It's Prime Day—a day of blowout deals from Amazon for people who have Amazon Prime, obviously intended to get more people to sign up for Prime. There are many pages of deals and many hundreds of items on sale.
A few things I can personally recommend:
Dyson Animal Vacuum Cleaner: I've written about this awesome thing in the past, and after a number of years I'm still very satisfied with mine. It's a good buy at $600 in my opinion, but why not pay $350 instead?
A Vitamix: I wish all products were like the Vitamix, a throwback to the days when things were well made and had simple controls and worked superbly. Especially if you eat plants a lot, this is indispensable—I use mine every day and love it. Mine was a refurb too, like this one.
An Apple iPad: I've said this before, but of all my Apple devices, the iPad is the least crucial and the one I'm the most attached to. My favorite Apple thingy. Except that I'm always misplacing the danged thing. Another item I use every day and love.
A kneeling chair: I don't own one of these now (although I should), but they're useful if you have any problems with your spine. Also great for meditation if you're not limber enough to contort yourself into traditional postures. (This deal is upcoming—a number of the deals haven't started yet.)
DNA test: I thought this was absolutely fascinating and well worth the cost. Turns out I have loads of Scandinavian ancestry, but through Vikings who settled in Northeastern England a thousand years ago—which we've always counted as English. (How long do you have to live somewhere before you're no longer a newcomer, anyway?!) And I had no idea how or why I am 12% Spanish, but that's what my DNA says.
An Instant Pot: Makes pressure cooking super simple, and it's a breeze to clean up. I love mine and use it all the time. Many foods taste better cooked in the Instant Pot—it makes soups super easy, and makes melt-in-your-mouth potatoes and sweet potatoes. You can use it as a slow cooker and you can even sauté in it. It's another appliance I use constantly and appreciate. I'm an Instant Pot evangelist—I've sold about seven friends on them so far, and all of them love it too. Mine was a birthday gift from my dear departed ex-girlfriend S. of ambivalent memory, just to give credit where credit is due.
The Starch Solution: The best, most practical all-around diet and nutrition book of the 120+ I've browsed or perused in the past six years or so (yes, I've been a bit obsessed). It's the easiest to follow and most sensible of the "health first" programs. Highly recommended for people who are humans. (Oh, okay, I admit it, this actually isn't a Prime Day deal. I'm just sneaking it in. It's plenty cheap as a paperback or ebook in any event.)
And finally, Prime itself: I've been a Prime member for years and have been nothing but happy with it. You get free shipping on most Amazon purchases free books, music, videos, and lots more. A no-brainer if you shop at Amazon more than a handful of times in a year.
Disclaimer: I'm an Amazon Affiliate and when you click through these links you are putting some pennies in my pocket. Just so you are aware.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Jim: "I'd love to hear more about how you use your Instant Pot in one of your OT posts. I got one a while back thinking it would be great for meaty winter stews and the like, but I've been eating a lot less meat, so not really getting much use out of it. If there are plant things it does well, it'd be great to hear about them!"
Mike replies: I'm not the guy to tell anyone about cooking, except perhaps talking to other clueless bachelors for purposes of commiseration. :-) So bear that in mind please! However, a staple of my diet are bean, lentil, chickpea, and split pea soups, which I normally make on Sundays and then eat throughout the week—I get six to eight meals out of each batch. The Instant Pot makes cooking these simple and fast, and cleanup is quick. I often use "heirloom" beans from Rancho Gordo.
I recommend having 4–6 recipes you like so you don't get tired of any one of them by fixing it too often. Here's one nice recipe that I like and that Xander liked as well:
Split-Pea Carrot Garlic Soup
6–8 cups of organic vegetable stock
2 cups dried yellow split peas
1 medium white onion, diced
1 bunch (6 medium) carrots, sliced (carrots bought with the tops on taste better. If you don't have organic carrots, cut to top 1/2 to 1 inch off the top end of the carrot as that's where pesticides tend to concentrate. Carrots are healthiest if they're scrubbed but not peeled.)
5 cloves garlic, minced
3–4 grinds of pepper
1/4 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dry basil or 1 tbsp. minced fresh basil
1/2 tsp. dry marjoram
Instructions: Mix together in Instant Pot. Cook on manual for 17 minutes, with 10 minutes of cool-down before venting. Allow to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate. When serving, salt it at the table just until it doesn't taste bland.
