More time constraints but a great workout

Good times in the pool today.

Lap 1: 7:30
Lap 2: 6:07
Lap 3: 6.07
Lap 4: 6.18
Lap 5: 6:19
Lap 6: 6:15
Lap 7: 6:17

1850 yards, no 250 yard laps over 6:20 (my previous best.) The double 6:07 is a personal best, and I did it twice in a row. So a sub-45 minute mile. Excellent swim. :)

Had a good bike... 10 miles at 16.7 mph. I was concentrating on maintaining 90 RPM, so I was adjusting the resistance on the exercise bike to maintain 'drag.' Basically going for 'turnover' as opposed to speed, for the distance.

The run.... hmmm... the run.

So I ran with my running shoes on. I've been running barefoot for well over a month now.

It was like running with cement blocks on my feet. Oh, it was so uncomfortable. I felt totally ungainly. Not like I have been running regularly. I missed my bare feet on the run. Obviously, I am going to have to make the switch to Vibrams, or something like that for the Tri, but wow, it stunk to run like that.

Day off working out to fly tomorrow.

Might lift after flying... we shall see.

Cheers!!

Time constraints and working out

One of the problems with trying to get good exercise sessions in is having time constraints from normal life. Obviously, this is aggravated by a job that takes up big quantities of our time, and takes us away from home and hearth regularly.

So, had a good 1000 yard swim; I was swimming on a full stomach, so that really put the brakes on me; Need to put more time between eating and swimming hard... lol.

So, my times;

Lap 1: 7:57
Lap 2: 6:15
Lap 3: 6:13
Lap 4: 6:20

Lap 3 gives me my best time so far since I started timing. It was kind of funny because I rolled over and did half a lap on my back, too.

I would have done more, but I had to get back and take care of Thomas, so that ended the swim there.

Yesterday I had a great lifting session before sailing, and the evening before I had a great HIIT working from Mike. 3 circuits of this workout in 20 minutes total... aahhh... feel the burn.

Today is swim/bike/run day... :)

Time to get Thomas down for his nap, and then off to the ghetto XSport.

Quick swim and more...

So, did my mini-try today....

The 1000 yard swim---

Lap 1  7:15
Lap 2  6:22
Lap 3  6:22
Lap 4  6:21

Total for 1K yards, 26 minutes, or a minute better than my first 1K a week ago. Not too shabby. I felt strong, had good pull through the whole thing. No fatigue at all, no fading.

Biked 5 miles, averaged 17 mph. Unfortunately I hit the Pause/Reset hoping it would show me the summary, but it cleared... Yup... duh. But I know I was regularly at 17, that was the pace I wanted to hold.

The barefoot run went well, just keeping up with my alternating speeds to build up my strength. Still at the mile marker, moving to 1.2 next week. This is where boredom usually sets in with running for me, so we shall see.

Lifting in the morning, then off to KBNA... back to work... sigh.

Cheers!

Scott

Swim the mile

Took the weekend off. Just needed to rest, and had a great time in Charlotte with my excellent FO friend Natalie.

Back to the grind!!

So, quite sensibly, I reversed my workout program, lifting weights after my swim. That made things much better. Here are my times:

Lap 1: 7:37
Lap 2: 6:25
Lap 3 6:29
Lap 4 6:45
Lap 5 6:36
Lap 6 6:36
Lap 7 6:36

So my mile totaled out at 47 minutes, give or take. That makes me about 1:30 faster than my previous time. I can feel good about that. I swam a bit more untimed, after, too. Just felt good overall. I did a few 'sprints' in the water, and considering I had done a mile already, I know I have energy and wind to burn.

Interesting thing that I have found out about swimming. You know how you get a song stuck in your head, and sometimes you can sing it away? As in... sing another song, and eventually it will displace the one that is stuck? Well, there is no way to do that when you are swimming laps (I don't have those cool underwater headphones.) If you have a song stuck in your head (The other day it was "C is for Cookie," can you tell that Thomas is listening to Sesame Street?) then you quite obviously cannot sing. As far as I know, not without drowning. So there it sits, taunting you. In your head.

Bodyweight workouts.

