Swedish death cleaning prayer.

For the last couple of years, since the publication of Margareta Magnusson's book on the theme, we have been hearing about the idea of performing Swedish death cleaning on our domiciles. The idea is not to clean everything within an inch of its life (remind me to tell you of the time I broke a toilet) but to get rid of everything unnecessary so as not to burden our descendants with our crap when we reach our Date with Destiny.

I must interject that I think it only became a thing because we love Swedish stuff -- skiing! pacifism to the brink of annihilation! socialism that supposedly works! cheap furniture! -- and if it were called German Death Cleaning, or North Korean Death Cleaning, or perhaps Cambodian Death Cleaning, it, uh, probably wouldn't have caught on.

"Gentle" and "Death" go so well together

Family Handyman has a concise series of tips about the means to perform this particular Swedish action. And I admit that the idea has its appeal. I would love to bring up a dumpster and just get rid of a mountain of things I don't need. On the other hand, it seems to play right into the anti-humanism of the modern intelligentsia, seeking for us to make ourselves as invisible as possible as we wait for the end, eating our kale and praying to Gaia.

But we cannot pray to Gaia for our eternal souls, as Gaia is just a planet and has no mind, no authority, no life beyond its temporal existence. Therefore we need to come up with our own Swedish death cleaning prayer, to say at eventide, as we prepare to sleep -- and prepare as well for the Big Sleep.

Here's what came to my mind, anyway, based on the 18th-century prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
All this crap I'll have to take
My cases stacked with books unread
Will still be here when I am dead
The junk that all my walls does haunt
Like some damn nineties restaurant
The vinyl, tapes, CDs, and more
That did my precious music store
A load of clothes, especially pants
That fit me once, but now, no chance
Each bill and paper safely filed
And old computers sit here piled
Hammers, drivers, nails, and wrench
Left scattered on my cellar bench
Attic, basement, full of junk
Attest I'm no Franciscan monk
Kitchen stuff once much regarded
Used one time and not discarded
The bathroom has things undesired
Bad aftershave and meds expired
Don't ask about the cars below
The garage is just a horror show
Every room has too much crap
Now I'm scared to have this nap
Since I can't take the stuff, I fear
Oh Lord, you'd better leave me here.

Chestnut stuffing!

He is, after all, the world's greatest eater.

Fred's Book Club: Eats!

Welcome back to our Wednesday "Hump Day" feature, the Humpback Writers, wherein we showcase books by authors who have had the bad luck to be brought to my attention and therefore unfairly labeled as "Humpback." I know, it's dumb, but I've been doing this for months and it's too late to change now. 

Today we're continuing this week's food theme with an actual cookbook, and an old one at that:

On Campus Cookbook: For the Non-Kitchen Cook is a long out of print tome that was created to help the college student, living in the dorm, to cook real, actual food using the simplest tools of the day -- blender, hot pot, and toaster oven -- which one might be able to keep in or sneak into one's dorm room. Tabletop microwave ovens had been around a long time when this book came out, but the author, Mollie Fitzgerald, an undergrad at Duke at the time, doesn't even mention them. I don't know why, but a lot of chefs eschew them, finding that they cook poorly and often unevenly.

So, okay, you may be thinking, Fred wants to do a cookbook because Thanksgiving is coming up. Why this ancient book that is directed at people living in student housing? And a jolly good question it is, too!

Back in the Cretaceous Era I was working on the student newspaper, in the Features & Arts pages, when we got this book in as a review copy. At the time I could not boil an egg without turning it into soup. So I suggested to the editor in chief that it might make a funny piece for me to take the book home and try to make a dinner with it, anticipating disaster. There were seventy recipes in this slim volume; surely I could choose an appetizer, main dish, side dish, and dessert to ruin. He said sure.

Not only did I not make a disaster of a meal, but the buddy who agreed to be my fellow guinea pig thought it was delicious. And so did I. Thus began an interest in cooking that has stayed with me to this day.

I don't want to include a photo of the pages of my copy of the book, which, as with all beloved cookbooks, are quite messy; let me just take the liberty of writing up two of them so you can see how simple Mollie Fitzgerald made it for the befuddled cook with limited equipment:

Artichoke Dip

14-oz. can artichoke hearts, drained well and cut into small pieces
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt or garlic powder
Choice of crackers

1. Preheat the toaster oven to 425°F.
2. Combine all the ingredients, except the crackers, in the order given in a medium-size aluminum foil baking pan or an ovenproof serving dish.
3. Bake the artichoke dip for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown and bubbly.
4. Remove the dip from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes before serving on crackers.

