Photo food diary Sunday Dec. 7, 2008
At last this exercise comes to an end. And I can’t say I’m not glad. It was fun, but was a pain at times. I’m not used to carrying a camera with me everywhere I go and I don’t have one in my cell phone (which I’ll remedy as soon as my contract with current carrier expires and I get an iPhone). On a couple of occasions I was almost wherever I was going and had to turn around and go back because I had forgotten my camera. MD fixed me a shake this morning (I’m writing this on Monday), and I immediately went for the camera when it dawned on me that I had finished the gig. I intended to post as usual during this week, but had no idea each photo food diary would take so long to do. It took time to upload the photos, select the best ones (I took 2 or 3 of each meal and.or snack), crop them to size, then export them. Uploading them into the blog is also a fairly time-consuming process. Then there was the commentary, which, I suppose, could have been eliminated. But I was trying to show why we ate what we ate. At any rate, it’s over. I hope you enjoyed it or at least got something out of it. As for me, I’ll have a place to send people whenever they ask the question: What do you eat?
MD has her Sunday performance of the Messiah, so we ate early. On Sundays we typically split a bottle of Gazela, a cheap ($6 per bottle) Portuguese lightly sparkling wine that has a low alcohol content (about 30% lower than champagne).
Gazela Dec 7, 2008
We use it to make Mimosas.
Mimosa Dec 7, 2008
And, when they are ripe, as they are now, we always make our Mimosas with fresh orange juice from oranges picked moments before from the tree in our backyard.
Our orange tree Dec 7, 2008
MD fixed me one egg, a bunch of bacon and a couple of slices of low-carb bread. I use a tiny bit of real blackberry preserves on toast when I eat it – I would rather do that than eat large servings of sugar-free blackberry preserves. I got only one egg because when MD went to the fridge there were only two eggs left, and, being the selfish person she is, she insisted upon one for herself.
Breakfast Dec 7, 2008
The bacon is almost as rare as I like it. Our family is divided. MD and the two older sons like their bacon crisp – youngest son Scott and I prefer ours less cooked. When Scott was a little kid, he told MD that he liked his bacon wobbly, so wobbly has become the term in our household for bacon cooked as Scott and I like it. Scott’s test for wobbliness in bacon is the finger test. If the bacon droops over a finger and hangs down on both sides, then it is wobbly. This bacon passes the test, but I (and Scott) would prefer it a little more wobbly.
Wobbly bacon test Dec 7, 2008
After breakfast, MD headed off to the Granada to prepare for the final Messiah concert; I got down my football bets ( went 4-2 for the day) and headed for the golf course.
On the course there is a little kiosk at the 10th hole that usually contains finger sandwiches, nuts, etc. Today most of the sandwiches were gone, so I was left with two little chicken salad sandwiches, which I ate just as pictured. I didn’t worry about the tiny bit of bread. I was walking 18, so I figured I was burning it off.
Snacks on the 10th hole Dec 7, 2008
Here is the view up my favorite hole #15. The clubhouse in the distance is where MD and I had lunch on the terrace the day we had bunless burgers and fruit.
View from 15th hole Dec 7, 2008
Here is a photo of the mountains surrounding Santa Barbara at sunset. This is just about at the time MD would be finishing her performance.
Dusk from tee of 17th Dec 7, 2008 (click to enlarge)
After golf I had to rush to meet up with MD and head to our granddaughter’s first Christmas performance and her school’s Christmas show. Of course food was there to be had. I grabbed a plateful of stuff and went outside to photo it. I had a couple of plate’s full and took off the bread and ate the innards. I don’t have any photos of the remnants, so you’ll just have to believe me.
Christmas pageant snacks Dec 7, 2008
After the Christmas pageant, MD and I went out to dinner to celebrate her putting the Messiah and the thousands of details she had been stressing over behind her. We started out with drinks at the bar of a little Italian restaurant. I had a glass of Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey on the rocks, which I found that I don’t like as much as I do Jameson.
Irish Whiskey Dec 7, 2008
MD had a Gimlet, which she loves and which she spilled half of once we got to the table. There were two tables over slightly different heights pushed together with a tablecloth over them. MD sat down and placed her Gimlet on the two edges and it immediately tipped over once she let it go.
We both had Caesar salads with anchovies, but without croutons.
Caesar salad Dec 7, 2008
I had a glass of Central Coast (Santa Barbara area) Pinot Noir – MD had a glass of chardonney.
Pinot Noir Dec 7, 2008
MD had fish. She left the potatoes and ate the asparagus.
MD
I ordered the pork chop, but they were out. So I opted for the Zuppa de Pesce, Italian fish soup.
