Recap (5/11/2013)

Nutrition and Health News:

• Sucking on your baby’s pacifier might help him be healthy
  

  “Infants whose parents sucked on their pacifiers to clean them developed fewer allergies than children whose parents typically rinsed or boiled them.”

  This study adds to the growing evidence for the so-called “hygiene hypothesis”, the idea that protecting our kids from exposure to “germs” is actually counterproductive–leading to weaker immune systems and/or autoimmune diseases. Read more in the New York Times’ article.

Books added to my TBR list:

• Hug a Bull and I Love Ewe by Aaron Zenz (reviewed by Carrie at Reading to Know)
  These children’s picture books that teach the names of male and female animals sound wonderful. Since my new library owns copies, I’ll definitely be looking them up!

• The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith (reviewed by Seth at Collateral Bloggage)
  I’ve seen quite a few food fads go by in my relatively few years–but the most recent fads, whether “whole foods” or “paleo” are by far the most unique. Unlike the fads of the past, which were based on complicated (and often flawed) scientific/nutritional arguments, this latest fad is almost entirely fought using evolutionary and environmental arguments. This book, which appears to argue for a similar approach to food (and against vegetarianism), sounds like it could be an interesting read.

Recipes Tried:

• Cheeseburger Crescent Casserole (from Pillsbury)
  Daniel bought some crescent roll dough I don’t know how long ago–and it’s been sitting in the kitchen ever since. Maybe two months? I don’t particularly like the stuff, so I hadn’t used it. But finally, I decided that it must be used, so I searched for recipes. This is a really simple recipe that I adjusted rather significantly. I added onions and green peppers and red peppers and jalepenos and mustard; and used minced dill pickles instead of dill pickle relish and swiss cheese instead of American. But it wasn’t half bad, tasted like a cheeseburger. If you happen to accidentally have crescent roll dough on hand, this is a good way to get rid of it (how’s that for a glowing review?)

• Chicken Enchilada Pizza (from How Sweet Eats)
  This was a.maz.ing. No other way to put it. I enjoyed it fresh from the oven. I enjoyed it microwaved for lunch the next day. I enjoyed microwaved three days later. It was wonderful. I used 2 cups of white flour and one cup of whole wheat in the crust, used my mom’s homemade enchilada sauce for the meat, and skipped the avocado (mine went bad in the produce basket before I made this recipe, boo!) I also cut up whole tomatoes and shredded my own romaine lettuce to cut down on cost–I think this might also have been why even the lettuce wasn’t too gross on reheating. I can’t vouch for using a regular pan, but this cooked up great on my pizza stone.



• Creamsicle French Toast
  Daniel and I decided to make French Toast this morning, since Daniel’s project is done (at last) and we had some bread in the freezer from last week’s Caprese Grilled Cheese. Daniel was looking at various recipes and found one that involved orange liqueur–which got me to think about oranges. I figured that I had orange juice concentrate in the freezer, and we had cream cheese in the fridge…why not mix the two together and use that as a filling for our French toast? Our bread was sliced thinly enough that we made them more like a sandwich, but they turned out pretty decent, if I do say so myself. Not like every-weekend-wonderful, but certainly a nice experiment.

Apps/Plugins/Technological Gizmos Used:

• TWICCA for Android (linked to by LifeHacker)
  Apparently TweetDeck is going the way of GoogleReader–which means I needed a new Twitter Client for my phone. LifeHacker was so kind as to suggest Twicca. I’m liking it so far, although I wish it had the capability of running my Twitter feed and my Facebook feed side by side like TweetDeck did. Oh well, nothing has everything. Download Twicca here.

Videos that Made Me Laugh:

HT: 22 Words