Ham Sandwich On Pretzel Bread With An Organic Apple Slaw And Reduced Honey Dijon Mustard Sauce

I tried to think of a catchy name for the sandwich and this post, but nothing came to mind. I actually made this sandwich about two weeks ago, and even with all that time I still couldn't come up with anything clever....but this sandwich is AWESOME! The best that I've ever made.

About a month ago I decided to start baking my own bread. The organic variety is too expensive and too much trouble to get in Madison. Around that same time I thought I would challenge myself by running a zero-waste kitchen, meaning nothing that goes into the kitchen gets thrown in the trash. There wasn't really a reason for it, I just thought it would be an interesting experiment. And since the kitchen is the only room in my apartment that sees any action now, a zero waste living room didn't hold much potential.

If I was going to learn how to bake bread, I would start with my favorite type: soft pretzels. I already pick out my weekly recipes according to the "concept of overlapping ingredients", so that when everything is cooked up there are no leftovers of single items, no half an onion or a third cup of raisins. The problem with that is that sometimes 1) you get tired of eating one type of food for a week and 2) I can't eat all of the food before the next week.

Historically speaking, when something like that happened before it would eventually be thrown out. But that can't happen in a zero-waste kitchen, so I decided to take the overlapping concept beyond just the ingredients, I would also cook food that could be eaten on it's own AND be eaten together, in combination with other food types.

Take this sandwich as an example: I can eat the organic apple slaw as a salad, and it can be a topping on the sandwich, as a substitute for lettuce. The pretzel bread can function as bread in the sandwich, or it can be eaten by itself with the honey dijon mustard as a dipping sauce. The honey dijon mustard also goes on the sandwich.

I got the pretzel recipe from Alton Brown. The only variations I made was when brushing the egg wash on the pretzel bread. Rather than use a regular brush I dipped a plastic mushroom cleaner in the wash and punched it into the bread. This created indentations which held the wash against the dough better and didn't run off. I also didn't form the dough into the traditional pretzel shape, I rolled it flat and cut it into squares for the sandwich bread and rectangles for dipping. The trick here is to make sure the bread is even. If part of the pretzel square is thin and the other is thick, it doesn't cook evenly-the thin part is crispy and the thick part is soft and chewy.

After cutting the shapes, each square was removed and briefly boiled in water

Punching the egg wash grid into the dough

Here's the organic apple slaw recipe:

1 head of cabbage, cored and chopped

2 organic Granny Smith apples, with an alumette cut, a little larger than 1/8" and about the length of a paper clip. Dicing the apples would be alright if you're only making a salad, but the longer alumette cut helps keep the apple in the slaw when it is part of a sandwich.

2 scallions, finely cut

2 teaspoons salt

6 tablespoons veggie oil

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon red pepper

Toss the cabbage with the salt and let it rest for an hour. Then rinse it in water and throw everything together. That's it!

The reduced honey dijon mustard is:

1 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup dijon mustard

1/4 cup honey

2 tablespoon vegetable oil

3/4 teaspoon cider vinegar

1/8 teaspoon onion salt

1/8 teaspoon red pepper

1 tablespoon corn starch

Blend on medium speed, then put in a sauce pan on low heat and allow to simmer. The reason for reducing it is because it can make the interior of the sandwich slippery if most of the water isn't removed.

After that all you need is some ham, a tomato and a red onion. Take the two pieces of pretzel bread, slather a little reduced honey dijon mustard on them, add the ham, onion, tomato, and organic apple slaw and eat away.

Assembling the sandwich with extra sauce. I like 'em messy

Originally I served it like a regular sandwich, but then I changed it so there was a big pile of organic apple slaw all around. First make it an open-faced sandwich and when it comes time to add the apple slaw layer, drop a huge scoop on the sandwich. Don't worry if any spills to the side, that's what you want to happen. Then add the top piece of pretzel bread. You have to eat your way into the sandwich before you can pick it up, because the slaw surrounds all four sides. This way you get the organic apple slaw as a salad first, and then part of the sandwich. The honey dijon compliments the slaw in the sandwich and gives it a different character than when the slaw is on it's own.

The sandwich surrounded by slaw. Look out pretzel bread sandwich!!!! Too late....

I've made the sandwich with honey ham and Bavarian ham, and liked them both. The same goes for roma and hydroponic tomatoes.

Have you ever watched a TV show and they talk about "layers of flavor", or the art of combining different textures in a food? Well folks, this has them both. There's the subtle sweetness and soft chewy nature of the pretzel bread and ham, the crunchiness of the apples in the slaw and their tartiness sublimely combining with the red onion, and the tomato and honey dijon sauce ties everything together.

This lasted for one week. When all your food is preservative free you really can't have a whole 'lot of anything in the fridge

And best of all, you get a healthy regular meal (pretzel bread sandwich), a snack (dipping pretzels), and a salad (apple slaw) out of the deal. Just two years ago the only time I stepped into the kitchen was when the buzzer for the microwave sounded. I mostly ate food that one way or another was prepared for me. By virtue of having multiple chemical sensitivity take all of that away I've been forced to become a better cook, to the point that I can pull something off like this and do it with zero waste.

I just wish it had not come with such a high cost. The only way I can share the meal is to do it on the web.

MCS: Is It The Thyroid's Fault?

Oh, you cheap bastards!!! Hey Walmart, is a little profit more important than people's health? (And their slogan is "Save money, live better"). You'll see the spurious nature of that catchphrase below

My final opinion is going to be no, the thyroid is not entirely to blame for MCS, but thyroid performance (and what it needs to function properly) may be a big part of the story. Or at least it seems to be for me, this could be entirely different for someone else since there is such a great variation with multiple chemical sensitivity. I got it from working at an unventilated indoor construction zone while living in one of America's worst cities for air pollution. My MCS experiences might contrast with those who got this way from pesticide or toxic mold exposure.

Co-morbid chronic fatigue syndrome is probably my worst symptom, and like many afflicted people I want to know how it works in order to find the most effective treatment, and possibly a cure. Because the thyroid produces hormones that are directly related to the body's energy production and metabolism, its normally suspected to be related in some way to MCS.

In my Gland To Meet You post I wrote about the possibility of being diagnosed with hypothyroidism and mentioned some of the symptoms. Since then I've had my blood sampled for the thyroid hormones regularly and I've been borderline hypothyroidism for the past two visits. It's something that's checked every time I see the doctor now, which I'm sure just absolutely thrills my insurance provider when they get the bill.

