Embracing the Primal Side

A couple of weeks ago, I officially started going primal. It's the way my diet has been naturally gravitating over the past year, so it's been a fairly easy adjustment for me. I rarely buy health books (most of them are marketing gimmicks or based on faulty research), but I went ahead and bought The Primal Blueprint and I'm glad that I did.

The Primal Blueprint (PB) is more about how to live a healthy lifestyle than how to lose weight or build muscle. Those things come naturally when you live that way, but the goal is overall health. I want to shed bodyfat and build muscle (who doesn't?), and so far this is the absolute easiest way for me to do it. It's best summarized by these 10 Laws:

1. Eat Lots of Plants and Animals
2. Avoid Poisonous Things
3. Move Frequently at a Slow Pace
4. Lift Heavy Things
5. Sprint Once in a While
6. Get Adequate Sleep
7. Play
8. Get Adequate Sunlight
9. Avoid Stupid Mistakes
10. Use Your Brain

Sounds pretty simple, huh?

The beginning was rough for me. For the first week, I found it difficult to get through my normal weight lifting routines and I needed to sleep a lot more. I also felt weaker throughout the day. I was consuming the majority of my daily calories from carbohydrates, and when I reduced my carbs to 100-150 grams per day, my body didn't know how to get more energy. After the first week, I started to get most my energy from dietary and bodyfat instead of the carbs, and all of those problems went away.

Getting 100-150g of carbs each day is effortless. A couple pieces of fruit and lots of vegetables, and I get my carb intake no problem. I don't even bother counting. Instead, I make an effort to eat enough protein (usually about 150g/day) and eat lots healthy fats (90-100g/day). I feel the need here to point out that this is not a low-carb diet. Rather, it's a realistic-carb diet. Eat enough so you don't feel like carbs are evil, but don't eat more than you need.

Avoiding grains can be socially difficult sometimes. It's the most challenging part for me, and probably for most people. It's almost like having Celiac, but not quite as dire. To be honest, the two times I have trouble are when eating dinner with my girlfriend (who doesn't follow PB) and when eating at a restaurant. Specifically, there's rarely anything at most restaurants that feels like a real meal or tastes good that doesn't have wheat or grains. Since I hardly ever eat out, I just make restaurants & some dinners my 20% no-rules-apply time.

A month later, I feel fantastic. My energy levels are very consistent, no more ups and downs or sudden crashes in the afternoon. My stress levels have surprisingly decreased. No gas, bloating, or indigestion. My skin has cleared up more. A multitude of minor cold-like symptoms that I didn't even notice before have disappeared. I feel like a whole new person. And best of all, my meals satisfy me in a way that they never did. I can always feel full and happy, but not like I gorged myself.

I've also lost fat while continuing to build muscle. The muscle I do have initially deflated (depleted glycogen and water loss). Now it's ramping back up with better definition and a much harder look, as opposed to the puffy body-builder look. I don't need to count my calories anymore. And my exercise routine now involves more time outside and with my dog.

This is what I've been looking for in a diet & exercise plan. Something permanent, fun, and easy (once you accept it) that makes me feel healthy.

Easy Chicken Stock (or Broth)

For the past month or two, I've been embracing a great Sunday habit. Each week, I roast a 3-4 lb whole chicken as meat for the week and make chicken stock with the carcass. If you can argue about the use of chicken meat in stock vs broth, feel free to skip this article.

Since I always buy the ingredients for stock each week for other recipes & snacks, it's a pretty logical step that I might as well save $3-4 and just make my own. It takes about three to three and a half hours, from the time I put the chicken in the oven to the time the stock is done cooking. The actual active cooking time, however, is only about 20 minutes. While roasting the chicken or letting the stock simmer, you can go off and do something else like play video games.

As a result, I've always got an excellent flavor enhancer on hand. I eat a decent amount of brown rice, and always cook it with chicken stock instead of water. Lately I'll thrown in some red pepper flakes to make it spicy rice. It goes well in just about every soup, like chicken tortilla or apple-pork sweet potato. Both are effortless crock pot recipes.

Your main ingredient is, of course, chicken. You can either use the bones & skin from a whole roasted chicken, you can buy parts, or you can save leftover bones and unflavored skin in the freezer until you have a decent amount.

Personally, I use a roasted chicken carcass. This way I get all of the meat to use in recipes throughout the week, and I'm not actually spending any extra money. This makes the stock entirely free. I like to lightly salt and pepper some of the chicken skin and eat the crispy skin as a treat. My girlfriend all but demands that I make it on Sunday.

For those of you that may not be familiar with roasting a chicken, a 3-4 lb chicken will take about 1.5 hours at 375 degrees on the bottom rack. You oven times may vary, and there's other ways to roast a chicken. I'll post some quick instructions on how I do it later.

Some people buy chicken parts like necks & wings very cheaply and use those in place of -- or in addition to -- the carcass. This is perfectly acceptable as well, but the point for me was to avoid spending any extra money.

