Day 7: My Brita is my best friend. Sorry Marcia.

I drink filtered water. After many years of experimenting, this is the water which tastes best to me and I am relatively sure it is safe. I grew up with well water in iron ore country. You can only imagine. I would turn on the tap and, all too frequently, I would get a spurt of orange sludge which in no way resembled water. If you let it run a minute it would clear. sort of. My mother used a wringer washer because she could control the water that went into the washer. With an automatic it was a crap shoot. You might get and entire load of whites washed in orange sludge. As it was, my white cotton granny panties had a distinct orange cast to them. They were a deterent to premarital sex.

Two of my sisters have wells. Karen has the same problem with iron and Linda's just smells nasty. Karen washes her natural blond hair in lake water to preserve its color and Linda filters drinking water.

While I like the convenience of grabbing a bottle of water with its premeasured perfection, one bottle = 2 glasses, I can't deal with the waste. All that plastic, piles of landfill, the ecosystem in agony, the screams of the earth shattering my dreams. The cost is also crazy. I wouldn't pay that much per gallon for gas! Then, where do you store a case of water in a studio apartment? I have room for me, but not a case of water. I would also have to carry it up 32 steps from my parking space to my apartment. No, these are not the reasons I drink filtered water.

I was having dinner one evening at the home of a retired chief of the Berkeley PD. He had a filter on his tap and he filled his Brita from that. I thought that might be overkill; however, he said they were always pulling bodies out of the reservoir and no matter how much the water was filtered and treated by East Bay Municple Utilities District, he had to filter it twice himself. That is why I drink filtered water.

My focaccia and short rib, open-faced sandwich was delicious. I had cauliflower sauteed in butter and sprnkled liberally with The Spice House's Galena Street Rub. Yes, it's a meat rub. So? Think outside the box. Hell, throw the box away. It's a spicy, flavorful rub that enhanced the cauliflower. I have leftover cauliflower for my London broil tonight.