The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D.

After our meeting at the factory we’re working with, the president of said factory treated us all to a feast at our restaurant.  As Chinese tradition dictates, such feasts are accompanied with many, many toasts.  The toast works this way:  the person making the toast picks out a specific person to toast, walks over to that person, raises his/her glass and gives the toast.  The translator translates.  The person receiving the toast answers back.  The translator translates back.  Then both toaster and toastee down drinks in one swallow.  After this, the glasses are immediately refilled by one of the servers.

In our case, the liquor used for toasting purposes was either red wine or bai jiu, a Chinese white wine that is actually more of a distilled liquor.  The Chinese love bai jiu, which has a distinctive flavor.  It’s about 50 percent alcohol and has a front end taste that is kind of like the essence of an infusion of dirty socks in some sort of floral alcohol and a back end like lighter fluid.  It’s an acquired taste, and one that I had sort of acquired after a zillion toasts.

As the meal progressed, the toasting evolved into each toast requiring the downing of both a glass of red wine and a glass of bai jiu.  Thank God we ran out of red wine and baiu jiu before I ran out of consciousness.  The photo above shows me just before downing a glass of each after a toast from the head of operations at the factory.

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MD loves to sing and does so every chance she gets.  Our trip to Mexico has really given her something to sing about.  She is joyous because even here it’s possible to stay on a low-carb diet.   Not only possible, but pretty easy.  And a good low-carb diet at that.

Since everyone seems to enjoy photos of good low-carb food, I decided to put up our day’s worth of eating today so that everyone can see the kinds of low-carb foods available in Mexico for not much money.

The only real problem we encountered was that at almost every restaurant we were presented with chips, salsa and guacamole when we sat down.  It’s tough not to dip a few chips and eat them, especially since they’re the greasy tortilla strips cooked in lard.  When we first got here, we ate a few just to quench our lust for them.  But then were able to simply let them sit there.

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MD came through tonight with my all-time favorite dessert, which you can see in the above picture.  I would rather have this mixture of pomegranate seeds and blackberries than just about anything else.  Not only is it remarkably tasty, it is chock full of all kinds of phytonutrients and antioxidants.  And it tastes unbelievably good. I lust over very few desserts, but I truly do lust for this one.

MD’s secret is to put the seeds and the blackberries in the bowl, then douse the whole thing with Torani Sugar Free Black Cherry Syrup.  It makes for an unbelievable taste combination, yet few calories, and a ton of nutritional density.  When I ran the recipe through the USDA nutritional calculator, it comes out to contain about 12 grams of effective carb and around 100 kcal.  I’ll guarantee you that you won’t find a better, tastier, more nutritious use for 12 carbs anywhere else.

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Squeeze In, Truckee, California

If you ever make it up Lake Tahoe way, make sure to have breakfast at the Squeeze In, a little restaurant in Truckee, California.  MD and I run over to Truckee at least once a week for our Squeeze In hit, and this week was no exception.  After voting on empty stomachs we drove to Truckee, an old railroad town about 13 miles from our house and a stone’s throw from where the Donner party holed up for the winter of 1846/47 and ate one another.

The Squeeze In, as you can see from the photo above, is a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant ’squeezed in’ between a number of other businesses on Truckee’s main drag.  It doesn’t have many tables, and there is often a wait, but the breakfasts are out of this world.  Especially the omelets, which are world class. And huge.  MD and I have our favorites, but yesterday we decided - in honor of the Donners, perhaps - to be adventurous.  We each selected an omelet that we had never had, and were rewarded for our culinary courage.  And selecting omelets is no easy task at the Squeeze In because there are at least 80 of them, and all of them are good.  (If you go to their website you can take a look at the menu, which is old.  They have at least double the number of omelets now that they did when this menu was put up.  In fact, the omelets that we had aren’t even on their menu from the website.  In case you’re wondering, MD usually has the Racy Tracey and I have the Dierdoni.)

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