Chicken With 40 Cloves of Garlic

Robin, that did the trick.

Edith has a universal remote for her tv. Every once in a while something gets scrambled or we have to rescan the channels. It's as if the instructions are written in Martian, and I can spend an hour trying to make things work. The instructions are in the format: Next, cut the blue wire. But before you do that, make sure the red wire is cut or the device will explode.

In the remote's instructions, it says to do this and that, and then there's a long paragraph that ends with saying you have to push a certain button within 4 seconds or the previous actions are cancelled. I finally rewrote all the instructions by using only 5 simple and short sentences. Now it's easy. I should get a job writing instruction manuals.

I'm inferring from some statements below that Chef Carey is now longer. Am I correct? I enjoyed sparring with him. I read one of his books and enjoyed it.

I came out with a book of my own a few years ago, "Eugene Bullard: World's First Black Fighter Pilot," which has enjoyed a number of national awards and is in its third printing. My claim to fame, I guess. But no fortune.

Way fewer carbs for me now that Xmas is over. How 'bout you all?

Chef Carey passed in early 2018.

I am always rewriting recipes I find on the internet. Most recent example: First instruction is to pre-heat the oven. Second instruction is to take the bird out of the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 20 minutes.

Re carbs: This year, for the first time, we limited how many carbs we made for dinner. So, instead of bread and potatoes and stuffing and a few others, we just made stuffing. Though I'll admit we have some Wolferman's muffins to get through, but they freeze well.

Please excuse my ignorance but were you a fighter pilot?

[Jenise]

Jenise, as a co-gout conspirator, I feel your pain. Those acute attacks can sure get your attention.I have shunned daily medication and, for me, quitting booze helped me manage the disease. Although, I have found stress to be a major trigger. Colcrys helps knock it down and if you catch the symtoms early enough, Indomethacin (NSAIDS) is effective and easier on the digestive tract if you get my drift .

I don't take a daily med either, and only took Colcrys for the first time this last flare-up. Hadn't even heard of it before--just Allopurinol. So far I've only had maybe one flareup per year, if that, though recently I'll admit I've felt more twinges, as if the safe band in which I operate is getting narrower. Not a fun disease, and I feel for you and anyone else who has it.

Jeff: Wow about the chef. The last couple of years, I've been reading the obits here and get some family obits sent to me from my home state state of Pennsylvania. Amazing how many people I've known have bought the farm. The Grim Reaper passed real close to me a couple of times the last few years, but to many people's dismay, I'm still here.

I was just a pilot, not a fighter pilot, but it's a topic that fascinates me. I also did skydiving when I was young and am now playing with a short story derived from a couple of my experiences.

I've been on a low-carb diet the last few years. And, yes I still eat plenty of veges and fruits. The weight peeled off effortlessly, and I lost 30 lbs. All my numbers and stats improved, too. I still rarely get ill, but my parts break now and again like an old car.

I've loosened up a bit on the carbs, and I can afford to splurge occasionally now, but I hop back on afterwards. Gotta keep my weight and numbers in the good zone.

I feel for you, Jenise, concerning gout and those pesky uric acid crystals. Do you remember the Katzenjammer Kids and the Captain's gout?

[Jenise]

Jeff: Wow about the chef.

Larry, I think it's fair to say that Joe's lifelong smoking habit finally caught up with him. He moved to Oregon for awhile after reconnecting with someone from his long ago past but she eventually kicked him out. Wasn't cancer but lungs were pretty bad--he required a trach to breath, and eventually he moved in with his brother and SIL in a midwest state. Apparently he wasn't the most amenable houseguest and, penniless, eventually was forced to raise enuff cash from Facebook friends to rent a small apartment, died not long afterward.

And there are worse things than gout. It's a family curse, and I'm not surprised to have it. Fortunately, for the most part my food choices are healthy ones and I don't have frequent issues.

Smoking is the one bad habit I didn't start or I'd be dead by now. My g-father died at 46; my father at 67 of lung cancer. Edie's mother, father, two brothers, and brother-in-law died from smoking, and another brother now has lung cancer. Yet other members of her family still smoke. Go figure.

Even more wow about chef with those details. I also remember a troublemaker from Canada that eventually got booted, but I don't remember his name or what that was about.

After my absence of a few years, I can see it's true that you can't go home.

[Jenise]

Well, yes and no--nothing sits still. But we still have fun, and I think of you every year during chile roasting season.

Gosh, a Canadian...don't remember who that would be. We don't boot many.