Lastly, you can save the bones & skin from other chicken you may have cooked, like chicken thighs. Make sure the skin isn't seasoned, and put them in an airtight container in the freezer until you have a nice sized collection.

For the onion, you'll want to buy one with the paper skin still attached. This gives the stock a little more flavor and some richer color. You can remove a little bit if it looks like it has dirt on it, but most should be clean enough.

For those of you that are interested, here's how to make chicken stock. Pictures to come later, after this week's cooking.

Ingredients:

• Chicken carcass or parts or leftover bones/skin
• 1 medium or large carrot, cut into half or thirds
• 2 ribs of celery, cut into half or thirds
• 1 medium or large onion with skin/paper, cut into quarters

Steps:

1. Wash and cut vegetables. No need to remove the ends or roots.
2. Put vegetables and chicken into a very large pot.
3. Pour cold water into pot until carcass and vegetables are fully covered (I use roughly 12-14 cups).
4. Turn heat to medium-high or high. Bring to a simmer, but do not boil*.
5. Simmer for 1-1.5 hours, skimming off any white foam that comes to the top.
6. When the stock has developed a nice yellow color, and the vegetables are soft and dull, turn off the heat.
7. Strain into another pot or large heat-safe container with a lid. Place in the refrigerator overnight.
8. The next day, open the container and skim off most of the fat that has collected on the top. At this point, you can either use it or you can separate it into containers (I use ziploc freezer bags with 2 cups of stock in each) and freeze it. If you let the stock sit in the refrigerator for more than 3 days, you should boil it for five minutes and let cool before freezing it.

* When the water boils, the marrow in the chicken bones will swell and clog the tiny pores in the chicken bones. A lot of the chicken flavor comes from the bones and marrow. If the pores are clogged, you won't get any of the flavor. Using cold water and slowly bringing it to a simmer will help extract more flavor. So... no boiling!

And there you have it! Homemade chicken stock. In summary, the recipe is: simmer chicken and vegetables for 1-1.5 hours. Done.

It might take some practice to feel comfortable, but once you've done it one or two times you'll realize it's almost effortless. Try using it in rice, baking vegetables, soups, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, or just about any dish that uses chicken. Experiment and have fun. Homemade chicken stock is the ultimate flavor enhancer.

Fix the Home Key With a Factory Reset

The Home key on my Google Ion/G2 stopped working yesterday. The key would still light up when pressed, but nothing would happen on the screen.

I run Open Home (and have for awhile), which could have had something to do with it. My phone was beginning to slow down and become less responsive, as well. Perhaps due to the newest batch of applications from the market. The only applications I had running at the time had been there for a couple of months, so I was pretty confident in them.

Either way, it seemed to be an application problem. After resetting the launch defaults on Open Home and the Android Home (Menu-->Settings-->Applications-->Manage Applications--><Select Application>-->Clear Defaults), the Home button still didn't work.

So rather than spend a lot of time trouble shooting, I just bit the bullet and did a factory reset on the Ion. I was a bit nervous, since I wasn't sure what a factory reset would do to a "special release" phone. Turns out, exactly what I wanted. After the reset, my Home button started working again. I reinstalled Open Home and a few other core applications, and I was back up and running within 15 minutes.

Since I'm on AT&T, I had to specify the APN settings before signing into my Google account. My contacts and calendar sync'd while I redownloaded my apps from the market. It was a surprisingly painless process. As a bonus, my phone now runs much smoother.

Enable MMS for AT&T/Cingular on an Unlocked myTouch 3g/HTC Magic/Google Ion

I had some trouble setting up my Google Ion (with Cupcake 1.5) to send and receive MMS messages. I could connect to the Edge network, browse the web, use the Market, etc. But something was wrong with my settings and I couldn't send or receive picture messages. I spent some time searching through forums, reading posts that were nearly identical in content. In general, the settings were similar to the ones I've listed. Each one had slight differences in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. These can be pretty important differences at times, so pay close attention to the exact value that you type into your phone.

Below are the settings that I used that have successfully connected me to the Edge network and enabled sending and receiving MMS/Picture messages along with the normal data functions like browser, gmail, market. To my knowledge, these should work for any AT&T customer.

1. Go to: Menu->Settings->Wireless controls->Mobile Networks->Access Point Names
2. Add a new APN (Access Point Name): Menu->New APN
3. Now fill in these values:
   
   
   Name: AT&T
   APN: wap.cingular
   Proxy: <Not Set>
   Port: <Not Set>
   Username: <Not Set>
   Password: <Not Set>
   Server: <Not Set>
   MMSC: http://mmsc.cingular.com
   MMS proxy: wireless.cingular.com
   MMS port: 80
   MCC: 310
   MNC: 410
   APN type: <Not Set>
   
   
   
4. Save your settings: Menu->Save
5. Power cycle your phone (turn it off completely, then turn it back on). This is to ensure that the new settings are used. At this point, you can try sending an MMS message to yourself, and it should work!
   

