Pond: Open For Business

    One of those things I look forward too every spring is having to ice on the pond disappear.  So I was happy this morning when Kona and I went out to walk around the pond, to see that that had happened.  So the pond is now open for business.  

    It is now busy doing all of those pond things:   Reflecting the surroundings and attracting wildlife.  I have seen water insects, a pair of Canada Geese, a pair of Mallards, and a pair of Wood Ducks, so far.  I have yet to see any of the Red Sided Shiners (fish), that I fear may have been wiped out over the winter.  The Bog Arum, and Waterlily plants are green and ready to poke through the surface of the pond.

    Walking around the pond is so much more interesting now that the ice is gone.  I enjoy peering through the crystal clear water to see what is happening underwater, and I certainly enjoy the reflections mirrored on the pond’s surface.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

But First, I Have To....

    It was a beautiful sunny mild day yesterday, and so I thought that I should probably wash the car, since we get dirty every time we get close to it.  (Above you see how dirty it was).

    Washing the car meant driving it up to the hydrant in the barnyard.  That hydrant had been frozen all year, so before I started the task of washing the car, I thought I had better just check the hydrant first to make sure it had thawed out.  When I pulled up the handle, water came forcibly spraying out sideways from the hydrant pipe, soaking my pants.  Over the winter, the ice that formed in the pipe, swelled, and split the steel pipe, which caused the leak.

    “Damn,” I thought, “What should I do now?”

    I after some thought, I figured out that I might be able to put a patch over the leak, and began a search for materials that I might be able to use.  I found an old roll of some “stop-leak” tape, and cut a patch out of an old bicycle inner tube, and some plumbing screw clamps.  It was one of those instances when I was happy that I hang on to things, instead of throwing them away.  

    I constructed a patch over the leak.  Although it didn’t completely stop the spray, it lessened it quite a bit, enough for me to go ahead and wash the car.

    The whole episode reminded me that every time I think I am going to do something, I discover that before I do that thing, I end up having to do something else first.  If I am lucky, I will only have to do one thing first, and not two or three things, which often happens.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Mad Magazine & Don Martin

         I think I was in the sixth grade when I discovered Mad Magazine.  For those who don’t know, Mad Magazine was a monthly satirical publication with amazingly creative art and humor that made fun of everything.  My father was always upset with me when I spent the money I had earned working on my summer jobs, to buy Mad Magazines.  Not only did Mad bend me over in laughter, but it also made me aware of current events (because I had to know what was going on, to understand the humor).  That need for awareness of news events is something I have carried with me for the rest of my life.

    One of special attractions for me in Mad Magazine were the cartoons drawn by Don Martin.  His goofy-looking, stupid characters, and situations really appealed to me at that age.  I liked them so much that I began trying to draw them myself.  Below is something I drew for a friend, probably when I was in the eighth grade.  I’m sure you can see how heavily I copied those Don Martin characters.

    

    I continued to draw Don Martin-inspired characters whenever the need arose, (making a birthday card ,a poster, or something for the classroom when I was teaching.   As an adult, living in McBride, often when I got upset or wanted to make fun of something that was going on, I would draw a cartoon about it and submit it to our local weekly paper.  Eventually the paper asked me to submit a cartoon every week, and it became a “side hustle”  for me.

    Slowly my characters took on a look of their own, but certainly their nose, ears, and eyes, continued to reflect my early love of those Don Martin cartoons in Mad Magazine. 

    I have now been doing those weekly cartoons for the local paper for 40 years.  I just submitted my latest one to the paper last night.  Below is a cartoon I did for the paper a couple of weeks ago.

    I often think about my father’s anger at me whenever I bought a Mad Magazine, and wonder if he ever recognized just how beneficial those magazines were to my life.

You can view my paintings and a weekly cartoon at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Dr. Cowburn's Tiger Moth

 

    One of the things I always enjoyed experiencing on a clear bright summer day, was the sputtering of a distant engine, then seeing Dr. Cowburn’s bright yellow Tiger Moth biplane slowly fly over.  When we moved to McBride in 1977, Dr. Cowburn was the Valley’s only doctor.  He owned a Tiger Moth biplane, and periodically he would entertain himself by flying around over the valley.  

