It's FIVE days into 2011. ALREADY. Seriously, this year is moving even faster than last year! One of my new year resolutions (among, a 1000 others) was to decrease my salt intake. I found out in the last three months of 2010 that I was eating roughly 5000 to 6000 MILLIgrams of salt everyday. That's nearly 5x-6x times the recommended daily amount for someone my height/weight/age.
As I went around work and outside telling people about my resolution, I received many useful tips on reducing salt in my diet. I am going to document them here so that I can refer back to them when I feel like I am slipping in my resolution.
- Use lemon juice as a garnish. This is an interesting piece of advice and potentially one that might work.
- Use herb blends instead of salt -- Herbmare is expensive for just some herbs and salt in the long run. I am going to try using a lot more spices in my cooking and lessen the salt instead.
- If you like salty snacks, try celery -- okay, this is working. Celery is salty. I am going to have to look up the amount of naturally occurring salt in celery. Why should naturally occurring saltiness be any different in its physiological effects than added salt?
- Do not salt while you are cooking. Add salt in the end. This sounds like good advice. Apparently, "saltiness" gets muted as foods cook and this forces the cook to add more salt. I can actually see this happening in my kitchen because I keep tasting things as they cook and I do salt like the cook in Alice in Wonderland.
Yes, like her. Notice the baton-like salt shaker in the cook's hand.
Well... okay, according to the book, it's some potent pepper mix which makes everyone else sneeze, but that is how I add spices and salt when I cook. If anyone else is there while I am cooking, they eventually end up in a sneezing fit or tell me about how they suddenly have this intense desire to sneeze... or cry (because of all the onions I merrily chopped). Strangely, all this affects me very little or not at all.
PS: Someone actually messaged me and asked me if I eat 4000 GRAMs of salt per day. I did mean milligrams but I can't help wondering what might happen if I really ate 4000 grams of salt a day. Would people be able to use me as a salt-shaker at the cafeteria? *Patron flagging down waitress* "Hey miss, could I have
(e:tinypliny) come and dance over here please. Thanks."
(e:heidi), if you are up for it, I can teach you whatever I know (or don't know hehehe) for free. I will at least have someone to practice with. :)
Yes, there are consumer-level sewing machines with USB drives that take programming instructions. They're generally for embroidery but it's expanding.
I've heard that about Singer also. It's sad because they're such the classic name in sewing machines. My machine is a Brother, it's quite nice but it's not heavy duty, I don't even try jeans. I've heard that buying them at local dealers can be great because they have refurbished ones, sometimes heavy duty ones that they've sold/leased to schools for home ec classes.
I'm bummed about salsa lessons... I'm already pushing myself too hard for January.
@(e:Paul) . Not sure if this is true or not but I have heard that their are sewing machines like that I don't know if a Person can go out and buy them though. I have heard that is how Hats are made...........
Goal not a goat. Yeesh.
Thanks so much, (e:heidi). I totally meant to talk with you about everything-sewing at the 24 but I guess all that hairspray messed with my faculties. I was hoping to catch you at salsa lessons today... oh well. :/
This whole sewing machine shopping is rather confusing because look at the one other opinion I got at this forum: :::link::: I ordered the brother machine yesterday but put it on hold because I spotted the Singer. I see your point about winter coats being heavy-duty and that is holding me back from making a decision.
You see, the newer Singer machines are uniformly getting some really bad reviews across the net. If I were to believe the huge sewing community online, Singer, as a company seems to be headed down the drain with increasingly worse workmanship on their machines and shoddy plastic parts that cost a lot to replace. The brother machines appear to be a little better, with positive reviews balancing out the negative ones. I am so confused. I want to go ahead and buy the Singer heavy-duty because my primary goat is the winter coat - but then all those reviews are rankling in my mind.
Of those two, the Singer model is heavy duty and that's the kind of work you want to do. The Brother is a regular-duty machine and wouldn't be able to handle the denim & multiple layers of the coat. Just about any machine can do a duvet cover unless you're using a heavy denim.
A heavy-duty machine can do all light tasks and can also handle the thick, tight materials. Don't forget to get the heavy-duty needles, too.
Actually, a number of brother models are computerized but after reading several reviews, I think the computerization detracts from their sewing capabilities because some of the manual control is lost.
I have seen my mum fight innumerable battles with awry tensions on her multiple sewing machines over the years and I dreaded the day I would have to fight in the tension battlefield. But now I am willingly putting on my armour. I am just trying to avoid the machines that have known tension problems at the outset. On an average, the computerized models seem to have more tension issues after couple months of use compared with mechanical models...
If I end up with a lemon, I fully expect my blood pressure to go up ten points.
I would like a sewing machine that is attached to a computer.