Dieticians of Canada (DC) has “Advice for the general public about COVID-19.

“Updated May 5, 2020 – The advice below is reviewed and updated regularly since it’s original publication on March 24. DC is keeping a close watch on new and emerging information. […]

“What can I do to support my immune system?

“A healthy diet rich in fruit and vegetables, protein foods and whole grains is important for a strong immune system as are other healthy lifestyle habits (e.g exercise, not smoking, adequate sleep, managing stress etc). […]

“It is easier on the supply chain if people gradually build up their household stores instead of making large-scale purchases all at once. To do this, you can add a few extra items to your grocery cart every time you shop. Good options are easy-to-prepare foods like:

• dried pasta and canned sauce
• prepared canned soups
• canned or frozen vegetables
• canned beans (like chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils).”

They also recommend people follow the Canada Food Guide, of course.

Here’s some “new and emerging information,” from Obesity Canada:

“Cardiac, respiratory and metabolic diseases (such as diabetes and hypertension) are more common among patients with obesity. These have been identified as risk factors for more severe disease or death from COVID-19. It is critical that people living with obesity, and especially people with a BMI over 40, take all possible precautions to avoid infection.”

The Globe and Mail says, two days ago: “Obesity may be a risk factor for COVID-19, researchers find. Fat cells may promote inflammation or make it more difficult for infected patients to breathe.”

“Carrying extra fat “stresses the body and makes it harder to do stuff. But we’re learning the fat itself is biochemically active,” said David Kass, a professor of cardiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“Dr. Kass explained the kind of fat that forms in your abdomen produces signalling molecules called cytokines that promote inflammation, part of the body’s immune response. The effect, he said, is like having an intrinsic cellular war constantly going on in the background. An infection of the new coronavirus is like dropping a bomb on top of it all, he said. […]

“Dr. Kass said part of the issue may be mechanical. Having more fat mass in your abdomen can make it harder to move your diaphragm, thus making it harder to breathe. Another potential explanation is that fat cells may act like a depot or reservoir for the new coronavirus, which is known to bind to protein targets called ACE2, he added. These proteins are highly expressed, or deposited, on fat cells, he said.”

Three days ago, the BBC resported:  “Is there evidence obesity is a risk for the virus?

“This question has been the subject of many studies as experts try to work out the answer.

• In a study of nearly 17,000 hospital patients with Covid-19 in the UK, those who were obese – with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 – had a 33% greater risk of dying than those who were not obese.
• A separate study of NHS electronic health records found a doubling of the risk of dying from Covid-19 among people who were obese. If other health conditions linked to obesity such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes were also taken into account the risk would be even higher, the researchers said.
• And a study of critically ill patients in UK intensive care units found that nearly 34.5% were overweight, 31.5% were obese and 7% morbidly obese (a total of 73%), compared to 26% with a healthy BMI.”

But go ahead and stock up on “healthy whole grains” (like Hershey’s Kisses cereal with whole grain corn?) and pasta.

References

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52561757

https://www.dietitians.ca/News/2020/Advice-for-the-general-public-about-COVID-19

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-obesity-may-be-a-risk-factor-for-covid-19-researchers-find/?fbclid=IwAR10buk4H3RZHloP_-EJM8A5tNci6OhWC-l-HcYMQXFV3HqLAj9ztAqm00U

and http://obesitycanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Obesity-and-COVID-19-FINAL-april-2.pdf

The website imdb.com gives us the synopsis of Rear Window (1954). “Professional photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race. Confined to his New York apartment, he spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbors. He begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife. Jeff enlists the help of his high society fashion-consultant girlfriend Lisa Freemont and his visiting nurse Stella to investigate.”

It was hot weather: one couple slept outside on their balcony, a young woman sunbathes in the rear courtyard, a cute little dog is lowered in a basket on a rope.

Now that it has warmed up here, I see the across-the-street neighbours visiting with their daughter and granddaughters six feet away. The backdoor neighbour is painting an elaborate wooden headboard, or maybe it’s a shelf – I don’t have Jeff’s arsenal of long-distance lenses, so I can’t be sure. On our walks in the quiet streets we look judgmentally at a half-dozen cars parked at a small house. “Alberta license plate,” hubby comments, to which I reply with a stern, annoyed Marge Simpson “Hrrrm.”

A friendly guy named Steve doing yard work warns a neighbour kid to get out of the tree –- the owner is driving up. A neighbour whose hours of work have been halved is selling his Subaru — $43,000 and equipped with a 5,000 pound tow-bar, not that anyone is going camping anytime soon.