Makes 3 cups

Lemon-Broiled Chicken

4 boneless chicken breast halves, or 4 to 6 other pieces
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
3 tablespoons lemon juice, or the juice from 1 fresh lemon
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon honey (optional)
1 tablespoon soy sauce (optional) 

1. Rinse the chicken pieces and pat them dry. Place the chicken in an aluminum foil baking pan so that the pieces are touching. Set aside.
2. Combine all the remaining ingredients in your hot pot on medium low heat. Once the butter has completely melted, unplug the hot pot and pour the liquid over the chicken.
3. Broil according to [the instructions from your toaster oven; the book gave detailed instructions but most ovens come with instructions -- you want the chicken browned on both sides, basically], basting several times with the sauce. Spoon a little of the sauce over each piece of chicken as you serve it.

Serves 2 to 3

The Lemon Broiled Chicken's sauce is great over rice, so make extra. Do include the honey and soy sauce.

This is haute cuisine for dorm food. (College students: That's haute, French for elevated, not hawt, but the stuff will be hot, so don't burn yourself.)

The theme of my article turned out to be how a good cookbook can help anyone turn into a passable home cook. The editor liked the piece, and ran it, too.

When people tell me they can't cook, I remind them that no one was born cooking, and that anyone can get a core of twenty or so recipes that they can make from scratch to feed the family. Next week, a lot of people in America will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time and panicking about it. They shouldn't. It really isn't that hard if you keep it simple and pay attention to what you're doing. The On Campus Cookbook was a great help to get me going.

This is, I believe, Mollie Fitzgerald's only book; she's actually gone into the family business, doing high-priced travel to exotic destinations, and is apparently the firm's fly-fishing expert. She did me a good turn with this book, though, and if she ever decides to write another, I'll buy it.

Sad Thanksgiving?

I know I may seem a little obsessed with food this week, doing two entries in a row already, but we are coming up on the holidays and I'm hungry. 

That said, I know that the holidays can be quite sad for people who have no family or friends, at least not close by, or who are suffering from ailments of all kinds. Sometimes we can't make things better even if we want to desperately. 

And some things make me wonder if they make everything better or worse.

You've probably seen little overpriced snack packs around, mostly in with the cold cuts. Hormel and Oscar Mayer  and Hillshire were out in front on this, apparently an adult version of longstanding kids food packs like Lunchables. Now Butterball, the turkey magnates, have jumped into the game with their own turkey-based snack products.

And it's sad. Or is it?

They come in three varieties as I write this, and two are Cajun Style and Citrus Teriyaki. Nothing sad about that, unless you're a turkey. But it's the Thanksgiving one shown above that made me sad.

It's not the interior of the snack, shown here:

What we have here is an almost Jetsons-style Thanksgiving meal: sliced turkey breast, dried cranberries, "stuffing bites," and a coupon at the top to buy more of the same. Not quite a meal, but it would see you through for a while. The turkey tasted good, as one might expect from Butterball; the cranberries were fine. The stuffing cubes really are croutons, even though seasoned with poultry seasoning, and belong on a salad. The coupon is acceptable, though small and easy to lose.

It's just that the idea of the Thanksgiving meal being reduced to this little snack pack seems sad, like it's saying, We know your Thanksgiving will suck so we made this for you.  Which is kind of nice. I wish every deployed American in the field on Thanksgiving Day could get one of these if he wanted it. I'm sure it beats the MRE.

Butterball was probably thinking this would be a little taste of our great American holiday for those who don't want the turkey dinner to be just a one-day thing. And maybe I should stop looking at the gloomy side of life and take that as such.

However, I think it might be smart for the Tofurky guys to come up with a similar snack tray. After all, fans of the meatless substance are the most likely to get sore about the food at the family feast and want to storm out and go eat something conscientious. I'd call that a win all around, actually.

All flesh is non-GRAS.

As a yout, my wife was a fan of Planters' foray into non-nut snacks. Particularly the Planters Cheez Balls, spelled with a Z for extra Zing. She says that she got through college on those and Combos. Then, in 2006, they went away. Sad!

So one day I was on the checkout line in the grocery store when I happened to glance over at a big impulse-buy bin full of Planters Cheez Balls. 

Hm. Planters Cheez Balls. 

SAY WHAT?

Apparently -- and somehow I missed this on the national news -- Planters test-marketed a return of the CBs last year, a test that was obviously successful, and here they are. So I dove off the line to get a can and make my sweetheart's day.

She said thanks! And she says they're not as good as they used to be.

It's easy to think that things one used to like have lost their zing, partly because as we get older we start to lose taste buds, and our ability to smell fades as well, which is a dirty trick considering that it's when the doctor starts prescribing bland, salt-free foods. But she's not that old and it hasn't been that long. Remember, she was right about Miracle Whip as well. I immediately jumped to the next possible cause -- the government ban on trans fats. I wasn't alone.

"The original version used hydrogenated oils. Could the recent FDA banning of trans fat be the reason these don't match the flavor?" asked one customer on Amazon, to which another replied:

These DO NOT taste the same. I used to love these. Was addicted to them. I know EXACTLY how they used to taste. These taste nothing like the old version. NOTHING. The old style used to have a cheesy buttery type flavor, almost melt in your mouth. These taste like air. Seriously, air. I bought four cans and will eat them but will never buy any more every [sic] again. Planters is passing off fakes to us Cheese [sic] Ball loyalists. Anyone who says these taste the same is not being honest with themselves. Buy a can if you want to but I'm telling you, you will be disappointed.

