Repenting on the way to church

Some years ago, one of my friends spoke in church about the importance of obedience.  Even in our teen-age years he was able to help us apply gospel principles to practical affairs.  He pointed out how every Sunday he would have seen one of our church leaders driving by his house on the way to church except that all he could make out was a little white blur.  Obedience in all things, he taught.  This was back when he and I and other friends terrorized the neighborhood.

I notice this even today, and it doesn't matter how big of a population our church members represent or what geographic region we're in, the doctrine of "repenting on the way to church" holds true.  In fact, it's a universal Christian principle.  At least in America.  On our way back from our meetings, Trisha and I witness members of other faiths relying on the Parable of the White Blur as they head in the other direction.

It's an eternal principle, too.  Just this morning we saw a car pull up right behind us on the freeway, tail-gate us, pull around us and tail gate the SUV in front of us.  As all three of us merged into the exit lane, this same light blue Mercury Sable from Austin, Texas heading southbound on I-183 at 8:51 am taking the I-35 North exit (did you catch all that, Jeff?) almost manages to pass the SUV on the right before having to slow back down.

We counted how many times the car changed lanes and how many other cars it tailgated before arriving at church with us.  We even got a good luck at them stopped at the light.  It was an older couple with a wheelchair folded up in their back seat!  The irony is that we actually got to church before them, without breaking any laws or endangering anyone's life.

What I find funniest is that this isn't the only couple who does this on their way to church.  We saw a lady do the same thing one Sunday morning a few months ago.  She ended up having a part to play in the church services. 

Our favorite game, now, is to guess which cars on the freeway are going to church with us and which are not.  Invariably, the ones breaking the most laws end up going to the same place.  I guess it proves your faith more that God will forgive you if you leave at the last possible moment and arrive more literally like a bat out of hell, taken into the presence of God than to prepare in advance.  Being prepared isn't a real test of faith.

The best part of it is that we get to calmly sit and judge people for their misdeeds, and then think less of them for it during our church meetings.  It helps keep me awake.  Some call that a sin, I just call it a practical solution to a real-world problem.  I'm applying what I learned as a teenager.

I guess that since breaking the law doesn't really get you to church any faster then the moral of the story is that, if indeed the first ones to church get forgiven more fully, then we're still in the clear in the end anyways.

I'm sorry, is that "yogurt" or "yoghurt" or "Yo Gurty!" or...

In this week's news....  Alright, so my blog isn't a food blog, but I like food so I blog about it more.  Plus, I manage to offend less people when I blog about food.

I decided to explore yogurt this month.  I've always liked it for various reasons.  It's sweet.  It's milk.  It's got a little kick.  It helps reset your system if you've recovered from stomach flu.  I just like it.

However as Trisha and I are eating more and more organic and local, and as we're becoming more aware of what we really put into our bodies when we eat, I've become more curious about yogurts.  I decided to give up the supermarket brand yogurts and common ones, like Yoplait, after watching how cows get treated on most industrial farms.  It's horrible.  Finding anything from sustainable farms or even organic farms is costly but I ventured the risk and tried one of my first "weird" brand yogurt several months ago.  Liberté.  I was not disappointed.  In fact, I tried Mountain High first and it was fine.  But Liberté just had me sold.

This month, however, I wanted to explore more instead of just settle on the first thing out there.  I developed a couple questions to guide me too:
Just what is "Greek Yogurt"?
Now that I've been eating organic yogurt, do the supermarket brands taste any different to me or still just fine?
What exactly do those cultures do??  I saw Streptococcus listed among them on Wikipedia.  Ummm...??  What gives?
How are we really supposed to spell yogurt?  y-o-g-u-r-t ?  y-o-g-H-u-r-t ?  d-o-u-g-h-n-u-t ?
What brands are there?
What brands tastes best?
Which ones are organic?
What flavors taste good?

I haven't answered most of these questions, but rather I'm beginning my research.  Curse you, grad school, for forcing me to more completely pursue my questions instead of settling for what the advertisements tell me!!

Here's the pictures of what I tried last week and what I'll be eating this week.  There's a bunch so I tried to keep the file sizes to about 120k each.  So here's the line-up.  Like I said, I haven't eaten them all yet so I only have a few comments.  But here's what I think.

Trisha recommended this one.  I think they got it sometimes at the Co-Op where she used to live.  It's Maple-flavored so I'm a little...intrigued.  It claims to have a creamy top, and I like creamy yogurt so maybe it'll be alright.
This one says it has no hormones and is all natural.  The ingredient list is pretty easy to read.

 This isn't trick photography.  This yogurt cup really is this fat.  And I didn't center the frame.  Darn it Jim, I'm a doctor, not a photographer.
Despite the really trendy-looking cup, I wasn't as impressed with this yogurt.  I had raspberry flavor, which isn't my favorite, so I'm trying peach now.  But before I mixed the fruit and yogurt together, I still wasn't as nuts about the cream itself.
As for ingredients, it's surprisingly legible except for locust bean gum.  No idea what that is.  Yet.

