You know what sounds awful? Pizza on a stick.
You know what is really good? Pizza on a stick!
Carnival food can be really awful, but the pizza on a stick at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is really good. Flavorful, moist, and easy to handle without getting greasy. The amount of pizza you get on a single stick is a full meal, so as carnival food goes, itʼs good value for money.
Iʼve never understood the appeal of what are called “alternative” milks. In ordinary life, I try to avoid processed food, and with the exception of fake meat, pretend milk is probably the most processed food on the planet.
I have a fasination with farms, so I like to watch the farm life demonstrations at the rodeo that are intended for children, but instructive for those of us who grew up playing on concrete and asphalt.
This demonstration was about how to milk a cow, but I was drawn to the banner nearby that compared cowʼs milk with various nut milk. Itʼs a little hard to see in the picture, so Iʼve reproduced the information here:
If you're viewing this on a mobile phone, you won't be able to see the table until you hold your phone horizontally. That's because tables look like absolute pants on phones.
| Cowʼs milk | Almond “milk” | Oat “milk” | Soy “milk“ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 110 | 60 | 130 | 110 |
| Protein | 8 grams | 1 gram | 4 grams | 8 grams |
| Fat | 2½ grams | 2½ grams | 2½ grams | 4½ grams |
| Carbohydrates | 12 grams | 8 grams | 24 grams | 9 grams |
| Calcium | 30% | 45% | 35% | 45% |
| Phosphorous | 25% | none | none | 25% |
| Potassium | 10% | 1% | none | 10% |
| Riboflavin | 25% | 30% | 30% | 30% |
| Vitamin B12 | 20% | 50% | none | 50% |
| Vitamin A | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
| Vitamin D | 25% | 25% | 25% | 30% |
What's interesting to me about the table is the highlighted numbers. The highlights indicate that those nutrients occur in the milk naturally. In cases where a nutrient is not highlighted, that means itʼs added when the food is processed. So while the nut milks have five percent more riboflavin than cowʼs milk, the cowʼs milk has it naturally. Itʼs not added at a factory.
Why does it matter? Some people think that the body absorbs nutrients better if they come from nature, not a pill. Which may explain why my doctor encouraged me to eat certain foods, rather than take a supplement, when I was found to be a bit short on a particular vitamin.
I wonʼt pretend that cowʼs milk is the perfect food, but itʼs good to have information to compare, especially if youʼre more worried about carbohydrates than calories. Or potassium instead of fat.
On the other hand, the U.S. Army thinks the cowʼs milk is almost the perfect food. When I was in R.O.T.C., we were taught that if we were ever trapped behind enemy lines, try to find a cow because with cowʼs milk and iron tablets, you can live for a very long time.
Thereʼs a stereotype along the lines of “People in Houston wonʼt ride transit.” If that was true, then Metro wouldnʼt have had two million disembarkments at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo a couple of years ago.
My observation so far has been that the people who are most against transit in Houston are people who donʼt live in Houston, or if they do, they live on the fringes, and not in the actual city part of the city.
Not only do people spend weeks riding their horses to Houston each year, the local TV news monitors their progress.