Wednesday, June 24, 2020

COVID-19 Basic Food Safety


Back to basics. Walk, then run.

This week, it's about food safety. You're not surprised, are you?

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications are not your life." - J. K. Rowling at the 2008 Harvard Commencement Address (British author, screenwriter, producer, and philanthropist, 1965 - )


   Food Safety Basics by fredwine on Scribd

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Handwashing

Handwashing. It's always been about handwashing.

This week, it's about handwashing. You're not surprised, are you?

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." - Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Three Ways to Protect Your Mental Health During – and After – COVID-19

This article was recently shared in a recent Institute of Food Technologists Update. Intuitively we know it's not just ourselves that are stressed, but I'll admit it made me feel better knowing for certain I wasn't the only one.

TTFN, Fred.


Quote of the week: "Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why." - Eddie Cantor (American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor, and songwriter, 1892 - 1964)

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

How to Manage Your Stress When the Sky Is Falling

This article was recently shared in a recent Institute of Food Technologists Update. Intuitively we know it's not just ourselves that are stressed, but I'll admit it made me feel better knowing for certain I wasn't the only one.

TTFN, Fred.
 

Quote of the week: "All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh." - Doris Lessing (British-Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) novelist, 1919 – 2013)


Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Is It Even Possible to Focus on Anything Right Now?

This article was recently shared in a recent Institute of Food Technologists Update. Intuitively we know it's not just ourselves that are stressed, but I'll admit it made me feel better knowing for certain I wasn't the only one.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age." - Christopher Morley (American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet, 1890 - 1957)



Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Science! based information available about COVID-19 and food safety.


Simply put, this is some of the best science based information available about COVID-19 and food safety. 

https://foodsafety.ces.ncsu.edu/covid-19-resources/

Be safe.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor." - Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father and a polymath, inventor, scientist, printer, politician, freemason and diploma, 1706 - 1790)

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Be Safe


It's times like these I'm thankful for my obsessive-compulsive nature and the need to washing my hands ten times a day working in the food industry.

Stay safe, wash your hands, and practice social distancing. There is plenty of historical evidence showing it works, dating back just over 100 years to the last time a pandemic swept the globe.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand." - Baruch Spinoza (Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardi origin, 1632 - 1677)

Image result for Effects of Social Distancing in 1918 Flu Deaths

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

How the Government Came to Decide the Color of Margarine

Food has color. Some bright, some pale, but the colors are distinct. For decades everyone wanted a deep, mahogany red Delicious apple because it looked nice. It was mushy and mealy, but it looked nice. Those days are in the past for apples, which come in many different shades and taste much better than the previous standard.

I remember my mother describing how they kneaded in the color to margarine. It seemed strange, considering I grew up with neon colored candies, to think you had to add your own color to margarine. Everything has its own tale, as they say, and margarine is no exception.

This week, a look at how the government got into the color of margarine

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Happiness depends upon ourselves." - Aristotle (Greek philosopher and polymath, 384 BC - 322 BC)

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

It's All Greek to You and Me, So What Is It to the Greeks? Part 2 - Chinese

The phrase “it’s all Greek to me” (meaning “I don’t understand it, it’s unintelligible”) is a common enough one in English to be the name of an awful lot of Greek restaurants. Quite a few other languages also use Greek as the stereotypical hard-to-understand language – mostly European languages like Portuguese, Spanish, or Norwegian, but also Persian/Farsi.

A Greek person, on the other hand, would express the same meaning with the phrase “It’s Chinese to me” – as would speakers of various other languages including French, Dutch, Russian, and various Eastern European languages; it’s an alternative option to Greek in Spanish and Portuguese, too. In fact Greek and Chinese seem to be the most popular choices of “unintelligible” languages. A few others choose Arabic or Hebrew; Dutch seems to be unique in having a phrase “That’s Latin for me”, while English, of course, also has “double Dutch”. Pleasingly, the constructed language Esperanto has a phrase “it’s all Volapük [a rival constructed language] to me”.


This week, well, you get the idea.

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult." - Ann Radcliffe (English author and pioneer of Gothic fiction, 1764 - 1823)



Wednesday, January 22, 2020

It's All Greek to You and Me, So What Is It to the Greeks? Part 1 - Greek

That's Greek to me or it's (all) Greek to me is an idiom in English, expressing that something is difficult to understand.

The idiom is typically used with respect to something of a foreign nature, however it may be considered an insult to some. Complexity or imprecision of verbal or written expression or diagram, often containing excessive use of jargon, dialect, mathematics, science, symbols, or diagrams. The metaphor makes reference to Greek (either ancient or modern), as an archetypal foreign form of communication both written and spoken. Technically, the phrase is classified as a dead metaphor, meaning that its components cannot be used separately, unlike for example the dormant metaphor "foot of the hill", which permits saying "that hill has a tree at its foot".


This week, if it's all Greek to you and me, what is it to the Greeks?

TTFN, Fred.

Quote of the week: "The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions." - Alfred Lord Tennyson (British poet, 1809 - 1892)