Sugar is...

"Sugar is poison," said Gloria Swanson (1). Sugar is addictive. Sugar is ubiquitous. Did you know there's sugar in toothpaste? Think about that. Just as an exercise in awareness, the next time you go to the supermarket, check the ingredients lists of the foods you buy and look for the presence of sugars and other sweeteners, "natural" and chemical. Notice how close to the top of the list the sugar (or sugars) are. That will tell you that there is more sugar than any of the ingredients following. Think you are not eating much sugar? Think again.

To help you recognize what things are sugars, here is a partial list of all the names that sugar comes under (adapted from "The 99 Names of Sugar," Food Addicts Anonymous, Inc.):
All-natural sweetener (cane sugar is a natural substance that has been highly refined)
Au Miel
Baker's special
Barbados molasses
Barbados sugar
Barley malt
Beet juice
Blackstrap molasses
Brown rice syrup
Brown sugar
Cane sugar
Cane syrup
Caramel
Caramel color
Coarse sugar
Clarified grape juice
Cncentrated fruit juices
Confectioner's (or powdered) sugar
Cooked honey
Corn sugar
Corn sweetener
Corn syrup
Dark brown sugar
Date paste
Date sugar
Date syrup
Dehydrated cane juice
Demerara sugar
Dextrin
Dextrose
Disaccharides
Dried fruits such as dates, raisins, figs, apricots
Evaporated cane juice
Fig syrup
Filtered honey
Fructooligo saccharides (FOS)
Fructose
Fruit juice concentrate
Fruit sugar
Fruit sweetener
Galactose
Glucose
Granulated, fine, or extra fine sugar
Heavy syrup
High-fructose corn syrup
Honey
Hydrogenated glucose syrup
-ides, any additive with this suffix: saccharides, trisaccharides, etc.
Invert sugar
Invert sugar syrup
Jaggery
Lactose
Levulose
Light brown sugar
Light sugar
Light syrup
Lite sugar
Lite syrup
Lo-sugar
Low sugar
Malt (any kind)
Malt syrup
Malted
Malted grains (corn, barley, rice)
Malto-anything
Maltodextrin
Maltodextrose
Maltose
Mannitol
Maple sugar
Maple syrup
Miel
Molasses
Mono- and disaccarides
Muscovado
Natrual cane sweetener
Natural fruit concentrates
Natural honey
Natural sucrose
Natural syrup
Naturally malted organic corn and barley extract
Naturally sweetened
Nectar (any kind)
-ol, any additive with this suffix: mannitol, sorbitol, inversol, hexitol, etc.
Organic brown rice syrup
Organic malted cereal strup: barley, corn, oat, rice
Organic sugar
-ose, any additive with this suffix: manose, polydextrose, polytose, ribose, zylose, etc.
Pineapple juice
Pineapple powder
Polysaccharides
Powdered sugar
Pure honey
Pure natural sweetener
Pure sweetener
Raisin juice concentrate
Raisin juice
Raisin paste
Raisin syrup
Raw honey
Raw sugar
Ribbon cane syrup
Robose
Rice malt
Rice syrup
Sanding sugar
Sorbitol
Sorghum molasses
sorghum syrup
Stevia
Succanat
Sucralose
Sucrose
Sugar (any type)
Sugar cubes
Sugar packets
Superfine, ultrafine, or bar sugar
Sweetener
Turbinado sugar
Unbleached water-filtered beet sugar
Uncooked honey
Unfiltered honey
White grape juice
White sugar

Sort of makes you queasy just reading this list, doesn't it? I added a few more names to the original list which was published in 1993. You have to admire the inventiveness of man in coming up with all these various compounds and the also the many ways to hide the fact that our food is full of sugar. BTW, I am not a member of the FAA and I am not endorsing their program. In fact, I got their list from Mildred Seelig's book, The Magnesium Factor, and I can recommend that.

