Past Reflections

                                                                  Looking back

I might have been rich if I'd wanted the gold
instead of the friendships I've made.
I might have had fame if I'd sought for renown
in the hours when I purposely played.
Now I'm standing to-day on the far edge of life,
and I'm just looking backward to see
What I've done with the years and the days that were mine,
and all that has happened to me.

I haven't built much of a fortune to leave
to those who shall carry my name,
And nothing I've done shall entitle me now
to a place on the tablets of fame.
But I've loved the great sky and its spaces of blue;
I've lived with the birds and the trees;
I've turned from the splendor of silver and gold
to share in such pleasures as these.

I've given my time to the children who came;
together we've romped and we've played,
And I wouldn't exchange the glad hours spent
with them for the money that I might have made.
I chose to be known and be loved by the few,
and was deaf to the plaudits of men;
And I'd make the same choice should the chance
come to me to live my life over again.

I've lived with my friends and I've shared in their joys,
known sorrow with all of its tears;
I have harvested much from my acres of life,
though some say I've squandered my years.
For much that is fine has been mine to enjoy,
and I think I have lived to my best,
And I have no regret, as I'm nearing the end,
for the gold that I might have possessed.

                                              by Edgar A. Guest

I really found this poem to be quite beautiful. I hope that when I am old that I am content and at peace with all the decisions that I have made, just like the man in the poem. I find myself continually dwelling on the past and sometimes I seem to get stuck in it. It is so comfortable and secure and the future is so scary and vast and unknown. It is so very easy to get lost in one’s memories; seeing those we love and times that were better sometimes it is a struggle to come back to the future when my heart wants to stay in the past. I don’t think that this is a healthy way to live and not very happy. I am tired of being afraid of everything all the time, afraid to live and afraid to dream and afraid to fail. But maybe the biggest failure is not even trying to begin with.

Afraid of Sprouts and Cremating Your Summer Burgers?

It is impossible to read the news lately without seeing headlines regarding food safety or foodborne illness outbreaks.

Just a little while ago, Dole announced a recall of Italian Salad Blend due to potential Listeria contamination.

On June 7th, the FDA released a letter that was sent to the Kellogg company regarding Listeria found in a Georgia plant.

And unless you have been living under a rock, you are probably aware of the outbreak of a rare but deadly strain of E. Coli that has claimed 29 lives. 5 cases have been confirmed domestically, and potentially the first death.

So what is a concerned eater to do? Not just think “it’ll never happen to me.” According to the CDC, 1 in 6 Americans contracts a foodborne illness every year and 3,000 individuals will die from one. Over half of those deaths are accredited to ‘Unspecified Agents,’ otherwise known as stuff we don’t know how to track. Of the known conditions, Norovirus is responsible for the most illness while Salmonella is responsible for the most death. Death is always more common in the elderly, the young, and those that are immune-compromised. The outbreaks also often spike in the summer months.

Seriously Debbie Downer?! Where is the bright side??! Coming!!

Most people believe that food illnesses all stem from consumption of beef. Undercooked beef, to be exact. In fact, poultry and leafy greens are the two foods most commonly associated with foodborne illness.

Food contamination often occurs through cross-contamination at the source (like in the case of leafy greens being grown near livestock) or cross-contamination in the home (preparing raw vegetables and raw chicken on the same surface). These are the tips that I follow to keep myself and my family safe:

• Wash produce well, but most importantly, ensure you are never putting raw vegetables on the same surface as raw meats or poultry. Even if salads say “pre-washed” give ‘em a whirl in the salad spinner. Think of it like a carnival ride for the greens.
• Keep meats and poultry and plastic bags when in the fridge. I know this is wasteful and generally not ideal, but the paper wrappings meats come in can leak and be another source of cross-contamination.
• If meat or fish smells off or has an off-putting color of texture, chuck it. Again, wasteful financially but not worth the GI trouble it may cause you.

In terms of cooking, this is where I become a bit more relaxed. *As a side note, I would never serve my grandmother or my child (if I had one) rare meat. The fatalities experienced with foodborne illness are often in those without the immune system to fight the pathogen. Stick with medium for anyone at greater risk for contracting illness.*

• Chicken should always be cooked through until juices run clear. Just do it. Remember the top causes of illness?
• Any ground meats need to be cooked until fully browned.
• And now, beef. Oh beef. How I love a good carpaccio or tartare. I have watched many a horrified reaction when I bite into my rare steak or burger. However it is not often that I eat a burger or steak and when I do I am familiar with where the meat is coming from and trust the quality of the markets (usually local) where I shop. This is a personal risk I take, and I am not here to try and turn you to the bloody dark side. However I would ask that you take this post seriously when considering where the majority of foodborne illness comes from. It isn’t always hamburger.

In terms of eating out, I choose restaurants that focus on a high standard of quality and ideally, source their produce and meats locally. I am a firm believer that the less “handling” a food experiences, the lower the chances are of that food coming in contact with something that will make me sick. Think about it – if you go to a local orchard in the fall, pick, apples, bring them home, wash them and eat them, the number of hands those apples have been through is pretty small. If you chomp into an apple from Chile, well, you see what I mean. This is also why tracking the source of foodborne illness is so difficult- think of how many hands a food passes through before reaching your mouth.

World's Best Restaurant?

Rest in Peace Hickstead-A True Champion

Hickstead, the “superstar” stallion that carried Canadian equestrian champion Eric Lamaze to Olympic gold-medal glory in Beijing in 2008, died suddenly during a competition in Italy on Sunday, tragically ending a partnership that helped push the country to the top of the sport of show jumping.

Montreal-born Lamaze, the world’s current No. 1 rider, had just taken Hickstead through a nearly faultless 13-fence course at the Rolex FEI World Cup in Verona, Italy, when the 15-year-old horse abruptly collapsed and died.