Afterwards I did a little research. It's something I'm good at, besides amassing a giant shoe collection I never wear anymore after getting MCS, and formerly restoring antique bicycles, another thing that MCS has stolen from me (and my sister who I promised a bike to). It turns out that in the 1920's iodine deficiency was a near epidemic in a big part of America, and the deficiency was causing people to have thyroid problems.

The thyroid needs iodine, it uses it as a fuel. Iodine is a naturally occurring element, but it isn't found everywhere. Another thing that was already well established as a dietary requirement was salt. Although Americans are eating too much salt now it was considered a vital necessity back in the day, and everybody had a big bag of salt in their kitchen instead of a bunch of empty McDonalds Happy Meal containers and a half eaten pizza from Dominos. The government made all the salt manufacturers put iodine in the salt, and some bakeries used it in bread. It solved the widespread iodine deficiency problem and it was generally considered to be a great success.

About the same time big business really starting lobbying politicians on a grand scale, mandatory iodine supplementation was discontinued even though the main condition which causes the deficiency hasn't changed. There's a large stretch of the American continent where iodine is absent in the soil where crops are grown called the goiter belt. Because iodine is not in the soil or water it's not in the food, and if it's not in the food it's not in the body unless somebody puts it in there. Big business doesn't have to do it now even though it was PROVEN to work once before and it was PROVEN not to be a significant financial burden on the companies that were required to comply. It's not their problem, we shouldn't put our health in front of what some people in this country (and the current Supreme Court) think is a corporation's God given right to make a profit. Even if it kills us. Besides, if anyone in government makes all the free market food producers start putting iodine in salt and bread again, Glenn Beck's head will explode. SOCIALISTS!!!!!!!! BOOOM!!!!!!

And to make matters worse, the bread companies started putting a real nasty iodine substitute called bromide into bread, which bonds to iodine receptors resulting in an inability to absorb future iodine, but that shouldn't really matter anyway. We are simply meant to shop until we die in this country. After all, isn't the last purchase everybody has to make a casket?

Ironically I'm writing this on Halloween night, which has become one of the bigger spending holidays in America. And for the last stop on the pessimism train, if salt manufacturers and bread makers don't put iodine in salt anymore because it's cheaper not to do so, you can be absolutely guaranteed that fast food and processed food corporations sure as heck aren't using it either.

So back to iodine and MCS. Here are the facts as I started my iodine research and experimental dietary supplementation: my energy level was bottoming out, I was gaining weight again and about to hit 250 lbs, my average basal temperature was 96.2 despite sleeping in flannel pajamas and underneath a multilayer combination of blankets so thick it could quite possibly be radiation proof, I had lived in the goiter belt since 2006, and none of the cheap bastards who made the salt I was using had put iodine in it. I went to a health store and bought kelp, which contains 150 mcg of iodine per dose, and started taking it daily. After two weeks, here is the result, with the good stuff first:

• Weight loss of 5.5 pounds a week despite no change in diet or exercise. And by no change in exercise, that means no exercise, period. I've currently lost a total of 12 pounds since beginning supplementation about two weeks ago. If any diet-only people read this post and think they've discovered the holy grail, I should tell you that my diet is far better than the average Americans, thanks to MCS chemical avoidance strategies. If you don't have MCS you're going to have a hard time finding the discipline to stick to the program.
• Slightly less hungry feeling before lunch or dinner.
• On the first week, my average basal temperature was 96.8. The second week, 97.2.
• No real qualitative change in energy level, but I'm able to stay awake about 1 hour more per night without any new fibromyalgia pains the next day. On the plus side of that equation, I've taught myself how to type while lying down. It's not like I'm doing jumping jacks for the last hour.

On the first day, still not much love in the temperature dept

Now the not so good stuff:

• In terms of energy level, I haven't felt any different than before. Overall fatigue was just as bad.
• Slight reduction in the quality of sleep.
• Iodine certainly didn't protect me from getting pink eye, that's for damn sure.
• Although my average temperature has improved consistently, it still varies greatly throughout the day. I hit a low of 95.1 a couple of times during the past two weeks, which is the exact same low I recorded when first monitoring my temperature nearly 6 months ago, long before iodine supplementation. I'm having a hard time trying to figure that one out.
• I experienced a tendency to get migraines during the later hours of the work day, especially the days I worked in the office where episodic chemical exposures occur more frequently.

So once again, this is what happened with me. I can't predict how iodine supplementation will affect anyone else with multiple chemical sensitivity, and I can't endorse it unless an iodine producer starts paying me Glenn Beck money to do it. If that happens, I have no problem making myself look like a fool on a daily basis just like he does. The difference will be I know I'm playing the fool, and I look better in a suit.

The best news is I'll be visiting the doctor again in a couple of weeks, and when I do I'll get the exact level my thyroid hormones are at. Then those numbers can be compared to the previous numbers derived in a labratory environment, instead of relying upon my bathroom scale and a cheap digital thermometer. Everything else like temperature and weight are secondary indicators from non-calibrated equipment, but I consider hormone levels a better measurement of iodine supplementation effectiveness.

It's worth noting that the tests for thyroid hormone levels aren't considered absolutely completely 100% accurate regarding thyroid dysfunction. But when I went through 6 months of almost every medical test known to man before I was formally diagnosed with multiple chemical sensitivity, they measured my hormones and at that time they were normal. I had MCS, but my hormones weren't in the lower ranges that places one at-risk of hypothyroidism like they are now. Based on that I theorize that the thyroid isn't the exact cause of MCS as far as my medical history is concerned (might be different for others), but the thyroid does seem to be involved with MCS in the long run (or the one early test I had was wrong and the numerous recent tests are more reliable. I didn't think my first doctor really had my best interests in mind).

People may or may not have thyroid issues before MCS, but they might eventually experience thyroid dysfunction after getting it. After all, people with MCS are often found after-the-fact to be low in magnesium and other beneficial minerals, which is believed to be from the toxic heavy metals bonding to the receptor sites that normally absorb those specific minerals. I'm low in magnesium and calcium.

So when I see the doctor I'll get a more definitive measure of how iodine affected my hormones. It's possible that iodine could impact my temperature or weight without changing the hormone level, or something else I haven't thought of is responsible for all that....I know my dad prays for me a lot.

