I like vinegar. I’ve even been known to drink vinegar, but I know I am not the only one. There are vinegars made for drinking. Add a little sweetener to vinegar and you’ve got ‘pickle juice.’

Take several types of beans (e.g. green & yellow wax beans, pinto beans, cannellini, black or navy) add vinegar & sweetener, S&P and you have a good ‘bean salad’. I’ve also added sweet pickles, peppadews, onion, pickled peppers or sweet pepper drops to a bean salad. Any vinegary item should work in a bean salad.

Why do I like German Potato Salad? Could be the vinegar & sweetener that changes everything.

I may have only cooked Rotkol once in my life. Not sure how many times I have eaten it, but I know I like the flavors. Once again it is the vinegar & sweetener that changes everything. But, you also add cloves, an apple & onion. I add onion to almost everything I cook. “Any onion is sweet, once it hits the heat.” Meaning, even a bitter, hot raw onion will sweeten when you begin to cook it. I like pickled onions, and okra.

So, I am fixing Traditional German Rotkohl (Sweet/Sour Red Cabbage) right now. I didn’t realize it took a couple of hours to let it cook down. I did not follow the above recipe closely. I chopped up some red cabbage, some onion, a small apple and added it all to a pot with some chicken stock. I put in some margarine, red wine vinegar, Splenda, Agave Nectar, S&P, a little Worcestershire sauce, ground cloves, and bay leaf. I can already tell from the cooking liquid that I’m going to love this.

The article title was a phrase that I had to transcribe while doing one of the lessons on Duolingo. “Die Universität in Freiburg ist sehr bekannt” is translated as, “the university in Freiburg is very well-known”.

Germany restricts “Google Maps Streetview” due to privacy issues, but some areas, including Berlin have allowed Streetview to record much of the city. Freiburg is not one of those German cities/towns that allow it, so I happened to find “Elbe Obst” (Elbe, the river and Obst – fruit), a company headquartered in Freiburg. *I haven’t looked for the famous university yet.

But the Elbe Obst web site has been very informative and entertaining. The site includes videos, about apple production, and has extensive apple recipes which reminded me of how useful food/cooking/recipes/ingredients are in learning a language… and this web site is written relatively simply so that I understand much of the text/content without having to “look up a bunch of stuff.”

Frank Döscher is managing director of the German company Elbe-Obst.

Fräulein a new variety of apple in Germany which apparently is both sweet and juicy.

So, knowing where Freiburg University is located would help. Needless to say, the University is NOT in Freiburg, Germany. However it is located a great distance away in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. And by now, I am not really interested in pursuing the University.

NOTE:

Last Sunday I got a call from Dr. Elton Hendricks asking if I would join him, and Jerry, his wife for breakfast, the next morning at Zorba’s. I immediately said yes, because I do like my time with the Hendricks.

Almost as soon as I awoke on Monday morning, I realized that I did not want to eat breakfast at Zorba’s. They have a descent breakfast, and they even offer two pancakes instead of toast, but I just did not want their breakfast. I think I had already had a recent breakfast at Cracker Barrel and for some reason I wanted their “Hashbrown Casserole” again. This casserole has an odd, distinctive, somewhat artifically chemical flavor. It’s had this flavor for years and I both hate it, and am attracted to it. Perhaps it is “liquid smoke.” *So, I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to eat breakfast at Zorba’s, but I was going to meet the Hendricks and enjoy their company.

The Hendricks arrived shortly before our 8 am meeting time and we went inside. Both Elton & Jerry have “walkers” and they have a routine as to where they sit, and where they temporarily store these walkers while they eat. We sat in a booth, beside the front plate glass window, and I sat beside Jerry, as I usually do.

I only ordered coffee. I even mentioned to the Hendricks that at previous breakfasts at Zorbas, I would get to talking to them and neglect eating my breakfast. At the end of our meeting, I would still have most of my food on the plate, but I will have enjoyed conversing with them both.

The surprise at this breakfast was that Dr. Hendricks had finished his “Autobiography” and it had been printed in a 140 pages tome. A cute little dark green book, with pages that had a good weight, and easy to turn from page to page, without them sticking to each other. Dr. Hendricks handed me a copy of his book, and I noted the ornate font for the book’s title.

