Good ol' spaghetti for dinner.

I surprised myself, weighing in at 132lbs, not long after breakfast. That's a decent weight for me, small as I am, but I wonder how low I'll drop before diet changes balance out to a new constant. I'm certainly eating no less than I did before switching to somewhat healthier foods, possibly a bit more.

Speaking of healthier foods, I'm auditioning blackberries this week. The idea is to use them as replacements for the banana I add to my oatmeal breakfast, assuming all goes well. The downside? Bananas are cheaper. The upside? Blackberries seem to be held in higher regard by the health community.

Goofed up today. My grocery list contained a head of lettuce. I bought one. Not a very good-looking head, but no head in stock was any better. Some were worse. As it turns out, I have a perfectly good head in the refrigerator veggie compartment. Bought a week ago, it's in better condition than the "new" head. A waste of $2.00.

Something I notice as I slowly alter my diet. Before, I was never hungry between meals, but always had a healthy appetite at meal times. Now, I'm never hungry, period. I eat because I need to, not because I want to. Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate flavorful food, as my Wowbutter sammich lunches (every other day) attest. I like those as much as ever. But only while I eat them. I'm no longer tempted to do so on days I normally abstain.

I screwed up at the grocery store this Monday. They carry what is called Antioxidant Blend in the frozen food section, consisting of the healthier berries, some of which I already eat. I decided to buy a bag instead of the fresh fruit I normally buy. Like other frozen fruits (except peach slices), I find I do not like the taste at all. But I've nothing to fall back on until next Monday's grocery run.

To be fair, I should have already learned to avoid frozen berries from prior failed attempts.

I kinda like frozen berries.

Sloppy Joe, chips and another root beer.

I'm experimenting, using info tabulated from a great many YT vids and other online resources, all with health supposedly in mind.

This week, instead of my traditional Oatmeal & Fruit breakfast, I'm doing something radically different. Breakfast in now three strips of bacon, an avocado / hard-boiled egg mixture with generous amounts of black pepper and paprika, and around ten fresh raspberries. As with my "normal" breakfast, I wash it down with whole milk.

I started out, Tuesday morning, with the three bacon slices, the meat of a whole avocado, and two hard-boiled eggs, eaten separately. As I've never liked the taste of avocado, I followed advice found it one YT vid and added a little Stevia...a mistake. This combo proved way more than I needed. I was bloated the entire day (which didn't stop me from eating lunch and supper). Stevia made avocado no more palatable, though I forced myself to down it all.

Wednesday, I reduced avocado meat and eggs by half. What's more, I smashed 'em up and blended 'em together, then added black pepper and paprika. To my surprise, I like this combo! Very tasty, and loaded with lots of health benefits. Bacon remained at three slices.

This morning's breakfast mimicked yesterday's. One unfortunate discovery; avocado meat does NOT keep well in the fridge. The half I'd saved the day before was inedible. This will be a major stumbling block. I can not afford seven avocados per week. I HAVE to somehow preserve those unused halves if this meal is to become a staple. (I'm researching it now.)

Observance: I need less milk with this breakfast combo, a good thing.

Observance: The advice I followed that says there is nothing wrong (health wise) with eating bacon make it a point to mention that we are to select bacon that is not cured with sugar and nitrate/nitrite. I read the label of every variety of bacon Walmart carries. They all are cured with sugar and nitrate/nitrite. Despite this, all but one variety claims to contain 0% sugar. I'll have to research this.

Observance: I noticed during yesterday's and today's exercise walks that I don't have quite the energy I had while on an oatmeal / fruit breakfast, but have better stamina. In fact I added a new extension to my course yesterday, and could have added even more distance. I suspect the lessening of energy might be the absence of a sugar-high, but we shall see.

There you have it. The jury's still out. Time, and maybe cost concerns, will tell in the end.

Rhubarb pie and custard!


I almost think a banana would be better...

I love rhubarb pie! I had a slice at my aunt's house when I visited. She grows gigantic rhubarb.


I'm presently having coffee and potato salad for early dinner.

I had lasagna and an alcoholic beverage called "Not Your Dad's Root Beer" which is actually pretty good stuff.

Something I like to do with it is pour it over a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

Next time I go to the store, I'll have to get some vanilla bean ice cream.

Pizza!


Without ice cream though

I used a gluten-free pancake mix to make corn fritters.


The reviews from beloved family:

"There is definitely corn in them."

"It does taste like food."


The verdict:

Gluten-free corn fritters are not better than no corn fritters.


Presently enjoying my coffee.

Pizza again!

Mmmmm---pizza! I'll probably have that tomorrow, tonight was chicken night.

Sausage roll. Ham sandwiches. Coffee.

The only safe place for your biscuit sausage roll ham sandwich is inside your belly.

