This time when I visited my mother in Indiana, I got a new container of 100% pure black sesame seed powder at the local Chinese grocery store. I was used to getting black sesame porridge in small pouches, already mixed with sugar. I remember it fondly from my days in Taiwan when I first discovered Sesame Seeds and Joy. A very important character in my novel, Our Lady of Kaifeng: Courtyard of the Happy Way, is even called Mr. Sesame or 芝麻老師.
The pure black sesame powder with sugar added on top
I asked the woman at the grocery store for the black sesame porridge in pouches, but she said: "This is better. This is pure ground sesame -- nothing else." Well, she didn't have it in any other form, so I bought it.
Now, many people add either rice or flour along with sugar to their black sesame seed powder to make porridge, but this time around I contented myself with just adding boiling water and sugar. The powdered black sesame seeds contain a lot of very healthful fat.
The idea of adding too many extra carbs besides the sugar to sweeten it did not appeal to me. So I kept it simple.
Bow loves sesame seed porridge, But this time I made it a bit watery, so it was more like a drink, and that's how Bow treated it.
Whether you drink it or eat it, black sesame porridge is always good.
Bow's friend has been bringing him Pickle Ice, and he has been enjoying this treat very much. It's delicious!
But many people may not know that there could be health benefits to enjoying this salty treat. Pickle Ice consists of frozen pickle juice. And pickle juice is made of water, salt and vinegar. There are no calories in it at all.
Sodium is good for hydration, so having some Pickle Ice on a hot day is much better than a sugary popsicle. But there's also another surprise benefit I had never heard of before I researched the topic.
There is said to be an antiglycemic effect to ingesting pickle juice before mealtime. As I understand it, that is the vinegar at work. I am not sure as to the validity of this health claim, but if you look at the second reference I have listed below, you can read the abstract by the authors from Arizona State University and perhaps research it yourself.
You can buy the Pickle Ice treats at your local grocery store, or you can make your own in an ice cube tray by using leftover pickle juice.
I have been reading up on how natural cultures in dairy products might help to fend off mental issues. Meanwhile, in my own refrigerator, unbeknownst to me, a minor transformation was taking place with in my sour cream.
The sour cream was not past its expiration date. It did not smell or taste bad. But part of it had frozen in the back of the refrigerator, and it was dehydrated and seemed a lot more like cream cheese and a lot less like sour cream.
I decided to add cherry tomatoes and leftover brussels sprouts to the cheese and the tortilla. This is what I served Bow for lunch today.
Bow asked for the salad first. Because he started with the tortilla, he kind of forgot to use his spoon most of the time.
Bow liked his salad so much that he only ate an apple afterwards and did not want his banana or his soup.
I am going to have to research the culture they put in the sour cream after pasteurization. How is this culture different from the bacteria they kill during the process of heating? There is so much more I will need to learn before I understand what cultures we may currently be missing in our diet.
But Bow has no questions. It's all good, as far as he's concerned.
As always, we had an abundant feast yesterday at Thanksgiving, including a turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and sparkling red grape juice.
My mother was the chief cook and Sword assisted her. Bow made excited food calls as he saw everything carried into the pen, as always.
But though Bow asked for the stuffing first, his favorite food this year was the cranberry sauce.
He treated it with all the reverence and solemnity of a truly spiritual feasting experience.
The other thing that Bow seemed to really enjoy was the red sparkling grape juice, which he savored with much ceremony.
It's the simple things that Bow is most thankful for. Especially if they are red, sweet, juicy and sparkle in the light!
I recently had a path mowed through my pasture so I could go walking there. Around Halloween, I noticed a spooky tree with strange orange fruit on it. What made it spooky was that there was only fruit, but no leaves. Last night, the day after Halloween, I took more notice of the tree.
When I looked at the fruit more closely, it seemed oddly familiar. It was something I had seen before, and I could already taste it just by looking. Yet its name was on the tip of my tongue.
As I often do these days to identify flora and fauna, I posted the pictures on Facebook. The answer came back loud and clear from all quarters: persimmon.
Today, I went and gathered the fruit. I washed it, and I presented a sample to Bow.
Bow was curious and willing to try it, but in the end, he did not seem to like it well enough to finish.
We haven't had oatmeal in a long time. We used to have instant oatmeal for breakfast, but then Quaker Oats changed the ingredients, and I didn't feel like having it, anymore.
But tucked away in a cupboard, there were the regular oats that you cook to make oatmeal, and today was a good day to remember them. I decided to make oatmeal as part of our lunch.
Now, the directions on the container said to add salt and water, but in our house oatmeal always went with sugar and milk. So I took a cup and a half of whole milk, boiled it with two tablespoons of sugar, reduced the heat, then added a cup of oats and let them cook for about five minutes. Then I served it in two bowls, one for me and one for Bow.
It was still kind of hot when Bow asked for his bowl of Oatmeal. But he enjoyed every bit of it.
My mother is the one who knows how to bake a real poppy seed cake from scratch. But I can do a nice impersonation, using off the shelf ingredients.
I take a regular pound cake mix and follow all the directions on the box, except that I also throw in a can of poppy seed filling. After I am done mixing everything, this is what the batter looks like.
Once the cake is in the oven, Bow gets to lick the bowl:
When the cake is ready, it looks a little like this,
It is hard to say what Bow enjoys better, eating the cake or licking the bowl!
The nice thing about spring, when it finally comes, are the blossoms and the flowers. This is a feast for all the senses, the eyes, the touch, the scent of flowers in bloom.
