Weight Goal

Although I am quite proud of this, it will be the last time I show this graph. I have hit my weight loss goal after over a year's worth of work. This was a goal that I thought was totally impractical when I started out in February 2010. Wow. Now I work on maintenance, keeping my sodium intake down, and exercise. I have slayed a lot of risk factors over the past couple of years: smoking, obesity, being a couch potatoe. Now I should live forever, don't ya think? Well, at least I'm feeling great. I can say that for sure.

Recipes for Salad Dressing

Here are two recipes for salad dressing that I use everyday. They are very low in salt and high in taste.

Creamy Parmesan & Roasted Garlic Dressing

This recipe is for the Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender. As prepared on Feb 6 and Feb 26, 2012.

1 oz Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese 4 cloves Garlic clove, roasted 1/2 tsp Olive oil 2 Tbsp Lemon juice, freshly squeezed 2 Tbsp Red wine vinegar 4 Tbsp Egg Busters 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard 1 Tbsp Anchovy paste 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp Freshly ground pepper 1 cup Extra virgin olive oil 1/4 tsp Tabasco to taste

Salad Dressing 1 Insert the blade assembly in the prep bowl. 2 Place the cheese cubes in the prep bowl. 3 Pulse to chop, 10 times, then process to chop finely, about 15-20 seconds. 4 Add remaining ingredients to prep bowl. 5 Process for about 30-40 seconds, until creamy and totally emulsified. Nutritional Analysis per Tablespoon (from Cuisinart): Calories 53 (89% from fat) Carb. 1 g Pro. 1 g Fat 5 g Sat. Fat 1 g Chol. 4 mg Sod. 82 mg Calc. 18 mg Fiber 0 g To Roast Garlic: 1 Slice off 1/2 inch of top of whole garlic. 2 Drizzle 1 tbsp olive oil over the top of the sliced bulb making sure oil gets into the sliced cloves. 3 Wrap tightly in foil and bake at 375 degrees F for 20 to 30 minutes. 4 The roasted garlic should keep for a week in the fridge.

Servings: 15 Yield: 30 tbsp, 15 fl. oz.

Degree of Difficulty Degree of Difficulty: Easy

Oven Temperature: 375°F

Cooking Times Preparation Time: 1 hour Cooking Time: 40 minutes Inactive Time: Total Time: 1 hour

Nutrition Facts Serving size: 2 Tablespoons. Percent daily values based on the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) for a 2000 calorie diet. Nutrition information calculated from recipe ingredients. Amount Per Serving Calories 144.14 Calories From Fat (93%) 134.66 % Daily Value Total Fat 15.24g 23% Saturated Fat 2.36g 12% Cholesterol 2.47mg <1% Sodium 88.14mg 4% Potassium 26.32mg <1% Total Carbohydrates 0.77g <1% Fiber 0.09g <1% Sugar 0.14g   Protein 1.52g 3%

Green Goddess Dressing

1 avocado avocado, preferably Hass, cut into 1/2-inch dice 1 1/2 cups low fat buttermilk 4 Tbsp Chives, snipped or Onion, minced 4 tsp tarragon vinegar 2 tsp anchovy paste

Puree avocado, buttermilk, herbs, vinegar, and anchovy in a blender until smooth.

Servings: 10 Yield: 2 1/2 cups

Degree of Difficulty Degree of Difficulty: Easy

Cooking Times Preparation Time: 30 minutes Cooking Time: Inactive Time: 12 hours Total Time: 12 hours

Nutrition Facts Serving size: 1/4 cup. Percent daily values based on the Reference Daily Intake (RDI) for a 2000 calorie diet. Nutrition information calculated from recipe ingredients. Amount Per Serving Calories 40.15 Calories From Fat (53%) 21.23 % Daily Value Total Fat 2.53g 4% Saturated Fat 0.51g 3% Cholesterol 2.32mg <1% Sodium 76.41mg 3% Potassium 135.43mg 4% Total Carbohydrates 3.11g 1% Fiber 0.95g 4% Sugar 1.82g   Protein 1.81g 4%

Spring Arrives in the Hills

Spring has arrived in Shark River Hills. I just received my new Lytro camera and took some flower pictures. I know, an easy subject. The camera does well and is ridiculously easy to use. The folks at Lytro studied at the Steve Jobs School of Design and learned their lessons well. You can play with the focus by clicking on different parts of the picture. Here's another one:
Do a pass over at the bottom of the frame to reveal the link to the Lytro website and my modest "living picture" collection. What fun, heh?

Instead of doing something productive . . .

