He-Man Hi-Bloodpressure Club

ADDENDA:
My friend Patrick just called me up and said, "Dude, I didn't know you have high blood pressure." I said, "HOW THE HELL did you know that?" Google. Huh. How about that. These internets are pretty nifty. He's on a medication which he is happy with. I gotta get a cuff to start seeing what mine is doing. If in the end my genetics trump my diet, it's an option I may revisit.

Over today's lunch I finished the Real Food book. The last chapter is about the Omnivore's Dilemma - for example, a Koala eats nothing but eucalyptus leaves it's whole life, and gets everything it needs from it. The downside is if the tree dies, so does the Koala. People can eat just about anything, and to get what we need nutritionally, have to eat a wide variety. The downside is not automatically knowing what to eat, but if a tree dies, we can move next door and eat the bush, or the animal in the bush. I really enjoyed the book, which is a de facto rational argument both ecologically and nutritionally against extreme diets and the effects of capitalism on our food, and scientific exploration of why whole traditional, non-industrial foods like raw unhomogonized diary, organic grass fed meat and wild fish, fresh organic fruit and veg are the way to go. (Real Food: What to Eat and Why, by Nina Planck, Bloomsbury 2006) Next up: a compendium of essays by various well-known chefs about how they came to love cooking and food....

(BTW, the title is reference to the Little Rascal's "He-Man Woman-Haters Club" - oh those rascally un-PC kids!)

BREAKFAST: 8:30am, toasted onion bagel with the good butter. Hunger 1.5/5. Not hungry after last night's late night nosh, but surprisingly tired. I've been staying up late (till 1am ish) the past few nights, but this is the first morning I'm kind of exhausted.

AM SNACK: 10am, 24 oz of water. Hunger 3/5. Really thirsty when I got to work, maybe the high temp? Sippy cup rocks!

LUNCH: Noon, roasted herb turkey breast, onion rings, baby carrots, Hunger 4/5. The side options were greasy looking plantains and mushy, pale looking veg. Fries looked appealing, but no fries, so onion rings....as I was eating them, I felt guilty....sure it's not fries, but isn't this the nutritional equivalent? This ain't the Attorney General trial, ignorance is no excuse. But they were damn tasty, though really tasting it, I noticed it's not really onion, but an onion mince that is shaped. I bet I could make an AWESOME wholly organic onion ring. (At some point after I get married in September, I'm going to go over this blog and figure out the things that would be healthier and funner to make myself). Turkey was actual real meat, not a roll or processed, but still tasted salty, and the 'gravy' didn't help.

No dessert there appealled to me, so as an experiment had the baby carrots to help with sugar cravings. Immediately after eating, my first instinct was "SUGAR NOW!" but thinking about it, I think that was more just habit than that gut-feeling of physically needing sugar. That so-called craving dissipated once I got up and split the caf.

PM SNACK: 3pm, 1 oz organic chocolate pieces, hunger 2/5. Not so much hungry as craving sweet. Back to the bad-sushi spot to explore their organic sweets, got a little baggy of small square chocolate pieces. Though not advertised as such, this was non-dairy dark chocolate, but they amped up the sweetness to mask the natural bitterness of the cocoa, not cool. As with pizza, I've expanded my palate over the years to appreciate chocolate like some dig wine. (I'm so classy - I'm a pizza & chocolate snob!) Though the sweet kick is coming from organic cane sugar and not corn syrup or malt, it's just unnecessary and makes the chocolate taste a little like an imitation of dark chocolate. At least there was no sodium in it...

DINNER: 7:15pm, 7 boiled perogis (meat, potato, kraut mushroom, spinach cheese), a smear of sauted onions, side of kasha with mushroom gravy, water. Hunger 4/5. Excellent yumminess at Veselka. I noticed that their kasha was a lot less salty-tasting than the frozen stuff. Makes me think I can really make it at home in a low sodium version....

EVENING SNACK: 8pm, bottle of chimay red beer, 1 small piece of fried sausage. hunger 3/5. Birthday drinks for a friend of B's, was slightly craving sweet, the beer damped it but didn't meet it. The little piece of snausage was SO tasty, but I wasn't that hungry and wasn't hard to deny myself from pigging out on it. If I didn't eat before hand, I would of gobbled up several fistfuls of that delightfully salty treat.

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, cherry italian ice, hunger 3/5. Maybe the last few nights sleeplessness was from the icecream late? Gotta find something without cornsyrup and all that crap. Slept well.