2019

Miss Minneapolis Flour

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Miss Minneapolis was a flour mill in the Twin Cities that was in business from around 1920 until the mid 70’s.

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They had the best logo, and ran the Miss Minneapolis beauty contest. Second place won a 50 pound bag of flour. Classy.

The below recipe is nearly 100 years old, and came from a Miss Minneapolis booklet of recipes.

I used coconut milk, but you can use the milk of a cow if you prefer. Moo.

2 cups scalded milk
1 cup boiling water
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons lard
1 cake of yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
6 cups MISS MINNEAPOLIS FLOUR

Put liquid, salt, sugar and lard into a bowl, stir until salt and sugar and lard are dissolved. Mix these with lukewarm water. When the first mixture is of the same temperature, add yeast to it. Add half the flour and beat well, then all the remainder of the flour, making batter a stiff dough. Knead until smooth and elastic, place into greased bowl, set in a warm place and let rise for about two hours. Mold into loaves, place in a warm place, and let rise for one hour. Pre-heat oven ten minutes and bake 50 minutes.

Relax: Chapter 5

Relax
Written by Leonard M. Leonard
Designed + Illustrated by Will Dinski
Original Copyright 1952


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Chapter 5
Mental Fire-Traps That “Burn You Up”

One good turn deserves another. Try non-resistance on the other mental states that make you tense.

It’s the same deal. If you hate something you’re resisting its presence. If you suspect someone, you’re resisting what he may do. If you envy someone, your resisting her success. If you’re jealous of someone, you’re resisting that person’s attractiveness to others.

When something riles us, we say that it “burns us up” – which comes pretty close to the actual truth. As we have already noted, the scenes and actions which negative thoughts bring to your mind are telegraphed through your body. You fight battles, suffer heartaches, engage dangers in make-believe enactments that “burn you up” or wear you down.

Don’t wait for the doctor to tell you that your blood pressure has gone up, that your heart’s overworked, that an ulcer is on the way, or that you need a good rest. Rest? You can take i on your feet, if you’ll take it in your head. Give up your mental tug-of-war!

The idea, of course, if not to take the fight out of you, but to leave the fight in you. Every so often, something happens which calls for all the resistance we can muster. Why waste it, for example, against the sound of someone chewing popcorn in the movies?

These days, we Americans are doing a lot of proper bragging about Freedom and Independence. But here’s a question: how free and independent are you when you give to every petty annoyance, every disappointment, every person who crosses you the power to disturb you, to control your moods, to upset your digestion, to make your heart beat faster or your blood pressure shoot up?

Again we say it: be willing to let things happen. Stop resisting so much, and relax.

How I Survived The Winter

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I’ve read that sauna is good for your immune system, and can help you live longer. I’ve also heard that there is no reliable research to back up these claims. However, I can say for sure that sauna helped me to survive the winter. 

Most days I can be found at a YMCA sauna, but I’ve also paid the $25 for “event” sauna with friends at the 612 Sauna Society

Sweat it out.

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Worry And What To Do About It

Relax , Chapter 3
Written by Leonard M. Leonard
Designed + Illustrated by Will Dinski
Original Copyright 1952


What do do about worry? Volumes have been written on the subject. But as Sherlock Holmes would say, the answer is elementary – very, very elementary: You can do something or nothing

Are you worried because you’ve been careless with your work? Start being careful with it. Are you worried about a pain in the chest. Have it diagnosed and treated. Here are two kinds of worry that you can do something about. Action can get rid of them by the roots. 

But most of our worries probably aren’t that kind. We worry about things which may happen in spite of us, or which already have happened in spite of us. Our worries are “untouchables” flying into the unborn future, or falling into the long-dead past.

The thing to do about such worries is the very most – and also very least – that can be done about them. Nothing. Nothing at all.

And that means not worrying, either. For worry is anything but passive. It is a strenuous effort. 

Every play tug of war? You remember how you braced and stiffened your body to resist the pull of your opponents. That’s the kind of work you do when you worry. You tense up to resist something you don’t want to happen. It follows that if you just didn’t resist, you just wouldn’t worry. And from this comes a top-flight technique for peace of mind and body.

Stop resisting. Be willing to let things happen. This was the keynote of Annie Payson Call’s method of relaxation. She was among the greatest teachers of relaxation, and among her pupils was George Bernard Shaw.

When you resist the possibility of something happening, she taught, you tense up, function less efficiently and thereby invite the catastrophe you fear. 

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Take the matter of catching a train, for example. On the one hand, you want to catch it. But if on the other hand you’re afraid you’ll miss it, you set up a force of resistance. You are so busy resisting the idea of being late that you become panicky and clumsy. Everything seems to go wrong. And so you are late, after all.

Probably you have had this experience. You are in such a fearful rush that you fumble around buttoning your shirt. You put your socks on the inside out. you nearly fall down the stairs in your haste. Then you find that you forgot something and have to rush back. The cause of your inefficiency is not your eagerness to be prompt, but your resistance to the idea of beng late. 

It is quite the same with other things. When we are fearful of any consequence, we dilute our power to avert it. But when we are quietly willing that it occur, we instantly lose the tensions of fear which direct us toward it. Relaxing, our minds our bodies function freely and effectively. 

What is resistance? In physics it is defined as a force tending to prevent motion. It may very well be the force with is holding you back right now. 

Are you worried that you’ll fail – on the job, at the social function, in a game or sport? Are you haunted by worries of sickness, accident, catastrophe? Unlock your tensions with an easy willingness for anything that may come. You will be better prepared to cope with any emergency – and meanwhile, you’ll feel better!

This is a prescription for relaxing and a philosophy for living. Calm thoughts, quiet confidence, steadier nerves and better achievement are the seeds which you can sow with less resistance. 

What should you do about worry? Nothing. Nothing, that is, but to stop doing. Stop resisting so much, and be willing to let things happen

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