Tuesday Toys: For the Kitchen

Yesterday I went to the town fair.  In the center of town several streets had been blocked off.  There were many booths of all kinds. I went mainly for the "health street" to see what new tidbits I could pick up that might get me on the straight and narrow permanently.  Hope springs eternal, you know...!

Another reason I went was because I could take the train into town and avoid trying to park somewhere, lose the car, get lost myself, etc etc.  It was an adventure to ride the train.  The stop I needed was about a block from the first street. Very handy.

After walking around in the blazing sun, with no hat, and no water bottle I finally found the health street.  My blood pressure was checked.  OK. My blood sugar was checked.  Not OK.  My blood cholesterol was checked.  Really not OK.  Fortunately there were no more things to be tested...!

After walking around some more I found a tent that had a water wall in it and misting water all around the top of the tent.  There were triangular paper cups which I filled with water and drank deeply.  I had my wooden walking sticks with me and people looked at me peculiarly for some reason, but the sticks gave me the confidence to do all the walking I wanted to do.  More than 11,000 steps, my best day in months.

There was a Chinese acupuncture booth that I saw as I was walking by.  The man there invited me in and said he could do a free diagnosis, so I went in and sat down.  He looked at my tongue and told me I have poor sleep.  Yep.  He looked at both ears, one at a time and told me I had tinnitus. Yep.  Then he told me I have inflammation. Yep.  After that he told me one other thing I did not want to hear, so I am putting that idea on hold for now.  Perhaps I will go see him at some point before we leave, but after I have given the other health initiatives a good try.  If I do two new things at once I won't know that acupuncture actually works, rather than the other healthy living things.

As I was leaving the fair I smelled fresh garlic and walked over to a tent where a woman was grating garlic in a plate!  So surprising.  It looked very interesting.  Always up for a new kitchen tool, I purchased one of the grate plates.  Today I used it for both garlic and jalapeño.  It did work.  It will work better when I am using fresher garlic, though, I feel sure.  These garlic cloves broke in half from age, I think.

This is obviously the jalapeño.  It is not a very good advertisement for the Grate Plate because of inexperience. If you go to the website you will see lovely silken grating.  I think I like this toy.