Happy Valentine’s day to all of you out there. Today is a very special day, and of course there will be a very special dinner menu on deck for tonight.

Disaster!

I had planned on posting a recipe for the chocolate mousse for today, but the recipe was such a bomb, it wasn’t worth it.

It turns out that my couverture chocolate has expired; so I faced a hard time getting it tempered properly so I could fold it into my whipped cream mixture.

What I ended up with was a sticky, split, grainy mess. I’ll try to fix it for tonight – or just bite the bullet and buy some new couverture chocolate.

The Menu:

• Butternut Squash and Apple Bisque with Apple Chips
• Baby Arugula with Toasted Walnuts, Cranberry Maple Dressing
• Tenderloin Steaks with Roasted Rosemary Potatoes, Creamed Spinach, Pinot Noir Sauce
• Chocolate Mousse with Hazelnut Crackle

Your Turn!

So, what are you doing for Valentine’s day? let me know in the comments!

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Taking the day off – there is an important birthday in my family life that will take center stage. Meanwhile, I need to prepare a Vanilla Mocha cake.

See you all tomorrow!

Yes, I am a bit late posting today. It seems that my computer SNARFED my photos. That’s right, through its nose. Let me explain!

I have a nice write-up, (in hand writing,) about a top-secret post on making Chicken Stock in Your Crock Pot. (Complete with some FAIL moments!) There were a good 20 or so photos I took to document the process. All that needed to be done was to go through those photos, adjust them, then post. (I shoot in RAW like all the cool kids.)

Then the gods of all Hard Drives frowned upon me.

It’s a relatively simple task – dump the pictures into a SORT folder on my hard drive. Label it 1-17-2012, even through there are pictures of the Family during Christmas. Don’t worry, they will be sorted later, see?

Hold your breath in anticipation while the 2.3 gigabytes of information are being transferred to the desktop. Of course, when the photos appear on the folder’s preview pane with squiggly lines, and dark bands running through them, try not to think the worst. It has to refresh, right?

Oh, but no – I have offended the Gods somewhere. It is not to be. Wait! I shoot in RAW, right? Ahh… perhaps the JPEG images are the only casualty of the corruption, right? The RAW files store the information straight from the camera. It’s all good, remember to breathe….

And…

Oh, no. The RAW files look worse than the JPEG thumbnails.

CALL CANON CUSTOMER SERVICE RIGHT AWAY…

Seems like today has a silver lining. Half way through “All of our agents are…” Durfas the Nice answers. “How may I help you?”

I try not to sound frantic…

“Uh, I have a small problem with my Rebel T2i… there are bands running across the pictures.” I say this, proud that I am still breathing and only have a small twinge of pain in my chest.

Durfas, (she is so nice,) replies, “Are the pictures showing up normally in the viewfinder?”

What a great question. I pop in the card, flash off a couple of pictures, and yes, they are appearing fine on the viewfinder… I put the card into the reader, and look at the folder from the desktop…

“They look okay on the viewfinder…” I reply, “and they look fine on the folder here.”

I cut and paste them into the SORT folder again. Damn! They are corrupt again! So… it’s not the camera, but maybe…

“Durfas – I need to checks something quickly…”

I grab the card, slap it into the Canon, take a picture of my kitchen, then race to the laptop. Out the card goes, into the laptop… holding my breath, I wait…

“That’s weird… they seem fine on the laptop.”

Durfas sighs as I let out my breath. She sounds convinced that it’s not my camera, as she says, “Did you open them using the EOS Digital Solution Disc?”

Oh SNAP! No, I didn’t even install it, assuming it was bloatware…

“I’m just glad that for now it seems like it’s the computer, not the camera. Thank you for your help, Durfas.”

Now what?

Looks like I will first check my computer out to resolve any issues – be it a virus, or hardware. After that, I will have to see about rescuing those files. I am not so worried about the photos of the Chicken Stock (I can always retake those…) but the family photos would be nice to rescue.

Does anyone out there know how to rescue a possible corrupt CR2 file?? Let me know in the comments…

As you can see by the dog’s carefree face, I’m off on vacation. Things will be pretty quiet here for the next couple of weeks!

No worries though, I’ll be back for more awesome posts later!

Take care all!

My Dream, Unleashed!

So, here I am with no picture, but an assignment to complete for my anxiety program. Without further ado, in the raw state, here it is:

My Dream – As if I Already Had It

I am a food writer, helping people around the world get into their kitchens and take control of their ailments by getting back to REAL food. I wok based out of home, so I have the ability to be with my family at the times they need me instead of in a kitchen somewhere, slogging over a stove.

I visit farmers, make connections and promote the best my region has to offer. I help people to understand how easy it actually is to cook – they, no, WE have been doing it for THOUSANDS of years.