They told me that they were going to have a special “get together” at a restaurant just outside of Lillington, NC on Sunday, October 16th with family and friends and that each attendee was going to be given a copy of his book. These people were going to be asked to attend the Methodist Church in Lillington, before meeting for this special lunch afterward. This church was where Dr. Hendricks had pastored for four years, just after his retirement from Methodist University.

It took me about six days to finish the 140 pages, but it was a very enjoyable read.

He was a handsome, young editor of the college newspaper, at Wofford (Spartanburg, SC). Turn the page, and he trained to be a pilot in the Navy, even landing on an aircraft carrier. *I’m not sure if he actually was the pilot on the aircraft carrier, or “just” the navigator/radarman. But, even “going along for the ride” earns many prestige points. As a physics professor, he actually had his class grind mirrors and make their own telescopes, another plus, in my mind. Driving a SCDOT truck and helping pave roads on Hilton Head Island, at a time when there was only “ferry service” on the Island, another plus.

NOTE [10/24/22]: I checked with Dr. Hendricks and he was “the navigator” and not the pilot, taking off & landing on the aircraft carrier. [end note]

Elton & Jerry visited a “one tree” town, in Kansas, on a job interview. And, years later Elton would move many trees from the Methodist College river bank area into more prominent locations near the various campus buildings. Reading the autobiography, I thought more than once that Jerry would need to write her autobiography, and as was mentioned about the dancer, Ginger Rogers, “she did it all backwards, and in high heels.”

Regarding Dr. Hendricks’ twenty-seven years (1983 – 2010) at Methodist, I don’t think it was him reading three books and helping design a 9 hole golf course for the PGM program, that was important, but that he had a successful philosophy regarding times when the institution faced financial difficulties… Instead of cutting back or reducing spending, he focused upon bringing more students into the fold, and thereby increasing the overall size of the pie. A very cogent example presented regarding bringing in a new student, that needed to be subsidized by a quarter of the normal tuition ($5K of $20K), but even with the subsidy, increasing the total “pie” by $10K. Presidential “genius”!

And various questions answered, even some that I didn’t know I had before I started reading this book. “Lowdermilk” (Bill) and seeing this name on a MU street… never having heard this name except from Garrison Keillor. Or that MU actually has a football team, and an 18 hole golf course. How about the Lillington Methodist Church funding their facilities well? With a congregation advanced in age and reduced in number, one thought might be to court the Hispanic community and bring young families, with children, in to worship & use these underused facilities. You might even expand the facilities to attract these young families, and the overflow would be not only young Hispanic families would be attracted, but non-Hispanic families also, thereby bringing new, younger lives in.

This morning, before finishing the book, I took it with me to Cracker Barrel, the one by I95, and had breakfast there. I ordered two scrambled eggs, the hashbrown casserole, and it comes with biscuits-n-gravy. I was engrossed in my reading, and this was good because the restaurant was busy this Saturday morning, and the meal probably did take a little longer to arrive.

But, as I see my waitress nearing my table with my breakfast, I put the book down, and looked at the food as she placed it before me. Two things came to my attention almost immediately, and without thinking I verbalized one comment regarding the “gravy”. I lifted the monkey dish and said to my waitress, “not much there is it”. She said she could bring me more, but I said, “no.” The other thing I thought looked “small” was the two scrambled eggs. I guess I have been spoiled elsewhere in that this probably was two eggs, but it looked far less. And, when I order two eggs, “over medium” it is obvious that there are two eggs sitting on the plate.

The monkey dish, with gravy, is normally “briming full” and I do not use all of it. But you can see that what was there was sufficient for only about half of a biscuit this morning. *I did order the meat “sampler” which includes some bacon, sausage and some fresh ham. I don’t necessarily like the sausage’s flavor, but the bacon has really good flavor.

So, I awoke early in the morning about 3 am and got up and started watching a movie, “Cat’s Eye”.