Nothing like the aroma of roasting chile. I grew some cayenne this year in a pot. It's still going; I bring it in every night because it gets below freezing. I'm also still a Scovie judge each year for the Fiery Foods Festival. At it for 25 years--the longest lasting judge.

Jeff: Wow about the chef. The last couple of years, I've been reading the obits here and get some family obits sent to me from my home state state of Pennsylvania. Amazing how many people I've known have bought the farm.

It's one of the dubious rewards of growing old: you get to watch your friends and family die.

I've been on a low-carb diet the last few years. And, yes I still eat plenty of veges and fruits. The weight peeled off effortlessly, and I lost 30 lbs. All my numbers and stats improved, too. I still rarely get ill, but my parts break now and again like an old car.

How low? Atkins-level low (=> ketosis), or just fairly low by proportion?

I hear you on the broken parts. I was climbing around in the Badlands in July, nothing strenuous at all -- in fact, I was simply walking down a gentle incline -- and tore a meniscus in my left knee. Piece floating around inside. Had it fixed in October, just finished PT, not quite as good as new but not bad.

[Jenise]

I hear you on the broken parts. I was climbing around in the Badlands in July, nothing strenuous at all -- in fact, I was simply walking down a gentle incline -- and tore a meniscus in my left knee. Piece floating around inside. Had it fixed in October, just finished PT, not quite as good as new but not bad.

I hear it too. I was at a party in August, dancing and something tore in my upper leg/hip mid-twirl. Didn't fall, didn't run into anything, it just went all by itself. Medical attention sought immediately thinking I'd popped a bone out of a socket, but no, just a "hip sprain". And now that leg's almost an inch shorter. WTF?

How low? Atkins-level low (=> ketosis), or just fairly low by proportion?

Not zero, but fairly low. More paleo of sorts. I was in a bit of ketosis, enough that to keep running, my body had to pull carbs out of my fat cells. I tried to stay under 15 g carbs per meal and really didn't eat much or anything for lunch.

Easiest diet I was ever on. I've eased up a bit now on the carbs, but if weight increases I just throttle back on carbs for a while. An easy version is to stay under 75 g of carbs per day, but it'll take longer to use weight. The worst part of low-carb dieting is the craving for something crunchy (I use fried pork rinds, which are not as bad for you as they sound--check their calories) instead of pretzels or chips.

My bp is now normal, total cholesterol is 126, A1C 5.5, sugar 99. Pretty healthy, and I eat an egg and bacon every day for breakfast (no toast or cereal) and some form of meat for dinner (plus a salad and/or veges).

Take a look at this great site and poke around: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb It's loaded with visuals so you can remember more easily what's good or bad.

I've watched a couple of documentaries on the evils of sugar, and it turns out that what we've been taught is wrong: Fat doesn't make you fat; sugar does. Back in the '50s our government went low fat, but England went low sugar. Plus you've probably noticed that our low-fat products make us fatter. The mouth feel of fat is replaced with sugar. IOW, read the label.

Not zero, but fairly low. More paleo of sorts. I was in a bit of ketosis, enough that to keep running, my body had to pull carbs out of my fat cells.

Not quite accurate, biochemically speaking. Plants have a metabolic pathway to convert fats to carbohydrates (glucose), but humans don't. Depot fat is the body's "rainy day fund"--an energy reserve that isn't dipped into unless it's necessary. The body, especially the brain, preferentially burns glucose if it can get it. When you restrict carbohydrate intake, the body is forced to dip into its fat reserves. The liver converts fatty acids to water-soluble molecules called ketone bodies (acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate) for transport in the bloodstream. These are converted to acetic acid and then to CO2, H2O, and metabolic energy. The presence of a lot of ketone bodies in the bloodstream is called ketosis. The ketone bodies are volatile and can pass from the lungs into expelled breath. People with severe ketosis typically have a nail polish odor to their breath.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Larry, back in my single days I lived on a relaxed version of the Atkins diet. I mostly avoided carbs, by which I mostly mean refined white carbs which are my admittedly my weakness, though I did have some fruit and didn't worry about the sugar content in broccoli and carrots. Now when I diet, I revert to Atkins but without the salami and cheese I ate too much of way back when.

I'm amused by the fad that the Keto thing is now--it's always been around, and it's always been possible to make it more sensible. The Facebook people seem to be ODing on cheese. I'm surprised their cholesterol #'s aren't thru the roof. Your numbers are very impressive.

Paul, you're absolutely right. I was using consumer-speak. Let's hear it for glucose.

The Facebook people seem to be ODing on cheese.