No, I'm not much of a gardener. Everything around here grows on its own, or it does not grow. But whether the flower is a domesticated one or wild, there is still a feast for the eyes.
Teyman and I go for walks three times a day. I show the pictures of what I see to Bow.
Today, I decided to let Bow feast on some of the flowers himself. I picked some dandelions and brought them to him in the pens.
Bow decided that dandelions were a feast for the mouth as well as the eyes.
However, since his belly was full, he decided to take a nap rather than finish off all the flowers. I should take a nap, too. Tomorrow I'm going to Jefferson City to attend the senate hearing on some anti-primate legislation. I should rest today and smell the flowers.
For us, Easter is the spring holiday. For my kids, it is a time for egg hunts and sugary treats. This morning, it was raining out, so I hid some eggs in the pens for Bow. Inside the plastic shells were Reeses chocolate eggs filled with peanut butter.
The corridor of the pens where I "hid" the eggs looked like this after Bow was done with it:
In the afternoon, Bow got another Easter related treat: soft gelatin candies on a plastic stick, looking a little like a kebob skewer. I probably should have removed the outer wrapper for Bow, but he was in such a hurry, and he seemed to enjoy figuring out how best to remove the candy from the non-edible accoutrements.
Outside, some special flowers were blooming just in time for Easter.
Yesterday was the second day of spring. Before it started snowing, and we all became enchanted by the winter wonderland that could be seen through the windows, Bow was enjoying his afternoon snack, another item from the gift basket.
This time it was pecans, coated in cream and sugar. The package described the ingredients like this: pecans, sugar, butter, cream, milk, salt. Something about the process of coating them with cream and sugar made the pecans much harder than normal. Bow took his own sweet time eating and enjoying every morsel, but as the time went on, he progressively slowed down, and I began to feel that he would have trouble eating it all.
It had not seemed like such a big serving for a snack, but when you take into account the extra calories in the sugar and cream, it was a much heavier snack than I usually give Bow at that time of day. It was three o'clock and all that was called for was a light snack.
I took this opportunity to ask Bow if I could try the pecans, too. "Can I have one, Bow?"
Normally. Bow does not share. But he was not very hungry, so he agreed. He would not place the pecan into my palm, but he did generously lift the bowl to allow me to select one. I took one and thanked him. Then he observed very closely as I ate it.
We each had a pecan in our mouth, and Bow was enjoying the shared sensation.
After that, Bow took another pecan and ate it, but he was hesitant about continuing. When I asked if I could have another one, he did not answer. But he left the whole bowl to me, and went to sit up on the ledge.
I took another pecan, but saved the rest for his dessert at supper time. Sharing does come naturally sometimes, but it's easier to do on a full belly. This is true for society at large, too. People who have more than enough find it easier to be generous. It's only natural.
The weather has been very strange lately. We went from snow to spring flowers in a single day, the day that Sword set off for grandma's house.
Then we had so much rain, that the ditches got flooded.
But when Sword came back yesterday afternoon, bearing gifts from grandma, there was a lull between storms and the birds were rejoicing.
Soon after that short moment of glory, it started raining again.
But for that one moment nature was at peace.
My mother sent along with Sword her famous poppy seed cookies. Bow and I had some with breakfast this morning.
The cookies are made with lots of butter and a small amount of sugar, so they are not particularly sweet. But they are my favorite cookies!
This is my mother's own recipe, but the closest thing available commercially would be shortbread.
Bow was very dainty in his sampling of the cookies.
The reason it's so dark in the video is that we just started Daylight Savings Time. I don't see that it saves anything, especially in a town where everything closes at five. But there's nothing like your favorite cookies to help cheer you up when you have to get up and eat breakfast in the dark.
Bow doesn't get ice cream every day, but when he does, it means a celebration. Today, we are celebrating the defeat of HB284 in the Missouri legislature. But the ice cream wouldn't taste as sweet if not served in a magic goblet.
We are celebrating that we get to stay together.
Bow savors his ice cream slowly. No ice cream headache for him!
Bow has always liked cauliflower in whatever form I prepare it. Sometimes I serve it raw. Sometimes I steam it. And sometimes I allow it to simmer in chicken soup. For today's lunch, I served it in two forms: raw in salad and steamed in chicken soup.
The salad consisted of purple cabbage, snap peas in pod, cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. Bow chose the salad second, before his apples or his banana. But his first selection was the chicken cauliflower soup.
He ate it very carefully and finished it to the last drop.
The highlight of Bow's lunch this afternoon was pickle salad, consisting of orange cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas in the pod and miniature dill pickles.
Usually, Bow leaves his vegetables for the last course, preferring the sweet juicy apples over every other portion of the meal. But today, he asked for the vegetables first. I'm thinking it has something to do with the pickles!
Sometimes you run out of cereal. That's okay, because you don't actually have to eat cereal. There are so many other, better things to eat. But when you are a chimpanzee, and you have finished your grapes, and you are accustomed to getting cereal for the next course, it can be a little disappointing.
For just such an occasion, you can break out the granola bars. They are just as bad for you as cereal, consisting mostly of oats and honey. They come in a bar, so that you can go on a hike and eat them without making too much of a mess. But if you are hankering for a messy eat, like cereal and milk, all you have to do is break the bar down into smaller pieces.
Then you pour on the milk. It looks just like cereal with milk, and it tastes a lot like it, too.
However, when you do all this in front of your chimpanzee, he will not be fooled. He won't call it cereal. He will call it "granola and milk." But if he enjoys eating it, anyway, your work is done!
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