Don't laugh at the container.  I already took care of that.  In fact, I make it a point to never buy yogurt in ret--- silly-looking containers.  Trisha told me to pick this one up and try it yesterday.  I honestly didn't even see it, despite it being right in front of my face.  In other words, I've gotten to the point where I ignore what I considered "silly" yogurts so much that I'm oblivious to them.  Yet, this is the very reason I'm trying this new adventure: to give a non-prejudiced chance to as many yogurts as I can so that I prove my tastes right, or open up my options.
Non-organic, has a little bit of gunk, probably from cows injected with hormones.

 Silly.  This is the second of 2 reasons I wondered just what makes yogurt "Greek" yogurt.  The first is down below.
I tried this one and actually liked it, if I remember right.  I tried it before really planning to write a blog about it, though so I'll need to give it another chance.  I remember liking the cream a little better, despite myself.  Also, it has pure cane sugar and honey as its sweeteners.  We'll see what round 2 produces.

 If you can zoom in on this, I recommend doing so.  They call it "ambrosia" because "it's just that good".  Okay, so that's me putting words into their mouths but that's what I assume "ambrosia" is supposed to mean.  I didn't study the classics.  First, it's not made in Greece (no, this is not reason number one yet from above) so why the Greek name, claim that it's Greek yogurt, or the reference to some nectary drink imbuing people with immortality that I have no idea what is?
Result: it wasn't that good.  It tasted about like Mountain High's plain yogurt.  It wasn't bad, though.  And I will say this: all organic.

 Here's my personal winner!  I LOVE this yogurt.  It's made in Canadia, Québec to be specific.  Yet they use Vermont milk.  It doesn't claim to be organic :( !  But the ingredient list is fairly short, and the only names I didn't understand were the culture names.  No corn syrup, no malto-phosphate-gunk #5.  Plus, I LOVE blackberry flavor.  The lemon flavor comes out just right too.  Even the plum-walnut, coconut and strawberry flavors, none of which I'm nuts about--they are all worth eating, in my opinion.

 Didn't give it a fair chance.  It said "Chocolate Undergroud" so I had to try it.  And it's non-fat.  Next time I'll remove the strange variables.  But it's organic and low on weirdness.
The end result for this one was like crossing pudding with lemon yogurt.  Strange.  Not something I'll eat regulary.  But at least it wasn't bad.  I'll certainly give a normal flavor a real chance.

Yoplait!  Yoplait is known for its high fructose corn syrup.  But this one said Greek on it so I told myself I'd give it a chance in the name of science.
For this one, no corn syrup.  It's regular sugar.  But they still added in vitamins and mystery gunk.  I'm not nuts about anything being infused because I get my vitamins from their natural sources, but I'll give it a go.
Not organic; fat-free; doesn't say a word about being from cows not treated with hormones.



I'd love to hear if there are any particularly good yogurts out there that I haven't discovered yet.  I realize my sample is pretty small at present but it's a start.  It's too bad I'm not much of an investigative writer.  I'd love to see a really well-written article about different types of yogurts.  For now, this is my experiment and adventure for the month.

"♫Food, glorious food, what is there more handsome?♫"

I've decided to open a Chinese restaurant...an adult-themed Chinese restaurant.  Here's what the menu will look like:
Peeking Duck
Vegetable Chow Fun
Actually, that's all I've come up with.  And I didn't modify the last one.  It just sounded funny to me as-is.

Yesterday I ate too much dessert and drank too much milk.  I told Trisha that my stomach was aching a little bit from it last night.  First, I had half of a cookie that we bought from Mad Cakes around the corner from our house, a "Chewy Chocolate Cookie" which ended up tasting more like a thin brownie than anything; then an old fashioned style sour cream doughnut, one of those weird shaped ones with a bigger hole in the middle and tastes more cakey than even the average doughnut, chocolate; and lastly a pudding filled bismark.  I've heard these called eclair doughnuts, Boston cream doughnuts, but whatever they are, they usually suck and don't have much filling in them.  Just a tiny squirt that fills 1/4 of the doughnut and leaves my mouth watering for what I paid for and wondering why I keep calling these my favorite doughnuts.  This one was rectangular, so naturally it didn't taste as good as a round one.  However, it actually had the right ratio of doughnut to pudding filling.  I had intended to save the bismark for today, but my painful Arabic reading made me crave success, so naturally I turned to my bismark.  And I didn't want it to get stale.  Or lonely.  Note that I left half the cookie.

Today, after vowing I wouldn't make the same mistake again, I pulled out the other half of the cookie.  Trisha groaned and rolled her eyes.  I told her I didn't want to end up binging like I did last night, so I'd just go ahead and eat the cookie now.  While conversing, I finished the cookie, wiped my mouth and drank my water (not as good as yesterday's milk).  Mentally finished, I started wadding my paper cookie wrapper up to throw away.  When what to my astonishment I discovered one last bit of cookie!!  I completely derailed from our conversation--justifiably--praised all that was holy, and made the bit last for three additional bites.  Now was not this exceeding joy?

On a completely unrelated note, I started reading "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser which talks about America and our terrible eating habits.  I am appalled.