Italian fish soup Dec 7, 2008
That is it for our week of dining. It’s pretty typical of how we eat normally. Maybe a little heavy on the booze due to the freely flowing Veuve Clicquot at the Granada, but pretty typical otherwise. Hope you enjoyed the posts.
Dr. Eades,
I enjoyed your food diary a lot!
) and sharing it with others looking for inspiration. I keep it really simple but really tasty. If you have the time (or Mrs. MD) take a quick peak.
I have been keeping one for the past few years.
I enjoy taking the pictures (except for in restaurants
Sorry for this off topic question, but was hoping you could point me to some quality resources.
My son is 10 years old. I have been referred by my pediatrician to a pediatric endocrinologist, to check on his growth and development. I pretty much know they are not going to find anything other than that he is developing slower than his peers. Doesn’t take much observation, He is smaller then most in his class and his 8 yeard old sister is as tall as him. However, he’s in great shape, eats healthy, has never drank drink milk (there might be something to that, so thought I’d mention) and is never sick, especially compared to his 3 sisters. When they get school colds, the worst he gets is a stuffy nose. But always good to rule out anything, just in case. (another side note, I’m 5’7 and was a real late bloomer)
So where does this take us. Growth hormone. What are your feelings on it and where can you perhaps point me to, to investigate on my own.
I want to be prepared when they come back with their “predictions” and let’s say they “predict” he will be 5″3 (or similar) at most.
Thank you in advance for you time.
Kind regards,
Marc
Let’s wait and see what they come up with. He may just be developing a little slowly and will have a real growth spurt when he reaches adolescence. I always remember a patient I had when I was in primary care medicine. He was about 6′ 8″ tall. When he first came to see me I asked him the question I’m sure he was asked a thousand times: Did you play basketball? He told me that he was only 5′ 8″ when he graduated from high school. And that he started growing in his second year of college. By the time he was a couple of years out of college he had reached 6′ 8″. So it can happen. He also told me he had an interesting time when he went back to his 10 year high school reunion a foot taller than when he had graduated.
If the endocrinologists do recommend growth hormone, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It’s given in physiologic doses and stopped when growth stops.
Do you have any info on K-2? Preferred brands? A blogger http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/vitamin-k2-menatetrenone-mk-4.html is saying it helps get your minerals to your bones instead of your arteries. The high vitamin butter oil he has talked about costs $60 per bottle and I’d have to buy a cow, a pasture and a churn to get pastured butter itself.
K2 is the newest miracle vitamin. I have to admit that I know very little about it. I need to do my own research before I can give an intelligent answer to the question.
Off Topic, a reply to to Tom, regarding grain-feeding to beef cattle in US: (from your Dec 3 food diary):
>”… only finished with grain the last couple of weeks to add extra fat and remove the taste the meat gets when not grain-finished …”<
According to “FACT SHEET: Feedlot Finishing Cattle” by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
http://www.beefusa.org/uDocs/Feedlot%20finishing%20fact%20sheet%20FINAL_4%2026%2006.pdf
“Cattle are raised on range or pasture land for most of their lives (usually 12-18 months), then transported to a feedlot for finishing. These cattle usually spend about three to six months in a feedlot, during which time they gain between 2.5 and 4 pounds per day. The cattle are fed a scientifically formulated ration that averages 70 percent to 90 percent grain. On this special diet, cattle will gain about 1 pound for every 6 pounds of feed they consume. … ”
So, I did the math – the proportion of a steer’s life spent in this feedlot system could range from 14-33%. If a steer was sent to the feedlot at 12 months and fed for 6 months, that would be a third of it’s life. Even if the steer were sent to the feedlot at 18 months and fed for just 3 months, that would be 14 % of it’s life. Seems like more than “the last couple weeks” to me …
And actually these numbers may be a little off. If you go to this link,
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/livestock/html/b1-35.html
you’ll get information from the Iowa State University Extension Service. It states the following assumptions:
For “Finishing Steer Calves” – starting weight 550 lb – ending weight 1150 lb, average daily gain of 2.95 lb/day, requiring 203 days (gaining 600 lb or ~52% of final weight).
For “Finishing Yearling Calves” – starting weight 750 lb – ending weight 1250 lb, average daily gain of 3.15 lb/day, requiring 159 days (gaining 500 lb or ~40% of final weight). Seems a bit more than “finishing” to me …
The concept of feeding grain to cattle for “cheaper gain” (questionable depending on how thoroughly one accounts for ALL costs), for adding “extra fat” (too much fat and the value of the cattle will be discounted. The buyers don’t want to pay for fat these days), and removing “the taste the meat gets when not grain-finished” (ah, maybe that’s the way beef is SUPPOSED to taste …) are all canards. I’ve no doubt that a rancher’s wife would believe them to be true, but the reality is different. Grass farmers who know what they’re doing can and do finish cattle to prime condition on high-quality pasture. As Monica stated in her comment, New Zealand farmers compete in the world market – without subsidies, with higher fuel and fertilizer costs, and higher transportation costs to reach their markets. Here in the Pacific Northwest I can purchase grass-fed beef for only slightly more than the supermarket stuff.
