Just Wonderin'...

Have you ever wondered about cooking sprays, such as Pam? Zero calories per serving. Zero fat as well, as advertised on the label, right? Yet, you look at the ingredients. Besides the propellant to get it out of the can, it is: Vegetable Oil.

Look at your bottle of vegetable oil. 120 calories per tablespoon. Along with 14 g of fat. Love the little note: 120 calories per serving. Calories from fat: 120. (duh)

I found out the little trick. One serving of Pam is a 1/4 second spray. I don't know about you, but I can't even depress the sprayer in 1/4 second. I remember when this product came out, the commercials said, "a two-second spray is all you need." Well, that is eight servings of this product! The problem is, you can't just multiply the one-serving numbers by eight, because you would still get zero. (we learned that in homeschool!)

Now, I use cooking spray. Isn't it a sad commentary that I have to spray my skillet before cooking bacon for heaven's sake? But I won't say it adds no fat to my food. I wish I had a way to measure that 2-second spray in volume. Would it be a tablespoon? I don't think so, much closer to a teaspoon. But that would be 40 calories and 2.67 g of fat, going with the numbers from the oil bottle.

And speaking of bacon, here's a little thing I learned several years ago. The article was about how fat we are still getting, even though we are low-fatted and low-carbed out of our minds, almost. The author's premise was that we have lean-meated ourselves out of hunger-satisfaction. She made my mouth water with her tales of marbling in beef roasts and fat-borders on pork chops. Back in the day (30? 40? years ago?) the average hog rendered sixteen gallons of lard. Today's hog? One ONE. gallon of lard. Back-in-the-day our portion sizes were smaller, as well. We didn't have to eat between meals (tho' if you were like Almanzo Wilder in Farmer Boy, you 'bout died waiting for dinner...) because we were filled up. Our calories weren't empty.

But I digress. I think my point is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Beware of advertiser's promises. Know the price of what you're buying, but then, if it's worth it, enjoy it, right? If we didn't have fat, we would have yucky skin and lousy hair. If I'm remembering correctly, some hormones need fat, too, to work. Fat is a great storage system. But my storage facility needs some major de-cluttering!

My children are back to school today. I wonder what my days will be like. Last year, Baby Nettie was born in September in great distress. My father was still alive and needed my time, as well. Both of those things are not on the agenda this year.

Do you think I might find a closet or two?