My Cup Of Tea

The best flavored beverage for me is tea.  And not some sort of iced tea mix, just real plant parts steeped in water.  No sugar, just flavor, water, some antioxidants, caffeine sometimes.  (The health benefits/costs of caffeine are frequently debated since it is America's favorite drug.  I try not to make a daily habit of it, but it sure is helpful if I've had a short night or I have to prop my eyelids open long enough to get through a long procedural document.)

I'm a bit snooty about my teas.  I'd like the whole experience to be pleasant, not just getting my caffeine hit as quickly and cheaply as I can.  I find the better quality teas are all loose leaf teas.

I don't normally recommend products, but I'm in the mood today.

First of all, I recommend Upton Tea for caffeinated teas.  I've not been real impressed with the herbal selections, but every green tea I've tried has been of good quality.  My absolute favorite is Jasmine Pearls.  I was initially spoiled by a gift to my mother and now I can't go back to ordinary tea.

Jasmine Pearls

It is quite pricey, I recommend you try a variety of Upton's 15g sample packets before you spend a lot of money on tea you may not like.  If you are a daily drinker this may be a bit steeply priced.  I have it as an occasional treat so I justify it to myself.

For a long time I used a normal tea ball for brewing my tea, but somehow it got misplaced during the move.  I picked up a new one at the local grocery store, and it was a complete piece of junk.  So with my next Upton tea order, I looked at their infuser options, and settled on a Finum Brewing Basket.

Finum Brewing Basket

The mug that you can get with it is just a small clear mug that has no integration features with the basket.  Just get the basket and use with your favorite mug.  It even fits in my tapered mug that's a little narrow at the bottom.  It could get lost in an extra wide mug, the handles are designed to sit on the mug rim.  The basket has lots of room for the leaves to move around and open up, it's easy to remove, the lid serves as a good drip tray, and it's easy to dump out the used leaves.  I highly recommend it.

I'm still considering my options for herbal teas.  I'd like to move to a loose leaf tea, but I've not been fond of Upton's offerings I've tried.  (All the bags, tags, individual wraps are wasteful and don't brew as well as the basket.)  Maybe I could order plain hibiscus from Upton and blend in my own fruit/spice flavorings.

I'm currently drinking Twinings Orange & Cinnamon Spice.  It's a nice warm-up when I come in from the cold in the morning and don't need caffeine.  If I'm really cold I will spike it with a little honey to get the internal furnace going.

So that's my cup of tea, what's yours?

Picking a Breakfast Sausage

I saw these two products on the shelf, but the serving sizes were way too different to do the math in my head to intelligently pick one.

	Serving Size (g)	Fat (g)	Carbs (g)	Protien (g)	%Fat Calories	Ketogenic Ratio
Bob Evans Precooked Link Sausage	45	10	0	10	69.23%	200%
Jimmy Dean Precooked Link Sausage	68	24	2	9	83.08%	268%

Next Time I'll pick Jimmy Dean.

Bean Feast

Product	Servings	Fat grams per serving	Protein grams per serving	Carb grams per serving
Refried Beans	2	4	7	16
Salsa	5.00	0	0	2
Colby-Jack	4.00	8	6	2

Total Calories	712
% fat Calories	51%
Ketogenic ratio	70%

At home this dish is served with fried onions, peppers, ground beef, and sour cream, but when cooking at your desk one must simplify.  Higher carb than my average lunch, but sometimes you just crave a little comfort food but you don't want to totally jump off the bandwagon and buy a sub sandwich.

Refried bean selection is tricky, but if you look carefully you can find a brand made with lard.  Look first at "Authentic" brands and not "Fat Free" or "Vegetarian" varieties.

Salsa doesn't traditionally have fat or sugar in it, so most brands are seed oil free , corn sugar free, and grain free.

I have to be careful with my shredded cheese selection because I'm allergic to one of the common preservatives, but most folks won't have a problem with any of the traditional cheeses.  Beware of "taco cheese" and other convenience blends that may have vegetable oil in it.

I have to admit, I further blew my Kotogenic ratio on this one by having orange juice with it, tanking at 41% ketogenic.  Hopefully I can stay away from the other fruits I bought for a couple hours until I'm done metabolizing the lunch carbs.  (Sometimes you just get in a mood for fruit/veg that are high carb.)

Assembly: Half a can of beans, 1/3 a jar of salsa, half a bag of cheese into a bowl, stir, microwave.

Serving Suggestions: 

• Eat with a spoon.  
• I've tried serving on tortillas, but the store tortillas don't have the sturdy scooping capacity of homemade ones.  
• Chips would be nice, but I've not found any seed oil free chips in the store, and the attempt to bake some with olive oil in the company toaster oven was a dismal disappointment.

The bonus with this one is that you have enough ingredients to do it again tomorrow.

A Real Sneeze

For years, I've been known for my ineffective sneezes.  They have been called "cute", "tiny", "kitten sneezes".  My husband was convinced he could teach me how to sneeze "properly".  But even when I tried to go with the sneeze, the best I could manage was a heavy breath along with the sneeze, which didn't really clear anything up.

Seemingly unrelated...  I've had issue with my rear molars for years.  I have a small mouth, and orthodontic work pushed the molars back further than they were meant to be, and I was always getting cavities in them.  One was removed because it was in too rough of a shape to save, and that quadrant of my jaw felt an incredible release of pressure that I lived with in the other three quadrants of my mouth.  Next time the other molar needed filling, I asked the dentist to pull it, and he assured me it could be saved and should be saved and did the drill/fill routine instead.

Recently, that tooth started hurting real badly.  I'd just moved and had not picked a new dentist yet, and was driven into a nearby office.  Between the delays of getting my records copied over, and the dentist being out of town for two days, I couldn't wait for an appointment and went to the emergency dentist in town.  They also refused to pull my tooth, and instead drilled out my old fillings, drilled out some decay forming under the filling, and put in a temporary patch, recommending I have my regular dentist put a crown on it.  It was still sore, but nothing like the pain that was making me sweat while on multiple pain killers.

I finally got in to see my new dentist.  Dr. Dupre was wonderful.  We had a consultation, and agreed to give the tooth a few weeks to heal from the emergency work before making a decision.  After the healing period I got a cleaning, exam, x-rays, the works, and had a chat about the situation, and he referred me to an excellent surgeon to remove the tooth.  The specialist was quick, efficient, and as painless as possible.  (The needle itself hurts, not the procedure.)

The day after my procedure, I sneezed.  Not a "kitten sneeze," but a real sneeze.  This felt very strange to me.  For a week I had real sneezing, I was slightly worried about the possibility of this being the beginning of some strange side effect and went back for a follow up check.  The dentist examined my socket and tested my sinus integrity and declared all to be well.  His suggested that I may have had a cracked tooth jutting up into my sinuses causing perpetual irritation and sinus infection.  If that's so, I've had that cracked tooth for years.

So the take-aways?  One, listen to your instincts, insist on the medical care you need unless you can find a doctor that can give you a good reason why you're wrong.  Two, this may be an alternate explanation to the amalgam filling theory of fibromyalgia.   Some people have gotten fibromyalgia relief from having teeth pulled, and attribute it to the mercury in the fillings, but they may have had cracks under those fillings causing infection in sinus or bone that was a constant source of inflammation.

It's allergy season for me, I'm struggling with the same runny nose and post nasal drip issues I have every year, but the sinus congestion is totally gone.  I can breathe out of both nostrils most of the time, and when I sneeze it seems to actually clear things out.  I'm grateful for my new sneeze.