This is where I get a lot of my ideas for bodyweight workouts. Mike likes to do his 'towel' workouts, and I can tell you firsthand, they will knock you on your butt. Sean has his Bodyweight blast workouts, too. I combine a few movements from each, or I do them as sets between 5 mile bikes on the exercise bike. Great way to combine everything.

Cheers!!

Scott

A quick 1000 yards.

Let's see how well this works; posting from my phone.

The 17th, did a quick 1000 yards, same rules as before (300, then sets of 250.)

Lap 1. 7:38
Lap 2. 6:12
Lap 3. 6:37
Lap 4  6:41

So 1000 yards in 27 minutes. Not too bad.

I did a barefoot mile the 18th at my overnight hotel in Buffalo. 12 minutes, alternating a pace of 3.5 for 2 minutes and 6.0 for 2 minutes. Keeping the rhythm up at 180 beats per minute. They call it a fast turnover; keeps your feet under you by making you shorten your stride to prevent heel striking; longer strides land on the heels, shorter strides land pronated or slightly toe first. Barefoot, that is your goal.

Treadmill barefoot is ok, I have not brought it to the street yet. Kind of a dicey proposition on pavement. So, jury is still out for that, but I know I want to save my knees, so we shall see.

I found some great videos (links to come,) of bodyweight workouts and high intensity interval training workouts. So it goes like this... After your warmup, you work out hard for 30 seconds, then rest for 15, repeating till you are through.

So one of them is (30 on, 15 off,)
Burpees
Glute bridge raises
Alternating pushups
Mountain climbers
High running legs
Swimmers
Windshield wipers
Alternating calf raises

So I have been doing 5 miles at 90 rpm (about 16.5 mph) on the exercise bike, and then a set of interval training. Finish at 20 miles with 4 intervals. Kicked my butt, but feels great.

So that is the workout dealio. Things are going smoothly, and today, Saturday, is a rest and sailing day.

Milk stuff.

A few months back, I started a series of posts on raw milk, especially the health benefits of drinking raw milk. Chris Newsweek of The Healthy Skeptic is writing that very topic on his website, and he is doing it much better than I ever could. I'll be taking largish excerpts from his site onto here, but also I will link to his posts. More to come on that soon.

Cheers, y'all...

Scott

So here we go again... registered for the Chicago Triathlon

So, here we go again!

I guess maybe I am a glutton for punishment... just for fun. I'm registered for the 2012 Chicago Triathlon (Sunday, 26 Aug.)

Last year I did the race, knowing I could never properly be a contender, or anything, but I figured what the heck, why not?

What got me started on this again was my pre-diabetic readings from my fasting blood sugar. One of the ways to bring that down is to exercise regularly. Well, if I am doing that, then I might as well do it with a target in sight.

Well, last year I got my ass handed to me by 2 foot waves in the harbor swim (on a 1.5K swim--- .93 miles) caused by the 20+ mph winds blowing out of the NorthEast. Then, I had that bike up and down the lakefront (2 laps,) on my mountain bike, for 40K (25.8 miles,) which gave me a tremendous tendonitis flareup on my right knee. Then the 10K run, and I am not a good runner to begin with. About a mile into the run, I knew I had to throw in the towel... It was either that or visit the hospital when I destroyed my right knee.

So, here I am, doing it again. At least this year I know a lot more what to expect, and I have made a few changes in what I am doing.

First off, BIG change-- I run barefoot now. I'm just closing in on a mile barefoot on the treadmill. This should help the knee problems I have had running, and it certainly has so far. The key, of course (as explained in an earlier post,) is to add distance slowly. Actually, I will run a mile on my overnight tomorrow. Treadmill... barefoot. I can tell ya, you get some funny looks when you sit down on the end of the treadmill, take your shoes and socks off, and then zip along with bare feets. Quite a few stares. But I am sold on the idea, and I have good research telling me that it's a far better way to run.

Something else that should be good training barefoot, is it should prevent a recurrence of plantar fasciitis... I would love to avoid THAT vampire biting at my heel again.

