...and what is YOUR Starbucks name?

My own Starbucks name is more like a list of names, but it's the price you pay for having an easily distinguishable name like Roland.

Galya (aka "Gal," or G - A - L as she spelled it for the dude) has caught on to the benefits of using a short and sweet name at Starbucks, but it doesn't always work...

does it, "Dan?"

I told Dan it would be cool to make a Starbucks Name Generator, but I find that it's already done.

Starbucks Name Generator 

My name is Upman. What's YOUR Starbucks name?

...and it begins

A weekend of food, bread, and beer and I'm ready to get things back into right again. I didn't eat all that much more than I usually do, but it was more of the stuff that I don't usually eat.

On Friday, I was 183lbs and today I'm 185.5. Not bad for a holiday weekend of bread and beer. I'm not a low carber, but I'm sure I'm on the low end of normal, since I do eat fruit and yogurt daily, corn tortillas and pozole every couple of weeks, and have a beer here and there.

Last night's Guinness was my "cheers" to top off and end my wonderful weekend with the family. Today begins a week of asceticism.

asceticism; the way I see it

• No grains – easy, since I don't eat them much anyway. I typically reserve what few grains I do have for beer or tacos, but these are low level foods
• Limited dairy – half and half in my joe, and one meal with cheese per day
• No fruit – it's a gateway food
• No yogurt – It's not filling, and just makes me want more yogurt, fruit, or sweets
• Veggies – yes
• There will be meat – oh my yes
• Avocados – Thanks to my sister's tree, there are plenty to eat right now
• Coffee – black and/or with half and half
• No alcohol – No beer, of course, but also no booze or wine for the week
• Sleep – I will try to go to be earlier than usual, which isn't really much of a commitment
• Intermittent Fasting – I almost never eat breakfast, so that part is normal. On some non-training days, I will go longer, but I'm not the 24 hour fasting type. My only issue I have with IF is forgetting to eat enough in the hours prior to training. I can train empty first thing, but training empty after a full day leads to bad training.
• Training – Gal and I appear to be going back to the gym this week, so two days of that and two days of kettlebells and ab rollouts in the little apt gym
• Mobility – It continues
• Walking – Yes, please
• Running – Gal suggested it. I plan to string her along...

By the way, I don't think I've ever used the term "ascetism" before yesterday, when I tried and failed to pronounce it after Gal said it over beers. I said "aesthetic" and got an eye roll for it.

Coincidently, and speaking of asceticism, this morning, my RSS reader found yesterday's blog post by fellow blogger John Durant, regarding his recent monk/monastery/fasting/adventure – Fasting with the Trappists: An adventure in asceticism. It's a good read AND also works well with my philosophy on dieting hard, which is to imagine myself in the place of some sort of monk; feel the hunger.

How to make easy homemade kimchi and five fried eggs for lunch, in no time at all

Yesterday, I had easy homemade kimchi and five fried eggs for lunch, in no time at all.

You say... "Roland, how can I have easy homemade kimchi and five fried eggs for lunch, in no time at all?"  

easy homemade kimchi with five fried eggs

Easy. 

First, get some homemade kimchi. Now, fry up the five eggs and put them on the plate with your homemade kimchi. Let the eggs cool a little bit, but not too long, and eat it for lunch.

Easy.

Homemade kimchi and five fried eggs

Serves 2*

Ingredients

2 cups homemade kimchi, divided

1 lbs nitrate or nitrite free – I can't remember which is which – bacon

10 free range omega-3 eggs, divided

Fresh ground Himalayan salt

Directions

Set the homemade kimchi aside until later.

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium high heat. When bacon fat** has fully rendered out, spoon out one tbsp bacon fat and add it to your non-stick or well seasoned cast-iron skillet.  Discard the bacon and the remaining fat.

Heat your skillet and tablespoon of bacon fat over medium high heat. Add your ten cracked omega-3 free range eggs and cook to desired level of "done." Put the eggs, divided, onto two plates.

Add half of the kimchi to each plate and serve, salting with the Himalayan salt.

See? Easy.

* Note: the recipe is for five eggs in each serving, not in total.***

** If desired, the bacon fat can be prepared in advance.

*** Recipe can be scaled to use fewer eggs, if desired. The use of more than five eggs is not recommended unless you are hungrier.

Dear friends...

Dear friends,

It used to feel so strange to say that, but you are my friends, even the many who I've never actually met. Even five years ago, it was a little awkward to tell your family or a local friend about a friend who's only relationship with you is online. I'm sure many of you reading this are right there with me.

I've met many of you over the years at airport layovers, hotel lobby bars, and even at the local gym down the street from your hotel. Amazingly, things go smoothly from minute one. I once picked up my friend Jim on the way to train at Yahoo! Park in Santa Monica. I drove into the hotel circle, Jim hopped in, we hit the park with a group of friends and continued to hit it off for the rest of the day, despite never having even spoken to one another before!

These times of forums, Facebook, blogs, and Skype are powerful for bringing us together, but it's still even better when you have the chance to meet face to face. ...and opportunity is coming!

I know many of you from the fitness and nutrition discussions at JPFitness.com, so it should come as no big surprise when I suggest that you, like me, try VERY hard to attend this year's Fitness Summit! This is something like the 8th or 9th annual get-together, and promises to be the best yet. I've been to three of them, and each one has been a blast, in addition to the learning experience.

Whether you are a fitness guru or fanatic or just interested in being healthier while you live your real life, this is the long weekend event to attend. This will prove to be a great time of friends getting together to learn, eat, play, and get to know each other even better. As great as knowing each of you online is, I would absolutely love to know you all in person, too!

Please come!