Ultimately, if I had to make any recommendation, it would be for anyone else who suspects iodine deficiency, whether they have multiple chemical sensitivity or not, is to talk to your doctor about it. If you think you're deficient don't run out and buy a bunch of kelp or dessicated thyroid glands, talk to your doctor about it first. Or as it exists in the US today, make an appointment to see your doctor and then wait 4 months for the appointment to come due. And if you don't have insurance, you can use the time to sell a bunch of your personal belongings on craigslist because whenever you walk into a doctor's office and your first words aren't "Who ordered the pepperoni pizza?" it's going to cost you about $500. That or you can move to a country with universal health care.

There's some evidence that suggests iodine deficiency results in an increased susceptibility for MCS. There's a mixed bag of personal evidence from my own short term experience (utilizing unscientific methods) that iodine helps after getting MCS. There's some evidence that suggests there are risks with taking supplemental iodine. I'm willing to take a few measured chances with my own body because there's so little of it left after getting multiple chemical sensitivity (the healthy parts anyway), but I'm not willing to take any chances with yours. See the doctors before making a move, even if such a thing comes with certain limitations. The doctors can tell you what to do, and Glenn Beck will tell you what to do, I'm only going to tell you what I think, what I have done, and what I might do in the future.

Well, So Much For That Idea........

One of the things that is odd now that I have multiple chemical sensitivity is that I have never gotten a cold or the flu. Not once, in fact I've never been close to it, and that's really unusual since MCS generally seems to weaken everything. The multi-year absence of germ-based affliction is probably due to the fact that I have a highly restricted social life now (pretty much zero), and when I do go out I usually have a respirator on (which sure doesn't help the chances of expanding my social life). And when you have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia on top of it, the times you do go outside of the apartment you're keeping a pretty low profile, as a means to both preserve energy and minimize pain. Trying to slip under the radar actually describes a lot of people in Madison, but that's because they're either stoned & paranoid, they just spent the weekend writing blatantly obscene and ridiculous comments on Sean Hannity's blog to see how many people agree with it and now they think the government has them under surveillance, or because they did the equivalent of all that back in the 60's and now it's all sneaking back up on them. But I'm the only one wearing a respirator.

But there may have been another reason for not getting the cold or flu. Multiple chemical sensitivity is notorious for jacking up a person's nervous system. It's believed that's one of the reasons why we can have a severe reaction to an almost microscopic amount of chemicals. It would also explain why I'm now waking up about 15 times a night, especially as soon as the tiniest bit of light comes through the window or the slightest sound is heard outside. So I was thinking perhaps the disproportionate reaction could be the same with germs or viruses, our bodies would detect the tiniest amount of an invader and work overtime to expel it.

Boy was I wrong. This weekend I got a whopping case of conjunctivitis. You may know it as PINK EYE.

I had gone grocery shopping early Friday evening. By the end of the night it felt like somebody stabbed me in the eye with a piece of jagged glass. The only thing worse would be if Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck were the ones doing the stabbing (they won't because I'm white and not on welfare...at least not yet anyway). I had to get the infection from the grocery cart's handle or the keypad at the checkout when I entered the PIN for my debit card.

This presents a dilemma for people with MCS. We sure as heck can't use those little wipes to sanitize the cart handles everyone else uses, because we may end up with an even worse reaction to the chemicals and fragrance than to the bacterial strain that causes conjunctivitis.

During the winter the solution is easy. I'll just leave my gloves on when shopping, that won't be considered unusual this far north of the equator. Besides, one of the first times I went grocery shopping in Madison I stood in the checkout line behind a guy who was wearing an immaculately constructed Sherlock Holmes outfit, complete with the tweed deerstalker cap, tweed jacket, and ornate hand carved pipe.....but only from the waist up. From the waist down he had on a dirty pair of baggy gray sweat pants and a tattered pair of sneakers that had the logos torn off, with no socks. It was early February and nowhere close to Halloween, the holiday being the only thing outside of mental illness or a wicked sense of pranksterism that could have explained this outfit, and I kid you not, nobody gave this guy a second look. I didn't say anything to the guy because I was still shocked to discover only a few minutes ago that a grocery store could have 4 entire rows dedicated to nothing but cheese, but Madison's casual acceptance of such a curious display was one of the things I came to absolutely love about this town....well, that and the 4 rows of cheese. During the summer months, I'll either have to construct my own Sherlock Holmes outfit to protect me from from the germs or I'll have to bring along a portable, non-VOC and fragrance free cleaning supply to clean off the grocery cart handles and the checkout keypad.

For the readers with MCS, watch out when using the above items when you're in the grocery store. And watch out for guys partially dressed as Sherlock Holmes, at least they'll be much nicer to you than my good friend conjunctivitis will. And if you drop by my part of town, we'll go to Woodmans grocery store since it seems to bring out the zaniness of people when they shop there (it's from being so close to all that cheese)

PS-"Conjunctivitis", doesn't that sound like the name of a pro football player? Conjunctivitis Jones, or something like that?

PPS-Should any of my readers dislike my treatment of the Fox News pundits, I issue you this challenge: Watch 30 minutes of any show Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, or Bill O'Reilly is on, or that morning show that is so far from responsible journalism that the entire cast, even on their best day, is deserving of Divine punishment, and tell me they didn't commit at least five separate instances of a logical fallacy. You'll see that it is usually more than five fallacies for any one show, and that they will repeat one like ad hominem, begging the question, false dilemma, guilt by association, poisoning the well, or the straw man, over, and over, and over again-and then the next show picks up where the previous left off. The same dirty tricks that would get a high school debate team laughed out of a competition is what Fox News is aggressively using to sell their agenda. Then again, most people who watch Fox News regularly won't read this because they are down in the basement counting their bullets because Fox News told them President Obama will take all the guns away.

My, My, Pumpkin Pie

Here's a slice of the finished product. Obviously, I haven't had any formal training in food presentation

Actually, it's pumpkin bread, but I couldn't think of a good rhyme for that. I also forgot to start taking pictures until half way through the night, so before you think I'm a total screw up and forget I'm blogging to illustrate one man's attempt to find normalcy after contracting a life-altering condition that profoundly affects every aspect of one's life, let me tell you about why I'm writing this post.

I started watching NBC's The Biggest Loser after my weight jumped to 250 since trying to replace organic food with slightly less expensive farm fresh food. The increased pesticide intake (which normal people would never notice) slowed down my metabolism in what I'm guessing is a natural bodily reaction now that I've got multiple chemical sensitivity-a chemical exposure lowers the metabolism, the lower metabolism means less activity, and that in turn results in less chemical exposure. But it also means increased body fat and a higher weight. So I started watching The Biggest Loser to see if there was something I could do before I eventually outgrew my fat pants (Ladies, I have them too, but because I'm an engineer they are classified according to weight-I have one set of pants for 230 lbs, another set for when I hit 240, and just two pair at 250).

