S3 E44 Tuesday Night Two-fer

It's Tuesday and we got double trouble with this fun little two-fer on cookbooks!

Check out the website! www.ComfortingVoice.com

See Emmy the MIni Macaw on her youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@voiceoftheparrot

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Good evening and welcome to the Comforting Voice podcast. I'm your host, Shasta Ray, and I'm joined in the studio tonight by Murray and Baxter, the cockatiels. They are getting into trouble already. I tried to get them distracted with some bird seed and things to do. I like to try to make them think they're getting into trouble and being naughty, right? I try to give them stuff that's forbidden, so they think. They're still too smart for that. They still plague me and stick to me, and they don't let me work. So we'll see if it transfers off onto the podcast. It could get comical. Their characters, as you can hear, they just said chirp. Each of them just said chirp. I taught them how to say the word chirp, and these two will literally just sit there and say chirp to each other, like they're having a conversation. It's really funny. I have yet to actually get it on video, so I'll have to make an effort to try doing that sometime. Like I always say, it's never a dull moment when you have a pet bird, and I've got seven. No wonder I'm tired. Wow. Okay, what are we doing? Oh yeah, we're here to escape the chaos of the world. So that means we need to engage in our sleep prep. So are you settled in yet? Are you comfortable? Are you kicked back with your feet up? Are you ready to go to sleep? Are you in bed? Okay, make sure you've got everything you need at your fingertips, just like I always say. If you need a cold bottle of water, maybe you need a weighted blanket or extra pillow, whatever you need. Make sure your listening device is set at that perfect volume so you don't have to fidget with it. And while I'm doing the initial chit-chat at the beginning of every episode, that's where you can really get settled in and take care of all that. Cause I'm really not talking about anything critical at this point. So do all your stuff, get into that perfect relaxation pose, whatever that is, flat on your back, curled up on your side, whatever it is. And then when you're ready, engage in a really, really good stretch. Just really reach into your arms and legs, your fingers, your toes, and wiggle your fingers and toes right at the very end, and then let go of that stretch and let all of your muscles, your whole body just go into that whole relaxation mode really quick. I love it because you can feel it instantly. It's wonderful. And then right after, follow it up with a deep, productive breath of air. Inhale to about the count of four, hold it to about the count of three, take another quick inhale to top it off, and then hold it another count or two and exhale slowly to about the count of six or eight, and that's gonna kick off your good night's sleep even more, or if you're just trying to shrug off some stress in the moment. It's amazing. You can do both of those, cycle through them, trade them back and forth, see what works for you, get your pattern down, and then you can use that every night when you go to bed, when you're ready to drift off to sleep. There you go. Cost you nothing. And Baxter is on my head now. Okay. We've got a really good episode lined up for you tonight. It's the first Tuesday of the month, you know what that means, and we got some great content. I've got a cookbook review, and since I'm getting a couple of my bird customers, we're gonna follow it up with a bonus cookbook review for the bird lovers out there that have pet birds. And I've got a great recommendation for you. And the rest of you might get a kick out of it. Okay, now I originally thought I was gonna bring Emmy the Mini Macaw down here, but I'd played with her a lot today and she sat and helped me work, and she was just such the good bird. She probably spent several hours with me while I was trying to do some stuff with my job. So I just put her in the bird room, and I just kind of figured it it might be time for Murray and Baxter to hang out with us, so here we are. But I already did the tea tag draw because of the danger factor with the mini macaw. So we've got your tea tag and your fortune cookie slip right here, and we're gonna start off with the tea tag. Life without love is a ship without sails. And your fortune cookie slip. You will travel to many exotic places. That's kind of neat. Okay, your lucky numbers off of the back of the fortune cookie slip seven, fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-four, thirty-seven, and forty-six. Good luck if you play number games or the lottery. And if you don't, I hope you were mildly amused. Okay. What have you guys been up to? Let's take a look at the next three countries on our listener base list for join the fun. And for anybody new to the podcast, join the fun. I do this every Tuesday. We take a look at three new countries from our listener base list. We've been doing this for a while. We've got a few left to go. And then just as a little teaser for next week, make sure you subscribe so you get notifications. You don't want to miss next Tuesday. We're gonna have a very, very special join the fun that's very unique. And um, yeah, you don't want to miss it. That's all I'm gonna say. I want you to have some suspense going on with that. Okay, so this week's join the fun is just our typical three listener base countries randomly selected from our listener base list, and we're gonna start off with Mongolia. Mongolia is home to the world's largest statue of a person on horseback, the towering Genghis Khan statue, or is it Genghis Khan? I found both pronunciations. Here in the United States we tend to say Genghis Khan, and I think that's because of the spelling, but I ran into a number of pronunciations that's Genghis Khan. Okay, so that statue stands about 130 feet tall, which is