I am watching Stephen King’s “Cat’s Eye” movie which was filmed mostly in Wilmington, NC in 1985. In one of the early “dog chases cat” sequences, the Battleship North Carolina was prominent in the background. The NC State Legislature some years ago, got rid of the incentives which made it attractive to film in NC, and especially down in Wilmington, NC. When you look only at the money incentives being given to these film companies and movie producers, it doesn’t appear a lucrative partnership. But, when I see a movie and recognize a local location in it, there is much joy and pride that wells up… even if the movie was made 37 years ago;-)

NOTE: I’ve mentioned previously that I noted some pictures of “Black” persons adorning the walls of this Cracker Barrel and that this is a change from when I was growing up. This morning, as I was reading my book, sitting at my table, I turned and looked at the wall beside me. I laughed. There was a small picture of two little girls. But, not just two little girls, but two little black girls. Definitely a change, from the top down. [note]

NOTE: Looks like it was in 2010 that I first started entering my weight data on the Fitday site. Although I did not “religiously” enter my weight most days, for several years, I did keep a more accurate record by manually entering my daily weight in the annual calendars that were provided by Marine Federal Credit Union. It was only in the last couple of years that, because I didn’t get a calendar from MFCU, I had to rely on entering my weight online. There are quite a few days that I weigh myself, but then don’t enter it online… or sometimes, I’m sure, don’t enter it accurately.

Not sure of how many years ago, perhaps 2010, that I had gained weight and was about 295 lbs. I started work at Fayetteville State University in August 1995 and weighed about 210 pounds then. But, I seem to recall that I gained about 5 pounds a year, every year, while working there.

In January of 2012, I awoke early one morning, and realized that I had “peed” on my bed. There was a small rectangular wet spot on my sheet. This was minorly traumatic, because I recall at the time rehearsing that I did not recall having ever peed on my bed, even when I was a child growing up. I did not have a personal physician, and it took several weeks before I could have an appointment to see one.

I knew something was wrong, and it felt like my stomach (on the outside) was warm as if something were burning inside. But, not knowing what was wrong, I did possibly the worst thing I could. I started drinking a lot of fruit juices. I drank orange juice, grape juice, apple juice, and I might finish off a couple of these each day. So, by the time I saw the doctor and a few days later was told that I was pre-diabetic, I had drove my blood sugar level up to incredible heights. I recall the doctor looking at a report, and saying something to the effect that my BGL was over 400, and she didn’t think that was possible. I remember thinking, to myself, that if she knew how much fruit juice I had been consuming, that 400+ number was probably correct. *These high levels had started affecting my vision. I recall stepping out of my apartment and looking a short distance up to a street sign, and I couldn’t focus on it. After I got the blood sugar under control, the vision returned to normal. **I just remembered that when my blood sugar levels were off, I suffered from severe depression. And, during that time I craved a lot of water. The body’s way of trying to flush out all that extra sugar.

You can also see that I made a gallant effort to control my weight and subsequent diabetes in 2012. I lost almost 60 pounds in seven months. I think I got down to about 228 lbs. before I started to gain again. And, my A1C dropped to fantastically low levels. *This was the second time that I had lost about 60 pounds of weight over about the same time period. The first time that I lost this much weight was when I was about 49 years old. It was definitely easier, before I had to figure in diabetes, to lose the weight because there was a wider variety of foods that I could eat. I once said that I ate vegetables from A to Z… and I could easily name: apples, asparagus, avocado, basil, beans-green, beets, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage-green/red, carrots, cauliflower, celery, chickpeas, cilantro, corn, cucumbers, dandelion-greens, eggplant, garlic, grapes, kale, leeks, lentils, lettuce, limes, mushrooms, okra, olives, onions, oranges, parsley, peaches, pears, peas-garden, peppers-bell, pineapple, plums, potatoes-white/sweet, pumpkin, radishes, ramps, rutabagas, spinach, squash, tomatoes, turnips, … zucchini. I also drank a bunch of water during the first time of weight loss.

I’m not sure of how to get into the mind-set, but when I was in it, I lost about 2-3 lbs. of weight each week. Because my metabolism had been increased, I ate a lot of food each day. I was never hungry. I was NEVER hungry. And periodically, I could “cheat”. I could eat a large plate of pasta with spaghetti sauce, or I could eat a whole large carton of ice cream. But, as long as I returned to my eating pattern, I might gain 2-3 pounds for a day, but by the end of the week I had lost 2-3 pounds of weight.

