View from the hotel window on the day of arrival.
I’m probably not going to be on top of this blog in the way I usually am for the next few days because I’m on a golf outing with a bunch of guys in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. The schedule is pretty demanding: golf every day, all day, followed by the consumption of copious amounts of firewater of one form or another. MD stayed home. MD is smart. She wants no part of this. Her sister came to visit to keep her company.
The hotel where we’re all staying–The Westin–just got its high speed internet fixed, so I’m finally on after two days. Here it is 11:15 PM and I’ve got internet. And, believe it or not, I’m relatively sober.
I probably won’t be able to get to all the comments until tomorrow, so don’t feel dissed if you’ve commented and it hasn’t shown up yet. Also, if I don’t get to it, re-comment. You might have gotten deleted with the 512 spams that I had. I hope there is a special place in Hell for spammers. It would be easy just to delete them all, but real comments somehow find their way into the spam. It’s no big deal for me to go through them when I’m at home because I check frequently and there are 25 or 30. Now that I haven’t been able to check for over two days, 512 have stacked up. I went through them and found a couple that I transferred over to the regular comments file, but I may have missed one or two.
I’m desperately trying to maintain low-carb vigilance, but it’s tough in Mexico. I’m doing the best I can. Tonight we had dinner in a great place (the name of which I can’t remember, but I’ll let you know soon. I would ask my roommate, who comes here often, but is out stone cold, snoring. He was a competitor in the margarita drinking contest and will pay for it dearly manana.) One of the specialties was a platter for two for about $45. It came with four lobster halves, 8 butterflied shrimp, and a large New York Steak. It typically comes with potatoes and rice, but we got them to substitute a bunch of vegetables, all of which were excellent. So, low-carb can indeed be done.
As long as I’ve got internet, I’ll continue to post from south of the border. If I disappear, you’ll know what happened. I’ll be back at my post late Sunday afternoon.
Oh, one other thing. My tech guy upgraded WordPress (the software for this blog), and I’ve discovered that sometimes it comes out as dark blue with dark gray lettering, making it difficult to read. I’ve contacted my guy, and he’s going to fix it. But until then, if you’ll hit the ‘Refresh’ button on your browser, you should solve the problem. It may take a couple of ‘refreshes,’ however, to get it back to normal. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The official website of Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades, low carb pioneers and authors of Protein Power.
Hi Mike,
Enjoy the weather and all.
Hoping that you might talk about this study when you get back if you haven’t already.
The replacement for Transfats apparently has some insulin response issues, as well as the HDL lowering fun we associate with transfats.
Looking forward to your thoughts.
Hi Max–
The study you referenced is on my blog-worthy list. I’ll try to get to it this week.
Cheers–
MRE
Hi Mike,
I have spent a lot of time in Mexico as a result of my consulting business, and, I must tell you, I’ve never had a hard time eating low carb in Mexico. The Mexican food we get in the US, they consider peasant fare, and the higher end restaurants don’t serve anything like it. My favorite dishes in Mexico were cabrito, which is roast kid, and huachinango en sal, which is snapper baked in salt. Also, anything called veracruzano is likely to be good. If you can find machaca sonorense, dried beef beat to airy thinness, don’t turn it down.
Mexican food tends to be very regional. like Italian food, so I don’t know if these dishes are available in Puerto Vallarta. I suspect that hotels in a resort town are catering to American tastes. I got to travel all over provincial Mexico, and found both the food and the cultural variety wonderful and fascinating.
If we meet in LA, we can go to a Oaxacan restaurant, some of which serve fried grasshopper.
Hi Chuck–
Puerto Vallarta has a lot of restaurants that cater to the tourists, but a lot of more traditional ones as well. It’s pretty easy to low-carb there if you make the effort.
Let’s do Oaxacan. Sounds good, even the fried grasshopper. Which I have eaten. They tasted like grass when I last had them.
Cheers–
MRE
Interesting comment you made about drinking. I was just wondering, as I sipped some sake from the traditional pinewood box last night, what the impact alcohol would have on a low carb diet (The rest of my dinner consisted of two chicken breast halves draped with bacon and barely-melted colby jack). I’m sure Sake (About 15-18% alcohol, I think, and made from rice) isn’t terribly low-carb in itself, but aside from left over carbs and mixers, how does the EtOH itself impact one’s metabolism?
Hi Bob–
Alcohol definitely has a metabolic effect that lies somewhere between that of fat and that of carbohydrate. The comment section probably isn’t the best place to lay out the specific effects, so I’ll save it for a more comprehensive post in the future.
Cheers–
MRE