Permit to Conceal and Carry a Grudge

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.Voltaire 

I find myself in a crazy situation. You see, I somehow got cancer despite doing everything known that would prevent this particular cancer. I read that it's the smartest, which might prove that being smart is not really a good thing. It's so bad and smart that I don't have to bother myself with all the awful things that people associate with cancer - hospital gowns, bald heads, puking. You know, the kinds of things that bring out empathy in those closest to a person, the kinds of things that allow people to say the things they need to say. Things that give a sense of HOPE. I don't know if this cancer is killing me, or if my mind is killing me - but it's winning in either scenario. People ask me what stage cancer I have, I tell them they don't really stage cancer like this now, so I give them the designation of my particular tumor, I tell them my tumor had a high mitotic rate. They glaze over. I explain that the mitotic rate means that the cancer cells in my tumor were dividing very rapidly, which logically means that they are elsewhere. Elsewhere means metastasized. Where? I don't know, nobody knows, because of that smartest thing - somehow this cancer knows how to metastasize quickly and stay smaller than scans can detect until it's too late. That's pretty smart. 

I don't know how it happened, but the people who are into fundamentalist religion (or evangelical or non-demoninational or whatever name they are using at the moment), are also into the idea that modern medicine is the devil's work. It's kind of a side job because they also like to sell supplements,  acquire guns, mistrust "the government," wish they were independently wealthy, and so on. These are also the people who are usually kindest to me. I can't tell them that an alkaline diet is a bunch of BS because it will hurt their feelings. I can't tell them that sugars of any type turn into glucose and are used by all cells in a body, not just cancer, and a body could care less how it gets it's sugar - some sugars are just more efficient and lead to obesity and type 2 diabetes. No, I can't tell them that. Instead, I amuse myself with CANCER FIGHTING FOODS, which shows that I take their advice. I know how to eat, and most of the time I don't care what it is, because, to be honest, I really am not into food. So, like the vegetarian secretly discovered eating a Big Mac, I will, when convenience strikes, eat some healthy stuff. Yesterday I bought Organic Romaine Hearts at Aldi for 99¢. That's a really good deal.

Macbeth Potatoes

My friend Jane told me once that I must buy organic potatoes - all other were unsafe. I followed her advice, which really meant that I quit buying potatoes altogether. I felt like I couldn't afford organic potatoes. Well, my friends, those days are over. Aldi now has 99¢ organic potatoes!

Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board, has this to say about potatoes:

Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes-the nation's most popular vegetable-they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. "Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals." (PREVENTION Magazine)

Chemicals are so absorbed into the very being of non-organic potatoes that even obsessive Macbeth-ish washing is not going to make one bit of difference. 

No recipe today, who needs one? A baked potato is pure perfection.