    He had owned his plane for decades, and in those early years, when he went off flying around, if there was an emergency at the hospital, the staff would stretch a white sheet on the roof of the hospital, to signal to him that he needed to land and come to the hospital.    There were a few times during those early years, when Dr. Cowburn would make a “house call” to a rural residence by traveling to the farm with the Tiger Moth, landing in a pasture or field.  

    When Dr. Cowburn died, a couple of men who grew up in McBride and lived in Prince George, bought the Tiger Moth, and although it is now in Prince George, it sometimes returns to the skies of the Robson Valley for special events.

    Below is a photo of Dr. Cowburn in his beloved plane.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Signs of Spring

    Living where I do in the rural interior of British Columbia, where winter is such a dominant season, makes me pay a lot of attention to the signs of spring.  Even though we experienced an extremely mild winter this year, it  hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm of watching the changes in the environment as the spring season develops.  

    Here are a couple of those signs of spring that I have noticed over the last couple of days.  Above is a  branch sporting some fluffy pussy willows.  Below is a shot I took of my pond, which you can see, is now half free of ice.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

The Book of Rain by Thomas

When most people are surfing through the television channels seeking something to watch, if they come upon a terrible looking movie with bad acting, bad dialog, and a bad plot, they quickly move on to a different channel.  Sometimes when that happens to me, and the movie is incredibly bad, I become fascinated with it, and like watching a train wreck, I can’t look away and have to watch it to the end.  I found Thomas Wharton’s novel, The Book of Rain, similar to one of those incredibly terrible films, and I couldn’t help but read it to the end, just to see if any redeeming qualities accidentally appeared.  None did.

I am a realist, and I have mentioned before in the Book Club, that for me, one of the most important things in a novel, is believability.  I can stretch my imagination a bit by thinking, “Well, that might happen, but it is pretty far fetched.” but there is a limit to what I am able to swallow.  This novel went way beyond my believability, and my acceptance. 

It’s storyline is a mixed up convoluted jumble of ridiculous situations which didn’t take me long to hate.  I couldn’t work up any attachment or empathy for any of the characters, and although I am extremely concerned about global warming and the loss of livability in our planet, which is the underlying theme of the novel, the ecologically deteriorating world the characters in this novel lived in, just didn’t didn’t make sense.

The story is set in Canada, where a family traveling to a live in a new community where a relative owns a business,  makes an overnight stop in this small town in the middle of nowhere to overnight.  While eating, an atmospheric “wobble” travels through the restaurant and the community.  This  periodically occurring wobble effects the consciousness of people, some more than others, and is caused by a mysterious ore, called “Ghost” that is being mined nearby.  Later on in the novel, one victim of the wobble was doubled into two people, by the effects of the wobble.

Alex, the boy in the family is somewhat effected by the wobble, while Amery his young sister is put into a four day coma by it.  So what do you think this family, that is just passing through town, decides to do?  They decide to live in that community.

When those kids grow up, Alex, the boy, becomes a maker of imaginative games, working for a high tech game-making group in a large urban area.  The grown up Amery, remains in the small town that now has a large restricted area nearby, caused by the problematic, wobble-producing Ghost mineral that was mined there.  Amery keeps sneaking into the restricted area to save the wildlife there.  She then disappears in the restricted area, and so Alex returns to the town to try to find her.

Not satisfied with the already convoluted plat, the author creates another storyline for the enjoyment of the reader.  It concerns Clare, another former resident of the town, who now earns her living as an illegal animal trafficker, who smuggles rare and threatened animals for collectors .  She is in a big city on some developed touristy, rainy, island that is about to get blown to bits by a volcano.  While there, waiting to learn what her next smuggling job will be, an almost extinct heron, the last female of the species, lays an egg on the balcony of Clare’s hotel room (What a coincidence!)  Although Clare tries to keep it’s existence quiet, hoping to steal the precious egg, the hotel staff discover the rare bird, and Clare is then visited by the adolescent Dala lama-type king of the island, who seems to know about her, and urges her to rescue the egg, if anything like the erupting volcano, starts to destroy the island.  The reader is then left hanging, never knowing for sure what happened.

The novel then skips ahead many decades and the reader enters a time period where humankind has pretty much been wiped out by the ecological collapse of life on earth, but Amery, now a grandmother, along with her grandson, hike to one of the last life-supporting areas for birds. By this time, birds have learned to talk to each other.  Fortunately Amery, while lost in that old restricted area long ago, also learned to talk to birds.  

