The safest fish to eat

I'm always hearing and reading how healthy fish is vs eating meat or even poultry, how we should all eat more fish for the healthy benefits of Omega 3’s…etc…yet we hear on the other hand, about the dangers of mercury poisoning and other harmful contaminants in seafood. So what is one to do?

So I did a little (just a little) research and thought I‘d post a list of the safest bets out there. To begin with pay attention to the seafood food chain. Generally speaking, the higher up the food chain, the larger the fish, the more contaminants. Over time, these large fish can build up higher amounts of mercury and other impurities from the many small fish they eat. This means you should avoid eating large fish such as shark, walleye, pike, sea bass, swordfish, King mackerel, largemouth bass, tuna, tilefish, marlin, halibut, and Atlantic halibut. So the smaller the fish, the better it is for you. Wiser, low mercury, choices would include crawfish, scallops, tilapia, Pacific flounder, crab, shrimp, summer flounder, haddock, sole, whitefish, and croaker (spiny, thin finned fish found in the sandy shallows of all temperate and warm seas).

Not all fish are equally high in omega-3's. Two excellent choices that are both low in contaminants and high in omega-3's are wild caught Alaskan salmon and sardines. Avoid farm raised salmon however, as it has significantly more dioxins and other potentially cancer-causing pollutants than wild caught salmon. Farm raised salmon however makes up half the salmon that comes to market so read your labels carefully. One of the main reasons for its less healthful status is farm-raised salmon eat lots of fish oil and meal made from just a few species of ocean fish, concentrating the contaminants they're exposed to, while wild salmon eat a greater variety.

Wild caught Alaskan salmon can be hard-to-find fresh, but is readily available in cans at most grocery stores. Read the label carefully to make sure any salmon you buy was caught in the wild.

I love Tilapia and we have taken to eating it fairly regularly since coming to California. Heres one of my favorite ways to prepare it. Its quick and easy and excellent.



Ingredients
4 tilapia fillets
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes or 2 tsp fresh chopped parsley
pepper to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Spray a baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.
Rinse tilapia fillets under cool water, and pat dry with paper towels.
Place fillets in baking dish. Pour lemon juice over fillets, then drizzle butter on top. Sprinkle with garlic, parsley, and pepper.
Bake in preheated oven until the fish is white and flakes when pulled apart with a fork, about 30 minutes.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead. ~Woody Allen

Another lovely Friday with my son.

Fridays have to be my favorite day of the week for two reasons….it’s the start of the weekend, not that TGIF “day” changes much for me personally as I am now happily and fully retired (and enjoying every single minute of it!) but because my husband is still working, its HIS last work day of the week and signals the beginning of a few lovely days together. Secondly, two Fridays of every month I get to visit Corey, and those are visits I always look forward to and cherish every minute of.

Corey had called the night before to suggest I arrive just a bit later than usual, maybe around 9 ish as there had been some kind of computer glitch at the facility and all the inmate commissary accts had been screwed up. After a week into the month each account “limit” had been somehow reset back to the $320 Limit allowed. Well this in itself was great news for anyone with money in their accts, it meant they could purchase more items this month than usually allowed. So, many immediately started buying up more grocery and other needed items. Well the facility caught their error, and rather than just let it go, the simplest, most cost effective solution (that would also most benefit the prison itself with greater profits from sales) the facility decided to shut down the commissary for three days while they made the necessary (?) corrections to the computers and the inmates accounts. Many had taken advantage of the glitch and had rushed out to the store to purchase extra grocery items (or other essentials) and when all corrections were made, their new acct balances of course reflected the additional spending, bringing them now much closer to their spending limit and so they would have to cut back their purchases the next 3 weeks of the month. Not a big deal, all in all, but the time spent to fix the error (3 days apparently) was anything but cost effective and the prison budget is all about cutting expenses (not incurring more) so didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But this is afterall, prison and everything about the system is anything but logical.

SO this was the reason we agreed to meet for our visit later in the morning, Corey knew the lines to the store would be long and it would be time consuming. And so I came to arrive at the Camp shortly after 9 am to discover this wasn’t going to be the only setback this day. In front of me, posted on the window of the Control Room (where we sign in) was a small sign that read “No Open Toed Shoes or leggings allowed. Effective immediately.” Say What???!!!

For the past 6 ½ years open-toed shoes have been allowed as part of the dress code for visitors. The only stipulation regarding shoes was they must have a backstrap, no flip flops, etc. And this being warm, sunny (nearly year round) California, most the shoes I wear are open-toed sandals or heels. Well for reasons unbeknownst to me (or any of us visitors and seemingly most the guards at visitation today) overnight the Administration changed their minds, and the policy was effective at once!

So here I am, in my lovely brazilian leather open-toed heels, and the choice offered me is drive back into Taft (20 miles return trip) and purchase a brand new pair of shoes at the local Kmart Store or forego my visit.

Of course, being me, I argued the unfairness, not so much of the new policy (we are used to “silly” policies being instituted in the bop) but for the lack of ANY notification prior to the change…as well as the extra expense it would force on some families, who would be traveling long distances for their visit today, many of whom could least afford an additional last minute purchase, and lets not forget, driving back into town for the needed purchase would lessen precious time with their loved one inside.

Add insult to injury….having arrived, again, this time in my shiny new black patent ($14.95) heels from Kmart clicking their way up the sidewalk, (the only thing I could find in a closed-toe shoe in my size, most all the selection was open-toed!) I hurried to once again check in for my visit. ONLY to be told it was now too close to “Standing Count” to be processed and let into visitation at this time! The facility does 4 Standing Counts a day, the entire inmate population is counted to assure everyone is accounted for and it usually takes at least an hour for the procedure. Having arrived initially, after driving the 45 minutes from Bakersfield, at just after 9 a.m., it was only just after 11 am that I finally hugged my son and sat down to our visit.

"Sometimes life's Hell. But hey! Whatever gets the marshmallows toasty. ~J. Andrew Helt

Letting off some steam....

Dominique Strauss-Kahn -former head of the Intnl Monetary Fund, and aspiring next President of France, considered "the favorite" to win in French polls, was arrested and charged with sexual assault of a NYC hotel maid. He is currently free on bail and resides in a $50G/month apt in NYC's TriBeCa district, the most expensive townhouse in the affluent neighborhood. It's interesting to read about and see how the French people view the story. One of the first "comments" from off the streets of Paris when asked about the Frenchmans bid for the Presidency was "How could he make a good president with such poor character?' other comments solicited were "For someone with such high aspirations its deeply shocking...guilty or innocent, I think his career is over." and "We, the small people, how could we possibly figure out what really happened....let the Grand Jury decide and lets hope they get it right" and "If it turns out to be true, this has prevented our country from being led by a pervert."

The first comment particularly caught my attention...and it was an "Ahaaaa" moment..."character"...the very word I was searching for...the very attribute so clearly missing in America's ruling sector - our lawmakers, our Supreme Court Justices, all who hold the reins to the running of America - GOOD "CHARACTER".

We read and watch, time after time after time, of just such abuses of power and position by our political, elected "representatives" and the news headlines are awash in each current scandal. But in most cases does it ever put an end to careers? Hardly. Such goings on have come to be almost "accepted" and excused by the general public, at least it would appear so as nothing ever changes or improves.

We read about the fraud and the greed that brought down the financial sector, the bursting of the housing "bubble", and witness these past 4 years, the catastrophic consequences, tens of millions of hardworking americans now live paycheck to paycheck (if they are lucky they still have a paycheck) having lost their homes, their jobs, their life savings, watching as their debts continue to rise. Jobs continue to be lost, foreclosures continue to rise in many cities across America as we speak. Its not as if its a big secret how all this came to pass, one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not be aware of how this all came to be. We've been told and shown in graphic detail. Everywhere we've turned for the past 4 years we are confronted with the effrontery of those who have raped and pillaged America for their own greed and thirst for power. There are a good dozen or more movies that glaringly depict how, why, when, it all came about. Those of you who have still managed to keep your naivete and trust in our Government (current and past, et al), representatives in Congress and the 5% (we're told) that hold most the country's true wealth, would do well to watch but a few of the top ten movies out there depicting the tragedy. A few suggestions for you would be Inside Job; Maxed out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and The Era of Predatory Lenders; The Ascent of Money; American Casino; In Debt We Trust; We All Fall Down, The American Mortgage Crises; Capitolism Hits the Fan and The Story of Stuff...these are the top 10 films in the country re the financial meltdown.

Many wonder at the lack of investigations, undertaken in earnest and in the true spirit of finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. I think we all know why, and one has to conclude "all" were in on it, in some manner or form, all were profiting. I believe America is forever changed, that we now live in a very different America than we could ever have imagined, and alarmingly, "just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed", as without significant new laws and changes to the complicated, make it up as we go along, corrupt system still in place it seems, in our financial sector, this "different", and future america, still lays in the very hands of those who brought it to its tarnished and fragile state

SPROCKET

Rod and I spent Monday, the Memorial Day Holiday, with Corey. It turned out to be a crazy busy day, lots of families with small children who pretty much ran roughshod in the visitation room. It was noisy and busy, but it was wonderful in a way as well, in that it felt less like a prison than at any other time. Everyone was walking around, kids were playing with toys and each other, laughing with their fathers, the guards were very low key, one rarely noticed they were even around. We started out our visit at a table in the middle of the room, but after 10 am the outside patio is opened up and we saw several vacant tables out there, so jumped at the chance to secure something quieter. Also they seem to always keep it pretty cool inside and outside the sun was shining, it was a lovely warm day.

We had a good day as we always seem to, and one story Corey told us was particularly interesting. It was about Sprocket. Sprocket is a small jack russell terrier who has taken up residency at the Camp. Apparently he lives somewhere nearby, but spends most all his time at the camp, where he has befriended almost everyone and is treated royally. All the men at the camp feed him, play with him, talk to him, even share their bunks with him. Corey tells us when the weather is rainy or cold Sprocket can often be found tucked under the covers of someone in the unit, and often when the guards make their rounds at count time, you will see little Sprocket traipsing down the aisle behind him. Corey says everyone loves Sprocket and Sprocket loves everyone...except for one inmate.

Apparently there is one fellow at the camp Sprocket has taken a serious dislike to and when ever the two of them meet, or if Sprocket sees him across the yard or coming into the unit will bare his teeth and bark at him, has even on occasion tried to bite him or has grabbed is pant leg with his teeth, snarling all the while. I am to understand that this fellow isn't particularly liked by the other men in the camp either, an inmate with some strange habits and behaviors most find irksome. Regardless, Coreys descriptions of these incidents were pretty funny, and we found ourselves laughing at the images conjurred up.

"Properly trained, a man can be dog's best friend." ~Corey Ford