The web site almost speaks for itself, but feel free to ask me via email (rdenzel@gmail.com) or Facebook (facebook.com/rolanddenzel) or on the JPFitness Forum or even it's own Facebook page, where you can get a good feel for how these things go!

I hope to see you all there!

Roland

Cranberry braised beef

Cranberry braised beef

I love the combination of cranberries and juniper berries with braised meat. A little fresh sage would be be a good optional touch if you have some. Sometimes I like sage, and sometimes I don't.

Serves 3-4 people

Ingredients

1 tbsp peppercorns, cracked
1 tbsp juniper berries, cracked
1/2 cup cranberries, fresh or frozen
1 cup bell pepper (about 1 or 2 peppers), chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1 1/2 lbs flank steak (or another chunk of beef)
2 cups beef or vegetable broth
1 tsp sea salt
5 bay leaves
extra water

Directions

Brown the meat on all sides and transfer to your slow cooker. Pile all the veggies, cranberries (still frozen is fine), herbs, and spices around it, add the broth and enough water to almost cover the beef.

Cook the beef according to your slow cooker's directions. For me and my slow cooker, it was "low" for the whole day, and I came home from work to ready-to-eat beef!

Have no slow cooker? Simmer on low, covered for a couple of hours, making sure it doesn't dry up and start to burn. The slow cooker isn't magic, just easy.

I think I served most of this fork tender beef with some sort of chopped vegetable salad, but I saved the broth and some of the meat for soup the next day.


Leftover Beef Soup

There's no magic to this soup, either. I chopped up some summer squash, the meat, and brought the broth to a simmer.

Serves 1

Ingredients

Yesterday's beef
Yesterday's broth
Misc summer squash from crisper, chopped

Directions

Bring it all to a simmer and let it go until the squash is tender.

Eat.

the old music

On our honeymoon at the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn, I was thrilled to find boxes and boxes of old albums and a nice little turntable to spin them on  on which to spin them.

Gal often jokes that my favorite music is by people who are dead. I'll leave that alone, because they aren't even mostly dead.



Much of my favorite music is old, I'll give her that.

But we found some of Gal's favorites there in the old records, too.



An interesting thing about vinyl records that many people might not know or remember, but they are only about 20 minutes per side, and they don't flip themselves. ...or repeat endlessly. They just stop.



There's no "background music" when you have a turntable and a box of albums. You are engaged in every song, from the selecting the platter, dropping the needle, to flipping it over.



Scratches, clicks, and hisses are part of the fun; you can hear them when you transfer your vinyl to CDs. But, there's no substitute for the experience of digging through boxes of albums and putting them through their paces.

Baked eggs & peppers

In some ways, it's hard to call this a recipe. Although I'll jot down what I did to make these little guys, know that you can use anything you have handy. Baked eggs is a concept, not a recipe.

I used Pinnacle Ceramic's non-stick 6oz ramekins for this recipe. I have about 12 of them in red and white. They are pretty and very easy to clean.

Baked eggs & peppers

This recipe makes one 6oz ramekin worth, so make 1, 2, or 3 (or 4, etc.) per person. Although it's per ramekin, feel free to make all the veggies for all the ramekins in just one skillet, then distribute amongst the various ramekins.

Ingredients

1-2 awesome eggs (these were a mix of Trader Joe's and eggs from some local chickens)
butter, lard, olive oil, or bacon fat for greasing and sauteing
.25 cup chopped green or white onion
.25 cup chopped green and/or colored bell pepper

Directions

Preheat the over to 350°.

Grease up the ramekins with your chosen fat and place them on a cookie sheet or baking pan for ease of handling.

Heat a skillet over medium high heat, add a bit of fat and swirl to coat the pan. Add the veggies and sautee them until they are soft, but not limp. About five minutes should do it.

Distribute the veggies into the greased ramekins and top each with one or two eggs. You can break the yolk or leave them whole. It's your choice.

Here, you can see the fat greasing the ramekins

Put the tray(s) of ramekins in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. If you like the yolk soft, then check them early for doneness. Be aware that baked yolks often look uncooked, even when fully hard. You might need to touch one to see if it's done.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool until you and your diners can handle the hot ramekins. I like to serve them directly from the ramekin, but you can also scoop them out onto a plate or bowl.

I've included some alternate versions, below.

Baked eggs & summer squash

Instead of the peppers, use .25 cup of yellow summer squash, zucchini, crookneck squash, and/or those flying saucer things.

Baked eggs & some fresh vegetables

Instead of the peppers, use .25 cup of the freshest ______. This option is often the most delicious because of the fresh produce! Mmmm....

Baked eggs with veggies and cheese

Top the ramekins with some cheese. Here, it's a Mexican cotija, which isn't particularly melty, but pretty flavorful.

Mexican v american coke

There is so much to say about Mexican versus American Cokes, but in the end the nutritional value of either one is the least interesting.

Mexican Coke – Carbonated water, sugar, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffeine.

American Coke – Carbonated water, high-fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffeine.

At 12oz, each has 39g of sugar. Whether you believe that HFCS is worse for you than sugar or not, the most important thing is that it's 39g of sugar. Even those who trivialize the percentage differences of glucose vs fructose, should know that 39g of any sugar is bad, and at the most inflated fructose numbers, you still only get 1-2g more fructose with HFCS than table sugar. Neither is a health food.

Why is it less expensive? It's imported!

Pepsi made a big deal out of it's Pepsi Throwback, but is Mexican Coke Coke's answer to the people who want natural sugar? Until recently, Mexican Coke was found only in Mexican restaurants, taco stands, and taco trucks. ...and BevMo. Now, it's all over the place. These pics are from a 7-11 or AM/PM, I think. I saw some in the grocery store the other day, too.