Audio Nutrition

logo pinched from The Teaching Company's web site...I hope they appreciate the free publicity

When I was younger, I listened to a lot of music and heavy metal in particular. After marrying, I reduced the amount of time spent listening to music more and more and now I rarely listen to any at all. I'm not sure if this is age, sensitivity to the emotions music can elicit in me, or simply a lack of interest in new music and being largely bored with the old.

These days, I'd sooner listen to spoken word rather than music. It could be that all the isolation from English living in Japan brings this about. It's impossible to say.

Over a long period of time, I've been listening to a lecture series on the High Middle Ages. The series is 24 lectures that last from 30-45 minutes and cover a broad range of topics. I finally finished the last lecture this evening. There are two things about the experience which I found remarkable. First of all, it was easier to follow and far more interesting to listen to lectures now as an adult than it was when I was in college or high school. The thought has occurred to me from time to time that 'education is wasted on youth' as they are often presented with the type of information they aren't ready to hear and have difficulty absorbing. While I considered myself a good student who was attentive in classes, I still think listening to lectures is something you benefit more from with age and maturity.

The other point was that I found that, despite my interest level and control over the delivery of content, I still found myself drifting in thought away from what I was listening to and had to consciously tune back in. Often, this sort of drift was cued by the fact that I almost always listened while cooking or doing housework and some thought about the task at hand distracted me. Had I sat at my desk with a notebook, I may have paid more attention but I doubt it.

The truth is that all our minds are meant to wonder. When I was studying psychology, I learned that we have an average duration of interest that lasts 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, we will lose more and more focus if we don't get a break. It's not that we have short attention spans. It's my guess that there may be a chemical process going on whereby your brain no longer operates at peak efficiency when attempting to store and process new information. Knowing of this common limitation, I often wonder why classes are so long in all levels of education. It seems we constantly try to fit the square pegs of our limited attention into the round hole of hour-long (or longer) class times.

Anyway, I learned a lot of interesting things from this series and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in history. Some of the things of interest that I recall off the top of my head were:

• Tales of chivalry (e.g., Arthurian legends) were stories written to spread chivalric code to knights who were not scholarly. The tales were not true but meant to be behavioral guides.
• The Spanish Inquisition was not as widespread or as cruel as is commonly believed. It's not that it was a good thing by any stretch of the imagination but there were very strict rules by which one could be accused of heresy (such as only literate Christians could be accused) and several methods by which one could prove false accusation (by proving people accused you because they hated you).
  
• The origin of giving an apple to teachers is based in the practice of not paying teachers and their being grateful to be left this food to eat when they had no money. Teachers were expected to impart knowledge without pay because their wisdom was a gift from God. (I mentioned this in a blogcritics piece I wrote.)

Cartoons and Crab Meat

Last night, I was flipping through channels looking for something interesting and found myself on the Japanese Cartoon Network. It's similar to the one in the U.S. except the cartoons are bilingual when they are in English and there is a mixture of Japanese cartoons as well.

The cartoon I happened to land on was Peanuts which was just finishing before Bugs Bunny started. Since I'm a fan of old Bugs Bunny cartoons, I decided to let the commercials play through and watch the upcoming cartoon. This is where things got weird.

The commercial that aired was a really long one about crabs. This is the sort of ad where some woman stuffs huge gobs of the featured food into her mouth while shrieking orgasmically. At one point, she looked like she was trying to gag herself by inserting the better part of an entire leg into her mouth and sucking off the meat. I'm not kidding. She easily stuck 4 inches of it in her mouth and it looked like more. No wonder her eyes were bugging out and she was making loud noises. I'm sure her uvula was bruised.

Anyway, the commercial was offering up 7 enormous spiky-looking crabs for about $100 so I was wondering who they think is watching cartoons at 9:00 pm. I'm doubting kids are jumping up and down begging their mothers to buy them crabs (though they may grow up thinking they may prove useful in foreplay after watching those ads). So, I'm wondering who this type of thing is aimed at.

I guess it could be the mothers of children who watch cartoons with their kids but my image of kids parked in front of the T.V. is one where it's an electronic babysitter while mothers are off doing the thousands of little things they must do to run a household and care for their families. Perhaps all the over the top expressions of delight are meant to force the mothers to come rushing into the living room to see if their kids have stumbled across some pornographic programs only to become entranced by the great value and obvious deliciousness of those monster crabs...or at least make them wonder if they can seek the gratification they're missing elsewhere in their lives through seafood consumption.

Lemon Tart (Sugar-free)

I'm not as good at taking food porn shots as some bloggers so excuse my detached crust.

