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The Pioneer • www.pioneerpublishers.com
August 18, 2023
Taking back our streets, one meal at a time eagerness of many people to grasp at conspiracy theories to explain society’s ills and confusions. Maybe it’s more simple. It seems to me that 80 perCINDY GERSHEN cent of an individual’s health problems originate in the food FARM TO TASTE system, whether you’re living under a bridge or you have a The number of people liv- stable home but suffer from ing on the streets is a warning Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer sign, and the problem is or alcoholism. increasing. I recently had a chat with I see more and more peo- a local trainer who has people ple living on the streets and coming to the gym for a drifting into psychosis and physical solution for probaddiction. Our communities lems like Type 2 diabetes, are becoming more dangeraching joints, obesity or failous, and this is bigger than ing memory. They are looking just a housing issue. for a quick fix. She told me At one time or another, her response is, “I can give many of us fear we might lose you 20% of a solution, but control of our health or 80% is what you’re eating.” descend into psychosis – That got me to thinking which is a disconnection from that the same applies to our yourself. Could our system of homeless neighbors. Could fast food, relying on sugar and the common denominator be processed food, be aggravatour highly processed, sugaring such conditions? laden food? There’s a lot of fear in our When you start eating society. You can see it in the well, you understand that
¼ lb. red or green bell pepper, diced 2 tsp. salt 1 T avocado, olive or coconut oil Optional: Be creative. Add chopped fresh herbs or a teaspoon of turmeric or cumin. For additional protein, add ½ oz. of cheese or ¼ c. black bean salsa as a topping (equivalent to 1 oz. of additional protein).
Chili flakes (if desired) Optional: Use 1 T chopped shallots instead of garlic Or, for an Asian flavor, use sesame oil and top cooked kale and broccoli with sesame seeds.
Steam broccoli until fork tender, 4-5 minutes. Steam kale 2-3 minutes. Both should be bright green. Place kale and broccoli on a tray to bring to Mix all ingredients and room temperature. Put oil in a 9- by 12-inch Dan Rosenstrauch shape into four patties. Grill until the internal tem- frying pan. Heat to medium. Cindy and kitchen crew prep ingredients for healthy, easily transportable turkey burgers. perature reaches 165 degrees. Put garlic or shallots in the After burgers have cooled, pan and sauté 1-2 minutes. healing comes from your food streets. It could be as easy as a add optional protein toppings Turn off heat and toss choices. home-cooked meal. and place burgers on garlicky broccoli and kale into the pan. Sometimes the first step is Here’s a healthy recipe to greens. Add salt and pepper to taste. on the level of one human try. Add pinch of chili flakes if being helping another human GARLICKY GREENS desired. TURKEY BURGERS ON being. We all want to tackle 1 lb. bag of prechopped Let me know how it went GARLICKY GREENS homelessness, the lack of safe broccoli at cindy@cindygershen.com. Makes 4 streets and chronic illness. 1 lb. bag of prechopped You can help by bringing a kale Cindy Gershen is a culinary 1 lb. ground turkey healthy meal to that hungry 2 T avocado, coconut or teacher and the chef-owner for 40 1 tsp. fresh minced garlic human being on the streets. olive oil years of Sunrise Bistro and Cater¼ lb. red or green onion, It might just be the first 1 T chopped garlic ing in Walnut Creek. chopped step of us taking back the Salt and pepper to taste
Create usable square footage instead of wasting it While the living spaces in your home might have traditional purposes, there is nothing holding you back from how you want to use them. Some of us work from home and need more than a cozy corner on the family room sofa to do our work. Or you may require a home gym for personal health. If the living spaces you need do not exist in your home, you can take non-essential square footage and repurpose it in creative ways. Everyone’s house plan is a little different, but there are three living spaces that can
JENNIFER LEISCHER
DESIGN & DÉCOR easily be transformed and used in nontraditional ways: the dining room, living room and a spare bedroom. The living room has long
been designated as a formal gathering space. It was a shrine – a room you looked at, but seldom used. These days, it just doesn’t make sense to waste this square footage on a pretty vignette. Consider changing it to a game room with a pool table, a few big TV screens and a wet bar. Or an overflow family room with a huge TV where your family and friends congregate for football and movie nights. Maybe you need to create extra space for your family or group of friends with similar interests. This might be a
music room or home study where everyone can stretch out, with their instruments or classwork spread out and easily accessed. The formal dining room is another space that may not add much value to your everyday living. Think about turning your dining room into a den with books lining the walls, a writing desk, a couple oversized comfy leather chairs and a good sound system. Now you have a place to just sit, read and breathe. A space for children is another option for the dining room as our “littles” aren’t very little for
very long. Extra bedrooms are like bonus square footage. The most obvious answer is a home office or a great place for a treadmill or Peloton. But you could use this space as a generously sized walk-in closet or a perfect spot for your hobby. A craft room, a TV room, an art studio, a music room, a meditation room, a library, a rental for family or friends coming and going, a posh place for your pet, and so on. If COVID taught us anything, it reinforced that our homes are truly our sanctuar-
ies. Thinking outside the design box may feel uncomfortable, but when your family and friends are actually using these new spaces you created, you’ll wonder why you waited so long to change things up. For a more extensive version of this column, visit the Pioneer’s website at pionerpublishers.com. Jennifer Leischer is the owner of J. Designs Interior Design based in Clayton. Contact her with questions, comments and suggestions at jenna@j-designs.com.
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HOW DO YOU DEFEND AGAINST THIS? It is likely most of you WILL CLANEY already have some exposure to TECH TALK AI if you use popular chat bots like ChatGPT, Bing chat, etc., AI, or artificial intelligence, and from shopping bots that is smart – really smart – already know what you’re lookbecause it possesses the ing for. And now, spy bots want knowledge of the entire Inter- to disrupt your life. net. That means it can use the A bot is an automated softcombined knowledge of ware application that is prohumankind to invade your grammed to do certain tasks. In digital devices like PCs, lapmaleficent hands, it will cause tops, workstations, servers and major damage to the data on now even smartphones. your computer, network or cell AI technology can intrude phone. on your life in ways never According to Digital Trends, before thought possible. AI is “Researchers at Cornell Universo smart it can use your sity have discovered a new way phone to gather information for AI tools to steal your data – about you, then use it against keystrokes.” you. The Cornell study went on to add, “The researchers
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accomplished this by training an AI model on the sound of keystrokes and deploying it on a nearby phone. The integrated microphone listened for keystrokes on a MacBook Pro and was able to reproduce them with 95% accuracy.” It gets worse. “This is just the latest in a string of new attack vectors enabled by AI tools, including ChatGPT,” the study reported. “Just a week ago, the FBI warned about the dangers of ChatGPT and how it’s being used to launch criminal campaigns. Security researchers have also seen new challenges, such as adaptive malware that can quickly change through tools like ChatGPT.” So much for the bad news. ComputersUSA belongs to a worldwide network of good guys with AI technology of our own. To coin a phrase, it takes AI to fight AI. Our Managed Service Providers (MSP) include SentinelOne Endpoint Detection and Remediation (EDR) technology. We use this AI to fend off the intrusions, killing them before they spread. Our members switched to SentinelOne EDR in an effort to provide the best possible defenses against hacks available in the world today. Nothing else even comes close to our protection. Find out more today. William Claney is an independent tech writer and former owner of Computers USA in the Clayton Station. Email questions or comments to willclaney@gmail.com.