There wasn't much on the show I could use unless I was willing to build a private gym and hire a full time personal trainer who doesn't wear fragranced products. Even the "healthy" food they featured in poorly staged and obviously scripted scenes of product placement is just low fat versions of processed food. But one of the contestants made an eloquent statement about fresh food, shortly before they booted him off the show. He said something along the lines of "...all chemicals they put in food now is to make food taste better, but if you buy real food that's fresh you don't need the chemical enhancers because the flavor is already there..." And then he said "Please don't vote me off the show" but it was too late.

I've been buying fresh food, but who knows where the hell the stuff is coming from during the winter months. So last week I tried buying food that's in season locally (and most likely still coming from the same place that provides me with blueberries when the snow is waist deep). You're probably thinking what is in season during October? Well in Wisconsin it's beer, cheese, and cigarette butts. And anything remotely connected to the Green Bay Packers, too. At the end of the list you'll find pumpkins.

I've already decided baking bread is my next area of culinary adventure, so I thought I would make pumpkin bread. Here's the recipe:

• 1 pumpkin, probably a small one. You'll want 2 cups worth after you mash it down or puree it
• 2/3 cups water
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup veggie oil
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice (maybe)
• 2 tablespoons molasses (the secret weapon of the ingredients in this recipe)
• lots of beer and cheese to consume while you're baking the pumpkin bread (if you live in Wisconsin)

I'm only joking about the beer and cheese, the allspice is optional. If you like the hint of licorice cloves and nutmeg provides, the allspice helps round out the spice combination and makes it a little more prominent. If you want a more traditional flavor leave it out, but 1/4 teaspoon isn't that much. I came up with the molasses idea from tasting the puree, it gives the bread a sweet nutty taste that would go well with either the allspice or traditional version.

Now the best part: Where I tell you what to do. If you live in Wisconsin, that's easy-load up on the beer and cheese. For the rest of you:

• Cut the pumpkin in half and clean out the seeds and stringy parts. Pumpkin seeds are edible, you can toast them and puree them with the rest of the pumpkin. You could also eat them as snacks or use as garnish to decorate the loaf of bread. I guess you could dry out the stringy parts and use it as dental floss or as twine to bind boxes with.
• Cut the pumpkin into sections and peel the skin. I cut the sections so that they were just smaller than my paring knife, and then I could cut each section from top to bottom in one motion.
• This part is important-steam or boil the sections before pureeing them. I went straight to the puree step first and it just wasn't happening. That's also why I can't give you a better recommendation on pumpkin size, because part of my first batch was scrapped. But 2 cups of puree is what I ended up with, so that number is good. If you end up with a larger pumpkin and more puree, it should freeze well. Then you can use the leftover to make pumpkin bagels. But the fibers and starches need to be heated and softened up a bit before they see the blender.
• Puree the pumpkin. It gets soft enough from steaming you could probably use a potato masher instead if you wanted to, I'm sure the same is true for boiling. Heck, use a pressure cooker if you feel like it, it's going to be your pumpkin bread. Get happy and have fun with it.
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• In one bowl, mix the pumpkin, eggs, water, oil, and molasses. You will definitely want to use a mixer unless you have a team of professional wrestlers living nearby who are looking for a workout. I used a cheap $20 handheld mixer and it worked fine.

• Once you get the liquid ingredients mixed, then slowly add the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, gloves, ginger, and optional allspice while continuing to stir the ingredients.
• Apply a small amount of oil and flour to the sides and base of a bread pan. One trick I did was to use the oil remaining in the measuring cup after pouring out the oil for the pumpkin puree to grease the pans. Less waste that way. I have it on good authority (my mom) that purified butter can be used to grease the pan, but don't substitute the full 2/3rds of a cup of purified butter for oil in the puree. That will be too rich (of course I was thinking rich...BUT DELICIOUS! I haven't actually tried it yet).
• Pour the mix into the pan, stopping when the mix is an inch below the lip. It will expand and rise when baked.
• Place the pan in the oven.
• The cooking time will depend on the shape and depth of the pan. I used two pans, one rectangular and one square. Because the rectangular pan was thinner, the heat reached the center faster and cooked the bread quicker. The square pan took exactly 10 minutes longer.

But don't worry folks, because here is an awesome tip: You can tell when pumpkin pie is done when you put a toothpick in it and it comes out clean. If the toothpick has pumpkin bread on it, it's not done yet. In the pic below I'm testing the square pan.

That's right, I've got the cookin' jams jams on. You know I mean business when I'm wearing cookin' jammies!

The comparison. The "done" pic was in the rectangular pan, "not done" in the square pan

The rectangular pan took 50 minutes, the square pan was 60. And the bread smells absolutely fantastic if you can bear some all natural airborne particulates floating around for a while. If you wanted you could add raisins, cranberries, or a little pureed carrots into the mix before baking. I even thought about a no-molasses and allspice-free version with a little curry thrown in for a savory flavor, but since this was my first loaf of pumpkin bread I didn't want to risk it.

Serve by itself, or with cream cheese or vanilla ice cream.

Normally when I write about cooking it's because I have to figure these things out all over again after MCS. To be honest I have to figure it out, period. I wasn't much of a cook before and now because of MCS chemical avoidance strategies and the artificial nature of modern food I have no choice but to learn, but with MCS there's a whole new set of rules to follow that the normal world doesn't make readily available. We have to dig for it or learn from our mistakes, and perhaps if I write about my experiences a newly afflicted person can be that much smarter about it, or maybe a foodie will come here for the pumpkin bread and learn about multiple chemical sensitivity and avoid my fate. But besides that semi-noble intention, I'm actually a little proud of this recipe. Give it a shot, it's delicious.

Chemicals Claim Another Victim: Kelly Osbourne

Photo and original story credit given to TMZ

The surprise story of this season's Dancing With The Stars, Kelly Osbourne, suffered skin burns after applying Impulse Body Spray, which is the British version of Axe Body Spray. Both Impulse and Axe are made by the same company, Unilever. Unilever is like most big corporations nowadays, they do some flashy publicity-generating events every year so the general public thinks they're green and responsible, but you dig a little deeper and find out that the exact opposite is true. Besides, they make Axe body spray, which is viewed by the multiple chemical sensitive community in the same way soldiers viewed mustard gas in the trenches of WWI.