This recipe is a modification of a regular recipe for a lemon tart on "Joy of Baking". If you don't want to go sugar-free, I suggest following the original recipe. If you do want (or need) to go sugar-free though, this is one of the best pastries you can make. In fact, it's so good that you wouldn't know it was sugar-free unless you were told. Note that this recipe has the benefit of being pretty easy and foolproof. You mix both the crust in the filling in a food processor and you can't over mix or mess them up unless you measure incorrectly.

I had planned to make this recipe as dessert for guests over the weekend but, because I got sick, I didn't have the chance to do so. However, I had already bought all the ingredients and made one anyway. My husband loves this, especially when it's fresh. When fresh (but cooled), this is an extremely light dessert. After cooling, it has more of a light cheesecake feel to it because the lemon tartness smooths out a bit and the crust becomes denser as it absorbs moisture from the filling. Either way, it's delicious.

Note that you must use fresh lemons and fresh zest. For a dessert that relies so heavily on the lemon for flavor, the best quality is essential. I can buy two small lemons for 100 yen at the local QQ so I just zest them first then juice them. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of lemon juice but, if your lemons don't yield enough juice, just add enough water to bring the liquid level up to a half cup. The zest contributes as much to the lemon flavor and scent as the juice.

(Sugar-free) Lemon Tart recipe:

Crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granular Splenda
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cold butter (cut into pieces)
2-4 tablespoons cold water

Filling:

5 ounces/140 grams cream cheese (cut into pieces)
1/2 cup granular Splenda
1/2 cup powdered skim milk
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 eggs
zest of 2 small lemons

For the crust: Place the flour, granular Splenda, and salt into a food processor and pulse it a few times to mix. Add the cut up pieces of butter and process until the butter is completely integrated (it should resemble cornmeal).


Add cold water one tablespoon at a time until the flour forms a dough (see picture above). Depending on how cool your kitchen is and how cold your butter, the dough can be quite toothpaste-like. Warmer butter can make a very pasty dough but it's not a problem if this happens. Just be careful not to add more water than necessary. Usually, I need to add 3 or 4 tablespoons though I have gone as high as 5.


Spread the dough into an (un-greased) pie plate or tart pan. I don't bother to spread up the sides because the filling is relatively thin and a shallow cheesecake-style crust works fine.


Bake the crust at 425 degrees F. (220 degrees C.) for 10-14 minutes until it has browned and cooked through. The base should resemble a big, crispy cookie. Set aside until needed.

For filling: Place the cream cheese and granular Splenda in a food processor and process until smooth. Add the eggs and process until well-incorporated. Scrape down the sides and re-process as needed. Add the powdered milk and process until well-mixed. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and process (and scrape down) until thoroughly mixed. The mixture should resemble a thin custard. Pour the mixture over the cooked shell (it does not have to be cooled but final baking time will be reduced if you pour the filling over a hot shell). Bake at 350 degrees F. (175 degrees C.) for 15-20 minutes until the center is just set. Serve with whipped cream. If you want to make your own sugar-free whipped cream, the recipe follows.

Sugar-free whipped topping recipe:

1/2 cup (120 ml) whipping cream
2-3 packets Splenda (not granular)
dash of vanilla essence
1 teaspoon pectin

Pour the whipping cream into a large (preferably cold) bowl and sprinkle with Splenda and pectin and add vanilla. Use an electric whisk on low speed to mix everything and introduce some bubbles. Turn up the speed and mix until stiff peaks form.

Note that the addition of pectin is not strictly necessary. If you've ever made homemade whipped cream, you'll see that it tends to separate after a day or so. Pectin won't stop this from happening entirely but it will slow it down greatly as well as make for a stiffer whip for a longer period of time.

Additionally, keep in mind that granular Splenda (which measures like sugar) is not to be confused with Splenda sold in packets. Packet Splenda is equivalent to 2 teaspoons of sweetness and granular Splenda measures precisely like sugar. If you were to use as much packet Splenda as granular, the sweetness would be overbearing and awful so be careful to use the right one.

I've experimented a lot with making desserts sugar-free and I've found that, in general, granular Splenda can be used as a substitute for powdered sugar in baked goods with little adjustment. If you use it in place of granulated sugar, you start to have problems because granulated sugar absorbs liquids and adds moisture. It also adds crispness and browning. In the case of this tart, the butter accomplishes the browning and crispness in the crust and the filling's loss of moisture absorption is made up for by the addition of powdered milk.

Sibling Rivalry 2

The supermarket would probably be a good place for a developmental psychologist to observe the interaction among siblings to see how they relate to one another. Previously, I posted about a brother and sister who fought over a package of chicken legs in a local market. Today, in the local butcher shop, I witnessed a similar altercation between two brothers.

