Month: February 2012

Researcher Study Just How Little Exercise You Need. Awesome.

Now here’s some researchers an exercise-averse person like me has gotta love.

“Millions of Americans don’t engage in much exercise, if they complete any at all and asked why, a majority of respondents, in survey after survey, say, ‘I don’t have time.’ Now Gretchen Reynolds reports that instead of wondering justhow much exercise people really need in order to gain health and fitness, a group of scientists in Canada are turning that issue on its head and asking, how little exercise do we need to maintain fitness and the answer appears to be, a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to work a bit. Most people have heard of intervals, or repeated, short, sharp bursts of strenuous activity, interspersed with rest periods. Almost all competitive athletes strategically employ a session or two of interval training every week to improve their speed and endurance. Researchers have developed a version of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that involves one minute of strenuous effort, at about 90 percent of a person’s maximum heart rate (which most of us can estimate, very roughly, by subtracting our age from 220), followed by one minute of easy recovery. The effort and recovery are repeated 10 times, for a total of 20 minutes and the interval training is performed twice a week. Despite the small time commitment of this modified HIIT program, after several weeks of practicing it, both the unfit volunteers and the cardiac patients showed significant improvements in their health and fitness. ‘A growing body of evidence demonstrates that high-intensity interval training can serve as an effective alternate to traditional endurance-based training, inducing similar or even superior physiological adaptations in healthy individuals and diseased populations, at least when compared on a matched-work basis.'”

I lifted the above from Slashdot, a respected site that has been around forever. It’s well worth visiting the actual post as the commenters typically rise above the average Neanderthal comment and usually add something of value to the post subject. Continue reading “Researcher Study Just How Little Exercise You Need. Awesome.” →

Low Carb Crock Pot Brisket (With Pictures)

The kid and I had planned to cook a recipe for brisket from one of the cookbooks put out by America’s Test Kitchen, a concern that does what I do, but only on a large-scale – buys lots of food and ruins a lot of it – in order to come up with the perfect recipe. We’ve tried a couple of their recipes in the past, and, by golly, they did come out good.

The problem was that the particular recipe did seem rather involved and we just didn’t find the time to pull it off last weekend. This past weekend, I decided to do something with this beautiful and expensive piece of meat, but I wasn’t going to follow their detailed recipe…I decided I’ll just give it a whirl.

My large oval crock pot seemed like an ideal cooking tool for this piece of meat. Brisket is a tough cut of meat that can be made tender through a long cooking process, then cutting the meat across the grain to eliminate any long strings. The potential for failure is large, though – if it isn’t cooked right, the meat will shred, giving you long stringy shreds that ruin it.

So, combining a few recipes I found, I came up with this recipe as well as this method. Note that while this recipe takes time, it does not take a lot of labor, so with a little planning and patience, you’ll end up with a pretty flavorful  pot full of brisket.

Continue reading “Low Carb Crock Pot Brisket (With Pictures)” →

Kitchen Experiment: Making My Own Sauerkraut (With Step-by-Step Pictures!)

I have been enjoying real, fermented sauerkraut this past week. There are apparently a number of reasons why eating real fermented vegetables might be real good for you – probiotics, bio-availability of nutrients, yada, yada, yada. Check out this link from Mark’s Daily Apple if you want a good overview of the health benefits. I was just looking for new additions to my low carb diet that could become staples. The problems to this are:

  • A relatively small jar of Bubbies sauerkraut is $4.99. That’s a lot for about 25 cents worth of cabbage. It just bothers me
  • A much larger and cheaper jar of Claussen sauerkraut contains additives ‘to preserve flavor’. I’d rather not do the preservatives – and it’s still way expensive for what is probably 50 cents worth of cabbage.
  • I’d also like to be able to have my sauerkraut made from organic cabbage and avoid pesticide residues and GMOs – but that’s just me.

So I began to research making your own sauerkraut. It seemed kinda easy, only requiring cabbage, a little technique, and a little patience. I found a recipe on About.com and on Mark’s Daily Apple. I also found a link and a video for ThePerfectPickler.com which offers a nifty-looking kit that I might buy sometime in the future – but I wanted to experiment first. Continue reading “Kitchen Experiment: Making My Own Sauerkraut (With Step-by-Step Pictures!)” →

Low Carb Kale and Beef with Mexican-Style Seasoning

I get up early, and have ample time before work to putz around. Not having anything good to eat for my lunch, I thought I’d cook something up with the ground beef I defrosted in the fridge. The stuff is expensive, so I tend to want to use it in a dish that uses it as an ingredient rather than just make burgers out of it, so I rummaged around the kitchen and came up with the following ingredients: