The Secret to Angus Young’s Energy
Have you ever wondered how these old rock n’ rollers do it? Angus Young‘s secret – corn flakes. Not Special K, not any of the other cereals, just plain old corn flakes.
Angus Young plays a solo during "Let there Be Rock" during a performance at the Rogers Centre in Toronto (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I always find it humorous when people are looking for the magic answers to success and find out that it’s really just a lot of hard work and dedication. Ok, maybe it is the corn flakes. 
Go to 7:10 to hear it from Angus himself.
The rest of the interview covers some other interesting things, like how they respond to criticism. They’re ask how the feel about people saying that their music is simple and repetitive and to paraphrase, they do what simple, works, and has proven to be what people want. Like baking a cake, you keep with a recipe that works.
Trader Joe’s Low Salt List
If you’re trying to reduce your sodium intake, finding low-sodium products can be hard to do in the usual chain grocery stores. Trader Joe’s has a huge list of low-sodium products and many are not high-priced “low-sodium” versions of other products. Most are priced reasonably. Here’s the link to the PDF.
Trader Joe’s Low Salt Product List
Low-Salt Bread
The doctor recommended a low-salt diet a while back. Eliminating salt in your diet pretty much means that you have to quit eating most things that are processed and most restaurant food. Salt is packed into everything that is made commercially.
The good news is that if you do the work and trouble of making home cooked food, reducing salt is easy. Store bought bread is one of the tougher conveniences to remove. Salt-free bread is hard to find and costs over $4/loaf. I’m attempting this low salt bread recipe today. I replaced the salt with sea salt(it’s supposed to be better for you) and the vegetable oil with olive oil.
The process is simple. Mix ingredients, knead, allow to rise, place in loaf pans, allow to rise some more, then bake. No bread machine or fancy ingredients required for basic low-salt bread. It saves a few bucks, it’s fun, and it’s more healthy than commercial bread. A little time and patience is the only hassle.
As for the results with this recipe, mine were nothing spectacular, but good enough. Replacing the vegetable oil with olive oil still made a good loaf of bread. Next time though, I’m taking the time to go buy some good whole wheat flour. White bread just isn’t as good.
Related articles
- To Salt or not to Salt? (biosil.wordpress.com)
Root Cause of Our Economic Probems Not Economic at All?
Here’s a good article found at Cultural Offering about the problem with today’s economics that is widely overlooked. It has to do with good men being shunned in a country that is sure it doesn’t need them anymore.
Yuengling Bock Beer
There was much to-do made about Yuengling beer becoming available in Ohio. I found most of it to be just like Sam Adams and it really wasn’t worth the price. I found Yuengling Bock Beer to be different than the other offerings though. It’s about as close to the Bock beers I had in Germany as I would expect to get in the U.S. Good stuff. In Newark, Ohio, I found it at the Duke gas station.
Here’s a video of a way-to-serious Yuengling guy discussing Bock beer. If it’s good enough for the Monks, it’s good enough for me.
Possum Living. An Interesting Old Book About Living Cheap.
I recently found a book called Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money
It’s a detailed how-to book where an 18 year old lady writes about how to survive without a real job. Considering it’s from an 18 year old’s perspective, the book is very insightful. It covers how her and her father lived on the cheap and survived with very little income. They raised their own food, created their own heat, owned their home, and managed fairly well.
In my opinion, the book doesn’t live up to the title for the average person. Most are not willing to go to the extremes that Dolly and her father did. In some cases, they were breaking the law. What this book does do is make you ask the question, “What would I do with no job?”. Could you raise your own food? Do you have the basic skills to survive? Could stay away from government dependency? Dolly provides some ways that they did it in in a rural area in 1973, but what would you do in a modern suburban environment. Are you using your resources wisely that you have now? Are you using your skills to save money now?
After reading the book, I’ve reconsidered my lifestyle. No, I’m not planning on getting off the grid, but I do think that the more capabilities one has to do without it, the better off they are in general. When you consider that our entire lifestyle is tied to a system of wires and pipes and that system is tied to an complex grid that few of us understand, I don’t think it’s out or the realm of a reasonable person to consider wise alternatives. Not only does it explain how to live off of the grid, there are some ideas about health, education, cooking, and how nearly every area of life can be simplified when the desire or need is there.
It’s a great book for the money and it’s sure to spark some ideas. The first idea it sparked with me was that I needed to get organized. I actually have some of things that are mentioned in the book, but I can’t even find them. In the process of cleaning the house up, I’ve been throwing out some things that I could have done without and that’s money that could still be sitting in my bank account. Lesson learned and onto a simpler way of life.
A Marine Who Couldn’t Forget the Sacrifice of Another
I received an e-mail alerting me that an ex-Marine would like to speak with anyone who was a relative of Corporal Harry Lawrence Spearman, U.S.M.C who died in Korea on Oct. 23, 1951. They stated that my Uncle had saved the life of Glen Finley while serving with Easy Company 2-7 and that he would like to express his gratitude for the sacrifice made.
Most of my young life, Sunday was the day we went to see Grandpa. There were pictures of an Uncle I never met. They told me he was killed in a war. They explained war to me. Of course, that led to how? What was the exact situation? What was he doing? Was he a hero? Nobody really knew the answers. War is chaotic and many times there isn’t time to write the long detailed letters explaining what happened.
When I turned 18, I joined. I admired the sacrifices of my many uncles, the ones who died and who didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything more honorable to do than to serve your country. What were the alternatives? Setting in a classroom going stir crazy in hopes of landing a job, delivering pizzas? I knew that wasn’t going to cut it. Off I went to join the ranks of so many others. I did my thing, but those who went before us always had a place of honor in my heart and mind. The honor and traditions they passed down ran deep and allowed me to participate in the greatest armed forces ever. The history of what happened with them should be just as important as anyone else’s in our country’s history, but there are just far to many stories for the historians to keep track of.
Finding the exact accounts of one of my uncle Bud Griffin when the PC-558 was sank led me to believe that I could find accounts for all of the others. The Army and Marines didn’t keep good records though. All that you really have to go on is the accounts of the men that were with them. In Lawrence’s case, there wasn’t anything.
I was excited to hear from Glenn Finley. Minutes after returning the e-mail with my information, I had a phone call from him. He said that he’d lived with the guilt all of his life that Spearman guarded him from the shrapnel from a mortar round. He said that their platoon sighted Chinese troops and rushed to get into a position to kill them. He and Lawrence were both lean and fast and the rest of the platoon could not keep up with them. They got into position with a BAR machine gun and started to take the Chinese out. He said they counted 20 dead in the area that they fired on. All of their firing at night gave away their position and mortar fire started to zero in on them. Lawrence covered him as a round hit and the shrapnel killed Lawrence, but left Mr. Finley with only minor wounds.
Finley said it took himself and 2 other men to carry Lawrence to the ambulance as he was such a tall and big man. My Uncle had only been in their unit for 3 days, but Finley remembered everything about him all of this time. He knew that he was from Sunbury, Ohio and verified that when he came across a classmate of Lawrence’s and found him in their high school yearbook.
Finley said that after he came home, he had a rough time. He had caught malaria and nobody could find the problem. Doctors here didn’t know that they had to take blood while the fever was high in order to diagnose it. They kept taking his after the fever had left. He had numerous wounds. Even with all of this, he managed to find a doctor that would ok him for service with the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Finley said his proudest moment with The Highway Patrol was an incident where a car was stolen with a baby inside it while the mother had went into a bar. He spotted the car and followed the drivers to their home. He asked the men to step out of the house and questioned them about the car and they denied knowing how it got there. He and another trooper convinced them through unorthodox methods that they would show them where the baby was. It was November and they convinced the thieves to take them to the baby where they had placed it in a dumpster in an alley. I asked him if he got an award for that and he said that another trooper got shot that month and stole the spotlight, so no award.
He went on to become a federal agent for the U.S. Treasury. After that, he got a job with a large insurance agency based in Akron, Ohio. He was proud of the agency that he ran in Indianapolis and said that he worked with some fine people there.