Then in the last 50 something pages of the novel, the reader is treated to the story of what happened in those skipped over years, which is relayed by a talking raven.  Yes, the talking raven tells the rest of the story.

I could use more colorful words to describe my opinion of this novel, but I will restrain that urge and only say it wasn’t my cup of tea.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca
 

Scene From Jervis Road

    I have always found big blocks of solid color appealing, so it was no surprise that on Saturday evening at 7:00 as we drove down Jervis Road on our way to visit friends, that I just had to stop and take this photo.  There is the solid mass of dark blue of the Cariboo Mountains, the large area of yellowish-tan of the hay fields in the foreground, the uninterrupted baby blue of the sky and even the white-capped peaks jutting upward in the Raush Valley are showing areas of solid color.

    This area just east of McBride is one of my favorite scenes,  I have always loved the agricultural valley nestled in between the two mountain ranges (Cariboo and the Park Range of the Canadian Rockies).

 You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Kona Gives Herself A Job

    I have mentioned this before in a blog, but I am still surprised every time I see it.  Our dog Kona has some kind of strong compulsion to carry firewood back to our house.  It is something she just feels that she needs to do.  Sometimes I just stand there in awe at the big and heavy chunks of wood she lugs all the way to the yard, in her mouth.

    Yesterday, I spent some time falling, and cutting up some of the dead alder trees growing on the dam of my pond.  I bucked them up, piled them, and will use them as firewood.  Later, when we took a walk around the pond, I went on one side, while Kona decided to walk down the dam on the other side.  When I got around the pond and started walking down the dam toward the house, there was Kona with a big piece of firewood in her mouth, already heading for the house.

    She, of course, doesn’t leave the wood by the woodpile, but just drops them on the lawn, so I still have to stack it, but it does save me some work, because I don’t have to go down to the pond to get it and carrying it.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Bleeding Money

            We have always been very conservative with our money.  Getting a mortgage for our house was extremely scary for us since we were both so scared of debt.  Getting our first credit card also filled us full of fear, and we still only use it if we have the money to pay off the purchase.  We generally paid for our vehicles with money that we had saved, but of course, sometimes life catches us off guard.

         In 1989, just as I was completing finishing the balcony on the end of the addition I had built on our house, I started drawing up plans for another addition for the opposite end of the house.  That addition was for a laundry room, a darkroom/office for my wife, and a carport. 

            I called Allen Baer, a local contractor to prepare the site, put in forms for the foundation, and pour the cement for the foundation. 

            A couple of days after he completed the foundation, my wife drove up to Prince George in our eight year old Subaru, to do some shopping and get a haircut.  I was working at my desk in the Forestry Office when at 10:00 my phone rang.  It was my wife.   On her way up to PG, the Subaru’s transmission failed.  She had to get it towed to the Subaru Dealer, and there she found out that it was going to cost between $700 and $1,700 to get it fixed.

        This created a real dilemma for us because that was quite a lot of money for us at the time, and we began to wonder if it might be wiser just buy a new car, because our 1981 Subaru was beginning to show its age and was really starting to rust out.   

        After receiving the call, I immediately booked off of work and caught the Greyhound Bus up to Prince George so we could better figure out what to do.  We were able to spend the night with our neighbor’s  parents who live in PG.  

        The next day was a memorable one.  We wavered back and forth about what to do:  Buy a new car, or sink more money into repairing our rusting 1981 Subaru.  In the end we bought a brand new 1989 red Subaru Station wagon, and spent several hours in the dealer’s office committing ourselves to pay $300/month for the next five years, after handing over a $4,000 down payment.

        After nervously assuming the debt, we drove our shiny new car to the Bonanza Steakhouse to eat, wind down, and get our mind off of the big step we had just taken.  After our meal and reducing our stress level, we drove our new car back to McBride.

        Driving our brand new car was both fun and enjoyable.  However, upon reaching home, our fun quickly evaporated. 

        I discovered that while we were gone, my herd of Angora goats had escaped from the paddock, eaten up some willow trees, and then finishing off their moveable feast by eating the vegetables from our garden .