Pete
Very interesting to see what you eat in a week. However you do eat out an incredible amount. For those of us who live in rural areas or can’t afford to eat out so much it takes a lot more planning. Well, takes a lot more planning as well for those of us that are female and don’t have anyone setting food in front of us three times a day.
I chose the week I chose because I thought we would be home most of the time. I was forgetting that MD was up to her eyes in preparation for her concert, so we actually ate out a lot more than we normally do.
Marc Feel Good Eating,
Your son reminds me of my younger brother. He was very short most of his childhood, about 5ft. When he was about 15 or 16, he suddenly grew and grew and then grew some more. No joke! He is the tallest in my family by far, hovering at 6’2. Not only did he grow upwards, but he also filled outwards, though he is by no means fat, but a powerful son of a gun. Until his growth spurt, he was very conscious of and concerned about his height. Hope this offers some help.
An interesting press release from the U of I regarding Fructose…
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/uoia-oi120908.php
I saw this paper. The fructose response is mediated by carbohydrate response element binding protein, which is a fairly complex operation. Interesting paper. Would be nice to see if same happens in humans.
Peter,
Thank you for the comment. Much appreciated.
Marc
I noticed the mention of K2, above.
Personal anecdote. I’ve been taking it (menatetrenone – MK-4 – the kind found in animals and not MK-7 from fermentation such as natto) for some months, along with A and D via cod liver oil (plus additional D3).
K2 MK-4 is found in the highest concentrations in things like foie gras, ruminant liver, fish eggs, bone marrow, and to lesser extent other animal tissues. However, if cows are grian fed instead of grass fed, concentrations go way, way down. So, there’s evolutionary context.
My personal experience is an overnight softening in my skin that has persisted. If you’ve ever been on tetracycline, it’s like that, all the time. Getting off grains cured and actually reversed my gum disease (2 surgeries, 7 or 8 years ago), but I would still get massive plaque buildup on my teeth, especially inside lower. Within a few days of a cleaning, I could no longer suck liquid or water between my teeth, it was that bad.
Within some days of supplementing, the plaque began to dissolve. Not all of it, but most. I had a cleaning about a month ago, now, and I have zero plaque buildup. Zero, and I don’t even brush every day, and I never floss (I prefer wooden toothpicks).
I just recently noticed a new thing. Guess it needed a few months for my finger and toe nails to grow out, but first, they are amazingly smooth on the surface, as though they’ve been polished. No ridges whatsoever. And, they are way stronger — thicker, actually.
Anyway, the best series of blog posts I’ve seen yet are those of neurobiology PhD candidate Stephan at Whole Heath Source (these are his posts from some months back):
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/activator-x.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/vitamin-k2-menatetrenone-mk-4.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/vitamin-deficiency.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/vitamin-deficiency.html
And this one is by Chris Masterjohn of the Weston Price Foundation:
http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/vitamin-k2.html
Stephan also has a couple of recent posts. Here’s one about reversal of arterial calcification in mice supplemented with K2 MK-4:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/11/can-vitamin-k2-reverse-arterial.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/11/vitamin-k2-in-marrow.html
Finally, note that Weston Price used this, along with A and D supplementation to actually get cavities in teeth to reclassify.
In essence, it’s looking more and more like A, D, and K2 MK-4 work in concert to get calcium to go everyplace it should (bones, teeth) and not where it shouldn’t (artery walls).
Hope that gives you a place to get started, Doc Eades, and / or anyone else who’d like to dig.
Thanks for the links.
Your comment above about getting an iPhone motivated me to get around to something I’ve been meaning to do for a while – install the WordPress client on my phone and put up a bunch of posts with it on a blog I created a couple months ago, more to play with the technology than to document anything in particular. I didn’t have much of hope for the iPhone being useful for entering blog posts, but was very pleasantly surprised by the functionality of the WordPress client. The blog is here: http://larkintheevening.wordpress.com/ all but the first two posts were completely authored and published from the iPhone, including the photos. These posts averaged maybe 10-15 minutes from start to finish. I just went with the default client settings. It was really ridiculously easy and fun. The last post is my lunch, which I posted just after finishing it.
Nice blog. The food looks great. Is that your German Shepherd?
Thanks for the food diary. I agree about the Jamesons, very smooth whiskey and nice when mixed with tea, lemon, and honey to stave off a winter cold here in Florida.