On Kelly's twitter page she wrote:

Never ever use impulse body spray from the UK i sprayed it on myself and now have really bad burns all over my body gentle on skin my ass!

Kelly's chemical burns were so bad that Dancing With The Stars dress designers had to refashion her dress to hide the injury. Personally, when I first heard that Kelly was burned I figured she just got a little to close to Tom DeLay when Satan appeared to claim his poor excuse for a soul, but it's not too surprising to find out Axe is the culprit. Axe body spray is probably the most mentioned brand name when it comes to multiple chemical sensitivity irritants. Perfume, cologne, air fresheners are always discussed in general, but Axe is the most frequently named product. Heck, Axe body spray even makes normal people sick, so much so that some high schools and colleges are thinking about banning it.

Axe body spray ingredients include:

• Isobutane, commonly used in refrigerators and as an aerosol propellant. It's highly flammable, as is just about everything else in Axe. It's most likely used here as a dehydrating agent so a persons skin doesn't stay wet. Axe is probably applied immediately before a person gets dressed, so they want it to dry as quickly as possible so the product doesn't stain any garments or cause them to stick.
• Alcohol Denat. Denat is added to the alcohol to make it taste bad so people don't drink it. It also keeps the body spray from clumping together and foaming up. And since it's basically alcohol, it also works as a dehydrating agent.
• Hydrofluorocarbon 152a, used in pesticides so frequently you can read all about it on pesticide and chemical safety web sites. It's most likely used as a propellant in Axe.
• Triethyl Citrate, another anti-foaming agent.
• Isopropyl Myristate, a dehydrating agent for the spray, but one so effective it's also used to kill lice.
• Fragrance, undefined, so who knows what is really in there. Given the other ingredients in Axe I sincerely doubt it's anything good.
• Butane, a liquefied gas that is also highly flammable and sees use in refrigerators. Butane is proven to cause serious medical problems. It's not suspected, it's been proven....and it's in Axe body spray. It is also a propellant, but with the cooling effect butane and the other refrigerants used in Axe have, I wonder if the manufacturers want it to have a cool sensation when sprayed on the skin.
• Propane, another flammable/propellant/refrigerant. Yes, it's the same stuff people use to fire up their barbecue grills with.

One of the things about Axe that probably makes regular people sick is that just about every single ingredient in it is a VOC. Heck, everything in there is a serious, serious VOC. That's going to push more of the vapors and the chemical particulates not just up people's noses, but straight into their lungs.

The other thing I was thinking about was that since people can get high from inhaling aerosol products in what's called huffing, I wonder if Axe body spray users are unknowingly getting a little buzzed from it. Not so much they are consciously aware of it, but the brain & body knows what is really going on...

You Are What You Eat (and boy are we in trouble)

How can they call this food? There's so many artificial additives that they take up the entire side of the box, about the only thing close to a natural ingredient was "mechanically seperated chicken". And believe it or not, this is a kid's meal that has the words "Real Meals" on the front of the box. Mmmmmm, sodium hexametaphosphate, just what a growing boy needs. Not only is it in our food, but according to the link sodium hexametaphosphate is also used in "soap, detergents, water treatment, metal finishing and plating, pulp and paper manufacture, synthesis of polymers, photographic products, textiles, scale removal and agriculture"......Sounds yummy! And so healthy too!!!!!

I must admit, I'm in a pretty good mood right now. That's because I just ate a curried chicken with vegetable medley dinner I made a couple of nights ago. I love curry, it's my all-time favorite spice. Jamacian jerk seasoning is a close second.

I'm sure my parents and probably everyone else in my family occasionally scratches their head and wonders why I haven't gotten married yet. However not a single one of them would be surprised to find out that if I did eventually get around to having a kid, I would name it Curry, regardless of gender. There's no sense calling a kid jerk since that's what most people are going to call him or her half the time, that's what happened to me anyway....

Later, I would pay my child's way through culinary school (where I bet Curry would be a popular name) and then we could then open our own restaurant called Curry McCurry's, where of course we would serve curry-based foods. My curry love child would run the kitchen and I would run the front of the house. I can see it now...."Welcome to Curry McCurry's. What would you like with your curry today? Extra curry, excellent choice sir".

My manner of cooking with curry (the spice, not the future child) is easy:

1) Find a recipe that uses curry
2) Double the amount of curry it calls for
3) Eat and enjoy

But this post isn't about curry. It's about food, how culture and economics affects food production, and because of that how people in different countries view food differently. Mainly, what we in the western hemisphere and the industrialized nations call food isn't what the eastern and less developed countries call food. Despite everything they don't have, the eastern cultures still eat real food. Western cultures mainly eat processed food. And "processed" doesn't just mean the meal was made on a conveyor belt, it means it has all kinds of chemicals in it to enhance preservation, to improve the coloring, to benefit the manufacturing and assembly of the final product, or because the chemicals they used to create a certain taste like diacetyl or to produce a food-like aroma was cheaper than using the real thing.

I was looking for some curry recipes the other day because I was in the mood for my favorite spice (and because my future child might need a middle name, like Tandoori) when I ran across something called the Ultimate Bacon Sandwich. This was nothing more than two slices of processed white bread and just under a pound and a half of brand-name bacon.

Every country has a giant sandwich it calls its own, but it's how the country goes about it and what the sandwich is composed of that makes the difference. In western cultures its all about excess and gluttony, a luxury of overconsumption if you will. In eastern and less developed cultures, it's more about necessity. They don't have the means of production, the transportation infrastructure, or the manner of preservation we have here. Or if they have such things, it's certainly not at the scale we do. So they don't have the gigantic cattle feed lots, they have a rancher down in the valley that raises livestock. They don't have multinational corporations controlling meat proccessing plants that run their operations 24/7 to acheive economies of scale, they have a single butcher that's in a town 5 miles away. And they don't have fleets of 18 wheelers transporting the cattle or meat products, or if they do, the product is most likely going to a more affluent country.

Take Uruguay for example. It's considered the beef production capitol of South America, but most of that meat is headed elsewhere (ironically, because they don't have feed lots their cattle is grass fed, which is considered more desirable in the industrialized countries). If you took the small Kansas town I'm from and compared it to a similar town in Uruguay, their homes don't always have power, telephones, or refigerators. And you'd be walking for hours on a dirt road to get there, rather than driving in an air conditioned car on a fairly smooth highway with a Big Gulp in the cup holder.

