Scales For You

Our grandmothers cooked on an old wood stove with a few pots and pans and a measuring cup or two.  Wouldn’t they be in awe of the modern kitchens of today!  Every kind of appliance and gadget is available to cooks now, but guess what–we all eat out!  One lady said, “I wouldn’t have a kitchen, but it came with the house.”  With the gas prices rising, we may all need to go to cooking school and learn to cook at home again. 

If we’re really going to get serious about cooking, we need to take a look at our kitchen and its appliances and gadgets.  Do we have a set of food scales.  Food Scales are useful for accurately weighing ingredients such as butter or shortening, as well as measuring food portions as specified by diet requirements.   Oh, I didn’t mean to mention diet, but it is an important word if you really want to stay healthy.  Many health conditions require specified diets and a good set of food scales can make it easier and more accurate to follow the plan. 

Numbers are very precise.  If you don’t believe me, reverse two numbers in a phone number and see if it works.  Or let the bank run a check through the bank as $425.32 when it was supposed to be $25.32.  Just one number can make a big difference!

Scales need to be precise, also.  Whether you’re measuring in grams, ounces, pounds, or pennyweights, you want the same item to weigh the same amount each time it is placed on the scales.  If it doesn’t, you can’t depend on the results, whether you’re cooking, measuring medicines, or weighing yourself.  Escali scales are accurate and precise.  Check them out.

We took our pickup truck and a trailer to a lime pit and got a load of rocks to use in our landscaping.  We had to drive onto a large scale before we loaded and again, after we loaded, for them to determine how much we owed for the rocks.  We had about 2.6 tons of rocks on the trailer.  That may not seem like a lot, but when you’re unloading them by hand and placing them on the side of a bank, it takes a lot of time and effort.

Many items we need to weigh cannot be weighed in tons.  I’m happy to say that my bathroom scale does not have to be capable of weighing a ton.  Actually, most non-liquid ingredients in cooking and grocery shoopping are weighed in grams.  If you read the labels in the grocery store, you find how many grams of fat, protein, fiber, etc. are in the product.  Most standards and legal requirements for nutrition labels on food products require relative contents to be stated per 100 grams of the product, thus it can also be read as a percentage.  One ounce (avoirdupois) is equal to 28.349523125 grams.  These small increments cannot be determined unless you have a gram scale.  www.holladaypartners.com offers a variety of scales, many of which can be used to weigh grams.  Choose the scale that meets your needs.

At an Advisory Committee meeting today with the local school system, the discussion centered around the idea that each child is different and learns at his/her own level.  The question was asked if it harmed a child to send him/her to the next grade level, if he had not mastered all the skills at the present grade level.  Of course, opinion varied because, not only are children different, but adults are, too.

This certainly holds true in our homes as well.  One child may enjoy working and playing outside, while another may delight in helping in the house, especially the kitchen.  A cooking scale can be used to help children learn measurements, as well as baking, and the child and parent or grandparent will be forming a special bond at the same time.  Kitchen scales come in many styles, sizes and colors to match any decor.  Invest in your child’s life.  It will pay great dividends!

I have attended three graduations this weekend and have another one Tuesday evening.  Graduations are milestones, not indicating the end, but a new beginning.  I’m sure that most people involved in these ceremonies have some dreams for their future that could not be achieved without this milestone.  Graduation simply indicates building blocks upon which the rest of our lives can be constructed.  Some of our dreams may not be entirely realistic.  However, nothing will be achieved if we don’t dream and try to fulfill that dream by putting our best foot forward.  Pesistence, hard work, and imagination can often make dreams come true that are almost unbelieveable. 

These principles are true in the everyday part of our lives.  For example, if I’m unhappy with my health, especially my weight, nothing will change without persistence, hard work, and imagination.  I need to imagine the body I want, then use persistence and hard work to research the proper diet and exercise program.  By purchasing a nutritional scale, I can determine amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrates, sodium, cholesterol, fiber, etc. in up to 999 food items that have been preprogrammed into the scale.  The scale is another building block to help me reach my goal.

We took our cat and chihuahua to the vet this morning for their annual check-up.  That’s always a lot of fun.  The cat is an indoor/outdoor cat that weighs almost 11 pounds and still has his claws.  We have to put him in a pet carrier and the vet has to be extremely quick to avoid those claws.  The chihuahua wants to see everyone, especially all the cats and dogs that come in while we wait, and he always manages to use the vet’s floor for a bathroom before I can stop him.  I guess he’s marking his territory.  Life is fun, isn’t it?

