one of them.  There are a lot of people who simply post "I love this" and think it's done.  Finally there are companies who will "greenwash" the review by posting their own comments.  I looked through the discussions on each food and made a mental note of them before I followed through.

Some companies who are grain free and China free will be excluded from this list because the company's reputation is not exactly stellar in the forum.  Any mention of bad quality assurance practices, mold in the food, off smells, recent recalls within the last very few years, or anything that simply does not "feel right" means I will leave them off the list.

This is not complete.  This is My Opinion.  Your Mileage May Vary.  This is strictly a personal list that I will follow in the future.  After all, a blog functions well as an individual's "scratch pad" to keep notes and that is what I am doing here.   I hope that this may help someone but if it does not, so be it.  Of course if I later find information to change this short list, I'll put out a new list.

But for now in alphabetical order, the list:

Acana - http://www.acana.com/
Brother's Complete - http://www.brotherscomplete.com/
Dr. Gary's Best Breed - http://www.bestbreed.com/
First Mate - http://www.firstmate.com/
Fromm - http://frommfamily.com/
Holistic Blend - http://holisticblend.com/en/
Orijen - http://www.orijen.ca
Performatrin - http://performatrin.com/
Solid Gold Pet Food- http://www.solidgoldpet.com/
Wild Calling Pet Food- http://wildcalling.com/
Wysong - http://www.wysong.net/
Young Again Pet Food - https://www.youngagainpetfood.com/

A Man Walks Into The Doctor's Office

The nurse takes him to the examination room and leaves him in there.

He sits down on the table and waits for the doctor. The doctor comes in and says to the man, "

Mr. Johnson, we have the results of your test. I have some very bad news for you. You have cancer."

Mr Johnson says, " Oh my god! Cancer! How long do I have to live, doc?"
The doctor says, " I'm afraid you have 6 months to live. And unfortunately I have more bad news.

" Let me sit down for a minute. Okay what's the other bad news?"
"You have Alzheimer's disease."

Mr Johnson says, " Alzheimer's disease! Oh no! That's horrible!"

Mr Johnson thinks for a moment and says, " Well, at least I don't have cancer!"

Two Mentally Disabled Patients

John and Elise were both patients in a mental hospital..

One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, John suddenly jumped into the deep end.

He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there.

Elise promptly jumped in to save him.

She swam to the bottom and pulled him out.

When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Elise's heroic act, she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital as she now considered her to be mentally stable.

When she went to tell Elise the news she said: 'Elise, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you're being discharged since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of the person you love. I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness. The bad news is that John hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he's dead.'

Elise replied. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

'He didn't hang himself, I put him there to dry'

Lets Go For A Ride!

What happened was we needed to go somewhere.  There was a list of short errands to go through outside of the house.

Our intent was to treat ourselves at a local burger joint, then head off to an office to inspect some construction work that needed to get done there.  It was Saturday so the office would be empty.

The problem is that someone put two and two together and got RIDE! 

Because we were going through the normal domestic machinery of getting ourselves together, we had forgotten to take the dog's leash off him. We had just come in from our evening dog walk and it slipped our minds.

Maybe we were also telegraphing our intent to take him along.

When you have a McNab Superdog like our boy Rack, you learn that you have to use very indirect and clumsy phrases to say things. 

Going outside to the backyard becomes "Traversing the rear portal to inspect the posterior of the owned land".

Taking a ride in the car, well, that's more difficult.  A suggestion is "Moving quickly on the highway in the large contraption.".

Like I said, Clumsy.

We're human, we "slip" so that may be what is going on here. 

I also slipped with the door.  It's a little tricky.  If the weather is hot, it expands and gets very tough to close.   In the frigid South Florida Winters it may not close when you expect it to. 

I mean, hey, after all, it has gotten to 34F, a mere degree Celsius over freezing!

I was in the kitchen and I hear from the hallway two things.

Why is the door open?

and

Where is the dog?

I walk to the door and start laughing.

He figured us out.  He nosed the door open just enough to squeeze a 45 pound dog through and trotted out to the end of the little walkway in front of the house.  Then he parked himself there.  The doors open out here to keep them from blowing open in a tropical storm so it wasn't all that tough.  We just didn't know he knew how to do that.

"Hey, come look at this!".

I hear laughing in my ear followed by some ringing in it due to the volume.

"Well how about you, Rack!"
"Wanna Go For A RIDE! IN! THE! CAR?!?!?"

Rack just looked over, gave me a smile, and looked back at the car with his tail wagging.   He was also dusting the grass clippings from the pavement but that didn't matter, he was going for a ride!