Instead of posting anything significant here or contributing to Fred's discussion board I'm listening to Andrew Bird on the Colbert Nation website. Very nice.

History of Zero

Reference: Mathematics—From the Birth of Numbers by Jan Gullberg (c) 1997.

Zero is a mathematical symbol of the void, obviously. It's history as a place holder in advanced number systems goes back thousands of years.

Another Pretty Picture

Shot from Crown Point over the Columbia River in Oregon, August, 2010. This is one of a series of high dynamic range (HDR) pictures I was able to put together from Mount Hood.

Major Victories on the Hypertension Front

I've reduced my sodium intake to just under 2000 micrograms (µg) over the past month or so. Pretty close to my goal and 40% less sodium than I was eating regularly back in December. I have learned to appreciate the subtle flavors in my cooking that are not overwhelmed by so much salt. I lost three pounds between Jan 25 and Feb 5. Some of that could be excess water because more than half of my sodium is gone.

The problems I am having in reaching and maintaining a daily intake of 1500 µg arise from old recipes that I cooked up back in December and that I still have to eat. And going out to eat at restaurants. Some restaurants, like Chili's, post their nutritional information, always a big help. I still have to learn to ask the right questions and to be assertive enough to get what I want.

The big news is that my blood pressure went down from 134/84, in June of last year, to 118/72, taken when I saw my doctor last Friday. That's a huge decrease and very significant for me. My grandfather, George Dees, died from a stroke when he was my age, in his late 50's.

Of course, this graph shows my logged sodium intake, not my actual intake.

Cruisin' the Bay

Last Sunday was too cold to do much walking. But on the 5th Jeremy and I were able to tour the entire Shark River bay. The tide was out and we could walk along the shore. Winter has been very mild this year.

New—Maybe Old?—Concepts on Health

I've been watching the Daily Show since before Jon Stewart. Another good one with David Agus, an MD and author of "The End of Illness."

The controversy over supplements is very interesting for me. I weigh in against them. My strategy is to eat a variety of foods, mostly fruits and vegges. I keep track of the macros (40:30:30 carbs, fats, protein). But it is very difficult to track all the micro nutrients.

Progress on Salt

I have been totally self absorbed lately and spending all my free time on my nutrition. I have a program that lets me change recipes and calculate a standard (or detailed) nutrition facts panel. So now I have a nutritional analysis of what I actually cook.

This info I feed into my food log on fitbit.com. I started this blog talking about mayonnaise recipes. Now, with home-made no-salt condiments and salad dressings, I'm making real progress limiting my sodium intake. And in a tasteful manner. I also dropped the cured breakfast meats, a real sacrifice. The accompanying graph shows my average intake at almost 5 grams sodium/day before these changes. I'm approaching my 1.5 grams/day goal now. I can sure taste the difference.

Friday Night Posting with Soundgarden

I've been blasting my ears with the likes of Chris, Ben and the gang over the past few months.

Working out at Premiere Personal Fitness

Train with a Purpose

I have been weight training with Fred Fornicola at his gym, Premiere Personal Fitness, for the past four months. Fred's place is located in historic Asbury Park, up on the fourth floor. It's a decent aerobics workout just hiking up the stairs. He has crammed his space with all sorts of equipment, the latest being his new Steel Climber. He uses these instruments of torture to great effect, efficiently guiding his clients towards their personal goals of physical fitness.

Fred asked me to write a little bit on what my training means to me. I hired Fred on as my trainer after having quit smoking for a year, and while having to recover from a recent broken ankle. My recovery process and physical therapy showed me how to better recover from life's inevitable set backs. The attitude that I picked up was, "I just have to do this, no excuses." As well as, "One day at a time," tried and true advice. And I have made fantastic progress. Fred has been a big help. My workouts have been very important in keeping me on track with my weight loss. My diet along with resistance training means that I have lost more fat than muscle. I am learning about my body: about safety, how to move, and a very physical sense of my body's capabilities.

Part of what I am learning, and I am grateful for all of it, is the art of weight training. This is a highly developed art: resistance training for body building. I see it as a balance in part. A balance between controlled stress through exertion to failure on the one hand, and the body's ability to heal on the other hand. Body building at my age is unrealistic, of course. I'm in it for the extension of my youthful, energetic years. The youthful, energetic part is happening right now. It's very addictive and I like it a lot. You may see what kind of an extension I can get, if you so desire. I won't be around when that determination is made.

Whatever, it all depends on how I keep up a healthy lifestyle: "Diet, exercise, cardio and you can't go wrong," says Danny. Simple.