Will I do the Tri in my bare feet? Doubtfull. Too many ways to tear a foot open. I just want to get the technique down correctly, and then see if I can transition to my running shoes, or maybe pick up some running huaraches, that kind of deal. Time will tell....

Another change is I am shopping around for a good road bike. Not break the bank good, but a bike I can ride normally to the boat, etc, that I can also do 20+ mile rides on. No more mountain bike. That resistance did me in. Most likely looking at a Trek 1.2. If you are a road bike fan, and know a good bike or two to recommend, drop me a line and I'll listen in.

So I went for my first 'mini' Tri yesterday, with a swim and a bike, and an untimed run (.93 miles, tho.)(and this was after my weight workout... not sure what I was thinking, but I had a good time with it.

The pool that I swim in is 25 yards long. I count a lap as out and back, so 50 yards. I swim 5 laps for sets of 250 yards. I do the first set as 300 yards (6 laps,) so that I have an even mile after my 7th set (Actually, a little over, I am allowing for pushing off the pool every 25 yards, which you just can't do in the lake.)

So, here are my times for yesterday, swim and bike. (Pool, exercise bike.)

Swim:
Lap 1 (300 yards): 7:58
Lap 2 (250 yards): 6:39
Lap 3                   : 6:46
Lap 4                   : 6:42
Lap 5                   : 6:57
Lap 6                   : 6:55
Lap 7                   : 6:39

Total Distance -- 1 mile, 40 yards...
Total Time --       48 Mins, 36 Seconds.

That will get better, I hope.

Bike:

10 Miles, 38 minutes. Average 16 mph. I can handle that... needs to be faster. And longer. But I was running out of time (That's what happens when you are exercising during your son's nap time.)

We shall see what happens. I am hoping to update this daily from now on. I'll be exercising one way or another almost every day (There will be rest days, of course... resting is part of exercise.)

Who's Who

This is an intro to the link list I have on the right. Some of these website I hit any time I am on the computer and have time to read. Some of them (Like Richard's Free The Animal,) can be quite caustic... gotta have thick skin to hang out there now and then. He does NOT edit posts, and he does not hold back exactly what he is thinking... Makes for an interesting ride now and then.

Anyways, as far as health goes, these are my "go to" guys (and gals.) Some of them have a great science background, some of them are people who merely have taken the job of 'citizen scientist' back to where it belongs.

Most of these are taken liberally from their own "about" pages...

Fathead

Tom Naughton is a comedian and former health writer who produced, wrote, and starred in his film that is partly an answer to Super Size Me and equally part a science film on what happens when we eat carbohydrates, especially sugar.

This is the movie that started it all off for me. After all, as he writes and says, "What if we've all been fed a load of bologna?"

Underground Wellness


Sean Croxton started out with a degree in Kinesiology from San Diego State and became a personal trainer.

After years of watching client after client sweat for hours, torture themselves, break down, and generally NOT jump into excellent health, Sean could not just accept defeat. He took his failure as an opportunity to learn and spent thousands of hours educating himself on what had been missing in his training regimens.

Sean has a voracious appetite for information, and is a sponge. He has occasionally connected with concepts that are quite 'out there,' but he is searching for all the answers, and he is willing to let no stone be unturned, even if it may not make sense at the time. Lots of great info, great exercises (his bodyweight workouts are a staple of my overnights,) and good fun.

Plus, he is a really engaging guy to listen to.

Hunt Gather Love


Melissa McEwen started her blog to write down her thoughts/research on 'the intersection of anthropology, economics, and culture.' She originally switched to a "pale" type diet and it helped her heal herself from IBS, GERD, asthma problems, and fatigue. Studied Ag Econ at U of I, and then forestry in Sweden (yeah, I would make that connection, too!) Completed a BS in Evolutionary Biology in NY.

Great fun to read, and really active in trying to promote REAL food.

RawFood SOS


Denise Minger stared her blog when she was consistently banned from vegan websites because she was questioning the orthodoxy that veganism is the only answer to real health. I love this quote from her about page

Who do I think I am, running a health blog without a nutrition PhD? Shouldn’t I be flipping burgers at McDonalds like all those other English majors?

