The Journal of a Raucous Expat Living in Rural Thailand
Well; we're in the snow. Our very dear friends, Alessandro, and his longtime partner Robert (the two doctors — one a chemist – foreground – Italian immigrant who speaks better English than most — the other a psychiatrist — home grown) just emailed me from Rio.
My dad-in law made soup this afternoon. First generation out of Mexico, he has never forgotten his heritage, and at now 80+ in age, he gets around no differently than when I first met him a dozen years ago. A true inspiration.
Hey, maybe this has something to do with it.
I didn't do any corn. What I did do was to put it on a plate instead of a bowl, and eat with my hands.
Who do you think got the two useable pieces of bone marrow?
That only wet my appetite. Tomorrow, I'm headed out to the butcher to see if I can get a bunch of marrow bones. Tell you what. I'll get his recipe tomorrow and toss it up.
Deal?
What a day. I promised a dozen posts, and got the last one up at 11:59 PST. Could have had it up 30 minutes earlier, but was trying to be choosy in a music choice that turned out to be limited to one — as I had my mind set on a particular song I've been enjoying lately.
So, for reference, here are the posts in chronological order.
There you are. Oh, but wait!. Do you know how to cook bacon properly? It's an essential skill. Frankly, I like the fatty bits, and I never put the bacon on paper towels or pat off the drippings. It goes straight onto the plate, fingers get involved, and the fat ends up in my mouth.
But here's what's essential about that: low heat. Patience. Forget the form of the bacon, it just tastes way better and that's plenty. I always cook on low heart, plus just a touch clockwise.
Can I?
This is number twelveroonie, just as promised (though I've got a baker's dozen followup in the batter's box already). I'm coming up to 18 hours pretty much straight at this endeavor, with the exception of a time-out for breakfast – cooked up by the wife & mom-in-law — a quick tripette to the market, and in the last couple of hours, refills of my tumbler (scotch).
I often tell people that Rush (and herbs) got me through college. We smoked dope and listened to them constantly. What days. I was a 4.0 in high school, but in a sheltered environment. College was a candy store in every way (every. way.). And I was a very poor student as a result. But thanks to Rush & marijuana, I pulled a 3.8 GPA in my most stoned semester (study stoned; test stoned), advanced quantitative economics, business, and accounting. I can still read a complex balance sheet competently; P&Ls are child's play. Go figure.
Kids: take note & smoke some dope if you like, and forget about the ignorant fear. Get it over with, or carry on, as you prefer. Hyped o-m-god paranoia is inversely proportional to … "authotity." See, it's about nothing but making sure you're set up with some authority to follow. Tell 'em to Fuck That! With attitude. Parents: get the fuck over it. They'll do what they want, and your only real hope is if they have some brains, anyway. And, how about you? What did you do to make sure they had some independent-minded smarts? Or, did you just count on them being sheep, making your life easy? Did you lead them every step of the way rather than show them the way of independence and autonomy? Did you fear that?
Anyway, 10 minutes to deadline, so here it is. It's not as good as the studio version on the Fly By Night Album, but it's not bad.
I can see
What you mean
It just takes me longer
And here's a bonus old favorite, La Villa Stranagioto, Alex Lifeson doing mind-blowing ghost bends, which as I've learned, is bending the string before the strike. Think about that.
Ha!
Anyone ever heard of Owsley Stanley? In paleo circles, he's known as "The Bear" — a complete carnivore – in his 70s, now, who thinks all plant matter is toxic (it is, to a degree, but we're evolutionarily adapted to most of it — grains and legumes excluded — which is a good reason to mix up what you eat vegetable / fruit / nut wise and employ intermittency to simulate seasonal availability). All plant matter naturally contains anti-nutrients & toxins per the logic of natural selection; It couldn't be any other way, but it's a pet peeve of mine when certain folks essentially anthropomorphize plants as an explanation for the phenomenon. I'll save that for a future post.