So if you lived in Uruguay and it took you a day to get to the market and back, and you didn't have a refrigerator to store the food in or you had a fridge but the power kept going out and you had to throw everything together and eat it before it goes bad, then you might end up with something like the chivito.




But here's the difference-in those countries you have food with all natural ingredients, there's just a lot of those ingredients. Eggs, pickles, peppers, olives, everything that goes on a chivito is actual food. The chivito may use mozzarella cheese, but it's reall mozzarella, not freeze dried mozzarella sticks where 25% of the ingredients have words with more than 5 syllables in them. And that's the kind of thing you'll find in the oversized sandwiches in western cultures, and that's what makes our versions of these meals so much more dangerous.

It's not just the calories, the carbs, or the type of fat you fry it in, it's the chemicals in the food itself that people should concern themselves with. Most people in our side of the world aren't building these sandwiches out of necessity, it's more or less for sport. And because most of our food is manufactured and processed, that's what ends up in these types of creations. So then it becomes an issue of not just eating chemically enhanced food, but the utter and almost unbelievable quantity of those chemicals that is being consumed and the nature of the chemicals that we should consider.

Look at the Lozy Manwich. It's a British creation so I'll translate some of the author's words, but basically it's a big loaf of bread with: 1 entire squeeze bottle of mayonnaise (all-natural mayo is real easy to make too), 1 package of bacon, 10 burgers (which I'm assuming is not homemade and instead is bought off the shelf like almost everything else in this recipe), 1 package of onion rings, 10 slices of processed cheese, 1/2 a bottle of BBQ sauce, 2 packages of BBQ chicken (again, why not just go natural?), 1 large package of pre-cooked ham, 10 more slices of cheese, 6 tomatoes (Gasp!!! A real food item!!! They must have been out of the canned variety), and 1 head of lettuce. If you follow the links you'll see all of these store-bought monstrosities being incorporated into the, uh, "sandwich" as it's being built.

In Australia, another western culture, there's the Aussie Hangover Cure. Just go look at it, I dont want to describe it.

And in the states we have things like the Widow Maker, which is two low-grade frozen pizzas with Hot Pockets, pre-packaged onion rings, bottled marinara sauce (again, it's so easy to make the real thing and so much better for you when you use natural ingredients) Velveta cheese and a couple pounds of assorted meat products thrown in.

I'm really surprised there's not a bong in the picture

Image source: thisiswhyyourefat.com

But what really threw me over the edge was finding out about a sandwich called The Big Fat Ugly. Among an almost horrific combination of meat products like cheeseburgers, cheesesteaks, gyro meat, chicken, pork, sausage, (and of course there's a lot of bacon involved), and hash browns, this "sandwich" also has the following processed foods in it: mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, chicken nuggets, mac & cheese bites, fried mushrooms, jalepeno poppers, pizza bites, onion rings, American cheese, and ketchup (yet another one so easy to make all natural and that you can bet the restaurant is not making themselves). If you want to see someone pick through this sandwich, go here, but be warned it's a bunch of college students and their language shows it. I mean, who cares about the occasional profanity, but when they use the word "dude" in every single sentence, and as a noun, adjective, and possibly as a verb, that sort of thing really gets to me...

My multiple chemical sensitivity is so bad I doubt I could even walk into this restaurant, let alone try to eat something like that. But to illustrate my message about what we Americans and the rest of the western cultures are starting to consider food (and how far away that is from real, natural food) I wrote down the additives and preservatives that are listed on the labels of the processed foods that goes into the Big Fat Ugly.

I originally started to break them down by each food, but there's so much repetition with the following chemicals it was taking too much time. And it's bad enough when the Secret Service chases you around town because you want to see a Presidential candidate speak and you have to wear a respirator, I didn't want the grocery store goons to give me the same treatment. So the list you see below only counts an ingredient once, even though it may have appeared in 3-4, or even all of the processed food items. When you look at the list, just understand that a person who eats something like the Big Fat Ugly isn't only eating disodium dihydrogen pyrophosphate, but they may be eating it 3-4 times over.

And really folks, doesn't disodium dihydrogen pyrophosphate sound like something you'd put in a race car? But no, WE'RE PUTTING IN OUR FOOD! AND EATING IT! I wouldn't be surprised if our language eventually changes to resemble the additives rather than the food itself, so in 20 years food won't be "tasty", or "chewy", it will be like what you see with the disodium dihydrogen deathwish description-it will be referred to as a "quality improver". You'll be walking into a restaurant and you'll hear somebody say "Wow, that synthetic swelling agent really made the dish!", or a culinary hopeful will get kicked off of Top Chef season 26 because the judges tell him "You really should have added more pyrophosphates to aid in water retention".

So anyway, here are the additives, preservatives, coloring agents, emulsifiers, and all the other stuff they put into the various processed foods that go onto American plates every day, and into the Big Fat Ugly:

Diacetyl tartaric acid ester of monoglyceride, ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, calcium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium proponate, azodicarbonamide (it's banned in most countries for being unsafe to eat or breathe, but Subway and Panera use it in the breads they bake in their stores and that you have probably eaten), calcium peroxide, sodium steraoyol lactylate, ethonxylated diglyceride, calcium sulfate, oleoresin, calcium disodium, sodium tripolyphosphate, calcium phosphate, sodium phosphate, apocarotenal, sodium benzoate, methylcellulose gum, hydroxypropyl methycellulose, cheese substitute (it was undefined, it didn't say what is actually was, just "cheese substitute"), rennet casein (another cheese substitute-why not just use the cheese?-which by the way, is also the same question I ask almost every women I meet), sodium aluminum phosphate, potassium chloride, potassium sorbate, titanium phosphate (for color) - Note: If there's a big chemical name for an ingredient, and then it states the purpose for using it in parenthesis right after the chemical, it's probably not good for you - maltodextrin, magnesium oxide, rehydrated enzyme modified cheese (enough with the cheese people!! - which is also what most women I meet end up telling me before the night is over), xanthan gum, malic acid, sorbitan monostearate, ascybic acid, potassium chloride, acetic acid, calcium chloride, sodium hexametaphosphate, silicon dioxide (AKA silica-you know when you buy something and it has that little bag of silica in the box that says DANGER-DO NOT EAT, well guess what, it's in your jalepeno poppers), sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium acid phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, amnatto, oleoresin of paprika, disodium inosinate, disodium guanyloate, polysorbate 80 (I guess that means there's at least 79 other types of polysorbate), THBQ (to protect flavor) (AKA tertiary butylhydroquinone. This is something else to look out for - if they don't spell it out and use an acronym, it's probably really bad for you. In this case it's a double whammy, they used an acronym and they had to tell you why it's in there with the "to protect flavor" description).