“We finished our round, I circled and was leaving the ring, and he collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack,” Lamaze said in a news release. “It is the most tragic thing that has ever happened. We had him until he was 15, and we had a great time together. He was the best horse in the world. We are all devastated.”
The Federation Equestre International, the sport’s global governing body, said the competition was stopped at the request of the competing riders, and “Lamaze’s fellow competitors gathered in the Verona arena to pay their respects to one of the greatest horses of all time, and to support their colleague in his moment of loss with a minute’s silence.”
FEI president Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, an equestrian competitor at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, said Hickstead “really was a horse in a million, and my heart goes out to Eric and everyone connected with this wonderful horse. This is a terrible loss, but Hickstead truly will never be forgotten. We were very lucky to have known him."
FEI jumping director John Roche said the official cause of death hasn’t been determined.
Canada’s equestrian community had sounded its own note of grief within hours.
“Hickstead and Eric have been one of equestrianism’s most legendary partnerships,” said Akaash Maharaj, CEO of Ottawa-based Equine Canada.
“We will always be grateful for the time and triumphs we all shared with Hickstead,” Maharaj added. “We know that generations of future equestrians will draw inspiration from his life.”
Hickstead, born in the Netherlands, was named for a famous equestrian showground in Britain. Lamaze purchased Hickstead in 2004.
The 43-year-old Lamaze recently bolstered his top ranking on home turf after a first-place finish with Hickstead in September at the $1-million International Grand Prix at Calgary’s Spruce Meadows.
"Everybody dreams of winning this," Lamaze, who lives in Schomberg, Ont., said at the time.
"For me, it’s just as exciting as it was the first time,” added Lamaze, who had won the same competition with Hickstead in 2007. “When you have a great horse that tries so hard, you want this title attached to his name as many times as possible. Sure, the money is great. But there’s more to it than that. It’s the best horse in the world.”
Lamaze, who also led Canada to a silver finish in the team jumping event at the 2008 Olympics, said after the victory in Calgary he expected Hickstead to be healthy enough to travel to London to defend their individual title at the 2012 Summer Games.

"He’s going to have the winter off — no jumping at all — and come (to Spruce Meadows) next year," Lamaze in September. He said he saw the horse doing “exactly what he’s been doing every single year, not changing anything, and go to the Olympics . . He’s healthy at the moment and jumping better than ever."

The above is taken from the Vancouver Sun
Read more: http://www.canada.com/Canadian+show+jumping+horse+Hickstead+dies+suddenly/5666204/story.html#ixzz1d2ZHPca8

Sleep well, Hickstead. You were a champion in every sense of that word. You died doing what you loved to do. Your memory will live on in our hearts. Condolences to Eric Lamaze and the entire Canadian equestrian team. So sorry you have lost such a great friend.

Animal rights and Animals wronged

    Traditionally people have attached a great deal of emotional and cultural significance to animals. The tendency of modern science, agriculture and biotechnology to look upon animals as utilitarian objects that can be modified and manipulated for our purposes flies in the face of deep-rooted trends in human thought. Thus, one issue brought into sharp focus by biotechnology, is the fundamental question of how we see animals: are they culturally significant beings evoking respect and veneration? or fellow mortals evoking affection and sympathy? or natural objects that we can rightly modify and manipulate for our own ends?

     Moral disquiet over genetic tampering with animals raises another deeply rooted cultural issue. Some of the traditional Middle Eastern food taboos reflect an animal classification system whereby animals that fall outside the system are seen as suspect. Today most Western people do not use that same biological classification system, but we do have certain categories that shape our perception of the animal world. These come from sources such as children's literature, religious ideas about the natural order, or the idea of evolution as having given rise to distinct "species" of animals. The creation of transgenic animals involves a perceptual shift, whereby we come to view animals not as distinct types, but as constituted by a vast number of genes that can be removed from one species and inserted into another. But this geneticist's view of animals may not be shared by other citizens. If citizens do not share the geneticist's view of animals, then the creation of transgenic animals may be culturally inappropriate, in much the same way that high-tech agriculture is culturally inappropriate in certain parts of the world. Alternatively, perhaps lay people in the West have accepted the modern geneticists' view of animals sufficiently to eliminate any inherent moral qualms about transgenic technology.

     Suppose that citizens are not troubled by the issue raised above and they accept the utilitarian view whereby animals can be manipulated for human purposes, and they are comfortable with a view of species that allows us to insert new genes in order to change their properties. We then encounter the four more conventional concerns that have been raised about food biotechnology: food safety, environmental impact, animal welfare, and social justice.

     Animal welfare concerns can (and should) be viewed as an extension of social justice concerns. From a social justice viewpoint we may ask whether a certain technology will benefit, say, technologically sophisticated dairy producers, to the detriment of smaller, more traditional dairy producers and the local communities that depend on them. Concerns about animal welfare extend this type of thinking to include animals: will the changes caused by biotechnology bring benefits to farmers, consumers, and purveyors of biotechnology products, but to the detriment of the animals themselves?

     Two specific animal welfare concerns have been raised about biotechnology. The first involves deleterious pleiotropic effects of foreign genes in animals such as the Beltsville pigs. As one transgenic specialist noted, science will “crash and burn” many times on the way to successful production of transgenic animals; as one animal protectionist retorted, it is the genetically modified animals that will “crash and burn”. A second concern involves increased incidence of health problems that may result from the use of products of biotechnology on animals, such as the use of BST with dairy cattle. In refusing to register BST, Health Canada noted that the product does not produce new disease states, but rather appears to increase the incidence of mastitis and lameness -- problems that were already being caused by conventional breeding and management for high yields. As both of these examples show, the animal welfare issues raised by biotechnology are rarely new issues.