Nasal Leakage

« An empty coatrack at the end of the evening. The chewing gum stuck to one leg is a nice touch. »

How do you explain to a puppy that you are not personally responsible for the snow melting into a hard and icy substance that he can no longer dive into and it refuses to give when he somersaults himself to the ground and rolls trying to get it to submit? It's awfully adorable as he wriggles around and yaps at the hard snow that denies him fluffy satisfaction. Gale-force winds deposited very wet, fresh snow that he was ecstatic to run around in last night only to find it gone this morning. He seemed quite pouty about the snow being replaced by the grit soup on the sidewalk that we should normally be spared from until April when everything thaws. He was momentarily cheered when he discovered that the pigeons will fly if he runs towards them which he then repeated several times, each time watching them swirl around and land.

We have lost the battle for Mt. Largess as I was too tired to tell him "no" and gently push him away from the sofa for the 50th time Thursday night when he got onto the sofa and came to snuggle up to me. I was in a bit of a mood which vanished as soon as he flopped his head down on my lap and sighed. Of course, this won't be so cute when he's 80 kilos, but he likely won't fit on the sofa when he's that size. Saints don't make very good lap dogs unless you've got a leviathan lap. After a while he got too hot, rolled over and began grunting and trying to make himself comfortable which was awfully adorable as well. Hurrah for sofas with durable, removable and washable coverings. We'll likely go buy him some sort of bed for him and a throw for the sofa.

I stayed at home sick today as I have been fighting a cold for a week or two and finally succumbed. I really do find it tremendously irritating that you can't buy OTC remedies for colds and flu at the local grocery and instead have to find the not-so-nearby pharmacy which makes it terribly unlikely that you're going tromp down there just for some advil. I was sleeping soundly until a certain wet nose was shoved into my face about 1pm to remind me that there was a walk outdoors in my near future. Fortunately, there were puppies in the dog park to wear him out as I didn't have the energy.

It was Fat Tuesday this week and I forgot that I had wanted to explain how English is used to describe the foods that glisten and taste good as I flinch each and every time someone uses the world 'grease' to describe most of the good stuff in food. I don't know if it is a result of the US demonizing foods high in fat or just that grease makes me think of motor oil, but someone asking me if I'd like more grease on my bread remains something of a jolt. English has a lot of different words to describe oleaginous foods but grease is not one of them as it's horribly unappetizing.

English doesn't have any rules that I'm aware of that demand, suggest or even hint at the use of the various words used to describe the oily substances found in food. Grease is never used to describe an ingredient in food, no matter how accurate it might be. Foods can be greasy, "That pizza is really greasy.", or grease can be a by-product of the cooking of meats [a.k.a. rendered] usually in the form of a layer on top of the food that needs to be skimmed off but 'fat' is often preferred even in this context, "Skim the layer of fat off of the soup and simmer for 40 minutes." You can also grease the baking pans with butter before baking. Grease conjures the image of motor oil, lubricants, grease monkeys and lardy french fries. And Olestra. If you aren't familiar with Olestra, it's a fake fat that carries the warning "May cause anal leakage" on the bags of potato chips that are fried in it which means that you can eat them, but just don't sneeze or cough for a day or two afterwards. I once tried isolating Olestra by grinding up some chips at home and adding water. The substance I found was similar to 90W oil that is used for packing wheel bearings and it took quite a bit of acetone to clean the mortar and pestle. That's grease. I have noticed that many recipes in Finland use 'rasva' instead of 'voi' or 'magariini' or other fats so this might account for the strong preference for grease in English.

Butter, margarine, and various oils, such as olive oil, collectively fall into the fats and oils group on the FDA Food Pyramid. All fats and oils are comprised of fatty acids, not greasy acids, which determine the behaviour of the fats. The more saturated the fat, the more solid it is at room temperature, like butter and lard. These are very greasy substances and yet we refer to them as butter, lard, oils or fats. Margarine is a hydrogenated unsaturated vegetable oil which makes it a saturated fat, a.k.a. trans fatty acid, and as bad for you as butter is only without the taste. In the US there are plenty of marketing slogans that extol the benefits of polyunsaturated fats or, my favourite, Omega-3 fatty acids as though any but a very small percentage of the population knows what they are. Even the DINKs who drink Evian, eat only organic foods and forget that Linda McCartney was a health nut vegetarian who died young, rarely have any idea what these fatty acids are and why they're supposed to be so good for you. Hell, even dog food claims to contain the Omega-3 fatty acids anymore when good old lard or canola oil used to be just fine. I love how bags of candy boast, "A 100% Fat-free treat for the whole family!", as though they had been exorcised of all things bad for you just by leaving out the fat. So, the more I think about why grease is such a taboo, unsavoury word in a food context, the more I think it may be a product of decades of marketing effecting the language and public perception rather than any real reason.