Archive for May 2009
Making Beef Bone Stock
Here's a traditional food preparation that I will always go to the trouble for. There's just no comparison when you make your own stocks, primarily beef and chicken. Here's a batch with beef bones. First, save all of your meat and bone scraps. Toss them in a bag in the freezer. You can also save your scraps from cutting up vegetables, such as the tops of carrots, outer skin of onions (adds color) celery tops, and so on. My procedure isn't a lot different that that found in Nourishing Traditions, a cookbook everyone should have. Step one is to get your scraps, and I also always go and get 3 pounds or so of marrow bones. There's probably also some scraps of lamb bones, maybe even baby back ribs. It's all good. Simply put them in a crock pot, cover in water, and add anywhere from a couple of tablespoons to a half cup of vinegar. I use apple cider vinegar. Another popular thing to add is a calf's foot, as the collagen apparently gives you a thicker broth, requiring less reduction. I haven't done this but will try at some future point. Optionally, you can cut up an onion...
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Get Primal With Mark Sisson
Mark Sisson, of Mark's Daily Apple, has an entirely new website design. I think he did a fabulous job. He gives you the highlights right here. Also, his new book, The Primal Blueprint, is available for pre-order. I have a feeling it's going to be the go-to book for beginners. I have my copy ordered and will put it to the top of the stack when it gets here. I'll review it when complete. I'm sure I'll be recommending it highly, and, it will be nice to have a updated "paleo diet" text, as Cordain's in out-of-date and plain wrong in too many areas. For those who missed it, Mark Sisson guest blogged here a few months back (and here's my guest post at Mark's place).
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“It’s What They Do”
Indeed. We have a thing or to to learn, I think. For all the mothers out there -- even leopards who mother (a verb!) the offspring of a kill. My wife, Beatrice, distributed this via email this morning. She's an amazing doggie "mom." Can animal behavior in some respects inform human behavior? Look at this blog's title and you'll see what I think.
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World Paleo Domination Business Update
I've been less than prolific lately as most time for the blog was spent trying to come to a decision about the business aspect, which I was calling "World Paleo Domination" for fun, and I kicked off here and here. Something you may not know about me: I believe strongly in the power of procrastination. I even used to have a presentation to that effect -- "The Virtue of Procrastination -- which I gave a couple of times at industry conferences. At the same time, I'm rather "Type A" in personality. What it comes down to is that if I do something really quick and ferociously, it's going to be with little investment of time, money, effort. It goes to the throw lots of shit against the wall and see what sticks. But something that takes a lot of time and effort gets procrastinated (for thinking time), and usually to the extent that at the end, it in no way resembles my original vision. Is that good or bad? Actually, I don't really know. It's how I tend to roll and I've had a thing or two come together in life. There's another great aspect of procrastination, which is that...
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Carb Face & Wheat Belly
Art had a post up on his private blog this morning and I was then glad to find he had put it on the public site as well. Go see how awful some of these Hollywood actors have aged. [Later: Well, Art took the post down, but, not before Google cached it. For as long as it lasts.] The face is the biggie for me, and in fact, I think Alec Baldwin has gotta be my touchstone for that, in terms of comparison. I hadn't realized that Val Kilmer had let himself go so badly. Hey, gentlemen: if you need some help with that, shoot me an email. My credentials, from left to right: just shy of three years ago (July 2006), then about 1 1/2 years ago and 6 months into my new mode of living (Dec 2007), and today.
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Wild Alaskan Cod in Green Curry
This was last evening. Amazingly easy and quick. It's got about three pounds of cod, eight stalks of asparagus, one package of artichoke hearts (Trader Joe's), a small yellow onion, once can of cocony milk and one small can (about 2 oz or thereabouts) of Thai green curry paste (containing only easily pronounceable and familiar ingredients). There's really nothing to it. I did sauté the asparagus & onions first, and then lightly browned the fish, but they it was everything in, cover & simmer for only about 10 minutes or so. We had friends over and they did up a salad, which we devoured after the main course, like dessert. Sorry for the blur. It was the best of two. I have been trying to take food photos with the flash disabled, in order to get a more natural look at the food. And here's the finish line. About six weeks since I've had any rice, so that's not so bad. Wonder how many sugar cubes?
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Tenderloin Filet of Beef Soup
This is what happens when you've got your heart set on a nice filet for dinner, but the wife is feeling a bit out of it and wants soup. So, I went to the store and got about 13 oz of filet, and the other things you see: bacon, green and yellow onion, a carrot, a jalapeno, two turnips, six radishes, garlic, two tomatoes, and a bunch of cilantro. As usual, I decided on what to put in it while in the vegetable isle at the store. Prep was to first cook the bacon, along with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, 1/4 of the onion, and half the jalapeno Then that went into the pot, leaving the bacon fat to lightly brown the tenderloin. Then it all goes into the pot to simmer for a while. Note that I used only two cloves of garlic, and about another 1/4 of the yellow onion for a total of half of it. I also used only about 1 inch of the stalks of the cilantro in the initial cooking and then about 1 1/2 inch of the leaves at the finish. That last bit was a mistake as the cilantro...
