Bunless Burgers & Lots of Waste

When you go for no bun, why do they have to go all out?

Two Buck Doubles (lo carb) from Burger King

 Just look at all the plastic.  I feel guilty ordering this stuff.

Two McDoubles (lettuce wrapped) from McDonald's

Jack In The Box does the same thing, by the way, but no picture yet.  Possibly never...

Oh...

Carls' Jr is one of the only ones to still wrap it like a normal burger, in a mere sheet of paper.  I get the Big Carl, no sauce, low carb.  Just meat, cheese, and lettuce.

In-N-Out Burger also wraps it in paper AND makes the best one: the original "low carb" burger!  Just say "protein style" when you order it.  It even sounds more manly than "lettuce wrapped" or "low carb."  I go for ketchup and mustard instead of sauce, add pickles.  Extra tomatoes, please.

braised lamb with cherries & wild mushrooms

Keeping it simple, but the smell is already great. I'm highly motivated to be hungry when I get home.

braised lamb with cherries & wild mushrooms

1lbs lamb shanks, chops, etc.
10 cherries, pitted
7g dried wild matsutake mushrooms
2 cups water
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp salt

That's pretty simple.  The meat, cherries, and mushrooms (and the bay leaves, I guess) will give it enough flavor without killing it with herbs and spices.

Brown the meat, deglaze the pan with the water, put all of the stuff in the slowcooker or crock pot and go to work.  The temperature of the cooker is your problem.  I'm going to be gone forever, so I have it on low.

I'm going to make some wild rice when I get home, plus there's always summer squash to eat.

Off to work, slow cooker cooking

Oh, speaking (or typing) of mushrooms, if you want to a chance to try some of the mushrooms that Marx Foods has to offer, check out their contest, below.

Eco-Friendly Disposable Palm Leaf Plates

My friend Justin at Marx Foods recently sent me some really cool plates.  Thanks, Justin!

I'm not one to get too excited about "green" or "eco friendly," because usually that means ugly or lame. If it's not ugly or lame, I'm in.  With these palm leaf plates, I was very pleasantly surprised.  They are neither ugly or lame, in fact, quite the opposite.

Here's a salad in the plates, so you see them in action!

Here we go...

Eco-Friendly Disposable Palm Leaf Plates

What they say...

Our Palm Leaf Plates are great for entertaining. These elegant and durable disposable party plates are an eco-friendly alternative to conventional disposable plates. These biodegradable plates are a natural and renewable resource. Naturally discarded sheaths of the leaves of the Adaka palm tree are collected from the forest floor. No trees are cut down. The plates and the disposable cutlery are even compostable!

Here's more on the hows of the palm plates. How Palm Leaf Plates are Made

That's what they say.  Here's what I say...

Pros: 

These plates are really good looking, and each plate is different.  The pictures on the Marx Foods site don't do them justice, as each one is lighter or darker, with darker "veins" of color running through.

Sturdy. They hold a lot of food without collapsing.

Eco friendly. Green.  They come from something that would be wasted, and then they can be composted afterward.  In Southern California, where we are overdrawn on water, it's a good thing to not wash a dish, as long as it can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. 

For those of you (and it's sometimes those of "us") who don't eat grains, rice, bread, or all those delicious foods that soak up juices, these plates are awesome.  I'll call them paleo or primal friendly, since they are sturdy and have a nice lip around them to hold in the liquids.  I haven't tried soup, but sauces are just fine.  The lip is deeper than those plastic plates from the grocery store, so don't buy those anymore.

Lots of shapes and sizes, and there are utensils that I've only seen in pictures (and I don't know their story, either), but look pretty sweet.

When I say they are good looking, I'm not talking "cool china pattern" good looking, but if you're a hippie, want to be a hippie, wear no shoes as often as not, live "primally,"don't wear deodorant, or live amongst women who seldom shave the pits, these plates are right up your alley!

Cons:

Expensive.  Sorta.

You'll feel bad tossing them, so you'll try to wash them.  You might get away with a quick rinse, but anything hot or wet, for any length of time, and you've used the plate up.  It's a one time use, things like sandwiches excepted.

Again, if you missed the link to Marx Foods, above, here it is again - Eco-Friendly Disposable Palm Leaf Plates

Extra-Extra-Medium

not actual size

I'm sure they didn't design this shirt specifically for me, but there it is.  I'm not the large I want to be.  Not the large I wish I was.  I'm a medium.  An extra, extra medium.  A medium.

I'm 6'1" and a little bit over 190lbs.  I don't know what it's going to take to bump me up to a large, but the writing is on the wall.

Most of my adult life, I've been a larger or better. Well, bigger anyway.  ...and bigger seems better.

There are whole web sites devoted to being large.  Here's 70s Big.  Go 200 (pounds) or go home.  (bye)

My girlfriend is very nice, except when she says "that shirt is a little large."  Well, I have larger, so pipe down!  I don't, actually, but I could cut out the tags and say they are larges, right?  Girls do it, right?  The only ones that leave the tags on are the ones in size zero or extra-small.  If you got it, flaunt it!

I have seen the writing on the wall, but not yet come to terms.

At the core of 7 year Quest For Abs FAILURE is the size "medium."  That, and the hunger.  Yes, it's true that I was hungry from 235 all the way down to 160, but not as hungry as I am on my best day at 190 and today's lean.  The hunger is different.  Perhaps because each day of surviving the hunger puts me that much closer to the comfort of a medium t-shirt and that much farther from a large.  Two conflicting goals make for two barriers.  Those of you who recognize math will recognize that 2 + 2 is 4, but when you go with multiplication, you get two squared, and that's HUGELY more and you've FAILED.  I've never been good at math, but I know it when I see it.

The shirt is on order, and when it gets here, I'm officially a medium.  What's next?  I can ditch the lifts in my shoes?  I'm really only 5'8"