Got me thinking of toad-in-the-hole for breakfast. Instead, I had a bowl of granola and a banana with my mochaccino. It's quicker and I was hungry. Bangers and mash for dinner, maybe.

Pizza rolls and sparkling ice drink.

Pizza and Dr. Pepper for dinner, yum.

Yum's right - pizza's always a good choice!

Pizza's the ultimate food!

I might have, at long last, made my least palatable breakfast entree more tolerable. How? I got rid of the Lintels and substituted some sauerkraut and a crumbled sausage patty. It now consists of those two items plus the meat of half an avocado, one or two eggs (depending on whether I lift weights that day), and a few spices. I'm not sure the sausage matters or is desirable, but time will tell.

I'm spending even more than before on bacon now. Having weeded Walmart's "Center Cut" bacon packages for the past some months, recent package slices have been small and mostly fat, cooking down to shriveled things that I'm lucky to get two decent-size bites out of (or three smallish bites). This week I'm trying "Thick Cut". Truth to tell, slices seem only a little thicker than the best "Center Cut" slices. That said, "Thick Cut" slices fill the entire length of my microwave bacon pan, and once fully cooked give me three very generous bites but slice, or four still satisfactory bites. I can probably get five bites a slice if needed. Five "TC" slices in total make a satisfactory main entree, The downside is cost. "TC" packages are noticeably more expensive than "CC" packages, and I need two per week to ensure five slices per breakfast.

Aside from the above entrees, breakfast consists of a third entree, a mix of salmon, mushroom, garlic and spices, plus, as a side, a small amount of berries: strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.

Also consumed is a glass of whole milk.

This replaces my former breakfast of Old Fashioned Oatmeal with fruits and a little sugar-free preserves, and a glass of milk. A great irony is that this old breakfast saw my weight often rise higher than I wanted it to be. On the new breakfast, I not only lost weight, but lost too much, and find it hard to gain back up to what I consider roughly ideal.

Coffee and b-day cake - Happy b-day, Dad!

Happy birthday, Crowdad. Not to be confused with Crawdad.

This being T-Day, I lunched with my brother, again at a Golden Corral. Due to my current diet regimen, what I had was vastly different from last year's GC meal. My idea was to eat meat, mostly beef, and eggs with a small amount of "sane" veggies on the side. That would have been reasonably safe. Turns out, there was no carver this year, and no beef beyond the beef-in-broth/sauce stuff I avoid. They did, however, have some nice looking turkey and ham slices. I loaded up on those, along with about half their small bin of chopped up hard-boiled eggs. Veggies were plain broccoli and some onions. It might not sound like a much, but that one plate kept me munching away while my brother downed two full plates of main course and about half his three pie-slice dessert plate. As always, I drank water.

I did not emerge totally unscathed, but that is to be expected.

As I often do for these holiday meals, I paid for both myself and my brother. (He kindly insisted on covering the entire tip. I didn't argue.) The good news, we both qualify for the senior discount now. It's minuscule, but as I told my bro, every little bit helps. The bad news? Well, so far as I can tell there isn't any. Not holiday meal wise in any case.

Traditional day after Thanksgiving breakfast here of coffee and pumpkin pie. I imagine Grits is having the same.

Just finished a plate of leftover turkey and ham.

Pizza!

Also pizza !

I went and done it. Experimentally altered my suppers, which up to now consisted of a variety of veggies plus salmon (which took the place of tuna late last year or early this year). My standard salad-supper for most of this year:

1) Iceberg Lettuce
2) "Cherub" tomatoes
3) Onion slices
4) lots of Broccoli
5) a decent amount of Cauliflower
6) Minced Garlic
7) Salmon (I get about two days worth of eating, twice each day, per 14.75oz can)
8) Spices: a little Salt, a touch of Chili Powder, some Paprika
9) Dressing: two spoons of EVOO plus a little Yellow Mustard
10) Hard Boiled Egg with Paprika on the side
11) Water

This proved to be a good combo. I enjoy, or at least don't mind, eating it. However, I'm now attempting to add more red meat to my diet. Beef is my ideal choice, but by and large more costly than I can justify. Shopping for groceries this morning, I spied a package of five nice size pork loin chops, marked down due to nearing their "use or freeze by" date. I decided to give them a try, substituting them for a bag of frozen Triple Berry Blend fruit (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries) at roughly the same price.

Today's supper was my first attempt to microwave a chop. I salted it before cooking, and rubbed both sides with minced garlic juice. I placed it in my bacon attachment, set the micro to power level P7 for three-and-a-half minutes, and hoped for the best. Turns out those settings are all but spot on. Once cooked, I spread a small amount of EVOO across the top. Tonight's supper:

1) one Pork Loin Chop, with salt, garlic and EVOO
2) steamed Broccoli
3) steamed Cauliflower
4) one Hard Boiled Egg, crumbed and mixed into the Broccoli/Cauliflower, then salted
5) Onion slices placed atop the Chop
6) Water

It was a tasty meal. I enjoyed it. Maybe somewhat more than my standard salad supper, but either satisfies.