Note: If you are still having trouble after using the above settings, try adding these two values in all caps:

Username: WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
Password: CINGULAR1

Healthy, Low Budget Homemade Pizza

I'm always in search of cheaper ways to get the foods that I like. Pizza is my absolute favorite, but easily becomes one of my most expensive (after sushi!). After seeing a recipe for homemade pizza dough and sauce, I decided I could give it a try. The most appealing part to me was that both recipes were simple, had generally inexpensive ingredients, and contained nothing in my list of foods and additives that I avoid.

I made the sauce and dough on a Sunday afternoon and refrigerated both until Pizza Night two days later. While both were quick to make, I'll definitely keep preparing them ahead of time. It just cuts that much more time off of the week-night preparation.

The pizza dough costs almost nothing, and the sauce makes enough for 4 recipes of the pizza dough. So freeze it!

I modified the sauce recipe a bit, to avoid buying expensive or unknown ingredients (a whole bottle of red wine, marjoram), and reduced the garlic by a couple of cloves. 10 cloves seemed like a lot, but I didn't want to give it a wimpy taste if it needed a lot of garlic. The finished sauce definitely tasted like garlic in the pan, but once cooked the garlic taste faded. All in all, I think it's an excellent sauce, even without two major ingredients! The fresh herbs were clipped straight from my indoor Aerogarden for a more down-home feel. Here's my modified recipe:

Homemade Pizza Sauce
6 cloves garlic, minced (organic)
2 oz tomato paste (organic)
1 28oz can diced tomatoes (organic)
1 cup water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, minced
3 tablespoons fresh basil, minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt

Lightly sauté garlic in olive oil over medium heat. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir to combine, and heat for 1 minute. If refrigerating or freezing, allow sauce to cool before transferring to a airtight container (such as a ziploc bag). Keeps up to a week in the fridge. I suggest dividing it into 4 equal containers, freezing three of the containers, and keeping one for the first batch of pizza dough.

I followed the dough and cooking directions on the link. The outer crust cooked perfectly and was delicious. The dough under the sauce & toppings was a bit undercooked. I'm not sure if this was because I used a cookie sheet instead of a baking stone, or if I used too much sauce/cheese/toppings. I would definitely recommend using the cheese and toppings sparingly. It's easy to pile too much onto this pizza when it only needs a little bit.

All in all, both recipes are excellent. At $0.50 - $1 per pizza, I'm going to definitely make this again.

Cooking by craving, curiosity, or leftovers

I've just been introduced to what may very well be my new favorite food-site: CookThink.com. I'm geeky excited about browsing through this site to plan next week's meals.

Craving some good southern comfort food? A rhubarb infused desert? Gluten-free Italian dinner? How about a light summery dish of grilled chicken? You can search for them all, and discover just the recipe you need, complete with tantalizing pictures and short description.

To steal a line from their FAQ:

Cookthink is a personalized cooking and recipe website that helps you find recipes to suit your cravings - hence our tag line, "what are you craving?" Most of our recipes are for everyday meals that are easy to prepare and cook during a busy work week."

Each recipe offers suggestions for other recipes that match well, so that you can easily create a full-course meal from a single ingredient. It's also a great way to explore your own flavor tastes to discover foods you might not have known about.

The recipes are composed by a large group of chefs, food bloggers, cookbooks, etc. Plenty of recipe websites out there allow submissions by any visitor, which can lead to some very creative recipes, but can also lead to a cluttered list of terrible options. By only allowing a select group of authors, they can keep the recipes full of fresh, natural, and simple ingredients. This also means that I can easily stick to the fresh and natural (possibly organic) foods that I love!

Best of all, the entire service is free.

Taking apart the Sony Vaio VGN-FZ290 for cleaning

A few weeks ago my laptop began to overheat to the point that I couldn't even rest it on my legs. I could still hear the fan working, but the air coming out of the side vent was pitiful. My laptop is in decent condition, so the logical assumption is that the vent and/or fan is clogged with dust and just needs a quick cleaning. I'm always a bit nervous about taking apart laptops, so I evaluated my options:

1. Use an air-can on the vent and hope the dust scattering further into the computer doesn't wreck anything.
2. Invoke my warranty and have someone come over to "repair" it. The upside here is that if it's not just dust, they can fix it.
3. (Probably) void my warranty by opening it up myself and cleaning it out. This is much more interesting, and doesn't require me to coordinate with a repair person or ship it somewhere for a week.
   

Naturally, I chose option #3. I figured that if I messed something up, I could always drop it in the pool and invoke my "Accidental Warranty."

Getting down to the fan requires disassembling most of the laptop. Taking off the back cover and components was easy. It just consisted of removing a couple dozen screws.

When it came time to unclip the keyboard, I opted to search for useful directions. Breaking a plastic clip is a high possibility for someone as clumsy as me. Luckily, these directions (with pictures!) were easy to find:

Take apart a VGN-FZ220

Armed with the confidence of someone else's experience, I continued on. After thirty-five screws, tweezers, and a can of air, my laptop laid in pieces and I had a brand new pile of dust.




Problem fixed!