    Once I had rounded up the goats and herded them back into the barn, more bad news appeared  when I discovered that Allen Baer had left a $1,600 invoice for the foundation and carport work he had done.  I had assumed that that invoice wouldn’t arrive for couple of weeks, but there it was.

    When I called Allen to tell him I wouldn’t be able to pay him until I got my next bi-monthly paycheck, he said that was okay.  I was greatly relieved, but then he mentioned that I also owed Harley Bratton, the backhoe man, for the work he did digging the trench for the foundation. That was an unexpected surprise because I had mistakenly assumed Harley’s work would be included in Allen’s estimate.

    Suddenly, money got to be really tight for us.

    Luckily when I did get my next paycheck, it included not just my basic salary, but also pay for all of my fire fighting overtime hours.  Our checking account had climbed to $1,800.  Unfortunately, by the time I paid for the foundation and groceries, our checking account had shrunk back down to a meager amount that would have to keep us for the next two weeks.

            The 1989 photo shows our red Subaru parked in front of the foundation for our addition.  That pickup truck is parked in the area of where the carport would eventually be.  This photo was taken later, after I had purchased the old pickup from my neighbor.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Graying Ice

    The snow has melted and the ice in the pond is starting to deteriorate.  As it does, it shows off some beautiful shades of gray and blue that I always find interesting.  Here is how the pond ice looked yesterday under an intensely blue sky.   

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca 

 

 

Need A Toilet?

    On Saturday we drove out to the Dunster Schoolhouse for the potluck lunch and discussion about the possibility of the Integris Credit Union setting up in McBride.  As we approached the door of the schoolhouse, I was surprised to see this row of toilets sitting on the porch.  I found it so unexpected that I couldn’t help but take a photo.  They look like they have water in them, ready to use, but don’t.

    The toilets are free for the taking.  The sign says they all work and don’t leak.  If you need a free toilet, here is your chance, drive out to Dunster.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Fire Abatement

    Spring is the traditional time for cleaning up yards, and I have been doing some of that , but beyond just cleaning up the landscape, I am also trying to do things that will lessen the chance of fire on our property.  

    In the area between the road and our house, we have a patch of delicious spearmint that we use in the summer for our ice tea.  After its growing season is over, the mint turn into stiff dead stems that are about a foot (30 cm) high.  I always just left them there, to be overtaken by the newly growing spearmint plants that come up in the summer, but I figured all of those tall dead weeds would burn rapidly if a fire would start, so yesterday I got out my lawn trimmer and cut them down, raked them up, and then put them on the compost pile to decompose.

    Another fire prevention action I took was to saw down two young healthy spruce trees growing in a grove of deciduous trees, between my barn and the road.  I really hate to cut down healthy trees, but conifers are more apt to burn than deciduous trees.

    In the past I would put tree debris onto a couple of piles to rot, but I have been taking off so many branches, that those piles are now too big, so I have been having to haul the branches to the dump.  Below is a trailer full of the cut off branches.

    I guess you can tell that the unusually dry and warm weather we have been experiencing for a year, has gotten me spooked about what might happen this summer, as far as the likelihood of forest fires.  There is a lot of regular maintenance that needs to be done around here, but right now, fire abatement is my main concern. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Souvenir Fridge Magnets

    The other day I read an article in The Guardian newspaper about the souvenir fridge magnets that people have.  Although we also have some souvenir fridge magnets, I hadn’t ever thought about other people having them.  The article told about people like buying them because when they see them on their refrigerators, it reminds them of the good times they had on vacations and trips.   They interviewed one person who had a terrible vacation in Spain, but had bought a fridge magnet to remind them of how nice it was to be back home.

    In the photo above, you can see our souvenir fridge magnets.  Here is where they are from:

1.   Mauritshuis Museum (The Hague, Netherlands)
2.   Atomic Bomb Museum  (Arizona)
3.   Dutch Houses  (Amsterdam)
4.   McBride Train Station (McBride, BC)
5.   Elvis & Nixon,  (New Mexico)
6.   Prussia  (Germany)
7.   Berlin  (Germany)
8.   Bottle Cap Folk Art,  (US, Southwest)
9.   Crown (Tower of London)
10.   Hong Kong
11.   Empire State Building  (New York City)
12.   Meteorite Crater   (Arizona)
13.   Alien  (New Mexico)
14.   Egypt Artifact  (Berlin)

