Kidney

Is the kidney bean shaped, or is the bean kidney shaped?

 The bubble words have nothing to do with this post, I just thought the talking kidney was cute.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know anything, which is why I'm trying to learn something each day.

And I didn't know exactly what the function of the kidney is.
Kidney's process about 200 quarts of blood a day. (for those of you like me who measure the american way, here's a little refresher, 4 quarts = 1 gallon, so the kidney is flushing about 50 gallons a day). The kidneys flush out the waste and water from the blood and send it to the bladder.

The kidneys measure out chemicals like sodium, phosphorus, and potassium and release them back to the blood to return to the body. In this way, the kidneys regulate the body’s level of these substances. The right balance is necessary for life. 

Now if Gracie asks me about the kidney, I have something to tell her.


 

Honey

After my Honey Bee post, which really just turned into a Queen Bee post, Skylar really wanted to know WHY bees make honey. 
So honey this one is for you.

The answer is simple; bees make honey for an energy source (food).  But here's what I didn't know, honey also acts as insulation for their hive during the winter. 

Because most bee colonies are maintained by beekeepers, the bees overproduce honey, which is why it's ok for us to take it from them.  Human consumption of honey is not doing any harm to the baby bees, they still get their fill.

Here are a few other interesting facts I learned about honey:
Nectar is regurgitated into the honeycomb, the content is high in water and natural yeast, if it was left this way it would ferment and be no good; but those smart little bees fan the nectar, thus making the water evaporate so that it is more sugar concentrated and turns to honey, and will not ferment.

Honey can be used as an antibiotic for burns and ulcers or gangrene, honey draws water away, so when honey is applied topically, the infection will be dehydrated to death.

Babies should not consume honey!  They can get botulism and die within 3-30 days. While the botulinum spores are not harmful to adults and children, they can be fatal to infants as their immune system and digestive tract are not fully developed.

HoneyBee

My friend told me that her father raised bees when she was young, their family got rid of the bees when she was 11 so she didn't know much about them, and I had a lot of questions as she was telling me what she did know.  So my research today is on the Honey Bee.  There is so much about bees I could probably study them all week, or all month, but I'm just going to focus on a one, after all, I do still have a baby to take care of.

 What's the deal with the Queen Bee?
The Queen is the only fertile bee in the swarm. She's incredibly important to the rest of the swarm for this reason, she lays all the eggs. 

A queen is made when the swarm becomes very large and they decide it's time to create a new colony, at that time the queen lays a few eggs in queen cups (see picture above), at which point the larva are fed exclusively something called royal jelly, a protein rich substance excreted from the heads of the worker bees.  All larva are fed royal jelly for a couple days, but the queen larva are fed it exclusively.  Being fed the royal jelly makes the queen larva sexually mature and fertile. 
When it's time for the queen bee to mate, she mates with about 16 drone (male) bees and stores up their sperm in a spermatheca (?) and then releases the sperm for 2-7 years (her queenly lifetime) onto the laid eggs.  Isn't that fascinating?  
I also learned that all worker bees are female, and only females have stingers because the stinger is actually an ovipositor (egg laying organ).  And the worker bee does die if it stings you, there are little barbs on their stinger that stick into the stung individual and when the bee pulls out the stinger stays in and kills the bee.  However, the queen bee's stinger is not barbed, so she can sting as many times as she wants. 

In short, Bees are magnificent, and I'm grateful for them.

Learning something new: Egg

There is so much that I don't know, and I'm often very inquisitive in conversations, so I decided that I'm going to make an effort to learn something new everyday, afterall, with Google and Wikipedia, there's no reason that I shouldn't know a lot more than I do.
In order to retain a little more about what I've learned, I'm going to write some small summary reports here and make a learning journal.
If anyone has suggestions on what I should study up on, please give me your suggestions!


I'm starting with an egg. 

Yesterday we didn't have any eggs, so I had to look up what I can use as an egg substitution for baking.  There are many options, most of which I did not have, such as arrowroot (what's that?) tofu (yea right), and soy milk (nope!)  The two most helpful and feasible for me were 1. Applesauce and 2 Banana.   
I made pumpkin pancakes with applesauce instead of an egg and they turned out perfect! 
Tangent:  It seems like applesauce is going to be a new family staple as I now use it as an oil substitute in baking, and can also use it when we run out of eggs.  Applesauce, you're a life saver.

So my next question about the egg is the nutritional facts, of course we've all heard that the egg white is the healthy part with all the protein, and the yolk is bad bad bad.

So here's my discovery:

One YOKE contains all of the vitamins, A, D and E.
Calories: 60
Protein: 2g
Fat 5g (2 saturated)
Cholesterol 212 mg (71% of your daily value of cholesterol)
Carbs 0g

Yoke contains your daily value of Choline, which I'd never heard of before, but it's apparently important to pregnant and nursing women as it is important in brain development, and increases fetal/infant brain development.  So maybe Choline is why breastfed babies generally have higher IQs than formula fed babies? 
Also interesting, the yoke's color is due to the diet of the chicken, so if a chicken is fed colorless food, the yoke will also be colorless.  Which makes sense why my parents chicken's yokes are bright orange rather than a dull yellow.  So I'm going to just make a guess and say that the more deep the yoke color, the more vitamins it has.

So you see, the egg yoke should not be shunned.  Although it has heartattackingly high cholesterol, it's also goodness packed.  So throw a yoke or two in with those whites, then do a little exercise to transform the cholesterol to good! (is that how it works? maybe I need to study cholesterol next)

Egg Whites consists of water (87%) and Protein (13%), sounds like the egg white isn't as proteinalishious as it's cracked up to be (cracked up.. egg.. get it?) 
Calories: 16
Protein 3.5g
Fat 0g
Cholesterol 0g
Carbs 0g

So here's what I'm going to do... change nothing!  Skylar and I already make our scrambled eggs with more whites than whole eggs, the portions depend on how many eggs we have on stock, since using just the whites makes less food.  Today we had a full carton so I only used 1 whole egg and the rest all white. 

Another tip I discovered for the poor homemaker, whipping your whites makes it look like you have more food.  I wanted to make a quiche, but we only had 4 eggs, and it usually takes about 5 or 6 whole eggs to fill up a pie crust, but I didn't want to use the whole egg because we're trying to be more healthy, so I whipped the heck out of those four little egg whites gently folded in some turkey, spinach and feta and viola, a beautiful low cal quiche filling. 

Scripture Reading Discovery.

I always seem to struggle finding time to read my scriptures, while I have plenty of time to read blogs, check facebook and watch internet television shows. Well, I have discovered the new LDS.org website, which is beautiful, I decided to read a chapter online as it was easier to read from the computer while holding Gracie than from a book, and I love it! I don't know why, but when I read from the scriptures on the computer I paid attention better, and felt like reading more and more. Even cooler, they even have audio so I can listen to someone else read scripture to me while I'm cooking, folding laundry or feeding a baby. I love the new lds.org website, especially the scripture page.
http://lds.org/scriptures/?lang=eng

Cooing

I love her noises