OK, you say, I know that refined white sugar has no nutritive value, but it just passes through, doesn't it? It doesn't cause any harm. Wrong. At the least, it causes our bodies to lose precious magnesium and potassium and it also causes insulin levels to rise which can lead to a host of other problems. At the worst... well, look it up for yourself. If you can manage to limit your sugar intake, you will find that you get your normal taste buds back. Sweet peppers actually do taste sweet and even broccoli tastes sweet. Another book I can recommend which talks about this subject along with a lot of other things is Michael and Mary Dan Eades's, Protein Power Lifeplan.

Trancendental Bach

I plan to revisit the Bach Chaconne today. I have been inspired by Robert Greenberg's lectures on Bach and music in general offered by The Teaching Company. I was listening to the lecture series entitled "How to Listen to Great Music," when I got sidetracked at the Baroque era into going back to "Bach and the High Baroque" which I listened to previously. I learned all this stuff when I was in college, but a refresher course was long overdue. And I am learning new things, too.

For instance, I don't think I ever understood that the Chaconne theme on which all 64 variations are based is in the bass line and not the melody. Sometimes I get so involved with the technical aspects of playing a piece, and playing the violin itself, that I forget to look at the compositional structure. The ground bass figure is only four measures long. Today I want to see if I can see or hear where each variation begins.

That's what's so great about the study of music. There is always something new to learn and ponder. The violin has been a constant in my life since I was 12 years old (I am a late bloomer). There have been times (illness, vacations, etc.) when I didn't play for a few weeks, but otherwise, the violin has kept me company, cajoled me, frustrated me, and rewarded me daily for almost 50 years! Pretty incredible, huh? And I didn't even like the violin when I first started. Somehow it lured me in with its charms.

The Teaching Company offers courses on lots of different subjects. Besides the Greenberg lectures I have thoroughly enjoyed the series on Shakespeare by Peter Saccio, and the lectures on Voltaire by Alan Charles Kors. In fact anything that Prof. Kors cares to lecture about, I would love to listen to. His lectures on Newton in "Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition" are delightful!

New Beginnings

I couldn't wait. My daughter's sweater is almost but not completely finished, but I went ahead and started on my next project--lace! The yarn and pattern have been sitting and waiting for over a month and I have been itching to give lace a try since I saw those beautiful photos of River posted on Mind of Winter. The pattern is by Sharon Miller from Rowan No. 38 and the yarn I am using is Rowan Kidsilk Haze, color 582 Trance. Both the yarn and the pattern book were purchased from LetsKnit.com, otherwise known as Sakonnet Purls. I highly recommend this place because of the good service I received and the good prices (and also because they happen to be in Rhode Island, my home state). They are having a sale right now, so check them out.

Since this will be my first attempt at lace, I intend to follow the instructions to the letter using the 10.5 needles and doing all 11 repeats as called for. We'll see how it goes... I have blocking wires on order from Knit Picks and I am using their Options needles which seem to be perfect for this kind of project. They are very pointy which makes knitting 2 or 3 stitches together so much easier. At first I had trouble with the tips coming unscrewed from the cable as I worked, but I found that if you use their little tool to make the join really tight, they stay put.

Knitting with the KSH is like knitting with gossamer or a spider's web, it is so fine and filmy. The mohair "glow" and the blue color give the result the look of a cloud. I chose blue because it is supposed to be a river, right?

My grandfather on my mother's side was a lacemaker. He emigrated to this country from Nottingham, England at the beginning of the 20th century to work in the lace mills of New England. I never knew him because he died of tuberculosis when my mother was only 14. They say that the carbon which was used to clean and lubricate the machinery (they didn't want to use oil that might stain the lace) damaged his lungs and allowed the TB to set in. He spent the last three years of his life in a sanitorium because that was the law for TB patients at the time.