I get this question a lot. It speaks volumes about how we view learning, and why we’ve abandoned personal responsibility for using our own brains when it comes to health.“We can’t possibly understand nutrition if we haven’t paid for a degree! Let’s just trust someone with formal credentials instead of thinking for ourselves.”

Her take on 'higher' education is worthy of a book in and of itself.

But I also believe that—for people who are self-motivated, have the time and resources for independent study, and aren’t learning something like dentistry or surgery that requires hands-on training—that a college education can be wildly inefficient and sometimes a barrier to objective thinking. Teachers, after all, come equipped with their own set of biases—ones students must cater to or even adopt if they want a good grade. (My college Women’s History prof comes to mind. Don’t agree that men are the root of all things evil, fattening, and smelly? Then no “A” for you!) At least in my experience, college fostered an atmosphere where the rewards (high marks, scholarships, making the parents proud) were more pertinent than what was actually learned. [emphasis mine]

She writes very well, and is inspiring if you have a science bent. Loads of good fun here...

That is all I have time for right now.... Headed for a barefoot run, and then a bike ride (exercise bike, though... :( . )

More to come!!

Scott

Barefoot running

So a friend of mine recommended reading "Born to Run" by Christopher Mcdougall. I'm always looking for something a little different, so I checked it out.

The book centers around a 'tribe' in Mexico called the Tarahumara. Basically, a tribe that runs for fun in some of the most forbidding terrain in the world. Miles and miles of running. They start at marathons, and they run for fun, dozens of miles at a time.

A great deal of the book covers information on barefoot running. Particularly how it is a more natural style, because, after all, we already have our feet. Parts are about how Nike created the running shoe market when there was previously no real need for it; people ran in more flat footed-type shoes.

A bunch of stats on how if running shoes are so good for us, why is the injury rate the same or quite a bit worse than before we had specialized running shoes.

Of course, running barefoot presents its own problems.. such as running over sharp objects (especially street running, like most of my Chicago-area running would be.)

There is a great deal of info on Lee Saxby's videos, etc. There really is a great case for it from what I can see and read... so far.

I guess the essence is to start slow. After all, we have encased our feet in shoes most of our lives (except a number of us in the sailing community,) and those stabilizer muscles and the like have not had a proper workout in quite a while.

I had problems last year with plantar fasciitis, and have recurring long term training problems with tendonitis in my right knee. So far, I have worked up slowly, and am only to about a half mile+ for running/walking, but not a single complaint from my feeds or my knees, and they would show up pretty fast.

I am going to continue taking this slowly, but if anyone else has tried it, had success, had failure, let me know how it goes.

From what I can gather, starting off barefoot is the best way to go; it forces you to walk/run carefully, since naturally you will start running correctly because heel striking on bare feet can be a wildly unpleasant experience as your body weight loads up at jog/run speeds. you will naturally gain proper form, but go slow to prevent injury.

Yet another step on moving forward by starting out looking backwards... ;)

Early April Update, what I've been reading, etc...

Hi All!

Well, I'm well into my dietary changes, and they are great.

Easy two to eliminate, too (100 bonus points for using all 3 forms of 'to' in a 5 word sentence!.)

Sugars (especially HFCS)

-So no Coke, Pepsi, Candy, ice cream, etc... etc...

Cereal Grains (and their products)

-Bye-bye bread, pasta, cereal (literally,) etc...

I've been eating this way mostly for the past 16 months or so. Quite often I would stray, especially during sailing season when it just seems like I need a coke when we sail. Or a beer after. Or Demon Rhum, etc... Let me tell ya... I can TELL when I have had bread now... ugh. We had pizza for my birthday dinner (my favorite since I was just a tyke, so I knew what I was getting in to with it. It's already a big lump in my tummy, and I know that lump will bother me till it goes away in the normal course of life...)

What is interesting, is that even though beer (maltose) etc are out, out of all the alcohols, champagne is the least 'sugary,' probably because the fermentation process is different. Score one for the home team there!

But I will still not be drinking a lot of anything (although I did have 2 glasses of bubble AND a Coke at Splash and Sara's wedding reception. Plus a slice of cake. I will have a slice of cake at my birthday on Friday, too. This is a way of eating to control your body, not a religion.