    At one time we also had a fridge magnet image of Michelangelo’s Statue of David with paper doll clothes that you could dress him up with and hide his nakedness, but I don’t know what happened to it.  Unfortunately, we bought no fridge magnets on trips to Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rico, or Hawaii, which were all memorable.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

"Winter Fog" My Latest Painting

    Yesterday I completed “Winter Fog” my 71st painting.  I began painting “Winter Fog” last November and it took me 88 hours to complete.  Like all of my paintings, it is made up of individually painted squares, each subtly colored differently from its neighbors (see photo below).  In this painting is painting there are 108 squares, two inch by two inch.  It was done with acrylics on an 18 inch by 24 inch canvas.  

    The image is based on a photo I took in 2014 in the field beside the Fraser River, just below our house.  I liked the atmospheric feel of the photo and the challenge of trying to capture the scene (especially the trees in the fog) with paint.

You can view my other paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca and at davidmarchant.ca

 

Fingers Crossed For Integris Credit Union

    Our little Village of McBride has one bank.  The Bank of Nova Scotia, a big international financial corporation owns Scotia Bank, and it has decided to pack up and move out of McBride, in search of Big Money elsewhere.  Losing our only bank is devastating for the residents and businesses of our community.  The loss of our bank will not only leave us without the normal everyday banking services that we need, but also will leave us without the only cash machine in the whole big isolated area.

    Our only hope is that some other financial institution might move in to help us.  Integris, a credit union with a handful of branches around the Central Interior of British Columbia, seems to be our best hope.

    Yesterday we went to a meeting in Dunster where Dan Wingham, a spokesman for Integris from  Prince George, spoke and answered questions about a possible branch in McBride.  It was a very informative meeting, which answered some of my questions.  Here are some of the things I learned:

    I had assumed that maybe Integris could buy and move into the Scotia Bank building which is all set up for a bank, and take over business with the safe and all of the other banking hardware there. 

     How naive I was.  Dan told us that Scotia Bank would never allow that to happen.  They want all their present banking customers, to just move all of their money and banking services to a branch in Prince George, 220 km (135 miles away).  Fat chance that will happen, but Scotia Bank are not going to make it easy for another financial institution to set up in McBride.  They will certainly not allow Integris to buy their building, and will probably put a covenant on any sale of the building to prevent any other financial institution to be run from it.  I guess that means another empty building sitting in McBride.

    Dan said if the Integris Credit Union did set up in McBride, it would have to start very small, and have its banking services in another building, which would probably only be open 2 or 3 days a week, until the  customer base increased.  

    The decision to possibly open in McBride will be made by the Integris Board meeting in July.  

    If Robson Valley residents want Integris to serve the area, the best thing we could do would be open an account in the credit union, to indicate to the Board that there is real interest to have that happen.

    We will certainly be doing that,  the community really needs the banking services, and Integris, a credit union, is not run by far away corporate types, but by board members, elected by the members of the credit union, and being a member of the credit union is a requirement for using its services.

    I really like credit unions and since moving to Canada in 1973, we have had money in the VanCity Credit Union, (one of the biggest and community-minded financial institutions in BC) and we have been very pleased with how it operates.  I will certainly support and work toward getting Integris to set up in McBride.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Sometimes I Wish Kona Would Sleep Lengthwise in the Bed

    Do you see that small sliver of empty bed space just to the left of Kona’s tail?  That is my sleeping area.  Even though it is a double bed, every night I am left with about 30 inches (76 cm) of space to sleep in.  Kona insists on sleeping sideways in the bed, and if I even bump into her while she is sleeping, she emits a low growl of irritation.  

    During most of my childhood, my bed was a sturdy old wooden army cot.  Not one of those canvas fold-up jobs, but a regular  cot-size bed with mattress, so I am used to sleeping in a narrow space, but a little more room, would be nice.  

    My sleep is further restricted in the early hours of the morning when Lucifer our cat comes in to the room, jumps onto the bed (carefully avoiding Kona) and then snuggles up tightly to my side, in the tiny space between me and the edge of the bed.  

    You might wonder why I put up with this.  My upstairs bedroom is the only place for Kona to sleep where she won’t cause trouble.  If we leave her wandering around loose anywhere on the main floor of the house, she will hear or see wild critters outside and will erupt into loud, frantic, barking, that violently wakes everyone up.  Upstairs, she can’t see or hear anything, and just sleeps.