This is not some conspiracy theory. When Innit looked at the product some years back, they reported the presence of "Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oils," which do not appear on the current label. The product does have a number of oils listed, like sunflower and either corn or soybean or canola, but no hydrogenated oils.

In the intervening years the FDA made its big determination on the dangers of those trans fats, saying "In 2015, FDA released its final determination that Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHOs) are not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)" and insisting on a ban. Health info purveyors like Healthline like to note that "Many manufacturers prefer this oil for its low cost and long shelf life," but trans fats were not present just because evil corporations want to be cheap and kill you. Apparently they also taste better, or convey taste better, in some foods.

So, my wife is disappointed, but maybe it's for the best. And yet, I despise when government agencies are able to issue rules like this rather than Congress, treating us like morons who need to be saved from our own stupid choices. I mean, we may be, but we are adults in a supposedly free nation and ought to be able to make our own choices. No one wants a stroke or heart attack, but no one wants to be talked down to like an idiot child, either. Worse, anything could be declared non-GRAS next, because guess what? Americans are still dying and cardiovascular disease is still the main cause. So what's next? Cheese? Butter? White flour? Bacon? All working toward that happy day when more of us die from cancer than heart attacks.

Next up: The USDA demands the end of early-bird specials for seniors. Have you looked at what they serve in diners? Everything is full of grease and cholesterol. everything is fried and buttered. Sure, they offer salads, but that's just a cover. The FDA prescribes bland, salt-free foods alone. Ban all the things!

Not a bad idea.

The Nipper workout.

My younger dog, Nipper, is the fittest guy in the house. Why? Because he's three years old. But that's not all! He also has this weird idea that exercise can be fun. I know -- crazy, right?

So since I know nothing about fitness, I thought it might be useful to you, the reader, who is clearly reading this and not climbing a mountain or biking across the wilderness at the moment, to get the Nipper Exercise Plan into your life. It's easy! And it's fun! Well, he seems to think so.

Every morning before breakfast, you must either drag some human slob along on a brisk walk, stopping only to inhale the lawns and sidewalks and intersections of busy streets as necessary. But of course, on some days that doesn't work. Nipper's scared of garbage cans, as I've mentioned before, so trash days are out. You might even have some reasons to skip the roadwork yourself. But that's okay! Because Nipper's Twenty-Minute Backyard Regimen is just fine for keeping him in shape, and you can try it too! Here's just a taste of the first five minutes, just so you get an idea:

First: Find a backyard. It's helpful if it's your own, but it doesn't really matter. Then, follow this plan to the letter, devoting the time allotted to each step:

0:00 - 0:10: Run like maniac into yard, barreling down into the tall grass at the edge, crashing into anything in your way. Ignore pain! Ignore stiffness! Ignore the human telling you to calm down and hold up!

0:11 - 1:45: Sniff everything you can possibly get your nose into. When you run out of things to inhale, walk a little farther. Make sure you get to wherever ticks and burrs may be found; it's important to get these things stuck on you. Ignore everything else; this is you time.

1:46 - 2:10: Stick, to it! Grab that miscellaneous stick and pull it with everything you've got! Really builds muscle... especially since it's a tree root and not going anywhere.

2:11 - 2:27: Miscellaneous trotting around.

2:28 - 3:30: Stick time II! Find a loose stick on the lawn and chew that thing to splinters! Healthy, too -- fiber!

3:31 - 3:32: Watch as a ball bounces past. Human is trying to engage by throwing ball. Ignore it; finish stick. Don't worry; human needs exercise, too. He can go pick the ball up. You're helping him!

3:33 - 3:34: Mad dash to human, who now has stick-like object instead.

3:35 - 4:00: Leap in air as high as possible to reach object while human keeps pulling it upward. What a great workout for both of you! Get those paws in the air! Slam into human occasionally! Okay, this is getting annoying! Demand stick! Must have stick! He threw it! Dang!

4:01 - 4:02: Mad dash after stick.

4:03 - 4:40: Mad dash back to human, but do not release stick! THIS IS NOW TUG TIME! Great anaerobic workout for you both. Pull him all over the yard! Yank, twist, spin -- your main object must be to get that stick. Secondary object is to plant human on his rear end. Don't let up!

4:41: You got it! Now let him get hold of it again for another set of reps!

4:42 - 5:00: Resume tug!

As you can see, this workout provides benefits and occasional injuries all around. If you send just $39.99 to frederick_key at yahoo.com today, I'll make sure you get the complete Twenty-Minute program, plus our free bonus pre-chewed Frisbee and freezable first-aid pack. How can you afford not to sign up today? Join the millions of happy puppies in backyards across this great land, getting fit the Nipper Way!