But, here is an observation. At the bottom of my 60 lbs. weight loss, both times, and somewhere around the 230 pounds mark, my weight loss floundered… and in about two weeks of hovering around the same weight, I would start a slower climb back upwards. Graphically, I would lose weight at about a 45 degree angle downwards, and gain it back at about a 22.5 degree angle upwards. *The last time, I had even bought clothing “the next size down”, and it never was worn with my subsequent weight gain. **I have worn a size 42 waist pant, for about 10 years, except for the extreme weight loss time. I think I bought pants, a size 28 waist, that I never got to wear.

When I lost weight in 2012, my doctor had also started me on Metformin (diabetes). With the great weight loss, and the higher dose of medication, my A1C dropped under 6, and many days my BGL was around 125. The doctor thought this was excellent and reduced the level of Metformin. That was a mistake, because by the next time I saw her, my A1C had gone back up, and I never got it back down to those really good levels. *Until now [12/13/25] and I’m at 240.3 lbs. this morning but my RBG number was 104 and has been below several days this week, due to a change in what I eat. I’ve lost about 12 lbs. in the last year and down 50 points toward RBG.

You can see that I have been losing weight this year (2022) but the individual increments have been chaotic, fluctuating up and down greatly. But lately, I have noted a change in how I enjoy foods that I have loved “all my life.” e.g. Arnold’s bread. I like their multigrain bread. It is moist and has good flavor. Lately, I don’t enjoy this multigrain bread. I can’t have it with a hamburger, or a deli meat sandwich. It might be okay with some peanut butter & jam. Hamburger, by itself even tastes a little “off”. I am hoping that the butcher is adding something to the ground beef that changes it’s flavor. **Yesterday, I did fix some cream of mushroom soup, with onion & asparagus, and half-n-half, and the end product was delicious.

I just realized that I haven’t had breakfast today, and it is now almost 1:30 pm. This morning, I did try some Starbucks coffee that I bought at WalMart recently, and it was close enough to that “good” flavor that I have been missing since I ran out of the gifted Cracker Barrell coffee, during the Pandemic. I normally like to buy “whole bean” coffee and grind a little as I go, but the Pandemic stopped most groceries from offering whole bean, where you could pull down the lever and get however much you wanted. **The gifted, already ground, Cracker Barrell, coffee changed between the time I got my gift and when I was able to get out (end of the Pandemic, for me) and buy some more at a local Cracker Barrell. It just wasn’t the same. And, it is expensive buying different coffees at $9+ a shot, just to realize that, “nope, that’s not it either.”

NOTE [10/05/22]: Last night I fixed a hamburger, a very small baked potato (in microwave) and sauteed some onion & sliced jalapenos on the stovetop. I ate almost all of the hamburger (with some catchup, mustard, and raw Vidalia onion), most of the very small potato (just haven’t wanted them as I have for the past several years) and forced myself to eat all of the jalapenos & onion (with a little sweetener & some Salsa Ranchera sauce). The jalapenos had very good flavor, although I oddly found myself forcing it all down.