A toddler who is accustomed with visiting with his grandparents through the front window gleefully bangs on the back window when he sees me, and keeps going until I stop what I’m doing and wave. It is normal to see one woman in a car with an open window in the driveway, and another sitting on a lawnchair six feet away.

A person who is trying to de-thatch his front yard (way too early in the season) starts up a conversation, and we suspect he lives alone and just needs to talk to some people. Probably wants to get some Vitamin D, like we do. Young women prefer back porches for scrolling endlessly on their phones.

More to come, I’m afraid. Will update as I learn more.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/

Part 1: What my crows like

I have a backyard flock, which is allowed, but usually around here they are chickens. I believe it is allowed to have two or three egg-layers, and people are trying to get rid of the roosters who crow contrary to the bylaws.

My free tree, a red maple, was large enough to attract squirrels a few years ago, as they could jump from across the street, where the mother maple lived.  But this year we got a family of crows.

Instead of scolding squirrels telling us to get out of their territory, this spring we got a family of four babies and two adult crows.  They talk to us as well. The parents say, “Caw, caw, caw, Wup!”

So I started saying “Wup!” in response.  Hubby went in to get his camera, and the parents and I were exchanging “Wups”” when he came back out. “Are you talking to them now?” he asked, and I said “Wup!”

Our city also has a new recycling protocol, where you divide garbage into cardboard/hard plastic, organics, and other. I decided to give the crow family the first go at the organics, in a place where our yard was denuded due to a recent renovation. A blank slate, no grass growing.

They like meat: ham, steak, chicken (no bones).  They do not like kale, red cabbage, or peas.  They like BBQd steak and baked potatoes with sour cream.

I had always wondered why crows jumped up to our eavestrough to look for food. Hubby said, “Maybe they are eating worms they dropped earlier.” That seemed unlikely to me.

The first time I left some yummy meat for my backyard flock, I saw a parent chase away the kids, then bring the food up to my neighbour’s new backyard evestrough and call the kids up to the roof to eat. Using it as a bowl, and safe.

The kids showed their red throats, Wup.

Part 2: The free tree

Late in summer, the free tree, which is growing beside/through the back fence grew large enough to buckle the fence and left a small gap, maybe four inches wide.

Part 3: The Russian Blue

In the fall, I kept feeding the crow family as I saw other crows nearby. Hubby and I had not seen them in the yard for a while. I Googled “crows, northwest BC” and saw that we live right on the border where some crows migrate and others overwinter.

Then one evening I saw a cat’s glowing eyes at the crow feast location. After the first snow, we could see the cat footprints were coming from the gap in the fence. It got cold, and I set up a cat carrier with blankets, then moved it to under the shed roof, then into a sheltered spot right beside the house.

Google to the rescue when I asked for “outdoor chicken warmer;” an image of a happy rabbit sitting on a warming pad appeared.

We set up a motion-activated trail cam and saw Outdoor Cat (aka Blue) resting on the warming pad, playing with the toy mouse on a string, and drinking from the outdoor heated watering bowl. And eating.

At first, fifteen feet was as close as Outdoor Cat could tolerate before streaking off.  As spring approached, he would get as close as five feet to glare at us if the bowl was empty. I think he knew the squeaky sound of the back door meant the food-providers were nearby. Sometimes he would appear three times a day, other times only once in three days.

Our trail cam then showed us Outdoor Cat, Dusty (our cat) a Stripey cat (WHO IS THAT?) and then not one but three different tuxedo (black and white cats) visiting.  All right, we will only put a small amount out after he shows himself to us, and that is working well.

A few days ago, walking through our deserted neighbourhood, we saw him two blocks away, slinking from one back yard to another, across the quiet street. “Where is your other house?” we demanded to know, but he vanished into the shrubbery.

Wesley Peters writes in the March 27, 2020 issue of Steinbach Online: “A former microbiologist and Steinbach resident, Dr. Glen Klassen, conducted research on the pandemic back in 2008 at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. […] What he found, he says, was startling. ‘The death rates for Mennonites were pretty well double the death rates of non-Mennonites.’

“Klassen goes on to explain how some of the different socializing patterns Mennonites engaged in potentially played a role in those disproportionate numbers. ‘If you were in a French Catholic parish, you would probably go to the same church every Sunday and meet the same people. The Mennonites were different. They had a moveable church service. One week it would be in Kleefeld, and the next week it would be in Blumenort.’

