The Not-Science of Soaking & Sprouting?

You know the drill.  Beans and such have evil things in their skins, so traditional societies diligently soaked them to remove said evil things.  Furthermore, sprouting is known to improve digestibility and quality of the protein.  So soak and sprout your beans!

I don't disagree with any of the above, I just -- taking off scientist hat -- wonder out loud if that's really why traditional cultures did these things.

First off, I'm thinking that pretty early on, humans figured out that if you dried things, they tended to last a really long time in storage without spoiling.  Further, certain things may well have been discovered in already dried forms!  I planted green beans one year and went on vacation in August.  Well, you can guess what happened.  I imagine the "bean" part could have been saved and eaten, however.  I also think there's no better snack than snap peas picked fresh, so I plant those almost every year even if I don't bother with any other garden proper.  You pop a few "seeds" into the ground, water, and in a day or so you start to see signs of life.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing all of the inmates here at the Asylum a very Happy Thanksgiving!  It's been an up and down year for me, but all-in-all I have much to be thankful for.  As is tradition, the husband and I will be hosting dinner and  I'll make way too much food, but it's always good to have leftovers.  

We shall have a "balanced meal" (LOL) of really good food.  

• First up will be crudite and stuffed baby-portie mushrooms (hot turkey sausage cuz sis and mom don't do pork, good old fashioned bread stuffing).  Might do deviled eggs too, but probably not this year.  
• Dinner begins with cream of wild mushroom soup.  I was going to get inventive and do something different this year, but the mushroom soup has apparently become legendary so it will be made!  I'll try and post a recipe for it.  
• Dinner proper will be turkey (of course).  My first T-giving I had no clue how to cook a bird and I roasted it upside-down like a dork.  Well folks, the breast comes out super tender that way, so unless we're doing a fry bird, I still roast it the "wrong way".  I stuff the cavity with celery and onions and herbs (don't eat that).  Nothing special but it comes out yummers.  We always do another meat, which this year will be a pot roast.  This is the easiest thing to do when entertaining, and I cook the baby carrots in the liquid at the end and they are delish.  Perfect for a " comfort food" holiday!
• Sides:  "Fuckin mashed potatoes" (a classic from a contentious holiday of years past when hubs really took his frustrations out on the poor taters ... they sure came out creamy!), wild rice (I absolutely adore wild rice and it's something I have always associated with this holiday), probably sweet potatoes too, the good old fashioned green beans, probably garlic beets my Mom will bring, carrots.  
• Dessert will be a to die for pecan pie my sister makes once a year.  I can't believe it's time again!  And anyone who would pass this up (celiacs are excused) are just insane in my book!!  I might make some chocolate muffins but desserts aren't something I like a lot of leftovers of.  Mom usually brings baked apples.  I don't have an apple pie in me this year ... that will have to wait for Christmas this year I think.  We'll serve a quality vanilla ice cream, and Mom will hit the Bailey's (just kidding on Mom , grin).

So I hope you all enjoy your own feasts!  

Post Sandy Weekend Wood Whoring

Well, the one good thing about storms like this, the clean-up crews don't spend time chipping up the wood when it's of more importance to just get the tree off the road and/or powerlines.  Hubs and I went out whoring for firewood.  Here's the two loads we got.  I'm a bit sore now, it's been a while since I hoisted logs over the side of that truck (the bed comes up to just below my shoulders) ... but as they say, it's a good kind of sore.  

We also took the chainsaw to some stuff, but most of this will wait.  We'll cut it up and stack, but I think I've got enough wood from end of last year to split and burn this winter.  

Sandy Report

Hope this post finds everyone safe and having not lost much in the wake of this massive storm.  I was semi-awake most of the night.  Our power went off a few times, and cycled on and off for a couple hours, but luckily it held.  There were no generators to be had as of early Friday afternoon ... this is something we need to get because all I could think of was our freezers full of food being lost.  

Being at relatively high elevation and far enough inland, I wasn't worried about water too much, more about wind and our big tree.   One fairly big limb came down on our shed which then blew apart ... Not sure if it can be saved, but it is what it is, and relatively minor.  Quite a few smaller limbs came down as well.  Although it makes for less privacy, I'm happy our neighbor had some limbs on his tree  trimmed recently.  Still, something hit his house and ripped his fascia board off.  

According to the hubs, we have a chicken in the neighborhood that clucked its way through our back yard.   (This would make Joel Salatin happy, but not the town officials.)   

My folks are without power so I expect company later since it was just the line to their house it won't be top priority.  One neighbor lost a car to a falling limb.  We'll take our tour of the neighborhood later.  One good thing is there'll be lots of free firewood to be had.

How'd you fare?

Kickass Womanhood at The Big Fat Paleo Symposium

UPDATE II:  

Since Richard Nikoley has "declared war" on me and linked to this post, let's keep it all here shall we?  I'm going to keep this short and simple:

1. It is simply mind boggling that someone who threatened me from the get go and called me all manner of names throughout, finds anything inappropriate in my -- gasp!! -- calling him a misogynist.  Which is really the worst thing I've said about him.  It is rather amusing to see how it seems to have affected him over the past months, however.
2. This is not a threat, it is a promise that I will make good on in my defense.  In his post, Nikoley made some things clear:

Accordingly, and as it is a "war," I go "nuclear and chemical-biological" early. I will make zero pretense at "objectivity." This is for the purpose of smear and annihilation in words and images, with no mercy. I have no intention of fact checking, caring a lick about context, posting a scintilla of extenuating or exculpatory evidence. I will be seeking as much dirt, as much that is unflattering, as much inside information that's likely to be taken in the wrong way as possible. And I won't let up until I'm satisfied, and I don't even have a standard for that. I'll know it when I see it.

And let me be equally clear.  This is actionable stuff here and I will take action against Nikoley and/or anyone who decides just for the fun of it to participate in his war.  I've already begun the process of contacting the internet distributors of his content, and will be contacting his publisher tomorrow.  For anyone else so inclined:

Contact Hyperink
For general communication, please email contact@hyperink.com.
You can also call us at 650-395-7596

Or he could take it down, and apologize fully like a man -- alpha, beta, or freaking omega, matters not to me.  

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Me & "The Community" ~ Part II: Is it time for a PALEO Diet?

Pragmatic Ancestral-Lineage and Evolutionarily Oriented  

(Claiming copyrights!  You read that here first!)

It's been a while since I wrote Me & "The Community" ~ Part I: Where I'm coming from ..., and this time of reflection in the aftermath of AHS12 seems like as good a time as any to finish off Part II which is about where I see myself fitting -- or not -- into the community as a whole.  These two posts were inspired by an email I received way back in June that read in part:

Subject: Here's some support from a random paleo dieter

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Thoughts on #AHS12

One of those posts I need to apologize in advance for the length of ...

A goodly portion of this post was written around a week ago, and I was conflicted on whether or not to hit the publish button.  I'm not sure the wisdom of posting this ... but in the end I decided to, and I've interspersed some additional thoughts now that AHS12 is over.  I apologize for the various awkward wordings, typos and case changes that resulted that I just don't have the time or patience to correct.

Let me start by saying that I am amused by the predictable reactions of some about the web to my not going to AHS12.  If I had a dollar for every time I've been accused of  "not having a life" I'd be rich, but when my life outside this blog actually gets in the way?  Well then, now there's really got to be some other reason, ulterior motivation or nefarious cause for my "backing out" of attending the paleo event of the year.  Well folks, it really is as simple as my husband starting a new job, this throwing a monkey wrench in my travel plans, and all sorts of things that now need to get done in August before my own job starts back up.    I have far more scheduling flexibility than most, like my husband who has a "real job" and not a whole heckuvalot of vacation time.  I'm glad I forgot to purchase his ticket to the Barefoot Ball which would have been our only "us" time.  We planned to take a friend of his along so he would have someone to hang out with about Boston while I was doing my thing.  I also wanted to stay at least through Monday as it's been a long time since I've been, and I dunno about y'all, but if I'm spending like $1000 for 4 days and 3 nights that don't include relaxing with my husband, I'm wanting to spend just a bit more to make a true vacation of sorts out of it.  Maybe that's just me, but I'm thinking not. 

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Rambling my way to a Mission Statement

Last week I was asked or told a few times that the purpose of this blog is unclear.  I suppose that's fair, but then again, how many people sit down and write a mission statement when they start blogging?  I dunno how many people in my audience here have ever blogged, but it's certainly a different animal than anything I've done in my life.  It is easy to get tugged in one direction or another based on how the audience reacts to what I write and my choice of topics.  It's difficult, sometimes, to stay on "message" when I've never had a specific message other than this.   I really did start this blog to sort through the peer review literature and what it says about the long term healthfulness of a VLC diet.   I've attracted a considerable readership of the science, but also of ex-low carbers and/or VLC'ers who have moderated their approach over the years.  Most if not all of these have improved their position -- be it weight or health -- often after languishing stalls and declining health on low carb.  When I juxtapose that with the messages coming from LC gurus and weight loss "success" stories, especially in light of the dwindling success of so many, I can't help but blog on some of these personalities.

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Random Thoughts -- Drinking with Dinner?

One of the things that was an oddity about my upbringing, was that my parents always frowned on drinking with dinner.  Anything even water, any meals I just chose dinner.  We didn't drink with meals.  Sometimes tea or water or diluted juice afterwards, and later in life this seemed to have been relaxed.  But the notion as I understood it was that you weren't supposed to wash your food down.

Whenever I went to a friend's house for dinner I was always asked what I wanted to drink.  Usually water or milk was offered, but occasionally soda too (that last one I think because I was a guest).  I would usually just decline as I didn't really like drinking milk.  To me most of their foods were more moist than I was used to anyway -- everything from salads with creamy dressing to white bread to breaded and fried fish vs. broiled.   

In my binging days, I probably consumed the most milk of any time in my life.  Outside the little cartons in grammar school, I've probably only truly drank a half dozen glasses of milk in my lifetime.  But in the binge days, how does one inhale a box of cookies?  Well, dunking in milk of course.  When I had pizza or fast food out with friends, I was already at an age where for some reason I had diet soda.  But one has to wonder how much more easily/faster that burger goes down the hatch when "washed" there with sips of anything in between.   Binge eating was almost always accompanied by drinking something -- usually diet soda or coffee.  Milk wasn't drank, it was used to soak ;-)  

I wonder how much of the overeating in general these days might be due to our national infatuation with drinking something all the time, both between meals and with.

Mendeley Desktop ~ Attention PubMed Etc. Geeks & Addicts

Are you like me?  Do you have a terabyte sized pile of PDF files on your hard drive?  A zillion studies on a bazillion topics?  Don't remember where you got it from?  Forgot to rename the file when you downloaded it, and now you've got a file named ABCXYZ123whatever.pdf and no clue what it's about?  Sure, you can preview the PDF in Windows.  Sure you can search on the title and find the link quickly enough.  Sure you can be more fastidious about renaming files and organizing them in subfolders.  Oh ... but what if you use more than one computer?  File not there?  Again, sure there are other syncing apps and online drives/services out there.   

But a couple of days ago I found a paper on Mendeley.com and they were touting Mendeley desktop.  I downloaded it and I'm in heaven!!  I've only just begun to explore this, so I haven't put much into mine yet, but below are some screenshots of my current Glyceroneogenesis folder.  Yes, I really am just getting started  with this :-)

In this case, at least I had renamed this PDF something descriptive.  But, for example, that Hanson paper in there was sent to me entitled ForEvelyn.pdf.  So by just dragging and dropping the file into MD, it extracted all this information, including a link to the url.  There are tools for highlighting, notes, etc.  I haven't even begun to explore the syncing and collaborative features of this program ... but this is super exciting for me.  See how it just extracted the real title of the study?  But now I don't even need to bother changing file names, this does it for me and tells me what the file is actually named.  How kewl is that?!   And having the link?  Priceless!!  It's not perfect.  The mark-up tools have some quirks -- hopefully that gets ironed out.  Sometimes it doesn't extract all information.  It's not particularly useful for scanned image PDF's (common for older papers).  But all in all I'm so glad I found this!

Maybe everybody already knew about this or some similar tool,  and I've been living in a cave or something, but thought I'd share this.

Marketing & Manipulation ... and Musings ...

WARNING:  Rant!

There's been quite the discussion going on in comments of The Men Who Made Us Fat, and I decided my commentary might be better organized in a blog post.  I can certainly see the positions of both sides there, but in the end I come down on the side of "Eric" when he says this:

"Until we accept that Obesity is a lifestyle choice ( either voluntarily or by apathy ) no real fix can every be made without crushing regressive taxation on food. To blame "big food" is a dangerous cop-out that reinforces the negative cycle."