Options:
Take a few cups of the finished soup and blend it in the Vitamix then pour it back into the soup for texture; this will also bring out the spices a little more. For a nice touch, blend some unsalted pecans with the portion of the soup you're blending.
Add 1/2 to 1 cup separately cooked brown rice to the finished soup (but see halfway down this post about the safest, healthiest way to cook rice)
Add a couple of cloves of minced uncooked garlic to the finished soup if you like garlic.
Hope you like!
Merle: "Regarding the DNA Test, I think you'd enjoy A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford. Lots of interesting tidbits, including information about DNA test results from a geneticist's perspective. Regarding 'How long do you have to live somewhere before you're no longer a newcomer, anyway?!,' I have some friends who moved to eastern Kentucky in the mid-'80s. Not long after they moved there, they saw an obituary in the local paper which described a man in his 90s and all the wonderful things he'd done. The last sentences read something like: 'He moved here when he was six months old. He was not a native of this county.'"
Mike replies: That does look like the kind of book I'd love.
In the 1990s I almost moved to a town called Battle Ground, Indiana, near where Tecumseh and The Prophet were defeated by William Henry Harrison, until I heard a native describe someone who had lived there for 20 years as a "mover-inner." One of the great things about the rural area where I live now is that there are a lot of lakeshore and Summer people, so newcomers get to blend in instead of standing out like sore thumbs.
Paul Amyes: "Lots of Scots and Irish have Spanish genes due to Armada survivors being shipwrecked on the Northeastern coast of Scotland and Ireland’s West coast."
Mike replies: That could be it. In Ireland, when I was young, I befriended a local girl for a few weeks who was "Black Irish," so called—a descendant of those Spaniards. She was very striking-looking, with light blue eyes and very pale, perfect skin, but beautiful black hair. She cast rather a spell over me, as I still muse over her in my thoughts from time to time.
Amazon UK does not have any Prime deals on Dyson. Needless to say I am not happy about this.
[Sorry David. I was only looking at the US site. --Mike]
Posted by: David Evans | Tuesday, 16 July 2019 at 12:38 PM
It's also 50 years since the launch of Apollo 11.
In a century all serious historians will agree that the Apollo programme was the highpoint of western civilisation. There were, of course significant achievements after Apollo – Voyager, the Hubble space telescope and its successors, images of black holes, the development of economic fusion power even, although it was too late. And there was very considerable social progress after Apollo: for nearly 45 years things improved steadily. But the rise of the oligarchs with their encouragement of stupidity, xenophobia and science denial in the second and third decades of the 21st century was the beginning of the end. The two nuclear wars of 2032 (US-China) and 2035 (Russia-China-UK) while limited, killed well over half a billion people. Climate change (denied, of course, by the oligarchs but well-known to be an existential threat by the turn of the millenium) did the rest: the harvest failures of 2040 killed nearly 150 million people in North Americs and marked the effective end of the US: after 2040 there were never less than two presidents claiming authority over what had been the US, and in 2053 there were, briefly, seven. By 2060 the population of the former US was estimated at under ten million, of which no more than a few tens of thousands had access to electricity. The UK also essentially ceased to exist in the 2040 war. The northern areas of continental Europe are still relatively benign: Italy, Spain, Greece, much of southern France have been lost to climate change.
Posted by: Tim Bradshaw | Tuesday, 16 July 2019 at 01:33 PM
When the remains of the Spanish Armada escaped into the North Sea and round the north of Scotland back to Spain, there were some severe storms and a number of ships were wrecked on the way, but there were survivors. This could account for your 12%.
Posted by: JOHN PHILIP LLOYD | Wednesday, 17 July 2019 at 10:51 AM
All racists should study DNA. We were once all African, and walked on all fours.
Posted by: Clayton | Wednesday, 17 July 2019 at 12:50 PM
Regarding your 12% Spanish DNA, apart from the Roman legions and the already mentioned Armada, people just moved about more than we usually know about. The example that I like is that King Alfred the Great (to be) travelled to Rome twice as a child in AD 850ish which we only know about because of his status but how many others there we don’t really know. Of course your Spanish ancestry might have roots nearer home (ie USA) too ;-)
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Friday, 19 July 2019 at 07:46 AM