My mother taught me to knit and crochet and sew. I remember the sewing lessons vividly because she suddenly announced one summer that she was going to give me and my best friend lessons together. Almost everything I wore, at least all the "best" dresses were homemade by her or me up until I got married and moved to California. She even made my wedding dress. When my children were little I was still sewing some of my own clothes. I crocheted and knitted lots of things for my little ones, especially my daughter. But then I turned more serious attention to the violin and put away all that needlecraft. There just wasn't time for it.

I have returned to knitting now after a lapse of 30 years. Everything seems new to me. There are new yarns to try, new techniques, new patterns. It's high fashion now and that's great! It's a new month, a new year, and time for new beginnings for me.

Backyard Birds

The Hermit Thrush is back! He showed up yesterday. I haven't seen him in a long time but he used to be a regular winter visitor to my backyard. And I saw a Townsend's Warbler briefly on Tuesday. Unusual birds tend to show up just before a storm and sure enough last night we had a slight rain followed by huge winds all night long. It is sort of perverse that here in L.A. a gentle rain is frequently followed by strong, dry winds which suck the much needed moisture out of everything.

I get excited by the birds that I see in my backyard because after all this is the city, and my backyard is the typical L.A. teeny, tiny yard surrounded by a 5-foot high cement wall. I try to make the yard bird-friendly by hanging a bird bath and hummingbird feeder from the patio cover and for years I have put peanuts out for the Scrub Jays every morning. I didn't think they would show up this morning because it is still cold and windy, but I had my camera ready for them when they did.

Currently, there are two of them and I can't tell if they are a pair or rivals. One is obviously the dominant bird and will take all the peanuts if he can, chasing away the other bird. So I put the peanuts in two different places and hope that the other bird will get at least one nut.

Winter is when we see the most variety of birds here. They migrate here because of the good weather much like the humans do. The birds that I see all year include the jays, hummingbirds (mostly Allen's and some Anna's), a Black Phoebe (my neighbor has a swimming pool), Bushtits (they clean my rose bushes of aphids for me), and one Northern Mockingbird (the bird that can sing all night long in the spring and summer). Crows come and go and an occasional Cooper's Hawk shows up, too.

In the winter, the White-Crowned Sparrows return like clockwork the first week of October and leave the last week of March (the time they leave is harder to discern because it takes awhile to realize that they are gone). I love the sound of their song. Another frequent visitor in the winter is the Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. There has been one Orange-Crowned Warbler appearing every winter for the last several years. I caught him trying to figure out how to get the sugar water out of the hummingbird feeder the other day but I don't think he was successful. The hummingbird was very upset. That's HIS feeder!

Grace got me into this, but really I have been thinking about creating a blog for myself for awhile, ever since people started asking me to email them advice on healthy diets and news about my knitting projects. This blog is especially for my family—son and daughter-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, and two precious grandsons—as I am keenly interested in their health and well-being.

I have always been an opinionated person, but after reaching 60, I have become even more so and now I don't mind telling people what my opinions are. There are some perks that come with age. And I get increasingly tired of repeating myself on certain subjects when I feel people are not getting the message. So be ready for strong words and critical comments.

But I am not all vinegar and no sugar (wait 'til you hear what I have to say about sugar!), and because nothing draws attention faster than a picture, here are my two entries into the Yuletide Gnome category. The design is by Alan Dart and was published in the British knitting magazine, Simply Knitting, in 2005. There has been such a demand for the pattern that they are re-printing it and you can order it from them here.

The green one was completed first and rode with me all the way to AZ for Christmas with my son and family. I made the second one while there. My older grandson liked them so much, he decided he wanted to crochet a stuffed toy for himself. His mom had already taught him to do a simple chain and the single crochet stitch. So we searched the Internet and found an easy pattern for a Pikachu. He bought the yarn himself and was doing quite well with the project when I left. He was fascinated by the instructions. To him it was like learning to read a secret code. We had quite a knitting/crochet circle going as I was teaching his mom to knit at the same time and was also working on a sweater for my daughter.