Big Sky Country

Kylee, my oldest son, sent some pictures from Nevada. This shot was taken yesterday at sun set in Lemon Valley, north of Reno.

Too Cold to Walk

It's cold out today, in the 20s. Jeremy, our spaniel/beagle mix, was really anxious to get out. He loves the long walks around Shark River Hills. I took him out around the block, but with the wind it's just too much. A shame. The sun's out, clear skies, and without the leaves, we can see Shark River out the back deck.

Breakfast Tostadas

Yum, breakfast tostadas, a variation on a recipe taken from the EatingWell site.
Two white corn tortillas, one slice of diced Canadian bacon, 1/2 cup egg whites, 1/4 cup 4-cheese low-fat Italian mix, 1/4 cup chuncky salsa, 1/4 cup non-fat cottage cheese, 1 turkey sausage patty. Melt the cheese on the tortillas while heating them on a griddle. Cook the egg whites with the diced Canadian bacon. Divide and heap cooked eggs on each tortilla. Divide salsa and cottage cheese to top the tostadas. Serve with 1/2 cup OJ and sausage. 470 calories, 12 g fat, 50 g carbs, 1676 mg sodium, 42 g protein.
Too much salt, from the bacon, sausage, and cottage cheese. I'm gradually phasing those foods out of my diet, replacing them with good low-salt foods such as fresh pork, canned green chilies, and Greek yogurt.

Weigh In for Sunday, Jan 15

Big weigh-in today. I weigh myself every 10 days to avoid ambiguous fluctuations. Today I lost over 4 pounds from Jan 5. This is a large loss for me. I should be leveling off by now, based on previous dieting results. Before I wasn't exercising so hard. The graph looks like I'm going to fall off a cliff and waste away. A good problem to have so far.
I'm within 5 pounds of my target. This was an ambitious target weight back when I started dieting with Nutrisystem in February, 2011. The steeper part of the graph, in December, is when I stopped Nutrisystem and started eating my own cooking. I will have lost fully 1/3 of my body weight when I reach 180. Of course the hard part is keeping it off. Hence the mayonnaise recipes. All my life I have been going up and down like a yo-yo, with heavier and heavier peak weights. Same ol' story. So one of my big goals this year is weight maintenance.

Mayonnaise

Mayo has a long, venerable tradition. From the Joy of Cooking (Rombaur and Rombaur Becker, 1972),

The making of a perfect mayonnaise is the Sunday job for Papa in France and rivalry for quality between households is intense. Mayonnaise or Mahonnaise–as it was first called, after a French victory over the British at Port Mahon on the Island of Minorca–is a great favorite, not only as a dressing but for combining with other foods. It has been made by hand for some 300 years.

Cuisinart's low-fat vs eHow's yogurt-based mayo recipes

I got several mayo recipes from the web (Google search "low-fat mayonnaise recipe"): A more traditional recipe from Jennie's Kitchen, a substitute using cottage cheese with corn starch as a thickening agent from eHow.com, and a yogurt-based substitute from the same place. I also found a mayonnaise recipe for my little Cuisinart Smart Stick. Of the four, I wasn't able to get Jennie's traditional or eHow's corn starch recipes to work. They didn't thicken or emulsify. The Cuisinart recipe worked fine. My particular recipe booklet didn't have sugar and had 1 cup of oil. I also used egg whites instead of whole egg product. It emulsified fine but I didn't like the taste. The oils I used may be to blame. Or maybe I'm just not use to eating saltless, greasy products. I plan to try fresher eggs and will get more flax seed and canola oil on Monday. The surprise was the yogurt-based substitute from eHow. I used 1/2 cup Greek Yogurt, 1 tbsp Almond oil, 1 tsp Dijon mustard. For a completely non-mayonnaise mayo substitute, this recipe seems to do the trick. I made up some Thousand Island dressing and it tasted just fine. I just have to get no-salt ketchup.

Just Starting

I have wanted to start a blog for years. This is good.
My first post will be about my search for a low-fat, low-salt mayonnaise recipe. I'm really into condiments, unfortunately. My German/French heritage, I suppose. But I have been tracking my food intake and belatedly realize that I have been eating about 5 grams of sodium a day. Terrible, way too much, especially for a 57 year-old man with boarder-line hypertension.
My search was very successful, many recipes for mayo out there. I tried three low-fat and one regular mayonnaise recipe. Only two worked (half of the recipes failed to emulsify and stayed liquid even after two tries). Last night it looked like the Greek yogurt recipe has the best potential. Taste tests are today.