Everyone’s diet has different features, what is important is to find what works for them individually. (For example, for me it is lower carb.) The main point though, is only ONE dogma – REAL FOOD.

I happily demonstrate what people could do with fresh products – perhaps even at a farmer’s market. That is my dream.

Oh yes, and help people to realize that it is TECHNIQUE that matters.

I get to spend time / holidays with my family because I am not stuck in a kitchen somewhere, and work a semi-normal life.

I made an un-cookbook. That is, a book or DVD where people go to for the technique on what to do – not just some random recipe. With that, all recipes are demystified.

There you have it, my RAW, unedited thoughts. I have put it out there for you, dear reader – what do you think? Tell me in the comments!

Sorry for the lack of updates. My son broke his clavicle, so I needed to take him to the pediatrician. A day full of x-rays, a neat-o prosthetic, and that was my Monday.

More upcoming, once I find my Mojo again!

Tried taking me to task, and this is what he looks like...

About a week back, Richard over at Free the Animal posted a response to a stupid video. I also posted a response about it. You would not believe the amount of comments those posts generated.

A commentator by the name Athonwy tried to take me to task:

Athonwy // Mar 3, 2011 at 12:56
Jason, you still haven’t made any convincing logical argument as to why you, or your dog, are not fair game for the plate. Actually, you made an argument exactly in favour of eating whatever we want, since something has to die, right? Where do you draw the line, and why do you draw it where you do? Why, in your world view, is eating an animal OK, but eating your dog or a human is not? You are not making a consistent argument.
Let’s put this question out to all the readers: Who has been more logical and consistent in their arguments? Me, or Jason? Please speak up, I welcome any criticisms or rebukes.

Good god, I wouldn’t want to be thought of as inconsistent… or illogical.

Why in my world eating animals be okay, and even my dog (in some cases)?

I tell you what – I would eat my dog if it meant my life, or my family’s life from starvation. It’s been nice knowing you pup!

That aside, it got me to thinking. How best to show that eating animals is a valid, logical, sustainable process?

Indeed, let’s turn things around here,  and go anti-vegan:

A Case Against Veganism

Fucking rights!

What is more innocent than the plants that you kill? Why do they deserve to die feeding you when they are meant to be for the animals you are supposed to be eating?

In fact, because of their abundance of soy or wheat products in their diets, vegans have inadvertently caused a mono agricultural empire, and the animals have to suffer eating the byproducts of your selfish diet.

Animals were not meant to eat soy or wheat byproducts, but the farmers have no choice but to feed these creatures that junk because of the demand for fucking tofu!

Plus, thanks to all the pesticides dumped around the area to keep those bananas/fruits alive, all the fossil fuels to transport them all over the world in their various stages of ripeness so we can consume them any time of the year (out of season), we have holes in the ozone layer, and a polluted  for their efforts. Feed the world indeed!

No, if vegans weren’t so fucking clueless and selfish, they would eat animals.

The Way Nature intended things:

The animals, (ruminants mostly – and for your vegan-addled minds that means they eat fucking GRASS and chew cud,) fulfill a purpose:

• They give us milk and we make many foods from their products.
• Their manure fertilizes our crops (mainly vegetables, some grains.)
• Their meat feeds a lot of people (a fuck of a LOT more than just 18 bags of grains.)
• Their leather can go to make many different items of daily use
• Their bones provide us with sustenance (bone broth) and with fertilizer as well. (Bone meal.)

In return, we eat far less, (because we are sated with a little bit of meat as opposed to the amounts of plants and animals we need to eat.) We don’t have to waste so many resources getting our sustenance.

I would finally ask the question, what in YOUR mind makes it alright to eat vegetation meant for the animals you eat?

Seriously, I thought about 2 seconds before I had to post this up and hack this guy to verbal pieces. This ain’t gonna be pretty, and I sure as fuck ain’t gonna be nice. (Viewer’s discretion advised…)

First, the set up:

Watch this beauty of a gem for a few minutes, (if you can tolerate it,) then read on.

Some of you may wonder why I would bother sending traffic his way. Well, the answer is simple.

I wanted to show you how fucked up some people’s thinking can be.

The best part about Vegan dickheads like that guy is how they go on about how their diet is the best, blah blah. The best part is when thatfucker goes off on whether something is “Paleo” or not. You know, like they didn’t have fucking olive oil back in the day.

When will a vegan actually pick up a book and understand what he is critiquing? Sure, they didn’t have olive oil back in the day. They sure as fuck didn’t have pasta, rice, garbanzo beans, hummus, tofu, soy sauce, pressed fucking canola oil either. What’s the point there?

Then the fucker goes on about how fat everyone is that goes on low carb. Even better are the people he shows a “good” examples of Vegan athletes.

Can you say, “emaciated?”

Seriously, Dude, get a fucking grip!