Also, I have read quite a bit that if you are going to be burning calories by the bunches (I am contemplating doing the Chicago Tri again,) some carbs can be good for you at the START of a training session. I can roll with that.

Reading now....

So I am a good way through "Why Women Need Fat..." (WWNF) and I have to say it is quite interesting. There are a couple things in there that I will blog about, but one of the most interesting was comparisons of when (in life) and how women get their first periods.

There is some supposed evidence that rBGH is playing havoc with girls and the start of when they develop sexual characteristics like breasts, and that they are developing them earlier and earlier. The problems with this is overall (according to surveys of OB/GYN,) they are still starting their first menstruation at the same ages, relatively.

Except for 1 subset of girls. Overweight girls.

In "WWNF," The authors give a clue to this-- Girls will not generally begin to have their periods until their bodies have amassed a certain amount of fat. Those fat deposits that develop at the thigh, legs, butt, hips... that is all breastfeeding fat. The hypothalamus gets the leptin signals from the fat stores, and until you have about (average, not written in stone) 28 lbs or more of fat, it will not trigger your periods. Teen girls in sports experience this, too. Delayed onset of menstruation.

Interestingly, if you go below a certain level of fat stores, your hypothalamus will (usually) stop your periods, because it is not biologically prudent for you to get pregnant. This is what happens to female athletes all the time. Not every athlete, but nearly all female athletes go through this. Nearly complete loss of their periods.

There is some interesting studies on African women and charting their periods during famines, etc... but the arrow points in the same direction.

Interesting book so far!

Also, listening to a podcast from Dr Chris Kresser, and there is a claim that there is more sodium swallowed in your saliva than in 400+ hot dogs. We are worried about sodium in our foods, but we can never come close to the amount we are already making and ingesting during the normal course of a day. I am still trying to track this study down, particularly because it sounds strange, since your saliva can't make anything with what you DO NOT have in your body already. So it is not like it is ADDING sodium to your food intake... but I'll know more when I read it.

Also an interesting post from Dr. Eenfeldt (aka The Diet Doctor) on Vitamin D and Hay Fever sufferers. He talks about a study showing a medical load (4,000IU) of Vitamin D mitigating a lot of the effects of Hay Fever in relation to a placebo as to be statistically significant. I'm a big fan of Vitamin D, and I think we would ALL be quite a bit healthier if we got a bit more sunshine, so I will agree that I am biased in favor of this study, but I'll read it when it is published (it has only been presented so far, so no peer review yet.)

Here are two other interesting things----

There was a 'study' touted in the mainstream media recently purporting to show a link (again!) between eating meat and early death. There are a number of really good 'take-downs' on this available online already, but I will throw my own $0.02 in in a few days. I've been working on a rant regarding just what the heck is a 'scientific' study and how do journalists get the wool pulled over their eyes over... and over... and over... and publish headlines full of nonsense?

Most likely because they forget basic math, and can't distinguish between correlation and causation.

So, more to come. I have a bunch of mental posts written out, but my fingers have not been willing to dance on the 88 keys... oh wait... on the keyboard. You really don't want my fingers dancing on the 88 keys... Especially since I was a bass player.

Cheers!

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum; It turns out I am pre-diabetic

So, I have spent a lot of time in recent months... months and months, reading information online about health, particularly as it pertains to ancestral health, food, eating, diet, etc....

So, I finally went and had a bunch of blood work drawn up, and had my AME (Aviation Medical Examiner) order the tests, etc. I see him many more times than I see my GP, so why not?

Top of the list is the "Lipid Panel," which is where you get all your cholesterol and the like information. All measurements are in mg/dl.

Total Cholesterol - 180 (125-200)

HDL - 36 (>= 40)

Triglycerides - 157 (<150)

LDL - 113 <130)

The 'normals' range for those is the number in parenthesis afterwards. So my total cholesterol is right in range, no problems. My HDL or 'good' cholesterol is low. Higher is better. Triglyceride count is a little bit high, and my LDL or 'bad' cholesterol is low. The Ratio for my cholesterol is 5.0, with the toleration being (<= 5.0)

All of my other 'numbers' are fine, with the exception of 1 of them.

