Green Goat Butter

So after trying a few brands of soy milk and then asking why the heck am I drinking this, I came to the conclusion that all milk is pretty lame nutritionally as a food, unless it's raw milk. And if you're going to try it raw, then you'd be good to try goats milk. Even though it wasn't raw, I saw it at the Fresh & Easy grocery so I had to try it.

I poured myself a big cold glass of it expecting it to taste like regular milk. Certainly it wouldn't have the thinner sometimes immodium-ish taste of soy milk right? At first, it did taste just like regular milk. Then the after taste came, and I got that look on the face that said, "ok what the hell was that funkiness?!!" So what do you do when you get that look? You drink some more and then some more. I think I felt a hair or two growing out of my chin. The after taste actually tasted like you swallowed the odor of a farm animal. It's official!!! This goat's milk is a little gross. Though you don't notice it in smoothies.

Supposedly Almond butter is better for you than peanut butter. According to the latest RW issue, almond butter has more calcium and magnesium than PB. Also almond butter has 60% more mono saturated fat. So this is a good thing for my cholesterol level. I"m coming up on 6 months since my last checkup. I hope to see my HDL number up up up!

It's funny that the goat is drinking his own milk on the carton though.

I was walking a few weeks back and saw a jar of sun tea on the deck of a house. I finally remembered to get a sun tea jar. Was only 5 bucks too, so happy about that. So we made some sun green tea!! It's a nice change from water and lemonade.

Roads or trails?

My treadmill faces a wall. On it I have a page from Runner's world taped to the wall. It's a picture of Scott Jurek. It's a sepia toned picture of just his face. His face is tilted slightly upward and has a hint of discomfort in his face. The whole tone of the pic matches the tone of the article very well. Scott has demons and he constantly has to ask "why do I do what I do?" "Am I doing this for me or for others?" " Is it all worth it?"

I guess I thought his pic would be some sort of silent cheerleader for me, but rigth now ,my time on the treadmill isn't about pushing my limits both mentally and physically, which I think is what Scott Jurek is about. So I often find myself closing my eyes and thinking of running on an elevated hill alongside the pacific ocean or running through the trails I used to walk through in Maryland. I really had no idea, the gold in trails I had there.

I was thinking that maybe I should take a photo from my own collection and blow it up to hang on my wall. Here are some of my favorites from my visit to the Painted Desert in AZ.

Mach 11

Well, it's finally done. Our house in Nebraska is officially SOLD! Money has been wired, deeds signed, and the new tenants have been given the keys. I heard they have 4 small children too. Wow! I'm thinking of 4 kids in that house. That would be nuts. Now I just have to pay off the utilities. My last water bill showed that I 'used' water comparable to last years usage. I'm glad the water company admitted that was an estimation charge.

I read the back of this book and couldn't stop thinking about it, especially when I read some reviews saying the book was less about the war and really an exploration of the man. So this may be my first of a few Jon Krakauer books.


A couple of my friends are reading Born To Run right now. One of them has already been tempted with the idea of doing an Ultramarathon. The other one told me, I understand why you really got into running after reading this book. He has even dabbled with the idea of getting some tarahumara huaraches, which looks like this.

Maybe I'll try on these copper canyon bullets someday, but in the meantime I'll stick with other shoes I think.

So I sent my friend a running blog link that I thought had a lot of good material on minimalist running and he emailed me back about the clearance sale on the Brooks Mach 11s. I couldn't refuse a 30 dollar price for a new pair of shoes. This shoe is not only light, but has hardly any heel. It will be interesting to see how these feel both on the treadmill and outside. Hopefully their rigid frame won't be negative for me.

Chops

Well this weekend went by fairly.....slow it seems. I ate a good bit of bad food. A place called Souper Salad which is a salad+ buffet. We were out late book shopping and this seemed a better option than macaroni grill. I say better because someone in the family is the pickiest eater ever. Souper Salad was surprising pretty good though as buffets go.

Sunday after seeking out some used book stores and consignment furniture places we found ourselves at Olive Garden. hahahaha yah I think Liz jedi mind tricked me into going here. I chose some low cal options for soup and entree. They were ok. But I had to have some desert. I decided to try their new Dolcini deserts which are little cups of creams and chocolates that you can get in different combos. They were decent enough. Asa ate a good portion of chocolate cake and reminded us later that high levels of sugar equal lots of screaming later.

Anyway, I felt kinda restless this whole weekend. I didn't run and I don't have a book to read. I think this was perhaps why.

Last week, I actually read this book very quickly as it's pretty short. It's a simple book with some powerful messages. One of my fav quotes is from Mother Teresa: " We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

Liz had actually had a chance to listen to Dr. Morsch speak so she bought a copy. She is investigating an opportunity to do some work in Niger ( pronounced Ni zhay) next year as well.