Part of me is wondering if my age has finally started to show in my diet. I’ve had a problem with “portion control” most of my life, but what I have fixed for the past 15 years or so is relatively healthy… switching up between chicken (not much lately), pork (not much lately), beef (a little more than chicken or pork, but not that much) and lamb. I have gone nuts (but not lately) for a “round bone” lamb chop, cooked on the stove top, and served with a couple of sides such as glazed carrots (with sugar free maple syrup & margarine), souped up beets (with Balsamic vinegar), a tomato chutney, etc. Even the lamb and sides I have not done much of in the last couple of weeks. *I do not feel bad, or sick, but my hunger is severely abated. For all of my life, breakfast was an extremely important meal. I rarely missed breakfast, and for many of them the meal included: eggs (scrambled or over medium – ‘a couple’), meat (bacon, link or patty sausage, country ham), grits (or rice, or potatoes) and whole wheat toast or a biscuit (at the Rainbow Restaurant) and coffee or hot tea (sweet with sweetener & creamer). I do like pancakes and waffles but when eating at a restaurant, I found that it was normally expensive to have both eggs, sausage and pancakes at the same meal. *Well after I retired, I found that Zorbas Restaurant had a choice with their basic breakfast (eggs, meat & grits) to have either toast or 2 pancakes. All those times that I could have had eggs, bacon & pancakes, wow. **”a couple of eggs”… I found another young, waitress, she was Negro, at Cracker Barrell that must have thought the word “couple” meant the same thing as “a few”. When I’m asked, “How many eggs would you like,” my response is normally, “A couple.” I don’t expect the waiter or waitress to respond, “And how many will that be, two or three.” I’ve never thought that the word “couple” meant anything other than “two,” because when you talk about human relationships, especially a man and woman dating, I would never think if someone said, “They are a couple,” to respond with the question, “And is there a third or fourth person in that relationship.” I have found several (more than a couple), but still only a few waitresses that I have to remember to respond, “I would like two eggs, over medium.”

Age being one possibility as the cause for the change in my hunger… but I also sometimes wonder if maybe I am suffering a COVID side effect. I’ve never been tested, or thought that I had COVID, but the sense of taste is one side effect.

This morning I weighed 258.4 lbs. which was down from the previous day’s result of 258.8 lbs. If you Iook at my weight graphs at the top of the page, you will see it has been several years since I only weighed 258 pounds. If I am not terminally sick (and I do not feel such), losing the weight will mean that my blood glucose numbers should become more manageable and at some point, even without medication, I should be able to eat more normally.

I attended my 50th high school reunion about three weeks ago. It was enjoyable and both painful. Part of the joy was seeing old friends and schoolmates and rehearsing stories from long ago that many of us shared. Painful was seeing how poorly some people had aged. Not thinking about the approximate third of the class that had already died.

A few weeks later I was looking on Facebook for the photos that had been taken during the reunion, and then seeing a note from Martha Burns Crawley regarding a play and presentations that were done in the 5th grade by those in Mrs. DeBerry’s class. The premier presentation was a group of boys that were lip syncing the song “King of the Road.” I wanted to be in that group, but wasn’t. Instead, I was assigned to a group of boys that danced & lip synced to the song, “I’m Telling You Now,” by the group, Freddie & the Dreamers.

Freddie & the Dreamers were a British group, and they did a dance during their song in which they flapped their arms and legs. “I’m telling you now. I’m telling you right away…”

I think we presented this song twice (probably to two different groups of students) during the day. But, I recall during one presentation, where our group of boys were singing and flapping our arms and legs, and I looked down on the front row of the audience to see them smiling, laughing and nudging one another. I looked down and saw that my fly was down. *I think I just kept dancing until the song was over. Isn’t the word, “mortified”. But I don’t recall any lasting negative effects of this incident, and I am probably the only one after 57 years that might recall this episode.

I enjoyed having Mrs. DeBerry as a teacher in the 5th Grade, and whether it was true or not, I felt that I was one of her “favorites”. I am qualifying this place of standing because a really good teacher probably makes many of their students feel “special.”

I don’t recall the exact year, but I think I was in the 11th Grade when I had Mrs. DeBerry again as a teacher. By this time Debbie Sutton and I had already dated, but I’m not sure when we split up. But, I definitely didn’t feel that I was one of Mrs. DeBerry’s “favorites”. I’m also not sure of whether Mrs. DeBerry had gotten a divorce by this time and was going by the name DeBerry-Newman.

Years later, I think Mrs. DeBerry-Newman became a part of the Department of Education in Onslow County.

I don’t recall the exact year, but I started working for the New River Baptist Association overseeing their “crisis ministry” which was called “the Hem of His Garment”. I had been working for the Salvation Army, and the experience there having become odious, I had finally been motivated to ask Gerry Hutchinson if there might be a job available. I didn’t know at the time that Gerry had probably already taken steps to start working for the Baptist Convention. He left shortly after I was put in the position at the Hem of His Garment in Jacksonville, NC.

I worked with Mrs. Mary Bell Jarman at the Hem. “Mary Bell” had a daughter that sometimes came into the thrift store (Hem) and sometimes had her children (Mary Bell’s grandchildren) with her. There was a young boy.