My fasting (12 hours, in my case) blood glucose was 104. "Normal" range is 65-99. 100-126ish is considered pre-diabetic.

Kidding, right?

O.k... let's look at this from real science point of view.

First, if we are measuring something, we want to be exact, but we need to know how exact our measurements can even be to begin with. For instance, if I am measuring a wall of a room, and I use a 1 foot ruler, placed over and over on the wall to measure it, that will most likely not be as accurate as simply pulling a tape measure across the wall. Less room to make repeat errors, etc. So it is important to know how accurate you can even begin to measure.

For total cholesterol, the Standard Deviation is 17. It is entirely normal for cholesterol levels to change over the course of days and weeks to at LEAST that amount. So it would be normal for me given this test result to have total cholesterol reading from 163-197. Double that amount, (35,) and then you can start talking about statistical possibility of something having actually changed.

And, btw, I am calling it 'cholesterol' because that is the normal, popular convention. I am fully aware that it is a measurement of the protein that is carrying cholesterol, not the cholesterol itself. I am actually not worried about my cholesterol per se, but I wanted to see the numbers.

That blood sugar thing, though. Hmmm..

So, I went to my local Walgreens, and purchased a blood glucose monitor. My idea was to track my fasting blood sugar every morning, and then read my level when starting a meal, and then post-prandial (after eating) levels at the 1 hour, 2 hour, and 3 hour mark. Far more so than fasting blood sugar, your ability to 'clear,' or clean up your blood after a meal is very important.

Normal levels, with high glycemic index foods (sugary, or foods that dump sugars into your blood,) would be around 145-160 at an hour, 160 at 2 hours, and then a steady decline to normal blood sugars within an hour or so.

Every morning, my blood sugar has consistently been in the 100 range. Morning 1, I had 3 eggs in butter and bacon, and my blood sugar never rose above 95. No surprise there, neither of those has any kind of glycemic load. Lunch was a banana with peanut butter, and the band sent me up to 105 after an hour, but it came right back down again. Dinner was salmon and asparagus, and no spike.

Morning 2, eggs, bacon, this time with a big glass of milk, and I peaked at 106, but it came down in under an hour.

How in the world does my blood sugar elevate when I am not eating?!?!

So, I continued this for the week. On an overnight and out with a friend, I had a fresh baked pretzel with my lunch of a large salad with a 5 oz steak, with bleu cheese, walnuts, and dried apricots.

Zing... an hour later my blood sugar was 145. 2 hours later it was 165, and 3 hours later it was still 160. Yikes... not clearing that wheat and those apricots...

Believe it or not, breads can have quite a bit higher sugar load, because they are carbohydrate loaded like you would not believe. The standard is 'table sugar,' but there are a few things that load you up more than that... and all that sugar has to be cleaned out of your blood.

Bread is off my list, I guess.

So how did I get this way? Pre-Diabetic is a function of a number of things, and you don't need all of these, but you need a couple in the right combinations.

Fasting blood sugar of 100 or more.

Overweight.

Inactive.

45 or older.

High Blood Pressure.

Family history of Type 2 (no way to know, I am adopted.)

HDL <35. (hhmm... close, within the margin of error (Stan Dev of 9 for HDL.)

TRI > 250 (High, but not even in the neighborhood.)

Regularly sleep less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours a night. (eh... debatable.)

Increased Thirst

Frequent urination

Fatigue

Blurred vision (high blood sugars are brutal on the eyes.)

So... over 100 on the sugars, low HDL, but not terrible... the rest is kind of a wash.

So, I started reading up on blood sugar levels, how they can be moved around, what causes certain things in your body, connections with disease, etc.

So, here is my "perfect storm." Written as a timeline (sorta.)

Most of my life, I have been a white bread, coke or pepsi drinking, boxed food type. A good portion of my diet for the last 20 years has included High Fructose Corn Syrup one way or another. Listen, if it comes in a box from a store, it probably has it in there. 45,000 items in a major grocery store, 33,000 will have it. Gotta love subsidizing the corn industry! It is the cheap-o sweetener of choice.