enormous. That's impressive. Mongolia has one of the lowest population densities on Earth, giving its vast grasslands an incredible sense of openness and sky. Mongolia still celebrates the ancient tradition of eagle hunting, and that's where trained golden eagles work alongside their human partners. It's like falconry on steroids. I would love to see that in action. So if you're joining the fun from Mongolia, you represent freedom, partnership, and the spirit of wide open possibilities. Next on our list is Belgium. Belgium has more castles per square mile than almost any other country in the world. Belgium is home to the headquarters of the European Union and plays a central role in bringing many nations together. Belgium produces hundreds of varieties of beer, with many recipes carefully preserved for generations. So if you're joining the fun from Belgium, you represent connection, remarkable variety, and a country where history and community continue to flourish. And last for our join the fun this week is Tanzania. Tanzania is home to Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa and the world's tallest freestanding mountain. Tanzania is home to Oldovi Gorge, one of the world's most important archaeological sites where some of the earliest evidence of ancient human ancestors were discovered. And Tanzania is home to the Serengeti, where millions of wildebeest and zebras take part in one of the largest wildlife migrations on Earth. So if you're joining the fun from Tanzania, you represent discovery, extraordinary journeys, and a country that reminds us both of where humanity began and how incredible our natural world can be. That's so fun. And that's why I call it Join the Fun. Like I said, we're going to have a very special edition of Join the Fun next week, so you don't want to miss it. And now, if you've got a minute, let's cut over to Lon for a very special edition of Got a Minute.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

The new me. Okay, we'll do this together. Got a little white noise in the background to maybe help out. You might want to try that too. I put a fan on in the distance, and what it does is it helps the brain unconsciously, subconsciously focus on that noise as opposed to any of the others around us. So it's just something to give a try if you're trying to relax. Today I want to talk about nutrition. My journey, for those that know, I allowed myself to get up to 368 pounds. Butterball would be a good description. Um, and at some point, basically, it became a health thing in speaking with doctors and nutritionists. I've always been one that wants to eat as well as I can, eat good product, uh rainbow on the plate, but I was awakened with issues of aphib, a heart murmur, uh possible atrial problems. So the journey started at that weight, and within about two years I ended up losing 184 pounds. Proof positive that it can be done. And in my case, it was without Ozempic or Wigovi or Golo. Golo, no, Golan. I became determined to do it, and I educated myself by turning products around. The biggest things that I learned was don't look at the marketing splash on the front of the box, look at the grid on the back of the box that describes proteins, carbs, fibers, sugars. Know that sugar is a beast. It is something that is affecting hearts across the globe, and the more we have, the worse our bodies respond to it. And be aware that sugars are in everything and the marketing side of it, they make it sound like it's a good thing. This has lower added sugar. Great. Turn the product around and see yes, but the whisper is it's got a lot more added corn syrup. Sugar. So just be aware. Anything ending in oce, glucose, sucrose, those are sugars and need to be controlled. We need to have certain amounts, so you break down that label and you learn what products are, learn what portions are. That was massive as well. A visual, a couple of pounds, a couple of pounds, couple of ounces of meat, fish, for example, is roughly the size of a deck of cards. The amount of carbs you should have on that plate is roughly the size of a large golf ball. The portion of vegetables and fibers and things you should have on that plate is roughly the size of a soft ball. Be aware, learn what sizes and portions look like and be very aware of how your body needs to respond. Some of us need more of this, some of us need less of that. I use a Carb Manager app that allows me to track my input, my exercise, my supplements, and you should check that out as well. The bottom line here, make your plate a rainbow. Be aware of sizes, portions, and what is in your food. Try and use as less processing as possible, least ingredients as possible, and we tend to lean omnivore. More veggie, less fats and meats. That doesn't apply to every single situation, but the bottom line is be aware, educate, and thrive.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

That was amazing, Lon. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, and it is perfect for our first Tuesday of the month, our ongoing New Year's resolutions that aren't resolutions. Project you do you, project embrace yourself, call it whatever you want. Make it positive. Jazz yourself up. Pick something that you want to improve in your life or about yourself and make it easy. Make it easy to do every day so that it becomes a new habit. And so that some area of your life is improved by that. And the whole theory is that we go through January with the whole New Year resolution thing, and we are done with it, failed, and miserably on to something else that's a bad habit forming by February, if not the second week of January, if we even get that far. So it's become this nationwide thing that we talk about it, hate it, don't do it, or fail at it. So my whole idea was don't fail. Make it fun, make it productive, make it easy for you to see your own progress and change going on, and make it something that motivates you to stick with it. So a couple of things I've been doing is