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Another Go at Cauliflower Crust Pizza — La Reine
I gave another try at cauliflower crust pizza the other night (recipe). What I changed in the crust this go-round is that I added 1 cup of coconut flour to the doubled crust recipe. So, 2 eggs, 2 cups cauliflower and 2 cups mozzarella. To that, I added 1 cup of coconut flour. It certainly made the crust more pliable and formable. After baking the crust for about 10 minutes, it's on with the sauce, some cheese and chopped mushrooms. Finally, about 3/4 of a pound of black forrest ham, a substitute for the jambon one gets in France, where La Reine (the Queen) is one of the most popular pizzas -- one I ordered regularly in at a restaurant just a short walk from my flat on the Med. I maybe oughtn't have put the pizza sauce on the outer crust as I did, as it scorched a bit at the finish line. In all, I'm still working on it. The coconut flour made it far easier to work with, almost like a real dough, but it was a bit too dry for my tastes. In fact, it's actually better cold the next day, were it approximates real pizza...
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Extreme Athleticism and Endurance
If any of you would like to follow along with the summer climbing season on Everest, the FirstAscent Team and their blog is the place to go. Here's why: I've got that same machined aluminum MacBook Pro in the 15" and 2.66 gig version. I've owned dozens of computers over time, but this just smokes anything and everything, including the desktops I've owned. The only thing remotely comparable is the previous generation MacBook Pro I owned. I will never, ever go back to PCs.
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Poison Sugar – In Shocking Pictures
I do a fair amount of harping about processed foods, focussing a lot on grains and frankenoils and such. I should talk more about what I consider to be the number one killer in all the world: sugar, especially refined sugar and concentrated forms. Now, let me show you why. But first, how much sugar is circulating in your entire body at any one time? Let's say you have ideal fasting blood glucose (80 milligrams per deciliter -- mg/dl). For an average sized person with a blood volume of 5 liters, that comes out to...ready for this?...ONE 4 gram SUGAR CUBE. Skeptical? Well, let Dr. Michael Eades convince you. Now, at an average consumption of 156 pounds per American per year, "only" 29 pounds of that is from the sugar bowl. The rest is added sugar in the products most Americans are eating. How much is that? Well, here's what 4,373 of them look like. At 4 grams each (remember, that's the total volume of sugar in a fasted, healthy person), that block is 17,492 grams, or only 38 pounds (it's actually hollow). That's only 10 pounds more than what the average person gets from the sugar bowl. So, how...
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Opening Eyes on Twitter
Those not on Twitter, I've no beef with you. I didn't get it. Sounded completely ridiculous to me (I may have characterized it as fuckin' stupid! a time or two). Well, I was wrong. I was dead wrong. And I think it's because someone has come up with a technology that roughly emulates (provided it's used as such), the natural way humans best communicate. For more than two-and-a-half decades, I have been inexorably tied to the Internet. First on Compuserve, Prodigy (remember that?), and America Online. Then, I graduated to a straight ISP pipe to the wild & woolly Internet, using installed software to access it. Email apps, and especially: USENET readers. I won't go into it, as USENET is pretty passe, now, but back in the day, you had all the world's most inquisitive and argumentative minds there. It was really something to behold, and to be a part of. In the space of a couple of years, I had logged well over 5,000 pages of discussions and arguments with others. ...Well, it was better than watching ER. Eventually I moved on, started a successful business that's still going strong, but I also kept tabs, followed along, eventually started...
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Dr. George Bray, “esteemed biomedical researcher” and professor of medicine, Louisiana State Medical Center, Baton Rouge, call your unemployment office…
...Because YOU'RE FIRED! Writes Mr. Cardello about a conference in which nutritional scientists sit down with food industry people to discuss how to solve the obesity problem: It also was refreshing for me to listen to and learn from Dr. George Bray, the esteemed biomedical researcher and professor of medicine at Louisiana State Medical Center in Baton Rouge. To many insiders, he’s known as the founding father of the obesity issue. Bray is a doctor and scientist who has been practicing his craft for fifty-one years, and he still has the energy and curiosity of colleagues who are half his age. When he first began studying obesity, he was a doctor gently sounding a warning bell, but nobody was listening. The American population was about 14 percent overweight at the time. Now 30 percent of us are fat, so he said the problem has doubled since he began his work. Now there is a backhanded compliment if I’ve ever seen one. I don’t think the author was being ironic, but it sure came out that way. And it corroborates my suspicions. Bray truly has been a founding father of the obesity issue in ways that he probably doesn’t like. When...
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