So how do you like your eggs? Sunnyside up or not at all?
As if decades-long concerns about high cholesterol in eggs wasn’t enough, now we’re in the midst of probably the biggest egg recall in history. I’m sure you’ve read about all the fuss over salmonella risks associated with, oh, something like half a million egg this last week.
So far I haven’t heard or read anything about final numbers on the egg recall. But the numbers I saw earlier today said about 450 million eggs. (I ran onto one source that said, as of 2007, Americans consume about 6.3-6.5 BILLION eggs annually. Wow.) And I don’t think I’ve read about food detectives having found the potential source of the salmonella infection.
Just as a little FYI: You cannot clean the eggs to remove salmonella risks. That’s because the infection — if a particular egg IS infected — is on the inside of the shell, not the outside. I believe, however, very thorough cooking would kill any risk of salmonella in an egg. (Bad news for those of us who are “over-easy” egg fanatics.)
In recent years, it seems that we’ve had a lot of food recalls over risks of salmonella and other food-borne diseases. Remember the spinach scare of a couple of years back. And there was a major peanut butter recall either just before or just after that. It speaks poorly of the safety of our food system that I can’t exactly recall which came first, the spinach or the peanut butter. (I am trying very, very hard to resist all temptations in this article to make jokes about which came first, the chicken or the egg — that sort of punny stuff is below me.)
What’s the answer to all these food risks? Probably it’s time for us to take the advice of many seriously and start looking for more of our “raw” or perishable food closer to home. In some cases, shipping distances lead to poor quality food. Above all else, we need to hold food producers seriously accountable for the safety and quality of our food supply.
After all, if we can’t get safe food and safe water supplies, what sort of living can we do??
Medical problems continue to challenge our family
Medical problems related to my wife’s heart continue to challenge — or “plague,” depending on your perspective, I guess — our family as summer starts to cool and wind down. I doubt the hot summer we’ve been having had much to do with it, but certainly it’s easier to face daily or weekly crises when you don’t feel like you’re face is melting off your body.
A few months ago, I mentioned that my wife developed atrial flutter, i.e., some of the “wiring” in the upper chamber of her heart is firing crazy and causing the heart muscle to flutter around instead of beating steadily and firmly as it should. She’s been on three heavy duty medications to control the condition.
Until just over a week ago.
At that point, she developed a strange slowed heartbeat that would jump in erratically every few beats. This slow beat or almost “heart pause” (my term for it; not medical) was making her very weary and somewhat nauseous. A quick trip to the emergency room led to a three-day stay in our favorite hospital again.
The cardiologists took her off the three medications she was on and put her on two new ones. Case resolved by medical magic one more time. They indicated if this medication doesn’t control the issue she’s probably going to need a pacemaker.
About an hour ago she came home from her part-time job feeling very, very tired and she’s in taking a long nap now. Stay tuned …
How much ‘stuff’ do we REALLY need in our lives?
I’m aware that people reading blogs come from a wide economic spectrum, and from nearly every country in the world (most nations have some sort of Internet capabilities, I think) — so when I ask a question like the one in the title of this article, I’m sure there are a huge variety of answers.
But it’s worth thinking about, no matter what your situation or where you live: How much “stuff” do we REALLY need in our lives?
I started thinking about this a couple of days ago after watching a DVD of a Denzel Washington movie that came out early this year, or late last year — “Book of Eli.” I won’t give away the nifty plot twists and ending for those of you who haven’t seen it. I would give the movie a qualified recommendation. I say “qualified” because it’s got a lot of very graphic violence, and some of the plot underpinnings seem a bit far fetched to me. But with those qualifications, I really enjoyed watching Denzil Washington act, he’s uniformly great at just about everything I’ve seen him do.
Anyway, the setting of the movie and some of Washington’s dialog started me thinking. It takes place in a “post-apocalyptic” future where people are grubbing around in the very violent, dangerous remains of civilization in America. Throughout the movie, Washington’s character keeps saying things about how thankful he is and we all should be for the basic essentials for life, i.e., food, clean drinking water, shelter, clothing, etc., and that beyond that we are wrong to try to grab more.
That’s an age old theme in fiction of all sorts and pretty much all times and places, debated and argued over long before refrigerators, air conditioners, and other modern furniture or appliances were invented.
How much of our lives are made up of “the abundance of things” (see Luke 12:15) we possess? Do we devote ourselves to acquiring “stuff,” or living our lives?
No more “sermonettes” for today, I promise. But think about it.
‘Real Subliminal’ products