We talked about many things in a short period. We both agreed Obama has placed our nation in a grave situation and neither of us are happy with it at all. He said that he fears for young voters that would choose Obama for the reasons that they did. He said Gingerich was our best bet as far as he could tell, but wasn’t sure. I think I got him converted to Ron Paul now though. It didn’t take long for us to make friends. I hope our talk helped his soul rest easier. Imagine feeling guilty for actions like he had to go through! Thinking maybe it would have been best if you took that lethal hit?
I’m sure our family suffered the loss of a great man. I never knew him of course, but Uncle Lawrence had served and survived World War 2. He volunteered to go to Korea. I’m certain that he understood the dangers. There’s no doubt. It is great to know that his sacrifice went to a man that was deserving of it. Mr. Finley took drunks off the road, saved a baby’s life, went after thieves while working for the government, and then served his community and employees as a businessman. He raised a son too. My uncle’s simple protective move allowed all of that to happen. There probably wasn’t even time to think about it, just an instinctive move. Who knows really? All we need to know is that both of them were the type of men to charge ahead and take to the fight.
It causes me to pause and think about the people that have sacrified for all of us. I’m honored to know that one of my family members acted with such heroism. It reminds me of John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”. This is true, but how do we live up to their sacrifice? It’s a question that Glenn Finley has been searching for answers to all his life. At 79, 60 years after this incident, he’s still expressing his gratitude for that sacrifice. God bless you Mr. Finley, I’m sure you were worthy of it.
Cafe Orzo – Caffeine Free Coffee Replacement
Image via Wikipedia
I found Cafe Orzo at a discount place called Ollie’s. It’s a caffiene free coffee replacement that’s 100% natural. It’s made from special Barley. Barley’s in beer, so you know it can’t be that bad for you. I was really surprised at how much it tastes like coffee, really good coffee too!
I probably drink to much coffee, so this will work as an easy way to have something similar to drink. I’ve heard that caffeine free coffee can be just as bad for you as regular coffee, so this fixes that. There’s no processes done to it to alter it. It’s just barley.
Related articles
- Home remedy for Tea and Coffee addiction (prophet666.com)
- Caffeine (therefinedmind.wordpress.com)
- Coffee: Good or Bad for Us? The Verdict is IN. (talesfromthelou.wordpress.com)
The Red Green Hat.
Apparently I’m one of the few who watch The Red Green Show AND want a hat like Red Green’s. I’ve never been much of a person to watch a show and want to emulate what I see, but Red Green’s a little different. Red seems to know quite a bit about life for a north of 40 white male, so it seems fitting that he would know what type of hat works best, especially when it’s cold like his native Canadian home. The suspenders, no way. The flannel shirt, I already have plenty of them. The khaki pants, no way. I have no interest in anything else about Red Green, but the hat, yes! That hat is classic.
When I set out to find a hat like Red’s years ago, I didn’t even know what it was called. When I asked places that sell hat’s, they never knew who Red Green was. To make matters worse, they thought you were a fool asking for a red and/or green hat. Simply asking wasn’t going to work. I kept checking the Internet and even found a short clip where Red explained the hat. He stated that it was a Canadian Army expeditionary hat. When I searched, no such hat was found linked to the Canadian Army.
Once I finally discovered that the hat is called a Jones hat or simply a “duck hunter’s hat”, I started getting close. I also got Red’s humor. Who would be a prominent member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force? Duck hunters.
There are few suppliers that make these hats. Gore-Tex makes one, but it’s not available in green. It’s sold through L.L. Bean. When I called L.L. Bean to ask if I could get it in green, I made the mistake of telling the lady about the Red Green Show. After that, she too was stuck on the idea that I was looking for a red and/or green hat. Dammit. The rest of the hats I found where either plaid or camo. I found the McAlister Waxed Canvas Jones Hat
The McAlister Brand Jones Hat Like Red Green's
Once the hat arrived, I was impressed with it! It’s waxed so it keeps the rain out. There is a warm liner and ear flaps that fold in. I got mine in olive and the McAlister stitched logo really doesn’t show enough to bother me. I’m happy with it and I would recommend it to anyone searching for a hat like Red Green’s or just a good hat to keep the weather off.