“Mennonites were not only meeting for church services says Klassen, but also socializing at pig slaughter parties and faspa. ‘I haven’t proven this, but it’s my hunch that this kind of accelerated order of extreme socializing had something to do with it’.”

If you read my blog post “Play with your food,” you would be familiar with pig slaughter parties:

“Of all the cast-off parts, I loved the bladder best. My mother washed it off in clean water, tied off the ureter with a double knot, and tossed it to me. […] Kid to kid, we hurled the bladder as hard as we could huck it, in hopes it would splatter and spill its pee on someone. No luck.”

“That’s from Carla Funk’s story ‘Butchering Day,’ or, in Low German, Schwein schlachter. Before the pigs’ heads were simmered, the “eyeballs had already been cut out and given to us to play with, our fingers working the stiffened lids and long lashes to make them blink like our own eyes.”

“If you had land just outside of town, with room for a logging truck and a garage and shed or two, why wouldn’t you raise pigs? Grandparents, bachelor uncles, extended family and children came together one Saturday every fall, using every bit of the animal possible. Shot, scalded, scraped, organ meats inspected, then the pig was  broken down into chops, roasts, ham and ribs. Boiled heads were for headcheese, Grandma using her sharpened paring knife to get “every scrap and shred of flesh and fat, […] every edible fleck found on that cooked skull.  She’d mix the meat together with some of the hocks, adding salt, pepper, and spices, then let it set in pans like a jelly until firm and ready to slice.”

Now, Faspa:  John Loghurst wrote in the Winnipeg Free Press on March 27, 2020 quoting Klassen. “Added to this was the “constant visiting between relatives from many locales,” such as Sunday faspa, a late afternoon lunch and visit held after church in various homes. They were ‘promiscuous in their socializing,” Klassen said of how the desire to maintain community contributed to the spread of the flu virus’.”

The Mennonite Heritage Cookbook (2007) explains: “Faspa meant the gathering of family and friends, usually at 4 p.m. Sunday, for a light meal and fellowship, with an emphasis on fellowship.  The meal always included zwieback, coffee and might also include cheese, cold cuts, and jelly.” Finger foods. Pass the zweibach.

The Taste of Home website says, “When Mother baked zweiback rolls—which means “twice baked”—she’d guard them, lest they disappear quickly! She would bake them on Sundays when friends came by for ‘faspa,’ a meal of cold meat, cheese, jelly and coffee.”

These are my peeps.  They travelled to East Reserve, Rural Municipality of Hanover (now Steinbach, Manitoba) in 1874, from Prussia/Russia because they were promised religious freedom, to be allowed to teach their children and hold church services in Low German, build their houses or house barns in a many-streeted village, with a shared pasture across the main road.  But the Great War made governments nervous about newcomers speaking “enemy” languages.

Vanessa Quiring writes in her master’s thesis about the broader cultural forces: “Government regulations created hesitancy and wariness amongst the Mennonites in matters related to public health. Government press censorship, conflict over education and schooling, the appointment of health officers and bans on meetings and church services all created tension, and arguably contributed to the distinctly higher mortality rate amongst the Mennonites of Hanover.”

The local newspaper was forced to switch to English, which a third of the population couldn’t read. There were few trained medical practitioners, with midwives also acting as traditional remedy dispensers and as undertakers, travelling from village to village, house to house, dead, ill and well.  Attending funerals in large numbers. Care for the ailing depended on family, neighbours, and community, including the church.

I am very glad my relatives were shunned from the church in 1898, and we became urban entrepreneurs and tradespeople, not church-going farmers.

References

Longhurst, J. (2020.) “Century-old lessons echo for retired scientist.”From https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/coronavirus/century-old-lessons-echo-for-retired-scientist-569152512.html

Mennonite Heritage Museum cookbook “From Pluma Moos to Pie.” 1st edition 1981 and revised in 2007 at https://www.goesselmuseum.com/what-is-faspa-

Peters, W. (2020.) “Why Mennonite Death Rate Was Double Average During Spanish Flu.” From https://steinbachonline.com/local/why-mennonite-death-rate-was-double-average-during-spanish-flu?fbclid=IwAR0THqWTH1n0QtNbJU5xQZl1lnCNKIEHMsiDHUW0hq4TbsSzQYdown6gVpY#.Xn6q2nDDoPE.facebook

Taste of home. (n.d.) Recipe here: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/grandma-s-zwieback-rolls/

Toews, C. “Hangry February 21, 2020. Play with your food.” At https://charcancookketo.food.blog/2020/02/17/hangry-february-16-2020-play-with-your-food/

Quiring, V. (2015.) “Mennonites, community and disease: Mennonite Diaspora and responses to the 1918- 1920 influenza in Hanover, Manitoba.” At https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/bitstream/handle/1993/30724/quiring_vanessa.pdf?sequence=1

On the day Trump got elected, my hubby started a Trump Box and gradually filled up our cellar with bottled water and canned goods. Now that COVID-19 is scaring us here in my northern town, we see that Toilet Paper is the mainstay of Panic Shoppers.