I am gravitating towards another war related book right now and if nothing peaks my interest I may have to pick it up.

Recently I purchased another knife. It's been a long time. Here's a pic of the blade.
Normally I don't find such a 'pointy' blade very pleasing, but I guess I was ready for it. The interesting thing about this knife is the symbol of the company. Al Mar was actually the name of the company's founder who was Chinese American I believe. The symbol turns out is what is called his 'chop'. It's a family seal of sorts that goes with perhaps older traditions of a signatory power that is held in higher regard than just ones name. I still don't know what it means per se, but I think it has something to do with 'horse' which would allude to probably the finer qualities of a horse. You got some CHOP knowledge? Feel free to fill me! ( uhh in)

Page, AZ

Here's a pic from March of 2005 in Page, Arizona at about 9am.


I was conversing with an old friend a day ago and was reminded of my trip with Liz all over Arizona. I remember this particular morning well. It was chilly and quickly reminding us that the last couple of nights of freezing in the Grand Canyon were kinda insane.

I was panicked and urgent about getting to the 'gorge' in time so that the light would be just right. We had to walk about a half mile or so to get out to it, and we were so exhausted at this point in our trip, that we really didn't want to get up. Turned out that my thinking was 'not so smart' because when I got to the gorge, I was very disappointed in what I saw.

I'll show you I guess..it's kinda embarassing, but oh well.

A big polish shadow right across it. Great!

What I never see in all the previous pics though is that the ledge to point in this direction is a big sheet of slate slanted upwards at about 30 degrees. This means you have to walk up it and kinda peer over it with the tripod to get everything you can in frame. I am not very comfortable, ok I'm really not comfortable with heights and this whole thing kinda made my spine tingle anyway. So in a way, the shadow gave me an excuse not to risk myself trying to get the ledge out of the bottom of the frame.

It was a quick decision to go back to town and get some breakfast. My feet were so sore at this point from all the hiking we had done in the Grand Canyon. I wimped it up and went to dirty WalMart to get new socks and odor eaters. Those HiTec boots were not so good in retrospect. Definitely not good with heat insulation either.

Page, AZ is breathtaking in its views though. If I could go back there now, I would love to find a trail that overlooks Lake Powell and run on it for as long as I could. That might be one time I would actually consider listening to Steve Roach on an ipod.

Jars and Noodles

VHS monsters DO exist!!

I went to buy a music stand today. The woman working there suggested I let Asa pick the color, so I ended up with a purple one. She asked for my ID when I paid for it. (I should have my LV drivers lic anyday now as they mail it here) She says, "ohhhhhh Nebraska! Oh Myyyy..someone's lost some weight too!"

Thanks! I'm just glad it's not from pancreatic cancer or anything like that. Then she asked me if I wanted to buy a piano too. Sure let me grab that one over there, what's the price? 36,000 you say? Pffft, let me get out my black Amex card. Do they get a commission on selling a piano?

Guess what I ate for dinner? Let's just say it involved spaghetti sauce! Since I have over 200 ounces of it, it will prolly be a frequent meal. Yikes!

Shiskabob

From the urban dictionary - Shiskabob

1. A college aged male who is about half a drink a day away from being an alcoholic. 2. Someone who would rather drink on a Wednesday afternoon than a Friday night and doesn't know when to stop, at which point he transforms from Shiskabob to Shitskabob.

Man, the Shiskabob better ease up on that scotch or we'll be meeting Shitskabob shortly.

These bad boys were tasty. I have to give credit to the marinade that Liz made for them. Somewhere in the realm of teriyaki with a side of mexican. Or wachaaa, olay!

What do you think we are making here?


Dats right, home made spaghetti sauce. Turned out pretty good too. Just add a small can of tomato paste and you're good to go. Was quite tasty!

I finished my book about Brain plasticity. I'll be sending that off soon to you know who! A couple of cool items from the latter half of the book.

1. A woman who had a rare genetic disorder that made her retinal cells die off. Middle of her life and suddenly she is blind. The thing is, she loved to read. Well now she has a special machine that reads to her at a speed so fast, people like you and me can't understand it. But since her visual cortex is now processing auditory information she can hear at , I think it was 450 words a min?!!!
She literally finds authors and reads ALL their books in few days.

2. The sea gypsies are a people who live most of their lives in the ocean. You can read about them here. The amazing thing they can do is adjust their vision underwater to see better. They can control the shape of their lenses in their eyes and constrict their pupils to a high degree.

They live their life on the ocean and are in tune with it. When the Dec 2004 tsunami came, they saw it before anyone else as a very small wave that was out of place and went out to sea or inland and survived. And finally, some of their tribes can free dive to 75 feet as they have learned to slow their heart rate.

Which kinda brings me to one of my next posts which will be about a heart rate monitor that I bought recently. It's biofeedback fun!