The younger son was probably about 5 years old and the older perhaps 8. The younger one meandered around the shop and grabbed a box of Kiri cream cheese and proceeded to run all over the small crowded shop with it (sometimes colliding with other customers who were waiting their turn) while his mother ignored him.

After a few minutes of seeing his younger brother delightedly waving around this box of cheese (which his mother probably wasn't going to buy anyway), the older brother snatched it away from him and purposefully strode away. It was clearly a little power game. The younger brother then started howling and crying. The mother, of course, just ignored the whole thing.

This situation made me consider two things, one which I've thought of often when seeing kids in public and the other which hasn't occurred to me before. The first is why parents don't do anything about the disruptive behavior of their children in public. For one thing, her younger child was using food as a toy (I've seen this before) which someone else will probably buy later. For another, she didn't do anything about the competitive behavior of her older son which was clearly designed to taunt her younger son. And finally, she was completely indifferent to the other people in the shop who had to deal with the collisions and the screaming. It's parents like her who fuel the fires of "kid-free" advocates who regard parenthood with contempt.

The second thing I wondered was if I was just as obnoxious as a child. Even as an adult, I'm rather inclined to tease and torment for reactions (in what I hope is an endearing and humorous fashion). My husband is capable of resisting me and mainly just laughs at my attempts to goad him into reacting. To be fair, most of the things I do are meant to make him laugh.

As a child, I used to torment my poor sister all the time. She would be sitting somewhere reading her book peacefully and I'd do something or other to elicit a reaction. My most famous incident, which my mother frequently recounted to others with amusement, is when I did something (I don't remember what) to anger my sister sufficiently that she chased me outside in winter. I was barefoot. There was snow on the ground. But, I was still amused and satisfied with the response.

So, I can't say I don't understand why the kids may do what they do but I think the incidents I observed were more about robbing the younger child of something in a show of dominance whereas I tended to do what I did for attention (being the younger child of two, I wasn't really interested in power).

My Craptacular Mailbox

It seems my mailbox had a flyer explosion as there were 12 pieces of promotional garbage in it. There were only 3 actual pieces of mail in amongst this big mess.

The flyer with the babe on the left is for a new health club near the local JR (Japan Railway) station called "WOW'D" (short for "Work Out World" it seems). The main selling point of this place seems to be that all the equipment has video screens built into it so that you can watch something while you exercise (perhaps motivational video since the slogan for this slick joint is "motivates everyone to be fit"). It's also got higher rates than the place nearby that my husband uses for swimming.

Three of the others are menus for delivery places. The biggest one is a Chinese restaurant that we've had food from before. It's okay but heavy on the noodle selection and light on chicken dishes and neither my husband nor I is a noodle fan. They also used to feature a picture of what looked like a whole baby pig (snout, eyes and all) on the front of their menus and it made us too sick to even open their menu. Eventually, they changed the picture for that dish. The tiny menu is for an overpriced steak place and another is for a sushi restaurant. Of course, I think that there's no such thing as a steak restaurant in Japan which isn't overpriced.

My husband and I don't get delivered food or eat out much because we're trying to live frugally and delivered food costs between two and five times more than eating in. We sometimes get pizza or curry but the places we order from do not leave flyers in our mailbox. Perhaps they get enough business that they don't have to paper bomb us all the time to get customers.

Most of the rest of the flyers are for massage and relaxation services and, ironically, "recycle" shops that will pick up items you don't want anymore (for a fee in most cases) and clean them up and sell them. I say it's ironic because these flyers make the most frequent appearances in our mailbox and represent the greatest waste yet the shops themselves are supposed to be reducing waste by recycling items rather than allowing them to be tossed in the trash.

In the past, a much greater portion of the paper left in our mailbox was for various pornographic services. Some of it was for "Q-dial" girls which I think was some sort of phone sex service. Some of it was for purchasing porno videos and the rest possibly for back door ways to access prostitutes. Some of it was pretty funny stuff. I'm guessing that the internet has offered a more discreet and cost-effective means of reaching their target audience than having someone drive around in a scooter dropping flyers in mailboxes.

The main problem we have, aside from the tremendous waste this represents, is that real mail can get lost in the pile of trash unless you painstakingly sort out each and every piece. It's been a great concern when we've had to wait for communication from the immigration office. When you apply for a visa, you fill out a postcard which they send you to notify you that your application has been processed and you have to return to get your visa. The card can easily get lost in such a mess and then life can be very complicated as the card has a deadline by which you should appear at the office.

In the United States, this sort of mailbox pollution is illegal. You can only get into mailboxes via junk mail. I'm pretty sure that it has little to do with the U.S. being more enlightened and more to do with the postal service making sure they get paid as part of the customer snail mail spamming process.