The following are excerpts from social media.

March 14

Terrace succumbing to media induced panic buying. Ridiculous! TP and Rice, what else ya’ll going to hoard?

March 15

My husband and I are Elders and we were out shopping at Wholesale on Saturday afternoon, it was sad to see the empty shelves. What made us feel even sadder was seniors coming in with their baskets, looking around, stuff they needed were gone. Felt so bad for them, putting their baskets back and walking out of the store. Please people take what you need and leave the rest!

March 16

Went to buy flour but it was all gone!

Yup pasta and rice were gone.

March 18

It’s not a good thing when half of us can’t get toilet paper, rice, noodles, flour, hand sanitizer, basic things because people are hoarding them! I can’t find toilet paper everyday and soon I won’t have any!

March 19

Just a warning to those families expecting to do a huge shop as you normally do on child tax day, like myself and haven’t been able to, specific food like meat, potatoes, boxed pizza etc., is now being limited to 1 item per person Save on had started it and most likely all stores will follow suit. We know why this is happening now.

Fam of ten here I have 8 kids and I’m having a hard time getting meats when I go check stores all the meats are gone I’m just praying for a miracle right now this sux but trying keep my chin up n believe this will pass quickly.

Just came from Safeway. Low on fresh produce like potatoes, cabbage, carrots, head lettuce, onions, lemons, salad fixings. But lots of TP. And low on bread

March 20

Save on foods, lil meat left n there’s no eggs left other then those small lil ones in the corner.

The meat guy told me I had to put one of my chicken packs back, when all I had was 1 pk chicken thighs, 2 pk chicken breasts. He said we are only allowed one of each. First time I’m able to get anything. Shelves were so bare. Superstore meats was wiped right out too.

I went for my normal every 4 month grocery shop. I live out of town and only do a mega shop every few months. I only got a few things as i did not want to be seen as “that” person … even then i felt like a person hoarding … could not get any meat as the place was cleaned out and the only pack of meat on the shelf was $50 for 2 steaks !!!!!

I went to Walmart last night and at that time the only areas wiped out were meats, potatoes were gone and canned goods were low. I was surprised to see the milk section full and the freezer sections had quite a bit left. Lots of sandwich meats , hot dogs and bacon. And the funniest thing to me was how full the produce section was when healthy foods is what we should be eating right now!!

Go first thing in the morning when everything is freshly stocked. Otherwise the meat section and I think bread runs out. And toilet paper, but fresh fruits and vegetables are full up and most other section. Might have to look for stuff like potatoes, but trucks are always coming in. Check Superstore too.

They are doing a great job at restocking at Wholesale. We went tonight at 6pm and we got everything we needed except toilet paper, rice and diapers.

I tried to get yeast to use my bread maker couldn’t find any, yet another lady had 4 jars in her cart. I would have only taken 1, no matter what…

March 21, 2020

It took me 4 days to find flour.

I load up monthly for household of 7 sometimes 9 and yesterday was just awful shopping couldn’t get usual stuff needed.

(The photo is from a local supermarket this afternoon – no paper towels, no TP.)

Simmering and braising bone-in short ribs in bone broth feeds your expensive brain, helps maintain insulin sensitivity, and you don’t need a hammer stone to get at the bone marrow.

Jess Thompson talks about Pliocene-era “Lucy” and argues that Lucy was not wanting meat, but wanting fat, specifically marrow bone. (Using a hammer stone to smash bone marrow, not a flake stone to cut meat.) A pounding tool to get at the good stuff, to smash open marrow.

The University of Chicago Press headlines their press release about the study: “Humans may have emerged from scavenging big game, eating brains and marrow.”

“In ‘Origins of the human predatory pattern: The transition to large animal exploitation by early hominins,’ published in the February 2019 issue of Current Anthropology, Jessica C. Thompson, Susana Carvalho, Curtis W. Marean, and Zeresenay Alemseged challenge the longstanding paradigm in anthropology that stone tools and meat-eating directly preceded the emergence of humans, arguing that our existence may instead be owed to our earlier ancestors consuming brains and marrow as they scavenged big game.