ongoing efforts to eat better, ongoing efforts to maybe move a little bit more, and absolutely ongoing efforts to stay organized around the house and stay up on house cleaning, that sort of thing. When you've got seven birds and one giant dog, and you live in the state of Colorado where dust is just part of the atmosphere, it's really easy for everything to get away from you in a matter of like four minutes. It's incredible. So yeah, I've been just kind of working on a little bit of everything, a tiny effort every day. I'm just conscious of it. And some days you fail miserably. Some days are just you're just kicking butt every direction and you're you're succeeding and you're seeing progress and self, you're feeling good about it. And it should just be an ongoing effort that you're conscious of, and you just want to do it so that you are your best self at all times, in some way. Whatever that means to you, it can be completely different for each and every one of you out there. So do what's right for you and make it easy to embrace, right? Another one we do is the dreaded diet. So tonight we're gonna do another cookbook review. Yep, I've got a tried and true favorite, and for my bird lovers out there, I've got a bird cookbook for you. So let's jump in. I had to dig this out of a box and uh dust it off, and I thought, oh my gosh, this would be perfect, perfect for my ongoing um health improvement endeavors. And it falls right in line with what Lon talked about. Oh my gosh. So he had this amazing journey, and he's always making an effort day to day to eat right and like what he eats and embrace it so that he benefits from it, and uh his body's healthy for it. So this is my personal history with cookbooks. And when I was a kid, I loved to cook in the kitchen and learn stuff like that, and my mom was really not the best role model for this. Bless her little heart. Oh my gosh. So I'm not trying to make this into some weird sob story, but my mother had kind of had her own brand of emotional issues and some mental illness tossed in there. She never really got any help or diagnosed or anything, and she had some emotional trauma early in life. So I just don't know where the lines are on that, on any of that. But unfortunately, it did come out in her personality, and I never had a very healthy relationship with her. She was also never particularly um adept, shall we say, at cooking and nutrition. So I had to very much learn how to eat vegetables and salads and stuff like that after I hit young adulthood into adulthood on to now. I learned some very, very bad habits early in life. And I'm not really blaming my mom. Maybe she never knew any different, right? But she did one awesome, awesome thing, and that was the fact that she recognized the fact I like to try to cook, I like to find favorite recipes, I would find one food and latch onto it, I'd learn how to make it, no matter how simple it was, and I would just make it all the time. And then in high school, I loved my foods class teacher, and at one point in time I actually wanted to maybe consider being a foods class teacher myself, and there weren't any colleges or anything I could go to, so it just never panned out. But for my graduation present, my mother gave me a cookbook. And the thoughtful part about this is in my foods class, and I always wish I would have stolen one, I really do. Um, they had this textbook that was the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but it had a lot of how to, like if you go to the grocery store and buy uh and buy a whole chicken, how to cut it up to make the parts, you know, the right size, useful, where to cut it. Just basic information, how to do basic stuff, measurements, anything you would expect in a foods class textbook, but it was a cookbook, and I loved it. And I think I actually borrowed one for a while, and that's how my mom figured out what to get me. And this was the Better Homes and Gardens new cookbook, which I think is now on its 13th edition, maybe. I graduated high school in 1986, so yeah, I'm 58 years old. I've mentioned that before. No shame in age, it's just a number. But this has served me, and somehow, I don't know how, it is one of the objects from my technically childhood that I've kept a hold of. And okay, so I'm gonna go down the um the contents so you can see how vast this is and why it served me so well. The inside of the cover has um broiling, like so. If you want to just broil a steak or something, it has information right there, quick. Uh, weights and measurements, internal temperature of meat when you remove it from the oven, how to make a basic white sauce, how to make a basic pie crust, just on the inside cover. And then on the back cover inside there's emergency substitutions, ingredient equivalents, and just nice little organized charts on all that. I've never found a cookbook like this, but I don't collect them extensively either. So back to the contents. I'm just gonna run down it so you understand all the goodness there is to be had in this. Nutrition analysis, appetizers and snacks, barbecue beverages, breads, cakes, candy, canning, cookies, desserts, eggs and cheese, fish and seafood, meat, pies, poultry, rice, pasta, and cereal, salads and salad dressings, sauces and relishes, soups and stews or vegetables are a special help, and the index. And this is what's really funny to me about this. Cookbook. There's no um copyright information. It's from the year I graduated high school, and that's not that far back in ancient times. Oh my gosh. It's got an ISBN number on the back, but there's no copyright information in it, and I find that to be very kind of humorous. Another feature on this cookbook that I really like a lot is each section is kind of like a recipe book almost where there's a little tab, and each tab has the title of that section. So you've got the barbecue, beverages, cakes, candy, breads, all that stuff. And each section starts with a nutrition analysis chart, each recipe in that