5+ years ago, on our honeymoon in Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia, somehow I managed to get Hepatitis E. So we come home, and I am sick... flu-like symptoms, but the characteristic tea-colored urine gave it away to my doctor. The 'interesting' thing, is that "E" type is mostly harmless. You have it for about 3 weeks, and then it goes away. The only thing it leaves behind is whatever it did to your liver while it was visiting, and you can never give blood again.

Having had Hep E makes you far FAR more susceptible to fatty liver and other diseases of the liver. It elevates your triglycerides (the fat deposits in your liver inhibit recycling them in the normal course of liverly functioning,) and leads to gallstones and can lead to pancreatitis (more on this in a bit.)

Recent and not-so-recent- studies are showing that life long extensive exposure to HFCS in the diet leads to reduced Triglyceride processing by the liver, gallstones, etc... etc....

So.....

Getting Hep E in SE Asia in 2006 may have led to me having pancreatitis in 2008, through fatty liver problems and gallstones, aggravated from a life long exposure to HFCS from a crappy food diet.

I had acute necrotic pancreatitis. The necrosis was roughly half my pancreas. The pancreas is where your beta cells that make insulin are located. I can't make as much insulin as the next person, neither as much nor as fast.

My liver has some damage from the Hep E, and fatty deposits from the processing of all that yummy HFCS, so I cannot detox my blood as fast as normal people.

Ergo----

Low HDL

High TRI

High fasting blood sugar.

Great, what does this mean.

Well, for the past year I have mostly had a 'paleo' diet. I have eliminated soft drinks, most foods that contain processed sugars, etc, pastas, breads, all the 'added' sugar foods.

Well, during sailing season, it was pretty hard to avoid, and I am positive I had more booze than I should. What's the harm, right?

Thankfully, switching my eating pattern a year ago may have helped insulate me from problems. There is no doubt that that style is the way I should be eating. So here is what I get to do....

No more alcohol.

No soft drinks (or really, anything with added sugars.)

Skip the pastas, breads, and other wheat- or cereal grain- based foods.

Generally avoid fruits, especially bananas (boo,) grapes, apples.

So... I am not 'diabetic,' but my body is trying to drag me there. Yes, I will still have the occasional glass of bubbly at a wedding (I have a few this year, etc...) but....

That's what's new.

More funner blog posts to come!

Milk (part 1)

AAaaahhh, milk.

Wow, does this produce some interesting reactions.

There are so many possible "pros" and "cons," it is difficult to know where to start writing.

We are the only mammal that a) drinks milk after weaning, and b) drinks the milk of another animal regularly and deliberately. (I stress the regularly; kittens will gladly lap up cow's milk straight from a pail, puppies will do the same with milk and cream, etc. Orphaned kid goats can be given cow's milk, the list kind of keeps

going.)

We probably started this weird thing of drinking the milk of another species with sheep or goats. Our 'cattle' at the time were most likely the aurochs, which could best be described visually via their modern descendants, the Spanish Fighting Bull, only the auroch was probably quite a bit bigger and meaner. (The last true auroch known died in a private game preserve in 1627 in Poland. How sad.)

Most likely as they penned the aurochs in, gradually they were able to slowly tame them, or breed them for tameness, and someone somewhere got the bright idea that since we are drinking the milk of the goats, and these are milk producers, we can drink their milk, too.

• In actuality, we can drink the milk of any mammal. Virtually every mammal that we have domesticated, we use some form of milk product. Yak milk in Tibet, buffalo milk in Italy (mmm, mozzarella!), horse or llama milk in the Andes, reindeer milk in Lapland. Whether it is to our 'taste' or not, is another story.
• Did you hear about the guy that started the dolphin farm? He drown milking one.

And really, the reasons why we do not drink from all mammals are practical, more than anything. The only areas where there is widespread lactose intolerance, are Asia and the Horn of Africa. There are tribes in Africa that exist on milk, blood, and the cattle both of them come from. (they also have the lowest incidences of coronary heart disease, which should tell you something is wrong with meat = heart disease, but I digress.)