So folks, if you don't have photographic memory and you can't remember all these ingredients, at least remember this tip: If you absolutely must buy manufactured and processed food, DON'T buy it if the ingredients have an unfamiliar acronym or if the reason why a chemical is used is stated in parenthesis right next to the additive.

Those ingredients are what you'll find in pizza bites, chicken fingers, jalapeno poppers, and other prepared foods most Americans eat. This list was only compiled from the food that goes into the Big Fat Ugly, but if you eat them on their own without a $25 gargantuan sandwich to go with it, you'll still be consuming a chemical stew.

People with multiple chemical sensitivity know they can't eat this-hell, we can't even go anywhere near this. I can't go into a normal restaurant anymore because not only do I not know what exactly is in the food I'm eating, but I don't know what chemicals are coming off the heated food when it is delivered to other tables. I did go out with a buddy about a month ago, but I had to determine ahead of time what places served organic food. And even then I knew I was going to get a little sick because not all of the food the restaurant served was organic, just what I ordered for dinner.

But I want all the regular people who read my blog to understand this: those chemicals I just listed up there, the chemicals that are in the food you're probably eating, don't just go into food. Some of them are used to make pesticides, laundry detergents, kitchen and bathroom tiles, drywall, plastic containers, fireworks, cement, heat pumps and automotive insulators, televisions and iPods, laquers, varnishes, paint, industrial defoaming agents, paper, textiles, and leather coats. And they're in you, inside of you right now, if you eat processed food.

But there's more. I'll be perfectly honest, all those things are only from researching less than 10 of the chemicals that were listed. I only looked up the ones I wasn't sure I spelled correctly and look what I found.

Many of those chemicals are fatal at a higher dose, but they've been approved by the FDA as a food additive provided the quantity of the chemical is small enough. My MCS brethren will tell you, and medical research has already proven, that some chemicals don't just pass through you like a dirty glass of Mexican water. In fact the human body is incapable of getting rid of a number of different chemicals, they just slowly accumulate in your liver, tissues, nerve endings, they'll even screw up your DNA over time. Many of the chemicals above are suspected carcinogens and tumorigenic. Some of them have been banned in other countries.

But they are in your food. And it's perfectly legal.

Now get off your butts, clean out your freezer and refigerators of all this junk, and start buying all natural and organic food. Please. I was just like you regular people once, before MCS (those of you who would be willing to open a restaurant called Curry McCurry's, anyway). I used to eat all of the processed foods myself and I even considered Subway a healthy alternative to fast food. You can make the switch to natural ingredients, it's easier than you think. Cooking with real food can be fun too, and quite the learning experience. After a while it doesn't take discipline to avoid fast food or the processed poly-whatevers that sit on the grocer's shelves, it simply becomes a matter of common sense, and one of flavor. That is, unless you like the taste of tertiary butylhydroquinone.

Dancing With The Stars: Operation Save Cheryl Burke

I honestly think there is a possibility that Tom DeLay is harassing Cheryl Burke. Below is the explanation why:

The look says it all, but there's more........

Another week, another show, and more evidence that Cheryl Burke cannot stand Tom DeLay. I imagine that he gets this reaction everywhere, but this is on live television where things aren't quite as scripted or controlled as a political rally, hence we get a much better look at it. Cheryl tries to put on the same appearances that all the dancers seem to do with their partners, but her body language and her gestures tell an entirely different and perhaps more honest story.

Seriously, it's getting so obvious that every time my phone rings I almost expect to hear Cheryl's voice whispering in a hurried and hushed tone "Lou....it's me.....and you're right....I can't talk now I think Tom is coming....h...e...l..p........m...e................".

First up, let's take a look at the couple's walk down the stairs at the start of the show. Cheryl is not only leaning slightly away from Tom DeLay (a posture she repeats consistently through the entire night) but the hand she would normally have resting on her companion's arm is made into a fist. Her fingers are clenched tightly together and her thumb is jutting outwards to keep her hand from slipping out from under his arm. Obviously, Cheryl can't stand to touch Tom and she's come up with this way to give the impression she's walking arm in arm with Tom, but in a manner that results in the least amount of contact possible.

Her hand is clenched tightly, as if her fingers themselves are repulsed by the man and curling away from his touch. With her thumb hook strategy, the only part of her that is actually touching Tom is her thumbnail. Seriously, she must not like this guy at all

See the thumb hook? I guess using the thumbnail is better than your fingertips if your job requires walking as a couple but you really hate the other person and you don't want to touch them. And hey Cheryl, if you're reading this, since you already have a fist made have you ever thought about kidney punching the guy? I'm willing to guess you've pondered the situation, especially after he dropped you on the floor later in the show. I'm just asking, yes or no it would make for a good read when the competition is over. You can always say you slipped, which is probably the same excuse he gave you after he dumped you on the floor

And the evidence gets much clearer as the show goes on. There was about one hour before Tom and Cheryl had to dance, during which time they were sequestered in a ready room with all the other couples. And get this folks, whereas other couples were sitting together for the entire night, Cheryl and Tom sat separately for the length of the show. And as the show went on, Tom got shoved further and further away.

Cheryl not only sat apart from Tom, but for the first half of their time in the ready room she surrounded herself with the most muscular of the male dancers on one side, and the male contestant who's a black belt in karate on her other side. That certainly suggests that Cheryl needed protection.

I'm seriously starting to think that Tom has made unwelcome advances towards Cheryl.

Aaron and Karina sat together the whole show

There's Cheryl, but no Tom DeLay. The buff guy is to the left of Cheryl, karate guy on the right, and "everybody else who is not Tom DeLay" is in front. Cheryl literally sits in a protective cocoon of dancers and celebrities

Another recurring theme of the night, Cheryl stays behind Tom. Since obsessive staring is considered a form of harassment, I wonder if that is what he's doing and Cheryl positions herself behind him so he can't stare. If he is in fact staring at her, he's probably thinking "She should be working at one of my buddy's sweat shops in the Marianas Islands" when he does it....that or "Hey, in that light Cheryl looks like that hot little effeminate Filipino boy I saw on vacation last year". And is it me, or does Cheryl look a little bummed out when Tom is sitting this close by?