Bethlehem Baptist Church is located on Gum Branch Road, and for several years they had a softball field next to the church building, both adjacent to Gum Branch Road. At some point, I heard that Mary Bell’s grandson had been hit by a car and killed. They were playing softball next to the church, and someone had hit the ball across the road. The boy was crossing the road to get the ball when he was hit by a passing car. *I don’t know if they moved the ball field, or whether they stopped playing softball entirely, but the ball field by the church was abandoned, and I think it is now mostly a paved parking area.

Years later and probably just in passing, I was talking to my cousin, Mary Ann, and she mentioned that the person driving the car in the accident had been Barbara DeBerry-Newman. This shocked me, and Mary Ann said it had been “hushed up” at the time.

I do not recall the year, and I was either on a short vacation, or perhaps at some work related conference at Western Carolina University. But, it seems that Suzanne Hesseltine and myself were at WCU at some conference, or training, during the summer.

What I wanted to recall was what happened as I was travelling down a straight, wide (perhaps Interstate highway) road, late one sunny fall morning, in the North Carolina mountains. There were tall trees along the right side of the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile. As I passed along this strait, a gentle wind was causing the golden leaves on all of the trees to fall at an angle onto and across the roadway. This was as close to a golden shower of leaves as is possible. And, it wasn’t just one tree’s leaves, but all the trees lining the right side. I don’t recall their being any trees on the left side of this road.

I recognized this as being a special event even at the time it was happening.

I was at Cracker Barrell and noticed an old calendar on their wall. It had a picture of a highway with trees lining both sides, and the trees in beautiful fall colors, yellow & golden. The road I was on in North Carolina was straighter, and I think it was a divided highway, with two lanes in each direction, but on my right side, but they were colored much like those in the calendar photo, and the gentle wind was blowing a bunch of leaves from all the trees as if they were rain, and this golden rain coming down across my car, was filtering the light of a beautiful, sunny, fall morning.

I started with a simple google search for “ground beef, lentils, recipe” and this was one of the suggested links, “Beef & Lentil Soup“. I can’t find the “shawarma spice mix” that I found online. Thought there was a link from the soup recipe page to it, but can’t find it now.

What did I include in my spice mix? Cardamom, cayenne, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, smoked paprika, and S&P.

I added some diced tomatoes & potatoes, just a little zucchini, garlic powder about half beef broth & half chicken broth.

This turned out really good. I didn’t make this “sweet” and the unusual spices for me, provided a unique savory flavor. I think I’ve had some of these spices at Sherefe when they made the sweet potato soup.

I do not recall if the above soup that I had a Sherefe was sweet potato or pumpkin soup. It was savory, and delicious. And, at a later time, the chef was not able to repeat the deliciousness. Much like me, in that, on a certain day, with certain ingredients available I can create something delicious, and not remember all the steps or ingredients, or amounts of each that went into making it good.

*This reminded me of a time, when I used several graphics design applications when I was “playing”. The two apps I recall using were “Painter” and “Paintshop Pro”. I used the letter “A” and doctored it up in various ways, with one program. I made it look real, with drop shadow, and then I brought the image into another graphics program and modified it with some special filters just in that app. I ended up with a pock marked 3D image of the letter A. The pock mark looked something like a barnacle. But, as soon as I was finished, I realized that I couldn’t do this again, even if I needed to. I didn’t remember all of the steps I had used, and there was a matter of artistic flow in the creation. If I slowed down to record each step of the process, the creation would have been severely impeded. I had to work at a certain speed, and with the knowledge and experience I had at that moment.

Finn Oliver’s Family Restaurant was my second choice this day. I had driven down to Lumberton, NC to eat at Pier 41, a Southern Seafood restaurant, but when I arrived the parking lot was empty, except for a police/deputy car around back. I didn’t realize that Pier 41 was closed on Monday & Tuesday each week.

I tried the mac & cheese, mashed potatoes & gravy, hamburger in gravy and corn. All were good. I didn’t try the fried chicken. I went back for a little more hamburger, corn and mashed potatoes and banana pudding for desert.