The Parthenogenic Man

In the early 80's there was a cartoon on Saturday mornings by the good people at filmation called "Hero High". When I was 6 it was the most amazing thing ever. Several years ago, via the magic of netflix, I relived my Saturday mornings of yesteryear trying to re-establish in my mind the wonder and bright shine of a 6 year old with a super hero jones sitting on an oval braided rug, enjoying a mixing bowl filled with fruit loops and milk, in front of a tv my whole body could have fit in. I wanted to hear the train rush by my apartment window. I wanted to smell the paint fumes from the auto-body shop my step father owned below. I wanted to bask in the wonder of super humans fighting crime and going to study hall. I wanted to remember what it was like before I knew the things I know. For 22 minutes I wanted to travel in time, I even had the bowl of fruit loops. Didn't quite work out that way. See, Hero High...well...it sucks. It's just awful. There is nothing to...

You guys can all save yourself some time and just read "The Four Hour Body" if you want for lots of details and specific information that goes beyond what i have to say. Also from time to time I diverge from the esteemed writer of said volume, so I'm going to focus on what I do, which may not work for everyone. The diet is called the "Slow Carb" diet, therefore it isn't a no carb diet. It functions similar to one, however, in many ways. One of those ways is it relies quite heavily on protein to reach it's goals and to manipulate your metabolism into burning the fat in your body more quickly, and not storing so much for later. Yes, I said manipulate. This diet is something of a body hack. Observation and experimentation yield consistent results when something is true and works. The authors idea was to compile the experiments he'd done on himself (yup...scary cyberpunk stuff, no) and on hundreds of others into one "diet". Basically the id...

Shopping for clothing as an averaged height fat guy has got to be one of the rings of hell Dante forgot to write about. I'm sure everyone feels this way to an extent because clothing manufacturers make clothing in cookie cutter sizes based off of some ridiculous "ideal figure" that almost no one has. A friend of mine who is a tall woman, and slender but not emaciated, complains of this frequently. Women must have to develop some long dormant psychic ability to intuit the size of clothes because they certainly aren't helped at all by the way clothes are "sized". Miss, junior,junior miss??, plus, queen, ladies, "womens", and thats just at places like JC Penny and Target. I'm sure American Apparel and Urban Outfitters have even more obscure sizing like "Chloe Sevigny" and "I can't be bothered" and "Being Treated for diseases you haven't even heard of yet" and "On Vinyl" and "A Brooklyn 5...

So...I'm sort of hesitant to do this. Not just because I'm not a nutritionist or a physician, but because I feel like my journey isn't about what I eat. But I'd be lying if I said my diet wasn't a tool in the toolbox. And...the question I get the most often is "what are you doing to lose this weight?" Its funny why I get this question too, often times its general interest, it's people looking for guidance or ideas. Frequently it's people trying to ferret out what I'm doing wrong, or what I could be doing better. Most of the time when a person asks you a question about your diet...it immediately becomes about them, about their insecurities and their frustrations. Frankly that's entirely the reason why I am going to discuss the diet. Part of the reason I'm being as visible as I am is to help people who need to know that they aren't alone in the way they feel. I want as many people as I can reach to know that I know what their inse...

So, This is more or less a "sauce" or a condiment as Mario Batali would call it. You might call it a ragout, though I wouldn't because any time you use fancy food words people get all up in your grill and say you're not legit and I aint tryin' to hear that noise. So you and I will call it Arnold. Arnold is served over cannelini beans (my favorite) and sautéed spinach because they are nutritious and delicious and fairly well mimic the carby goodness of pasta. If you aren't a dieting zealot like me, go ahead and serve it over pasta, orichetti would be my drug of choice. Stuff: I used Roma because they were the ones that looked the prettiest at "grocery" store I was at. Shortly jersey is going to be bumping out some hella good tomatoes, I would use those first and firstmostly. What to do: I don't know why there is an "R" in my "Fond" but it's early, leave me alone. and watch this if you want to know whats actua...

First: a Disclaimer. This is not a fat positive blog. I am not a fat positive person, because for me, being fat mostly sucks. I am not a fat person because i desperately love eclairs or because i have some genetic predisposition to it or a thyroid condition. I'm not fat because i live in a so-called "food desert" (sorry, Em) and don't have good options, or because i am poor and suffer the ironic malnutrition of excessive weight. I am fat, because...and I ONLY mean this for me, because i am a profoundly and deeply damaged man. This is not true of a good many fat people who live positive lives and are healthy and loved and valuable as people, but it is true of me, and unfortunately it's something i have to talk about now. When i was very young I saw the vicious thread of addiction that connected so many of the people in my family and I saw it for the bright red filament of destruction that it was. I also saw a fair bit of powerlessness in front of it, and i de...

Okay so the gravy is gray, not pretty but pretty delicious. And the "glaze" isn't really so much a classical glaze so foodies be damned Gordon Ramsay can shove it. So i use pre-sliced "assorted gourmet" mushrooms which is mostly just crimini's with a few shitakes and chanterelles thrown in. an interesting tweak would be to use mushroom stock instead of chicken stock here btw. I toss a little stock in the pan just to keep it all juicy and hydrated during it's bikrham phase. So by the was H&S means herbs and spices, S&P means salt & pepper. Probably unnescessary to explain but... also i add a bit of the pan juices to the mustard before i brush it on the breasts. and i only broil for a minute or 2 at most just to make the glaze brown and kind of crispy...kind of ...i can imagine it being crispy, though it isn't really. still yummy though. so the mushrooms definitely make the blended mixture into an unpleasant color, but oh so yu...