We gathered ourselves together.   Rack Knew.  We went up to Jack's Hamburgers, got a burger and fries and some root beer and ate in the parking lot.

Rack also got two french fries and a double thumbnail sized piece of burger complete with bun sneaked to him but we won't tell anyone.

A good day for a dog.

Come to think of it, a good day for all of us.

Vanda Orchids On The Fence

These usually wait for the cold weather to come and then pass before they finally break open and bloom.

I've got two different pots of these vanda orchids, this one and a purple one that will bloom a little later.  The plant has grown into the fence, so when we have that next tropical storm in season, it will have to be left there.  I'm not brave enough to cut the roots off the wall since there are just too many.

It's on my irrigation chain getting its half gallon of mist a day.  When I repotted the thing, I made the point to use some live Spanish Moss to hold the bark in the wooden frame.  The Spanish Moss likes the same "stuff" that the orchids do so I am either getting symbiosis or they're fighting.  I'm not sure but since I have flowers I'm going to leave things as they go.

They're a beautiful plant, and I like the flowers enough that the picture will end up on the wall or in the wallpapers folders for my machines.

I remember being told that these things are so finicky and have to have just the right conditions to bloom.  I must have them because the last time they were fertilized was about 4 years ago when I was able to pry them off the wall for a hurricane.  I guess that the old wood on the wall is perfect for them which is perfect for me.

Seems Like Winter's Peaked To Me

Winter in South Florida is a funny thing.

Officially it's all of two weeks long.  Not the season but the "weather".

It gets cool in waves then locks in with the weather that the snowbirds love sometime around thanksgiving, give or take a month I guess.

Highs around 80.  Lows around 60.

Or So.

Then That Week In February hits.  That Week is usually the second week of February.  It's the coldest week of the Northern Hemisphere in most places, but your own neighborhood may vary. 

Some time in January we'd take the comforter out since the windows here are leaky, and the houses are designed for keeping the breezes flowing and letting the heat out instead of keeping the house one temperature.   It would get used on the random cold night you wake up at 2AM when the bedroom is too cold.  Then you'd fold it back up and put it on the stand or the table next to the bed and wait until the next cold night.

For That Week, you'd use it every night, shivering in what passes for frigid weather here.  It hit 39 one morning, that's cold enough for everyone to be bringing out their coldest weather clothes that they moved down here with 10 or 20 years ago.  Since styles changed in the meantime, you can take a stab at when someone moved by looking at their winter clothes. 

For the record, I have three leather jackets, the oldest I bought in the early 1990s.  Luckily leather bomber jacket styles don't change much.

Or so I tell myself.

After that week passes, the comforter goes back to the table next to the bed.  You start hearing stories from your friends and family Up North that the snow is just beginning to melt.  Now you consider whether it's time to put the comforter away for the winter after you give it that last Hot Wash in Super Hot.  It will go in the Cedar Chest or the suitcase that you moved down here with and can't use anymore since the airlines are hell to deal with and it weighs too much to use anyway.   Nobody wants to carry those big rigid suitcases anymore and the people at the airport will break into it in the name of national security in order to steal the things you hid in there anyway.

What they're doing with all those odd pairs of socks and underwear, I have no idea.

But it seems like it's time.  Time to wash the comforters.  The weather is still beautiful but now the highs are creeping up so the forecasts are at 80 instead of 76 as a high.

The next time that Aunt Patty complains about the snow back in Jersey, just tell her that Winter's Peaked and the Comforter's been washed.   She won't understand, but it will give you a smile.

Weirded Out By Your Neighbor's Drone? Create a NoFlyZone.org

I'm amused at this and haven't decided whether to put my address in the database or not.

What the website noflyzone.org does is ask your name and address and email address and it will look it up and create a "Geofence".

While I'm not too happy about having my email address used, I have a gmail account for that sort of thing, it seems pretty simple.

The theory behind it is as well, but of course, it will only protect you from the honest neighbor.  Dishonest folks will bypass that sort of thing, or at least they can at this point.

What happens is that a Drone has software to guide it.  You can't go over a certain height.  You can't fly over an airport.  You can't fly over a military base.

That sort of thing.

How does it do that?  There is a database of excluded areas in the software that lets your shiny little toy go up and spy on the neighbors.

Now to be fair, there are good uses for these things.  Exploring your own property, taking footage of a festival, and other public events.

Here's little Johnny's little league practice from 40 feet up!  Ok, here's little Johnny's little league practice until that pop fly took the drone out.

Anyway, it all looks at the GPS data, the same data that your phone tells you to turn down that blue road on the map that is really a river, and says that this particular area is not allowed.