And yet, later in the show it appears that Tom is still sitting too close to Cheryl and gets shoved even further away, because after mixed martial arts fighter Chuck Liddell comes back from his dance he takes Tom's seat. Think about it, if you're a producer of a TV show and you have to keep a couple together for appearances sake but the man doesn't respect boundaries and is in someway making the woman uncomfortable, and you want the creepy guy to move but you have to do it efficiently during the short time span of a commercial break, how do you solve this problem? You get the 200+ pound guy who makes his living hurting people to take the creepy guy's seat.

The protective cocoon is restored. Where's Tom now? Where is he? Cheryl looks a little more relaxed now too

...and in this position Cheryl is still behind Tom and out of his line of sight. Poor old Tom, moved all the way over to the far end of the room

And you know what else Tom? Most lonely guys in the corner don't use the American political system for personal profit, they don't pander to religious groups, fight the EPA, or promote legislation that subjects women abroad and their children to live in conditions of institutionalized slavery

Next up, let's take a look at what else went on in the ready room. Many of the couples would ham it up for the camera right before the show went to a commercial break, and then once again before they danced. But not Tom and Cheryl. They did perform an almost perfunctory ham it up session right before they danced (more on that later), but they didn't do a single one by themselves together before the many, many commercial breaks that occurred during the two hour show. Tom did one himself with another couple, and one with another guy while Cheryl carefully kept her distance.

Here again, women instinctively seem to move away from Tom DeLay. If she could get any further away from Tom she'd be crawling inside Donny Osmond's nostrils, and with as many face lifts as he's had there's probably enough room for her and a couple of Marianas Island refugees up in there. And you just know this is as close as Tom DeLay will ever get to having a 3-way (so I misspelled psychotic, this gives you breathers a chance to learn what brain fog is to people with multiple chemical sensitivity...besides, just look at the guy fer chrissakes and tell me that isn't a tad crazy looking)

If republicans wrote the show, this is what Dancing with the Stars would really look like

Does something look odd here? Besides the fact that Tom seems to be enjoying this so much? Look at how far away Cheryl is from Tom, and how she is leaning away from him. She literally cannot get her head any further away from the man. Perhaps Tom smells bad too, that sort of thing might be unavoidable when you become a servant to Satan

Unlike Kym's body language with Donny, Cheryl positions herself to make the least amount of contact with Tom as possible, including leaning away from him in an exaggerated manner

So after a while, you see Tom and Cheryl do their final ham it up session for the cameras before they dance. I know it's starting to sound like a broken record now, but check out the distance between the two of them and the "get this guy out of my face" posture of Cheryl:

Here's Cheryl and Tom. Notice how there's only one point of contact, just three of her fingers and his tie, and check out the obvious space Cheryl is keeping between herself and Tom. There's a good foot, foot and a half of air space there

For comparison, here's Donny and Kym. Count those points of contact. And the smiles seem much more natural too......

And before the dancers hit the floor (in Cheryl's case, literally, thanks to Tom) the show always breaks away for a pre-recorded human interest story about the couple. There's only a few things interesting about Tom DeLay - that he managed to fool most Americans for so long and that many of them still don't see the utter hypocrisy of his forced abortion overseas/fundamentalist anti-abortion stance here, and that he somehow does not get his butt kicked on a daily basis (selling his soul to Satan probably helped with that). Neither of those things make for good television, so the clip focused on Tom's attempts to dance with Cheryl Burke, and his trip to the doctor.

Tom DeLay's curious fist gesture comes into play again

That might explain this.....

And this....I swear he's doing this with the tongue in cheek action during the commercial break

Thanks doc, we already knew that

And then the actual dance started......

Stay behind him where it's safer Cheryl.......

I'm sure the woman is supposed to lean away a little bit during this type of dance, but the fact she was with Tom probably didn't help much.....and he actually dropped her too, right onto the floor

And then it was the after-dance interview, which just like everything else this night, was very very telling........


And let's look at how their posture and body language compared to the other couples:

Cheryl leaning away again and keeping a noticeable distance from Tom, Tom perhaps reacting subconciously to the elbow

Cheryl's hands are clasped together in front of her so he can't touch them, and in this sense her hands also form a protective barrier around her private parts. And as you would expect in a situation like this, there's a whole 'lotta distance between him and her, as compared to......

This pair likes each other. Her hands are saying "I'm totally cool with this. Sign me up as wife #8, he's mormon, right?"

These two really like each other, or at least the moment they are sharing together - no clenched fists, thumb hooks, leaning away, or lengthy distances here. You see multiple points of contact, they are leaning towards each other and both people are in the process of drawing each other in closer and loving it. It's what we call a hug, and it's what Cheryl would most likely call a nightmare based upon what her body language seems to be saying in the other pics of her and Tom

Standing arm in arm, looking very comfortable

Arm in arm again, her hand open and relaxed as if to maximize the connection. Aaron accepts this contact around his neck, normally a very vulnerable part of the human anatomy, and leans slightly forward to signal approval and encourage greater contact. If I met a guy with hair like that I'd use my hands to slap him, unless it was St. Patrick's Day. He might be a Leprechaun

Arm in arm, her hand open and relaxed at the small of his back suggesting she is drawing his private parts closer. Judging by his posture he's either accepted the invitation or he put on a few pounds since his suit was tailored

And when it finally came time for the score, I kid you not, it was 6 6 6.

So, how do we enact Operation Save Cheryl Burke? That's easy. Tom and some of the Hitler Youth.....errr.... I mean young republicans are using social network sites like facebook and twitter to solicit votes, at least when they aren't busy attending KKK rallies, setting fire to orphanages, or entering the phrase "how to sell your soul to satan" into google's search box. But Tom will never carry enough of the judge's score to get to the top, so he'll last for a little while (not a phrase you can use often around republicans, wink wink) but he'll eventually get canned. So the trick is to not vote for a top dancing couple, but to vote for the ones with the lowest score next to Tom. That will help equal out the votes he's getting only because of his political orientation and the gullability of his supporters.

Cheryl needs all the help she can get. That's likely why she keeps sending out these non-verbal SOS's.........

Sorry Tom, you only had one soul to sell, and the devil doesn't give anyone second chances, unless you're Charlie Daniels, that is