I’m always amazed at how proficient the vet and her staff are with these animals, and the love they show toward them.  Love goes a long way sometimes, toward getting cooperation.  They sat each of these animals on the scale and managed to weigh them without any fuss.  They gave both of them shots, and neither of them even whined.  The cat started getting a little antsy after that, but they had him back in the pet carrier before he could do any damage.  The chihuahua was still in a good mood when it was all over.  It’s nice to work with true professionals.

Family ties don’t seem to be as strong as they were in the past.  There are many contributing factors:  divorce and remarriage with exes fighting and conniving, while using the children to get the best of their other parent; televisioon, video games, and cell phones, which keep us so preoccupied we have no time to actually get involved in each other’s lives; and jobs that require unusual working hours, traveling away from home or moving to a different location. (to name a few)  It’s sad when families get separated or are at odds with each other.  Having a strong connection with family members gives a stability that is hard to find otherwise.

Family members can support us in our effort to change to a healthier lifestyle.  If we have a good kitchen scale to weigh our food portions, and are trying to eat more healthy foods, other family members that really care will avoid bringing tempting junk food into the house.  They will encourage us by telling us they can see our improvement, and cheer us along the way to our goal.  If our own family has somewhat deteriorated, at least we can strive to give our children the supportive family atmosphere.

Happy Mothers’ Day to happy mothers!  Sometimes our holiday traditions bring sad feelings mixed in with the happy memories.  Some have recently lost their mothers, some mothers have lost a child, and some children from divorced homes are missing their homes they once enjoyed.  Our traditions seem to make the sad feelings intensify.  I guess, it’s all in attitude.  Some folks want to sit around and mope and think about how sad they are, while others want to change the tradition and try to move on with life into other areas.  The grief process is never easy, but our attitude can help us with it or make it worse for us.

The same can hold true for weight problems.  If we can get our attitude right, we can concentrate on being healthy–eating the right foods in the right amounts, exercising, resting, etc.  If, on the other hand, our attitude concentrates on how pitiful it is that we are overweight, we find ourselves snacking on unhealthy foods, moping around without exercising, not sleeping and gaining more weight.  A spring scale can have a nostalgic look that reminds us of happier days.  It can bring back pleasant memories while serving the purpose of weighing our food portions before placing them on our plate.  With the right attitude, we can get our weight problem under control and enjoy many more traditions and make a lot of happy memories for our children and grandchildren.   

New research is showing that losing a job can lead to health problems, as well as financial woes.  White or blue collar workers who lost a job through workplace closure were found to increase by 54% in the likelihood of reporting fair or poor health, and increased their odds of developing a new health condition by 83% when they had no preexisting health problems.  High blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, heart attack and stroke were found to be on the increase among these out-of-work people.

Based on these findings, it tells all of us that we need to develop a healthy lifestyle to prepare ourselves for any kind of disaster.  A healthy person is more likely to be able to deal with these setbacks without being completely devestated by financial problems, plus new medical problems that produce more financial problems because of increased medical bills.  A spring scale is very inexpensive and can help in the kitchen with measuring ingredients, as well as measuring food portions before they are placed on the plate.  It seems a lot easier to resist second helpings of food than to leave food on the plate.  Eating too much food produces excess weight!  We all know this to be true!  Extra food is stored as fat in the body, and that fat seems to feel right at home and doesn’t want to leave.  Get those kitchen scales today and get started toward a healthier lifestyle.  You’ll be glad you did!

Sometimes, it seems we just can’t be everywhere we need to be.  Tomorrow, my husband and I each have a first cousin’s funeral to attend at the exact same time in towns that are 20 miles apart.  It looks like we’ll have to go our separate ways in order to honor both cousins and their families. Life gets complicated at times.  Maybe that is why our world has become so portable.  We can take whatever we need with us as we hit the road–even scales.  A handheld scale that will fit into our pocket or purse can be used wherever we are to measure our food portions.  Sometimes, our “eyes are bigger than our stomach” as we fill our plate, and we take out too much food, then feel obligated to empty our plate.  This little portable scale can help prevent this situation, and keep us on our eating plan regardless of our location.  Life is complicated at times, but modern conveniences can help.