section with its page number, and then it's got the servings, calories, protein, all that stuff that Lon talked about. So this is a really interesting cookbook, and when I picked this off the shelf yesterday to do this episode today, I didn't know that the clip was going to be his um weight loss journey and his advice on food. So it just was so perfect tonight. Again, Lon, you are awesome. Um, back to the cookbook. This is just something I have used over and over and over again in my lifetime. And no matter how many cookbooks come and go, this is a staple that I've always kept a hold of. And I remember there's been times where I was moving, I had crappy roommates, all sorts of stuff, and it was the one object I would almost take a bullet to make sure it stayed intact and it never left my site. So highly recommend the um Better Homes and Gardens new cookbook. And again, they update it. So if you just go on to Amazon, it's reasonably priced, I want to say less than $20, like maybe in the $17 range for a brand new one. And there you go. Now to celebrate Murray and Baxter, Emmy the Mini Macaw, and my tiny little flock of four budgies, we're gonna do a quick little uh drive-by bird cookbook review. And when I had my little pet bird um podcast, I actually did a cookbook review on there, and that's because there is a very popular brand on YouTube called Birdtricks. And while they have some really great information on their YouTube channel, with the Bird Tricks brand, they this started out because they have a set of their cookbooks, and a fan sent me theirs. They were like, Can you do a review on these? Am I imagining things? It's very little information creatively presented, and honestly, they could condense all three of these books into one book, publish it through Amazon KDP so it's available to more people, and price it at like $19.99 instead of eighty dollars. And it would still be overpriced, but at less at least it would be affordable for more people and their fans. So I went kind of into a deep dive and did a review on a number of cookbooks, all of which can be found on Amazon.com. And the problem with pet birds is they are the third most popular pet in America, and probably worldwide, I would imagine, but they're the least understood by their general pet ownership, and it's very hard to diet convert them to very healthy stuff. So I started finding options for people so they could self-educate, and this is one of the best books I came up with. Brand new, it was $15.95, and you can get used copies much less than that. It's a paperback. It's called The Healthy Bird Cookbook by Robin Deutsch. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. D-E-U-T-S-C-H. The Healthy Bird Cookbook by Robin Deutsch, a life-saving nutritional guide and recipe collection. And this is amazing because it gives you a lot of detailed information on dietary needs, nutritional information for different things that are healthy for them to eat, things that you shouldn't feed to them, um, why different nutrients are good for them, a very extensive list of fruits and vegetables, food groups, nuts, fats, oils, seasonings, flavorings, meat groups, and even what is and is not okay to feed them in a dairy group, and why it's not advised. It also goes over symptoms of vitamin deficiencies. It has some species specific information, wonderful photos, other hazards to avoid, and then it's got a whole um breads and muffins that you can cook for your bird if you like to bake, uh, recipes here again, and all different kinds of recipes for other things that you can feed them. And it gets very, very, very creative. It's easy, it's not hard, and it's it's very easy reading too. It's not like gonna be some tech book that's over your head. So, for all my bird friends out there, you might want to check this out. It'll help you bond with your bird, your bird will be healthier for it, and you'll have a lot of fun, also. The Healthy Bird Cookbook, a life-saving nutritional guide and recipe collection. And again, at this point in time, you can get used copies very easily, probably off of abooks.com or Amazon.com itself. I think that's all I've got for you this week. Just some really super easy ways to embrace maybe a better eating style that can go hand in hand with a better lifestyle. Get yourself a really good cookbook that's gonna have a lot of just basic, easy-to-get ingredients, information on it. And I don't know how this episode came together with me finding that clip from Lon. Out of all of them that he sends me, I've got quite a bunch of them to select, and I picked that one out of it, and it just happened to align with the cookbook thing. And uh, so I think that means we're in for a wonderful, wonderful August, and everything's gonna align for everybody that listens to this podcast. So don't forget to tell all your friends about it, share your links, share the name of the podcast, the comforting voice podcast, and actually I'm listed in podcast apps as sleep easy to the comforting voice podcast. That way you can look it up on either of those terms if you're looking for a sleep podcast. I come right up. Isn't that neato? Comfortingvoice.com. That's our headquarters. Head on over there, check it out. All kinds of fun links to explore, and all of the episodes can be heard there. There's also a list of different podcast apps we're listed in, although it's not a total comprehensive list. Anyway, go surf over there, check it out, it's fun. And last but not least, Friday night. You don't want to miss it. We'll see you back here for the conclusion of Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. And the following Friday, you'll find out what our next Friday night bedtime storybook is. Oh, we're just rolling right along. That's all I've got for you tonight. Murray and Baxter have been really, really good little birds tonight. I'm gonna get this edited, published into your eardrums, and we'll catch you on Friday. Until then, sleep tight, good night, and bye bye.