The theory is great, but if you have someone who is frustrated by the limitations, there's nothing to say that they can't take the time to reverse engineer the database, select all the data, and hit the delete key.

Oops, no more limitations.

So like I said, it's just for the honest, like you and me.

Well, maybe you.  I don't have a drone.  Although I can think of some amazing video to be shot like the fireworks display that got videoed a while back up in West Palm Beach from the middle of the display.

And if you didn't get anything else out of my blather, have a look at the video.  It's truly beautiful and gives you even more Ooohs and Aaahs than a normal fireworks display!

Like the video says, make sure you watch it in HD!

Getting Your SMS Texts Back on Android After Leaving the IPhone

This is something I usually don't do.  A Reblog.

I'm doing it so I have the info later on and will have to repeat it.  Now you know why I have so many recipes on here - so I can bake and not have to go digging through the "Recipe Box of Doom"!

The backstory is that when Kevin went to The Isle Of Man, I borrowed a shiny old or "new to me" iPhone 4s for two weeks.  The reason is that iMessage on the iPhone will do what passes for an international text for free.  Google's Hangouts works that way too.  But either way you have to have two people on the same hardware.  Either Android or iPhone - but not mixed.  Both systems are proprietary, and I believe that both will not play well with each other.

Since he had the loaner, I went off my beloved Samsung Galaxy S4 for two weeks.   I came back to the S4 because I use the phone like a computer and create content on it like pictures and videos mainly for my own entertainment and use here.   The camera on that iPhone has thankfully been improved in later versions, it was too saturated and too poor and grainy in low light situations.  The software was rubbish since HDR didn't work well at all, but this is also iOS 6 when the current phones get iOS 8.

Got all that?

Anyway, here are the steps - and if you're coming here and want the original, here is the direct link.  I have no pictures here since I followed the steps and it worked first time immediately.  The steps were beyond annoying when I got to iCloud since Apple wants you to stay on their services.  Removing the phone number from iCloud required hunting around in every nook and cranny of the site in order to delete the number from wherever you find it.

Steps:

1)  Before you leave your iPhone, turn off iMessage.  This is done by going into the Settings app, selecting Message, then flicking the slider to off on iMessage.

2)  Remove yourself from iCloud.  On the Mac, there is (or was) an iCloud app that you could do this from.  Since I am normally using Linux or Windows (in that order) I had to go to the website for iCloud.  Start on the settings link (icon) and go through every single aspect, link, and sublink on there.  If you see a phone number, delete it.  It also argued with me to disable "Find My iPhone" in order to proceed with some of this.  I did and chased my tail around until complete and I was dizzy.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific.  I had to go through all of the account details manually myself.

3)  Have all your iPhone friends delete and readd your contacts.   Good luck.  As annoying as the iCloud step was, this one may simply be impossible.  Luckily for me, I had few people iMessage me during the two weeks.  If your contact used iMessage to talk to you, they will not be able to recontact you until Apple's servers all realize that you have dropped off of iMessage - that could be as much as 45 days, however with me it was instant.

4)  Ask your readded friends to "Send Message as Text Message" on their iPhone.  Yes, seriously.  They're going to wonder if they really want you as friends at this point.  Hopefully you don't lose too many as a result.

5)  Wait 45 days before using your new non iPhone on this number.  I had to ask myself whether they were serious about this one, but apparently either I was lucky or this particular bullet is old news.  It was in my case.

6)  Text "STOP" to 48369 .  That's the Apple support guy's hint.  It worked for me immediately.

After running through all of this, my S4 is working fine.  I SMS Text everywhere, I am not using iMessage anywhere. 

I have read that some people on iPhones hate green text bubbles, and SMS is green while iMessage is blue.  All I have to say to that is grow up since there are worse things to hate.

First world problems, really!

The Best Gambler in the World!

A man with his attorney walk into an IRS building to get audited. The auditor looked at the tax payer and said... ... "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says the man. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."

The man says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."
 The auditor thinks a moment and says, "No way! It's a bet."
 The man removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops.


The man says, "Now, I'll bet you another thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."
The auditor can tell this man isn't blind, so he takes the bet.
The man removes his dentures and bites his good eye. The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost two grand within minutes while the mans attorney is in the room as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" The man asks. "I'll bet you four thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there is no way this guy can manage that stunt, so he agrees to the bet.

The man stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, and urinates all over the desk. The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win.

But the mans attorney moans and slaps his hands to his face.

The auditor walks up to the attorney and asks, "Are you okay?"

"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when he told me about being summoned for an audit, he bet me ten thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be excited about it."