Anyway, his fame is that he cooked the best lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in history. A half a kilo. A. Lot. Tiny micrograms will blow your mind, though, I've yet to experience it personally. Perhaps; one day. He was also the sound man for The Grateful Dead throughout their long tenure.
But let's get back to chicken. At this point, I'm loath to look up the link, but he's notorious on the high-fat carnivore forums, when he explained himself at length a couple of years ago. I read the whole ordeal, and one of the things I took note of was his chicken recipe.
Here goes. We need more than just chicken, so for that, I rely upon my neighbor Julie's method. Olive oil, on a baking sheet, in the oven until the tips get brown and crunchy. You can do it ahead ot time. It's just as delicious cold; same stinky pee.
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Since I'm on a deadline to get a dozen reasonably substantive posts out out today (2 1/2 hours to go PST), I'm grateful to dad (22 or so pounds lost & counting), who took it upon himself to make Keith's baked eggs.
Voilà:
Dad says:
I changed the ingriedients a little because I didn't have some of them. I started out with olive oil and a little bacon dripping, with bacon on the bottom, followed with onion and green peppers, then sharp chedder with two eggs on top. I had to bake it a little longer, probably because I used a crock and should have pre-heated it.
This is a huge presentation from GrassrootsHealth: Dose-Response of Vitamin D and a Mechanism for Prevention of Cancer, by Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H., Edward D. Gorham, M.P.H., Ph.D., Sharif B. Mohr, M.P.H., and Frank C. Garland, Ph.D.
There are a ton of slides here, so I’ll highlight a few of what I consider the most notable. First up, placebo vs. intervention. I’d call that significant.
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As per the last post, this is courtesy of GrassrootsHealth. The particular presentation I'm highlighting is Skin Cancer / Sunscreen — the Dilema, by Edward D. Gorham, Ph.D., Frank C. Garland, Ph.D., Cedric F. Garland, Dr.P.H.
and Sharif B. Mohr, M.P.H.
Let's jump right in with some graphical highlights.
Melanoma has been getting worse and worse, where? Indonesia? Brazil? Cuba? How about Tunisia — all places pretty close to the equator where the sun is powerful all the year long. Bzzzzt. Norway.
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Well, via a nice Google alert for vitamin D, I stumbled upon a treasure trove, yesterday. At first, it was just one of the more common news articles I cite. In this case, however, there was this bit towards the end.
Carole Baggerly started a group called GrassrootsHealth last year in California, which focuses solely on promoting information about vitamin D. She started it after a bout with breast cancer that was followed by a diagnosis of osteoporosis. She learned she was vitamin D deficient.
This led to a whole list of discoveries about vitamin D. She read research that suggested raising vitamin D levels may prevent up to half of all breast cancer and two-thirds of colorectal cancer cases in the United States. She read a study showing women with the lowest levels of vitamin D had nearly double the risk of their breast cancer progressing, and a 73 percent greater risk of death compared to women with adequate vitamin D. She found out that the first study linking colorectal cancer and vitamin D was published in 1941.
You know, I'm seeing this more and more, and I don't blog or link even a 10th of the stuff I read. Increasingly, I'm seeing references to associations discovered in the early 1900s that should have been paid attention to, weren't, and we're suffering the consequences. It's rotten fruit, vegetable and eggs time (to be tossed at some of these "experts" and "authorities").
Moving on, I quickly located GrasstootsHealth and then this page. which just happens to be the pot of gold. Those links are to various presentations by doctors and other researchers that are chock full of associative revelations I find riveting, mind-blowing, shocking, you name it.
Let's begin with vitamin D deficiency in association with type 1 diabetes, by Frank Garland, PhD.
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Stephan went to a lot of work to compile this post and it's pretty revealing. Best you read it over there, but here's just a taste. First, everyone's getting fatter.
Second, it's not the animal fat.
Go check out his post for the rest. Here's a graph I just found on my desktop, but I don't recall where I stole it from, but thanks to whoever put it together. It's not the butter, either.