The so-called "simple obesity" -- the epidemic of indisputable overeating to the tune of an average of 500 calories per day -- is very much a lifestyle choice.  In my case, the obesity of the late 90's and the 2000's was in large part due to apathy or laziness.  Too many take out meals instead of cooking something.  And take out means too many fried, processed, calorie dense foods.  Or just eating crackers and cheese watching TV -- before you know it a sleeve is gone, and you haven't even had a "meal".  It's ordering the quarter pounder and medium fries when a regular burger and small fries is enough.  It's having McD's on the road instead of packing a snack for the long trip.  CHOICES.

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Happy Fathers' Day!

To all my readers who are Dads, I wish you a very happy day and hope you get to spend it with your kids (and if they're old enough, that they do something nice for you for all you do!)

On the front here, we have a limited celebration in store.  But if this haze lifts there's supposed to be a nice day for it.  We're grilling up porterhouses for the red meat eaters, steamin' up a lobster and cooking up salmon filet in the fry pan.  This will be complimented with coleslaw - homemeade by me of course, a cold green bean salad from my maternal grandmother's recipe (with a vinagrette of sorts) - made by Sis, roasted yukon golds (me), and some sort of orange squares for dessert (Sis).   The plan is to enjoy food, and more importantly, family!

Who says nobody's VLC in my house?

Yes, the inhabitant that should be on a carnivorous diet, is.  I just had to share the "cat in the box" picture.  He's always been a box cat.  He's too big for shoe boxes but that doesn't stop him if one is available.  Box full of stuff?  He's on top.  Cardboard tray from Costco?  You'd think I paid premium for it at the pet store.  I had used this "tray" to carry some stuff between rooms last night.  And this morning there he was sitting in it, like I meant to put it there just for him :-)

Some other pics, not to step on Beth @ WeightMaven's toes with Friday Cat Blogging.  On the lower left, he loves to read my blog :-)  And check out that coloring, I think he's got a tarantula on his forehead!!  This guy doesn't have normal fur, it's a thick "pelt" is the only way to describe it. I call him my Gotta-Getta-Gund.

 

Me & "The Community" ~ Part I: Where I'm coming from ...

I had a number of posts in the works in the wake of Kruisegate that got buried a bit by other crap storms and hope to get back to them at some point.  This is one of those that was re-sparked by an email I received a little ways back.  It read:

Subject:  Here's some support from a random paleo dieter

Hi Evelyn, I just wanted to throw a bit of support your way regarding your blog.  When I first ventured into this paleo/evolutionary nutrition thing, it was through the Fathead/Gary Taubes route, so I wasn't always open to reading your site, but I did occasionally, and it always challenged me and opened up my mind a little.  Now that the days of obsessing about ketosis are over, I feel I've reached a much more balanced place with my current diet, and I do generally attribute that to people like you who are battling against the kind of glucophobia Jimmy Moore encourages.  I've seen almost immeasurable benefit from this way of eating, and it's not blunted or reversed at all when I eat a decent amount of plant starch, and I'd like to thank you for helping me get to that point.  If it wasn't for the dissenters, I don't know how long I'd be peeing on sticks.

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Gary Taubes on Anorexia

Hey gang ... I'm working on the Big Fat Lies blogumentary ... just when I think I've found everything I'm remembering to include, I come across more.  But I'm near completion and after some time to do other things in my life (grin) will likely get to publishing it next week.  In the meantime, I came across a quote that really turned me off to Taubes when I heard it.  It really had little to do with his scientific manglings, but more to do with his attitude about fat tissue regulation showing an utter disregard for eating disorders.  I blogged on it once over on the Chronicles blog but couldn't find the quote at the time.  So when I heard it this time, you can imagine it jumped out at me!  

As someone who struggled with ED's, and could just have easily succumbed to anorexia rather than what eventually led to lifelong struggle with overweight and obesity, I found this personally offensive.  It's moreso because I feel that Taubes misuses the works of Hilde Bruch -- probably the single name most associated with studying and treating eating disorders -- to support his so-called Alternate Hypothesis.  Bruch is the author of The Golden Cage and various other books on both anorexia and obesity.  I have a copy of this book and just paged through it to refresh.  Bruch was not, as Taubes would have you believe, fixated on some metabolic even that precipitated this disease or others.  Her focus was on finding out how it starts so perhaps to prevent it from progressing, and how to help (mostly young girls) sufferers unlock their cages.