That makes little sense to me. Yes, it's low in carbohydrates, but cheese also is pretty high in fat. And if you're dieting and your metabolism is in starvation mode, that fat will go straight into depot fat cells. It seems to me that this defeats the whole concept behind the Atkins/keto diet strategy.

Personally I never had any success with dieting for weight management until I also added weight training to the mix. There's always some muscle loss as well as fat loss from dieting. The stimulation from weight training helps retain muscle mass. Muscle tissue, even at rest, burns up a lot more energy than other tissue and helps with fat loss.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Paul, me neither. Which is why I mentioned it--maybe Larry can explain but offhand I don't know why one's cholesterol numbers wouldn't go thru the roof.

It's late, so I hope I make sense. My biochemistry and nutritional education date back more than three decades ago, so some knowledge has changed, such types of good oils, and carbs vs fats, etc.

Paul said: That makes little sense to me. Yes, it's low in carbohydrates, but cheese also is pretty high in fat. And if you're dieting and your metabolism is in starvation mode, that fat will go straight into depot fat cells [no, it's the opposite; see below]. It seems to me that this defeats the whole concept behind the Atkins/keto diet strategy.

Your body and especially your brain runs on glucose. If you eat sugar and other carbs, your body burns that as fuel. Now, assume you eat zero carbs and a lot of cheese, as stated above. Your body still needs glucose and through ketosis converts fats into glucose. And your body will draw fat from your fat cells to convert to glucose. Bottom line is that fat is stored in fat cells only if there are enough available carbs to burn; if not, the body has to draw fat out of fat cells (making you skinnier) to convert to a carb (glucose).

Think early eskimos. They had very little in the way of carbs, and they ran on ketosis.

Your liver makes most of the cholesterol your body needs. Surprisingly, you can eat a lot of cholesterol (think shrimp), and it will have little effect on blood cholesterol. Carbs and sugar, however, produce a lot of triglycerides (not good) and a lot of insulin (which is thought to be an inflammatory agent in blood vessels).

I've seen a couple of excellent Australian and New Zealand documentaries a few years ago on how it's sugar that makes you fat, not fat. Watch this: https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/low-car ... t-fiction/ I can't locate the NZ documentary, but it shows in one animated scene exactly how the chemistry works. The NZ documentary was particularly good. A young, fit man upped his sugar intake to that of Americans. His weight rapidly rose and so did his numbers.

I hope this makes some sense. I'm on a modified Paleo diet (I use butter and milk). It worked for me. I ate lumberjack meals and still lost weight. And my numbers improved. Easy-peasy.

Your body and especially your brain runs on glucose. If you eat sugar and other carbs, your body burns that as fuel. Now, assume you eat zero carbs and a lot of cheese, as stated above. Your body still needs glucose and through ketosis converts fats into glucose. And your body will draw fat from your fat cells to convert to glucose. Bottom line is that fat is stored in fat cells only if there are enough available carbs to burn; if not, the body has to draw fat out of fat cells (making you skinnier) to convert to a carb (glucose).

Sorry, but this is wrong. Humans have no metabolic pathway to convert fats into glucose. Sugars that we eat are converted to glucose, and then via a pathway called glycolysis (or fermentation) glucose is converted to pyruvate. There are then three pathways. In the first, which is heavily used by muscle cells, converts pyruvate to lactate, which travels to the liver, where it is rebuilt into glucose. The remaining two pathways start by converting pyruvate to acetate. The acetate is either converted to CO2 and H2O via the Krebs cycle, which produces a lot of energy, or it is converted to fatty acids and stored away in fat cells. Conversion to acetate is a one-way trip for humans--we lack a way to convert it back to glucose. Fat is burned by splitting up the fatty acids into acetate and sending it through the Krebs cycle.

As you said, the brain preferentially gets its energy through gycolysis. But it will switch over to burning fat (transported in the blood in the form of ketones, which cells convert to acetate) if there is no glucose around.

There are metabolic pathways for converting certain amino acids (the components of proteins) to glucose. These are collectively called gluconeogenesis. If there is zero dietary intake of carbohydrates, the body will be forced to start breaking down proteins to get the glucose it needs. Cheese is mostly milk protein (casein) and so provides the amino acids needed for gluconeogenesis. But cheese also has a good bit of fat. The Paleo approach, where you eat a lot of protein and zero carbs, provides the necessary amino acids for gluconeogenesis (which otherwise would come from breaking down muscle tissue) while forcing the body to mobilize and burn its fat reserves.

-Paul W.

Technical points well taken, but the end result is pretty much the same. FWIW, the Paleo Diet is not zero carbs. There are plenty of fruits and veges with carbs that are eaten--just not as many. It's the grains and sugar that are avoided.