So, if I understand correctly:

The path to health is to eat a shit tonne of carbs, no animals, fruits, run all fucking day long, so I can look like I need another meal?

Eat every 3 hours, just to keep my metabolism going?

Faint because I need more vitamins that I just can’t get with a vegan diet?

Do I really want to look like those skinny ass fuckers?

Hell no. I would prefer to stay fat, thanks.

Give me my meat, give me my bone broth. Give me my vegetables, and my fucking food back.

Vegans think they are out to save the world by eating vegan. I say that eating animals makes me higher up on the food chain.

If you choose vegan, that’s up to you – at least I can go almost all day without food by eating a couple pieces of steak with butter, mushrooms, and a bit of vegetables. I can bolus for that, and be pretty much okay after that.

Can’t say that for you poor fuckers starving yourselves on plant based foods alone.

What of all the diabetics out there? I noticed that there was one very telling low-carb doctor missing on the vlog. That would be Dr. Bernstein. I am sure that that Aussie could take him to task, right?

Maybe once he puts down his ever-loving banana scramble.

Another thing

Over at the YouTube channel this Banana lovin freak has going on, he has some videos that overlay a cooking “demo” with an animal being slaughtered, and also labeled as low-carb/paleo/primal.

Well, I have something for that:

Think on this, Mr-High-and-Fucking-Mighty – When you kill a cow, it is fucking dead. Then you bleed it, hang it, and then it is used. But, it is still fucking dead.

Take that carrot that you bought at the store. (That was grown in manure, oh – and probably bone meal as fertilizer too, shit head!) You know, you put it into your crisper in the fridge – and you wait to use it.

Then you peel it.

Well think on this shit-head:

IT’S STILL ALIVE. IN FACT, IT’S DYING A SLOW FUCKING DEATH.

Think I am wrong? Well, instead of being dead, it is actually still vibrant. It still breathes. It still feels. (And don’t tell me plants don’t feel anything asshole – because plants have been documented as having feelings, and a conscience as well.)

Think on that when you get on your soapbox to protest how killing animals is inhumane. At least we KILL them, and don’t SLOWLY kill them.

What makes killing plants any different than killing animals? In the end, you gotta kill SOMETHING to eat!

>/Rant over.

Oops!

I had a post all raring to go last night, but then I did something stupid.

I thought I was taking my long-acting insulin, but I had replaced it with fast-acting instead.

For those of you wondering on that, a long-acting insulin (AKA Basal) lasts over a long period, like 20-24 hours and provides a background for your insulin needs.

A short-acting insulin (AKA Bolus) lasts over a 4 hour period, but acts rapidly, delta over 2 hours, then crashing.

Now, I usually take maybe 1 or 2 units to cover a meal I know will be a bit carb heavy. (Low carb by most people’s standards…) I took 18 units by mistake – 9 times the amount I normally take.

The danger in that is insulin removes blood glucose from the blood stream. That’s it’s job. If you go too low, your brain won’t get enough glucose to function, and that is BAD NEWS.

To further put it into perspective, that 1 or 2 units I normally take sometimes will put me low. Imagine what 18 units would do.

So, a ride to the hospital, 14 glucose tabs and a Sprite later, I was sitting in the hospital thinking about what had happened.

A comment I received …

Well, yesterday I received a comment from Nigel on a rant post I wrote a while back. I took a look at his blog earlier, and he has a lot of great information over there. (Why is he in with that CS woman, I have no idea.) I enjoyed looking through a lot of his posts, and learned a great deal.

What did I learn from being stupid though?

Well, I took a hefty dose of sugar to cover my insulin spike. In all, at least 150 grams of fast-acting glucose. (A GI of 100 – meaning it goes to work right away.) I got to thinking in the hospital bed, “I should be gaining weight… all this insulin, a tonne of sugar…)

It was time to test a theory/hypothesis out… Ahh… fuck that. I was more worried about what might happen to me.

This morning when I weighed myself, I had lost 2 lbs.

Huh?

I see a lot of bad science, and just stupidity on blogs when the issue comes up with insulin. I live and deal with insulin every fucking day – and if I fuck up, it means a trip to the hospital. People don’t have a clue as to what insulin really does, its effect in abnormal amounts – too little, and too much.

If I don’t take insulin, and continue to eat like I used to, I’ll lose weight. That I proved last year. I will eventually end up in the hospital, and might fall into a coma.

If I take too much, well – I just might not wake up.

Does insulin make a person fatter? Sure. I gained 30 pounds in 2 months when I started taking my insulin regiments. Was it the insulin alone?

There is more than just insulin involved in our weight loss journey while low carbing. Surprise! The whole endocrine system is way more complex than just 1 hormone.

