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WATER

About two-thirds of a person’s weight is water. Even mild dehydration from sweating or fever can make the body function less efficiently making it feel tired. The brain is especially susceptible, and lack of water can cause headaches, dizziness, and mental confusion. The sensation of hunger is often really just unrecognized thirst, curable with a glass of water.

Water is cheap. The hundred gallons the average person uses each day cost only about twenty-five cents. Water is perfect for bathing, for doing dishes, or washing the car—the questions come when you’re going to drink it. City water is frequently and rigorously tested, so there’s very little danger of it ever making you sick. Water may be safe and yet unpalatable, however. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about the recommended eight glasses a day if the water you’re drinking has a noticeable odor or unusual taste. Filtration, the addition of chlorine or potassium permanganate, or other remedies, may be necessary.

Bottled water can be artesian, spring, mineral, sparkling, or purified, which includes water that has been distilled or deionized. There’s also seltzer and club soda, though they are technically not water but soft drinks, since they are artificially carbonated and, in the case of club soda, have minerals added and sometimes flavoring and sugar.

The testing, bottling, and labeling of bottled water are governed by the Food and Drug Administration, reinforced by state regulations, and imported waters have to meet the same standards. The water must be calorie-free, sugar-free, and have the same qualities it has at its source, including any minerals or carbonation. Most bottled water is safe, though it is not tested, as tap water is, for certain bacteria such as e-coli, for the parasite giardia, or for arsenic, and any that is sold in the same state where it is bottled doesn’t have to be tested at all.

AVOCADO

The slow sale of avocados in the 1920s, it is said, immediately shot upward when the growers began to deny indignantly that they were aphrodisiac.

Avocados are ripe when they give slightly under the pressure of a finger. They will ripen by themselves in a few days at room temperature or in a paper bag and can then be kept in the refrigerator. When cut they will quickly turn brown, though some lemon juice and plastic wrap prevents that. They are extremely nourishing, having the highest protein content of any fruit, as well as the highest number of calories, about five times that of an apple.

GROVER CLEVELAND

Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on this date in 1837. In 1885, he was elected president, the first Democrat to win since the Civil War. A bachelor upon taking office, the luxuries of the White House made him uncomfortable. “I must go to dinner,” he wrote to a friend, “but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring, a Swiss cheese, and a chop at Louis’ instead of the French stuff I shall find.”

A year into his term, he married his twenty-two-year-old ward, Frances Folsom, the youngest First Lady in history and the first to be married in the White House itself. Daughter of Cleveland’s law partner, who had died when she was eleven, Frances became enormously popular.

Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison in a bid for reelection, but returned to office in 1893, becoming the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. Just before that election, he received a gift of apples from a friend, F. J. Parker, in Walla Walla, Washington. In his letter of thanks, Cleveland said, “… a state that can produce such fruit as that which has decorated my table since the apples reached me ought to be able to produce anything—even a Democratic majority.”

BOILING WATER

Water boils at 100 degrees C at sea level. In fact, the Celsius scale, 0–100, is based on the freezing and boiling points of water (32 degrees and 212 degrees, respectively, in Fahrenheit). Water boiling violently is no hotter than water gently boiling; it is only turning to steam more quickly. Salt added to water