Sure, you can feed an anorexic carbs (and protein) and pump them full of insulin and put bodyweight back on them.  This will not cure them, however, and may well be one of the more cruel things you could do to a human being capable of literally starving themselves to death because they are so afraid of gaining weight and their reflection in the mirror.

So I put together this "short" since I was playing with a different video production program. 

Random

Been flicking through YouTube and music sites lately.  Came across this video of one of my favorite bands most Americans have never heard of, covering one of my favorite songs.    I saw them live twice, once at Toad's in New Haven CT when their lead singer was new.  He was sitting at the back of the bar going unnoticed before the show.  Got to chat with him.  I was 2-3 rows in on the floor watching a band that has packed Wembley.  Pretty cool.  Here's Marillion singing Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (I only wish they sang more, but this was just fun to watch)

Announcement!

Announcing upcoming content!  Check out the video below.  No idea what caused the "blips" -- very annoying at times -- in there, but can't do much about it now.  Also the perfectionist in me wanted to edit this further, but what the heck ... warts and all ... here it is!

Totally unrelated to diet question: Drawing Tablets

Hey all!  I'm planning to look into some different things this summer now that my schedule has cleared a bit.  One of these is doing some stuff where I'd like to "mark-up" documents, record written  "presentations" and/or just incorporating some free-hand drawings into content here.  So I was in Staples the other day to return something I didn't need that I received as a gift, and forgot about.  So first I checked that they still carried the item and they did.  Yay!  But as I browsed the aisle, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the writing tablets.  They are so much sleeker looking and seemingly functional (according to the descriptions) than one I had eons ago back when computers still came with 5" floppy drives and hard drive capacities measured in MB.  VERY interested -- also wide price ranges!  I'm well familiar with underspending on such devices and them having inadequate function ... but then again, nowadays you can get devices for $50 that actually do the same things as $500 devices if you're not looking to push every feature to the max for some high-end professional endeavor!  I'd like something economical BUT functional.

So ... I thought I'd ask if anyone has one and how you like it and what you use it for.  Brand, model and all that definitely helpful info.  Right now I have just my HP Mini (my big laptop bit the dust almost a year ago and this little thing is wonderful and I've had no need for anything more!) with Windows 7 (Starter) .  If you'd rather for any reason offer input or give recs via email, it's carbsane at gmail dot com as always!  THANKS in advance!!

"Sea Tangle" Noodles - YUCK!

On Monday the hubs and I finally got around to checking out the new Korean owned market that opened up nearby recently.  It's "full sized" -- taking the place of a regular grocery store and pretty much keeping the produce department intact.  I can see getting fish/seafood from there quite often if that department stays as clean and stocked as it was.  

They have a full complement of the shiritake, konjac, yam noodles and such (all the same thing essentially though some have a tinge of soy that makes them look less like cellophane noodles and more like ramen).  These days I avoid those although prepared properly they can be an acceptable low carb/calorie filler.  But I had heard of the kelp noodles and thought I'd like to give them a try.  

So there amongst the others sat a package of Sea Tangle Noodles.  I went to try them yesterday.  They come in a plastic package, much like the shiritake.  I was happy to discover there was no fishy smell that required extensive rinsing.  But that's where the happiness ended.  They are rather springy, almost like cartilage, utterly tasteless (not such a bad thing), but the texture was just gross.  While shiritake noodles are weirdly chewy, these are crunchy! -- and not in a good way.  

I think I'll try frying them up with some chili oil just to see if they might have some redeeming quality/use, but I just thought I'd share my experience to save anyone ever wondering the time and money.  :D

Carnie Wilson: Undergoing second WLS

With all the recent discussion on losing weight, exercise, bariatric surgery etc. here at the Asylum, I was reminded of this short post I intended to make on Carnie Wilson.  I had seen her on Fox & Friends with Wilson Philips promoting their new album.  Her's is a cautionary tale but also goes to show there's more to this obesity thing than many folks seem to want to acknowledge or talk about.  

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