Christmas at the Cabin

A pic Beatrice took. Rotor is by the fire and Nuke, in the cat bird seat where she likes it. She’s the guardian, though she’s become accustomed to sleeping with me under the covers nearly every night, but only after 3-4PM when she wakes me up with her whine, asking permission. I never turn her…

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Self-Experimentation Doesn’t Trump Science; It IS Science

Over the last few days I’ve spent significant time catching up on reading some of the newer Paleoish, Low-Carbish diet & fitness books to hit the shelves. Specifically, Rob Wolf’s The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet , Art De Vany’s The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us about Weight Loss,…

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Not Sunday; Not Rock; Emmylou Harris: a Wrecking Ball Selection

So how many people are going to embed Bing, Johnny, Nat…maybe even Burl or Mitch Miller doing the great Christmas classics? Not me. Simple and quick: An amazingly beautiful woman performing an amazingly beautiful song live. Emmylou, from Wrecking Ball: Goodbeye. Pastured pork leg is in the crock pot and braised cabbage in the oven.…

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Lamb Feast & Season’s Greetings

Arrived up in the mountains yesterday afternoon to enjoy a relatively quiet season through the new year. The large family get together was last weekend and tomorrow, we’ll have a few family over. I’m probably not going to do anything fancy for Christmas dinner. Maybe a simple pot roast. Or, maybe my brother will bring…

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I Get Email From a UK Heart Surgeon

Whilst engaging in cooking on last Saturday and entertaining family for an early Christmas dinner — periodically checking email — I received a missive from a new heart surgeon in training in the UK. He took umbrage with my derogatory remarks directed at another UK heart surgeon some time ago. I need to advise you that your…

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Meat Mastery

According to Martin Berkhan, "Richard is a skilled practitioner of meat mastery." Well, let’s see; you be the judge. We had early Christmas yesterday because some family members are out of town next weekend. I decided to do a boneless prime rib roast. 13.5 pounds. Here we are, ready for the oven. Click all images…

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Chris Masterjohn on Religion and Paleo

It’s been nearly a month since I posted on Jimmy Moore’s raising of the subject of potential conflicts between low-carb and paleo lifestyles and religion. I was surprised to see Chris Masterjohn take up a bit of his time to get involved in the comment thread. At any rate, apparently the topic interests him enough…

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Search 5 Million Print Books in Microseconds

Damn that John Durant. Just as I was beginning to get a handle on all my tasks he comes up with something that’s just too fun not to play with. It’s Google’s search engine for the millions of books they’ve digitized over the years. John explains. Google has been digitizing books for years now, and…

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Leangains: The Dietary Approach

You can find the previous post in this series that discusses the workouts, right here.

I’m not going to lie to you: this could be the most controversial post of the Leangains series. I suppose the reason for that, were I to sum it up, is that the readership of this blog largely focusses on those with current or formerly damaged and broken metabolisms, and Martin Berkhan’s approach does not seem to zero in on that — at least from my perspective. A low-carb predisposition is an understandable aspect of my readership and in Martin’s case, low-carb, while being a valuable tool anyone can use, is not a requirement for all.

So I think it’s fair to say that a lot of paleo / Primal practitioners out there might not necessarily see eye to eye with all the Leangains approach to diet prescribes. But I also see this as a temporary thing for me. I simply want to get as lean as I want to be and then carry on more or less as before, though with a Leangains informed approach, which I might sum up as: lift really heavy; briefly, a couple times a week, eat lots of meat, and go good & hungry for some period almost every day. Also, from my perspective, I see Martin as highly supportive of paleo principles, but with some added tweaks owing to what he knows about the science of nutrition and conditioning.

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The Latest Uh-Oh for the Vegetarians and Vegans: Creatine

So guess where you get Creatine? If you’re a gorilla, ape, vegetarian or vegan you might have a problem because it’s not an essential nutrient, as it is manufactured in the human body from L-arginine, glycine, and L-methionine BUT, in human animals and other animals, approximately half of stored creatine originates from food (mainly from meat).…

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Sunday Rock Prog Rock

This one took a bit of searching. I had something in mind, took a while to zero in on. So, let me ask you; you know Kansas, right. Who doesn’t…Cary On Wayward Son? And while I’ve always loved that song, it’s not really Kansas. Here’s Kansas — The Pinnacle — in 9+ wonderful minutes, in…

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Braised Lamb Shank and Grassfed Potroast…and Erwan LeCore

Awaiting Roger Waters & The Wall show time like a 4-yr-old getting his first bicycle from Santa, and continuing on the theme of never being too busy to source good food, here’s some more recent meals. Braised Lamb Shank The taters were half white & sweet. Then I reduced the braise sause. Grassfed Potroast Wow. That…

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One for those missing the food porn

I usually don’t even bother to read most of the "inspirational" emails many people seem to have an irresistible urge to email out to everyone in their address book, but the one I got last night regarding the New Year caught my eye. …So much so that I thought I’d share it as a prelude…

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