Posts Tagged Under ‘Health’

Peanut Butter: Hero Food

I’m sitting here reading about PHP exception handling when the idea strikes me: some peanut-butter toast would hit the spot like some sort of proverbial spot-hitting device. That got me thinking about why peanut butter is an amazing product.

Peanut butter tastes great. You can rock peanut butter with lots of things: chocolate, jelly, Nutella, bread, celery, apples, Thai food, cookies and lots of other stuff. Maybe I’m expanding on the Thai food part, but they use crushed-up peanut paste with oil in their cooking, so that’s close enough for me.

Peanut butter has phat mouth feel. Mouth feel is the term for how food feels all up in your craw, and peanut butter is great. You don’t have to chew it, but it still hangs out for a while, as if to say, “What’s up, mouth. Let’s get to know one another.”

Peanut butter is good for messing with your dog. If you put peanut butter in one of those Kong toys, it will blow your dog’s mind. He looks like a freaking idiot trying to lick peanut butter out of a rubber ball for 19 hours, but the mutt loves it!

Peanuts are a friend of the environment. They’re natural — granted, Jif or Skippy not quite so much — and you can grow hella peanuts on just a little land. That means more efficiency and fewer animals getting faded for protein. Sadly there is no such thing as peanut bacon just yet, but scientists are probably working on it. Speaking of that,

Peanut butter is associated with George Washington Carver. Wikipedia says he did not actually invent peanut butter as we know it, but he did do lots of work with it. Plus, the dude made gasoline and nitroglycerin substitutes out of peanuts. His name always seemed to come up in school, and I admired him for his devotion to that greatest of foods. Now if someone just steps up to his legacy and invents bacon from peanuts, we’re in good shape.

There you have it: peanut butter.

Pro Massage: Overrated

Hey all.

I’m going to base the following opinion on a statistically suspect sample of N=1, but hey, why not.

When G and I were on our honeymoon in Mexico, they had a complementary massage session at the hotel where we stayed. I looked forward to this with some trepidation, being that I had never partaken of a masseuse / masseur before, and I figured having some stranger rubbing oil all over me would be more than a little awkward. But, I was game.

When the appointment arrived, I walked into the darkened room and laid down on the table, at which point a nice masseuse walked in and commenced her work. Getting oiled up felt a little weird, but then the shoulder part was pretty soothing, so I chilled out and settled in.

Then, ow. A lot.

Thanks, I feel so refreshed

I don’t know if I’m extra stiff or what — I used to always do well at the sit ‘n reach back in the elementary gym-class day, and my college jujitsu course instructors noted how weirdly far my joints could bend before I had to tap out — but that massage hurt. At one point I think my arm got put into a police submission hold, then my knees were bent back a lot farther than they’re supposed to go — that was especially rough after the 2006 knee surgery tightened things up down there. Being a dude unfamiliar with this whole thing, I of course opted to grit it out silently and act like it felt great to have my ligaments popping and locking without the benefit of Carlton’s breakdancing lessons, but it didn’t.

Anyway, don’t pay for a massage, because they aren’t that cool. And as a guy who has gotten exactly one in my lifetime, I know.

Thanks for reading, and may your day be filled with General Tso’s chicken. I ate some today and it was amazing.