“We offer a new and testable hypothesis that simple hammering tools sparked our involvement with large-bodied prey more than 3.2 million years ago – by unlocking the fat stored within their bones,” Thompson writes.”
[…]
“Drawing from the most up-to-date archaeological data as well as chimpanzee ecology, Thompson and her co-authors offer a new theory about big game consumption among humans’ closest ancestors. They propose that their earliest encounters eating large game were not reliant on knife-like “flake stone” tools, nor were they eating much, or any, meat off bones. Instead, they consumed large animals as scavengers of the parts other scavengers couldn’t easily access, eating inside-bone nutrients — marrow and brains — by breaking through bones with percussive tools.

“Large animals, with their easily digestible and calorically rich fat and protein, are thought to have been partly responsible for humans evolving larger brains and bodies than other primates. Brains and marrow are the fattiest body parts on lean wild game and are the precursor to fatty acids important to eye and brain development. This is an important factor, Thompson writes, when weighing the costs and benefits of meat-eating versus inside-bone eating in East Africa 3.5 million years ago. She also notes that inside-bone nutrients take much longer than outside-bone nutrients do to rot. “This undoubtedly extended the amount of time it persisted in a fresh state, thus increasing encounter rates relative to edible flesh and decreasing risk from carnivores that remain near fresher kills,” she writes.”

The University of Michigan Health System says, “Bone marrow fat tissue secretes hormone that helps body stay healthy.”

“It has been known for its flavorful addition to soups and as a delicacy for dogs but bone marrow fat may also have untapped health benefits, new research finds. Researchers find that with calorie restriction, a less-studied fat tissue releases adiponectin, which is linked to reduced risk of diseases like diabetes.
[…]
“A University of Michigan-led study shows that the fat tissue in bone marrow is a significant source of the hormone adiponectin, which helps maintain insulin sensitivity, break down fat, and has been linked to decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity-associated cancers. The findings appear in today’s online-ahead-of-print issue of Cell Metabolism.”

References
The University of Chicago Press. (2019.) From

Thompson, J. (2019.) “Fat of the land: What ancient bones tell us about the origin of the human diet | Jess Thompson ASU Jan 18, 2019
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSCV_XFcVPU

University of Michigan Health System. (2014.) From From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140703125216.htm

Recipe

I’ve adapted a recipe from https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/red-wine-braised-shortribs-367736

Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs / Christopher Testani

YIELD Makes 6 servings

INGREDIENTS

5 pound bone-in beef short ribs, cut crosswise into 2″ pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil [make it olive oil, tallow or lard]
3 medium onions, chopped [I used half an onion]
3 medium carrots, peeled, chopped [I used 1.5 carrots]
2 celery stalks, chopped [I used one]
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour [not needed, don’t use it]
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 750-milliliter bottle dry red wine (preferably Cabernet Sauvignon) [save a glass for yourself!]
10 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
8 sprigs thyme
4 sprigs oregano
2 sprigs rosemary
2 fresh or dried bay leaves
1 head of garlic, halved crosswise
[I didn’t use herbs, it’s flavourful enough with out them]
4 cups low-salt beef stock [use home-made or store-bought bone broth instead]

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350°F. Season short ribs with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in 2 batches, brown short ribs on all sides, about 8 minutes per batch. Transfer short ribs to a plate. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons drippings from pot. [no, don’t pour off healthy fats that keep your insulin sensitive]

Add onions, carrots, and celery to pot and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often, until onions are browned, about 5 minutes. Add flour [no flour, it’s yucky] and tomato paste; cook, stirring constantly, until well combined and deep red, 2-3 minutes. Stir in wine, then add short ribs with any accumulated juices. Bring to a boil; lower heat to medium and simmer until wine is reduced by half, about 25 minutes. Add all herbs to pot along with garlic. Stir in stock. Bring to a boil, cover, and transfer to oven.

Cook until short ribs are tender, 2-2 1/2 hours. Transfer short ribs to a platter. Strain sauce from pot into a measuring cup. Spoon fat from surface of sauce and discard [do not discard brain-building fats!]; season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Serve in shallow bowls over mashed potatoes [no spuds required] with sauce spooned over.

Cooks’ note:
To test if the ribs are done, pull on a bone. It should slide out freely.