Better day. They kids rolled and dove onto the floor for candy...only it wasn't candy, it was plankton...phytoplankton to be exact. Toxic phytoplankton, though they didn't know that. Their shellfish and fish and seal lion and human selves played the "bioaccumulation" game, gathering up what looked good, but wasn't. Then the Whale guy came and took two hours to do his whale show, complete with whale skull (not real, but ya coulda' fooled me) and my teaching partner and I just got to watch and do a bit of work...

And I pondered today...actually pondered, which is something I rarely find time to do or space in my brain to do it (nor do I find time to pee, but that should be another post)...and I kept thinking about Tablespoons. Not the kind on your placemat, but the kind everything is supposed to be measured in.

A tablespoon of olive oil as x amount of caloires and x amount of fat...but apparently it's good fat, so I'm not sure if that means you can have an extra tablespoon or not. Versus like a tablespoon of ice cream, though it usually is measured in 1/2 cups on the back of the carton (one serving = 1/2 cup...as if anyone can eat just 1/2 a cup of ice cream). Versus a tablespoon of sesame seeds, which is really quite a lot and they are supposedly high in fat, but if you ate the spoonful, it would be like eating bits of an eraser. Wouldn't it?

Or a tablespoon of "creamy salad dressing" (as is stated by Weight Watchers...something worth a lot of points, but at WW you don't want points, you want to eat less points). Can anyone put just one tablespoon of creamy salad dressing on their salad? Do you just make the salad that much smaller? One tablespoon creamy salad dressing to 2 tablespoons lettuce? Even a cup of lettuce couldn't be adequately covered in creamy salad dressing with a tablespoon. Could it?

And then there's a tablespoon of salt. No recipe ever really calls for a tablespoon of salt. Whereas the creamy salad dressing can't be spread that thin, a tablespoon of salt could go on for days.

I just had a tablespoon of chocolate fudge sauce sans ice cream (we have none in the house).

I could easily have another tablespoon, but I figure the label says one tablespoon is the suggested serving size.

Of course, my tablespoon was more like a mound than a flat across the spoon thing, but is a tablespoon supposed to be level?

Guess so, but it seems silly, when dipping the spoon into the jar to level it off. You'd have to level with a knife or something. Or better yet, your finger and then what? You have to lick the knife or your finger because it's silly to scrap your knife or finger against the side of the jar, isn't it?

Perhaps this is why I teach...to keep my head so full, I can't fill it up tablespoons of "rhetorical observation" designed to justify why I just had a heaping tablespoon of hot fudge sauce even though today was a good day!

I'm really no different than my students. Toxic tablespoons versus toxic food webs -- we're all just doomed to suck up what looks good, but isn't...