Will this become a new supper standard? Hard to say. Certainly I'll revert to salad-suppers on the two suppers per week I don't have Chops for.

At some point I'll want to tweak my current breakfast. Not from a nutritional standpoint. Basically, I'd like its two side courses to taste better. Bacon, the main course, is what it is. I'm happy with it, except for those packs with slices that shrivel to nothing when cooked.

(As to why I've switching from a mostly veggies and fruit diet to a more meat based diet, let's just say that I've slowly grown distrustful of the health claims make for the former, and want to experience first hand the potential benefits claimed by the carnivore crowd. That said, veggies & fruit is nutritionally far better than eating overly processed foods.)

Hmm. Methinks Decrepit just pwnd both of us, Reaper

Maybe---last night I made some garlic parmesan chicken wings and tonight I had cheeseburger helper. Both meal where pretty good .

The Best Dinner ever Made!

Looks pretty good!

Oh it was! The green beans cooked in butter and garlic, the mashed potatoes had ranch seasoning and the stake cooked and seasoned to perfection! Bliss!!!

This past grocery run, I bypassed the Thick Cut Bacon I normally buy and instead bought Thick Cut Bacon kept below the rest of the bacon. Rather than shingle packaging, this comes as one sliced hunk of meat. I bought it somewhat reluctantly, it being pricey compared to what I normally buy, and one package not having enough slices to last a week. Luckily, I happened to have enough slices left of the prior week's bacon to make up the difference.

Speaking of difference, this new stuff is an almost night and day improvement over what I normally buy, despite both being Walmart house brand! It tastes much, much better. It takes only four slices to see me through a meal, as opposed to five-to-six slices needed with my usual bacon. Alas, even with the slice-per-meal reduction taken into account, the good stuff is still somewhat too costly. That said, I'm trying my darnedest to figure out how to justify it.

I could only ever eat smoked bacon and they stopped selling that where I live ages ago

Coffee and pie, my favorite post-holiday breakfast! Today it's Dutch apple (in the US this means apple pie with a crumble topping, not to my knowledge actually Dutch).

I'm with ya, Grits. Coffee and mince pie here.

Coffee and freshly baked buns


Where is the coffee emoji, Acadian?

Pizza!

Coffee, porridge with raspberries this morning. Pizza for lunch later today though!

Sounds like a kicker menu, I'd go for it all

Another pizza!

I've made more changes in my ever-evolving quest for a health, proper human diet.

Breakfast now consists of:

1) 4 scrambled eggs combined with a finely chopped small bella mushroom, a small amount of minced garlic, a bit of milk, and a bit of EVOO. Salt to taste

2) 4 thick slices of bacon, more slices if thin or small. Will substitute a pork loin chop if/when out of bacon (as I was this morning before my weekly grocery run).

3) A glass of whole milk.



Lupper (my term of a meal eaten between traditional lunch and suppertime) now consists of:

1) A large blob of 73%lean/27%fat ground beef into which is mixed some sauerkraut, a finely chopped bella mushroom, and some garlic. Once cooked it's placed in a disk over one crumbled hardboiled egg, buttered. To this, I had some EVOO and salt to taste. (I'd prefer ribeye steaks, but those are far beyond my weekly food allowance.)

2) A glass of water.



These two meals satiate me. I eat no other(s).

A concern is that neither meal includes salmon. I need to re-incorporate it into my diet, but it doesn't go well with either of my meals as they now exist. For the time being, I'm downing Fish Oil capsules with both meals.

To truly embrace this sort of diet, you need to disbelieve in Ancel Keys and his now law-of-the-land theory that red/fatty meats and cholesterol are the primary cause of heart disease and other health issues, as I have grown to do after over a year of pondering over both sides of the issue. Even now it's hard for me to fully accept, having been under the sway of standard medical opinion for a great many decades.

This past weekend I finally managed to track down some palm wine. It's alright; has a sour, citrus-y flavor. I'm not in a big hurry to drink it again, but I'm happy to have satisfied my curiosity. Also, the cassava-leaf-and-goat stew I had with it was downright delicious.

Palm wine, never heard of that.

I guess I'll start playing this game too. I'm not sure if I'm way out of the norm, here. Mostly I'm vegetarian, and I that often I eat some weird stuff. But also enjoy junk food too.

So this morning I just got to work. Large coffee + half & Half, croissant.

Pizza time!


I swear; if I could live on only pizza, and I'd be a happy camper

I thought that is already what you live on?