Sure, insulin plays a major role, but I think maybe it is just about signalling the other hormones to work in tandem. It is one complex, nasty mess that once it gets deregulated, can become a shit mix – like Play Doh my Son mashed altogether into a ball.

Not impossible to get back to normal, but pretty fucking hard. The idea is to avoid mashing that shit-mix together.

I learned that simply implicating 1 hormone is too simplistic. What I have not changed is the approach. Low carb seems to be working, but science can’t really tell me why.

Rats Ass For Science

Some people might thing I am a GT fan-boy. Well, I am not a fan boy of anyone, and I take most things I read/hear with a super-heavy dose of skepticism. I research, read, and finally make my decision. Keep in mind, science is not the only place I go to.

Science has its place, sure. It is not the end of the story though. There are plenty of things Poindexter can’t explain – like how a chick is attracted to a douche bag, mind over matter, and why someone might gag over a fart while someone else thinks it smells like roses.

I believe in Gestalt – that is, a larger picture than just one piece of the puzzle. Functional medicine, if you will. There is more to Diabetes, weight loss than just the pancreas (as Nigel pointed out to me, thanks man!) It is a complex, difficult system to navigate. It’s not impossible.

I know, pretty bold, huh?

Why is being labeled “Borderline Diabetic” or “Pre-Diabetic” worse than being diagnosed with Cancer?

Hear me out here; I will explain.

I was 14, lethargic, urinating a lot, and eating like a maniac. Keep in mind that if I weighed a buck 20, I would be lucky. One quick trip to the doctor gave my mother some hope; I was at the “borderline” of diabetes.

Great news! I just had to “watch my diet” and all would be good!

No other information, no diet, no books, nothing else. Just an admonition to “watch my diet.”

What if I had cancer instead?

I remember when my mother was diagnosed with cancer – life pretty much turned upside down. She was forced to quit her nursing program at the last semester, I was sent to live with my grandfather, and Mom went through intense Chemotherapy.

My sister (a ripe age of between 6 and 7 years old) had a front row seat to the weakness that my mother endured through her treatment.  My mother had a major organ removed at the ripe old age of 25, and recovered from big old C.

Why is that better than being “Pre-Diabetic” or “Borderline”?

I am not going to say that cancer sufferers are lucky – far from it. The pain they have to endure is beyond my imagination to comprehend. I am not even going to say that they should be grateful for their diagnosis.

Here’s why I think a Cancer Diagnosis is better than a “Borderline Diabetes”:

1. They have a proper diagnosis. There is no wishy-washy bullshit. There it is, the cancer – now what are you going to do about it?
2. Cancer is Real. There is no fucking with it. It is there, and there is no “borderline” or “pre-cancer”. Now, you need to deal with it.
3. The doctor forms a plan of action. Cut it out, Chemo the shit out of it, leave it in there. All are plans of action.
4. With diagnosis, there is hope. Real fucking hope, not a false one. Hopefully it will work out, after you take steps to address the problem.
5. You understand the risks. Not so with a bullshit diagnosis like “pre-diabetes” where you are sent on your way after your “diagnosis” without a fucking clue as to what can happen to you.
6. What you don’t know will kill you. People don’t just ignore cancer and hope it will “all work out.” If you did that, you would fucking die. So why do we bury our heads in the sand when it comes to diabetes?

I am pretty fucking pissed that the doctors had their heads up their asses and gave me the bullshit diagnosis 20 years ago. Had they been on the ball, I could have saved years of damage to my body, and possibly years of my later life.

A bullshit diagnosis, and no information, no plan of attack, I was set up for a disease (and finally a proper diagnosis 19 years later.)

Thinking back, I can see a progression to today.

The endless pasta meals, the gallons of coke chugged daily, the sugar, pastries, cigarettes. I can see how, inch by inch, my body fought the shit that I was doing to it, until it just gave up.

Now, a lot of people might blame me, and you know what? I take all the blame. Just remember what I had to work with though – NO FUCKING INFORMATION.

I quit smoking after getting the information on what it could really do to you. I mean, really. I quit cold turkey, almost 3 years ago. Once I had the information I needed, it was easy.

As for the sugar/carb addiction, it was easy to break free of that once I knew what that shit did to me. Had I that information 20 years ago, my life would be drastically different.

What you can do today after reading this:

If you are labeled “Borderline” or “Pre-Diabetic”, you need to act. Treat it like you are a diabetic. Your first move is to buy the book, “The Diabetes Solution” by Richard Bernstein. (Link goes to my Amazon Store.)

I know you don’t want to hear that you are diabetic. One question is though, do you really want to wreak havoc on your body, and die of complications?

My grandmother got diagnosed with the “borderline” Diabetes, and she took it seriously, and she actually reversed the damage. She 80 years old, and an inspiration.

Get fucking real, and treat this shit seriously, like Cancer seriously.