Going For A Dip

 When you live alone, meal making isn't a production and you don't want it to be. Most of us eat secretly in front of our computers, some at TVs and others out at a cafe. Food for most of us is, or used to be, a social time when we ate and talked and exchanged our daily lives and feelings around a table with other folk. The cook for the meal on the table, enjoyed seeing people savoring the food presented, and that  made it more than a pleasure to do the work. Things change for most of us when we no longer have our kids or spouses to sit down with. We singles continue to hope we get in all the necessary healthful elements our diets demand, but somehow taking hours to prep what it means to do that, has no appeal. It just doesn't feel good and everyone wants to feel happy when cooking and eating.  And when you live alone, who's to see if you indulge a bit here and there or eat cold pasta or consider a boiled egg sufficient. Not good. We have guilt about abusing our bodies by not ingesting what counts for top physical maintenance. I discovered dips. Dips don't have to be purchased at the store because if you read the fine print on these costly little containers, you will learn that they have loads of chemicals: preservatives and flavour enhancers to make us buy more. These days of inflation, we are trying to trim our budgets and feel good about the planet. My recipe for a delicious and nutritious dip is tub of sour cream with additions. These "additives" could be dried green onions (made from clippings of the ones you keep constantly by your sink?), dill mustard, bit of horseradish, ketchup and your favorite sweet chili sauce. Okay, some of these are commercial, but wait. There are better things coming. Raid the fridge and chop up some tomatoes, peppers, celery, whatever you find that will taste yummy. You always have on hand your taste treats: herbs and spices in little bottles. Some you may dehydrate and blend yourself. Good for you. I keep mine in alphabetical order but that's just a librarian habit formed out of the past. The little bottles sit on a shelf above the stove ready to be snapped up and sprinkled. Perhaps celery salt, garlic powder, salt and pepper and any other bits and pieces that you love. Stir these into your sour cream. Give your mix a taste. Tasting is the first order of anyone who purports to be a good cook. Mix the whole thing up well. Now you have not only some crucially nutritional items in there, but also you will love a great tasting dip. You can dip away even as you play games on line or sit in front of your movie time or read from your electronic book stand or computer monitor. And no guilt. The dip welcomes sliced veges: peppers, carrot sticks, broccoli trees, cauliflower bits, apple slices, and any other fruit or veg you come across out of your collection. You don't even have to cook. As you travel along your healthful new dip road, you will come up with some fantastic ideas that can be used with fruit or biscuits. Tacos bases or crackers are okay but skip the greasy chips. You might like to toss in some grains or nuts, even ham or bacon or other chopped meats to your dips. Use your imagination and let your taste buds decide.  Simply dip in and enjoy.  

DIY

 Used to be that everyone dealt with issues such as racism, protest and other matters in their personal space when they happened. We spoke up and put that kind of thing down immediately. Now it seems that we are wearing masks of a sort that have us running off to the media or the "government" to report and recount even the most minor events. Out comes the cell phone and the idiot texting habit happens and spreads more quickly than any virus and most of it is based on what can be handled at the moment it happens. Someone comes across a word in a long ago text book or sees a picture in a magazine of something in the background and suddenly it becomes a big media issue. It makes me wonder if that is a good thing or not. Does it build us up or tear us down? While a crucial matter that involves the world in a WW3 scare these unfortunate days, I find reading the daily news on line, or see print picture after picture of someone with a bone to pick, a tiny saying inappropriate, about the most innocent occurrence. Everyone loves to jump into it passionately. Peace disappears and a small mistake becomes a huge problem . Don't know about you, but I don't have the will or time to be attempting to solve everyone else's problems. Sure, I can handle some of them and do, but it seems that many of them are based on a personal sensitivity that we already have laws to protect and places to go to see that they are taken care of. When I turn on morning radio that previously played pleasant music and recounted life stories of every kind of individual living their daily lives, I am now hearing rather sharp and nasty interviews and horror stories of encounters that someone has experienced and while they aren't nice, they aren't worthy of major attention in a morning wake-up show. Frankly, after hearing these over and over again to the point of screamingly boring repetition, I want to say I GET IT.  I don't want every radio host becoming an investigative reporter, ranting on in the early morning, the same topics that tend to drag us all down rather than telling us tales of positive actions and behaviors in order to start our days in a happy note. I am not asking for pie in the sky but I would like to find some positivity out there. It is no wonder that there is rampant depression and stress beyond the daily Covid news that invades every corner of our lives. Have we all become witch hunters and nit pickers who fear to open our mouths because even though we all know what is politically correct or not, others sometimes pluck out some miniscule comment or expression or body language to regale us with their righteous retorts. The world can be a polite, sensitive place if we all are kind and understanding and loving with the knowledge of what being a good citizen and human being  is all about. Maybe all of our lives would improve if we sought out the good things in life and shared them: all that is good and beautiful and true. Yes, there is bad out there but there are also good deeds and talents of every kind by every kind. Perhaps, the best and safest way is to "smell the roses" even though sometimes, we walk amongst thorns. 

Pocket Grammar

There is nothing much to learning Grammar or Usage. It isn't (is not) complicated or should take years of doing exercises to catch on. There is something called a sentence. It's (it is)  a statement that tells you someone or something did a deed. The first part is a he, she or it and the second part is what they did. That's ( that is ) a sentence. Never begin one with her or him or them, please. The first word needs a capital letter so make it one. The end will have some kind of punctuation such as a period ( a dot), a question mark ( you know what that is) or perhaps an exclamation mark (zzzit with a dot at the bottom). The latter is when you are shouting, cheering or laughing out loud. Now let's (let us)  take a look at the little marks that go here and there as you write your sentences. A period is a stop sign. It means that's ( that is) the end of that bit. The comma is a kind of taking-a-breath. It's (it is) a little whew and then you can go on. A sort of tiny gasp. When you want to put down a train of other words for clarity you need the comma to keep them from running smack into one  another. The question mark and exclamation mark have been mentioned before. Take a look back.  Then it gets a bit more complicated. There is something called a colon which is one period above another. It means, hey there's (there is)  more to it and let's (let us) add on more words for clarity. Then you have a rather weird thing named a semi-colon. It looks like the colon except that the bottom dot is now a comma. Remember that one? A semi-colon means, well, I should be a period but since the next part is sort of related to the first part I'll just add this bit to connect it to the first part. Then we get into the tricky little guy, the apostrophe. It's ( it is)  a kind of loose thread left over when you kick up and out, a whole word to do it but be cute about what you say. I'll (I will) is really I will. It's is really it is. (By now you may have noticed the broad hints every time I used an apostrophe.) And so on. There is nothing complicated about this use of the apostrophe. But there is another side to the apostrophe, and it happens when you want to show that something belongs to something else. If gramma has a cane, it is gramma's cane. Like that. You throw in the apostrophe to show what  you mean and if you want to get fancy, it's called the possessive. For argument's sake. The complicated bit  is it's and its. But it isn't ( is not) complicated at all. The rule simply applies. It's is it is and the term, its, is possessive. People get these two mixed up, understandably. They fall under the exception category and there aren't a whole lot of those fortunately. Just memorize them. The rest of grammar is saying what you want to express in a sentence such as where something happened, how it happened, who or what it happened to and perhaps why it happened. Newspaper folk call this the W factor: who, what , where, when and why. How comes into it, but that is often covered in the why of it all. So there you go, spell check, blue grammar hints aside. Just write your thoughts out and stop worrying about grammar. Write what you think and love doing it. Well, okay, grammarians, I did ignore quotation marks, but let's not overly complicate lesson number one.