    Despite my feeling of sometimes feeling cramped at night, I know it is good for me.  It restricts me to sleeping on my right side, and when I do that I don’t wake up with back pain.  If I sleep on my left side, I wake up with a problematic back, so l guess in the long run, it is better with Kona’s butt sticking into my back, keeping me on the edge of the bed.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Firewood, Not A Worry

 

    Normally, I spend a lot of time worrying about firewood.  During the winter I worry about not having enough, and running out.  As Spring approaches, I start worrying about where I am going to get more firewood for the next winter, and how much of an ordeal it will be to cut it up, haul it to our house, split it, and stack it.

    As I have blogged previously, this winter has been unusually warm, with a no snow Christmas and a unusually mild rest of winter.  All of those mild winter days meant that most of the time I didn’t have to build a fire in our wood stove, depending instead upon our electric baseboard heaters to keep our house warm.  Not using the wood stove, meant that I used just a fraction of all of the firewood that I had cut last year.

    The top photo shows the gap created by the firewood I did use over the winter.  Generally, this time of year, that whole row of firewood is gone, as well as most of the firewood you see in the lower photo.      

    It’s pretty unbelievable.  Getting, and preparing firewood usually takes up a good bit of my time in the spring.  This year, I won’t even have to do i,t because I already have enough leftover wood to get me through next winter.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Nature Seems to Think Spring is Coming

    After all of the unusual and unexpected weather we have been experiencing, I no longer know what to expect anymore.  However, it seems that nature thinks that spring is on the horizon, and is starting to show itself.  Above is a photo I took of daffodils starting to work their way through the ground beside the house, where the sun’s heat is trapped, warming the soil.  

    I also spotted a flock of Canada Geese, beside some open water of the Fraser River, so the bird migration seems to have begun.  A real surprise was hearing from a friend who has a pasture that goes down to the river, that she saw two Mountain Bluebirds.  I’m pretty sure they eat insects, and there are not any of them around that I have seen, so I am not sure what they are eating.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

MSG, Monosodium Glutamate

    MSG or Monosodium Glutamate, has been given a bad wrap which has caused many people to avoid it.  That’s too bad, because it is a perfectly safe flavor enhancer, that occurs naturally in things like tomatoes and cheese.  MSG is often used to intensify meaty and savory flavors in foods.  

    In the early 1900’s a man named Ikeda, a Japanese biochemist became curious about the delicious flavor in his wife’s soup, that contained kelp sea weed.  After a lot of research he isolated the flavor and was able to duplicate it chemically.  He called his product Monosodium Glutamate, and started to produce and sell it.  

    Because it made things tastier, it became very popular, especially in Asian food.  However in the 1960, a scientist in the US, wrote a letter to the editor of a science journal wondering if MSG was the cause of “headaches and discomfort” felt by some people after eating at Chinese restaurants.  Without any proof, this idea, became known as “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” and rapidly spread across the nation, and so many people believed it, that Asian food establishments really began to suffer economically.   You can still often see “No MSG added” signs in some Asian restaurants, as a result of the unsubstantiated idea.

    Like the anti-vaccination misinformation which exists today, despite so many scientific studies, the fear of MSG also remains, even though MSG has been scientifically studied more than most other food substances, and all of those studies have failed to link it to any negative reactions.  It takes five times as much MSG to kill a mouse, than regular table salt.

    Most people are aware of four basic flavors:  Sweet, sour, salty, and bitter, but a fifth flavor is now recognized and is called “umami” (delicious taste).  It is described as savory, characteristic of broth and cooked meats.    This taste has its own taste receptors on your tongue and other places in your mouth.  Monosodium glutamate is an additive that activates those receptors.  It can be described as a pleasant "brothy” or “meaty” taste with a long-lasting, mouthwatering and coating sensation over the tongue.

    MSG has an appearance similar to salt.  I like to sprinkle some on my popcorn and add it to my soups.  Sprinkle some of your foods before adding salt, and you will probably end up using less salt.  Low salt foods can maintain a good taste with the right amount of umami.  

    Surprisingly, studies have shown that the first encounter humans have of the umami taste comes from the breast milk. 

View my paintings:  davidmaarchant2.ca