"Oriental" countries' largest domesticated mammals were the horse and the pig. Pigs are reportedly quite difficult to get any 'supply' of milk from. It is more a matter of quantity, rather than quality. High Steppes cultures have the mighty Yak for their milk, and they make use of every single inch of that animal.

So, there is no reason why we couldn't drink the milk of any of our fellow mammals. Quantity becomes the largest problem, although taste probably runs a close second, when you consider that what the mother eats dramatically effects how the milk tastes. So, line up a tiny stool and milk a rat. Grab your SCUBA tank and grab that whale teat! (That would probably not be a problem of quantity.)

What about the poor platypus? Milk away! (But not the male of the species, which has a spur that produces venom. Then again, if you are trying to milk a male you may have other problems from the get-go.)

Milk is something that is designed to help create life. As such, it is supposed to be eaten, one of the very few things on our planet meant for that. Most things are there to reproduce themselves; tomatoes are not there to become salsa, they are there to make more tomato plants. Milk is designed from the start to be drank.

Sigh.. so this is where it gets dicey.

From a practical point of view, our 2nd chromosome is where the gene that expresses 'turning off' the production of lactase, the enzyme that aids the digestion of lactose, the sugar that is only found in milk (trivia-- it is also found in yellow forsythia blossoms in the spring. weird, eh? Too lazy to find independent scientific evidence of that, though.) is found. There are some very interesting debates about this.

It appears that if your ancestors drank milk, (The World minus Far East and parts of Africa,) you have a higher likelihood of that gene expressing in favor of producing lactase. In fact, that gene expressing in favor of producing lactase is the dominant expression of that gene. So once you have a genetic history of it being turned on, it will tend to be turned on.

This makes quite a bit of sense, with recent (last 20K years) evolution. Once we figured out that it made more sense to milk the females of the species, and let the animal live, instead of slaughtering her for meat which would spoil quite soon anyways, we would rapidly develop an evolutional bias towards being able to continue digesting milk. Why not, when it could keep us alive?

Adding to that, we probably rapidly developed age-stable milk. Yogurt... cheese... especially cheese. Cheese can age for upwards of 2 years; try THAT with your normal milk. But talk about nutrition on 'the go!' You could store cheese from your animals, and have a stable food source for the inevitable partial famines that are our historical norm.

But is it healthy for us?

Well, in a word, yes. Yes, even cow's milk. But, it depends on what you mean by milk.

That milk you buy in the store is not 'milk.' It is an industrial product. It has been homogenized (a process which does stop the cream from separating, but totally changes the way that the milk tastes. Having had both, homogenized milk tastes slightly rancid to me. It also hides or masks the taste of the dead bacteria floating in there from pasteurization. Yup, for realz.)

It is also highly likely that it comes from a cow that is milked 3 times a day by a machine, a cow that is fed grains to keep her milk production up even though the grain kills her from the inside, trapped in a stall next to 500 other cows on a production line, standing over a river of your own manure that collects in a toxic lake, automatically injected with antibiotics due to all of the above. Here is that cow--

Yup, that is pretty much where they spend their lives. How 'cow' is that?

So I am stealing the next picture off the website from my friends at Golden Guernsey. Which animal would you rather be, and which would you rather have providing life giving sustenance?

Back to milk....

Without the enzyme lactase, drinking milk causes nausea and diarrhea. "Lactose intolerant" people know that feeling!

What is interesting, is that raw milk has lactase in it. After all, when a baby (of any species) is born, it takes a little while for that digestive system to kick into full swing. The milk has to provide its own means of digestion (after all, the baby is not getting the milk in the womb, it is getting nourishment from the placenta.)

So raw milk is a complete package for nourishment. It seems as though milk proteins evolved alongside the genetic tolerance increase near northern European dairy settlements some time about 8,000 years ago. Coevolution; As we were able to drink more milk for longer periods, the cows evolved to provide our protein requirements.

So since milk comes with it's own digestive system, why are people intolerant of milk?

Most likely, it is because they are drinking pasteurized milk. The pasteurization process kills off the lactobacilli, so YOU are not making lactase, and the milk's food enzyme activity has been killed off. You don't have sufficient lactase to break down the milk sugar (which is a 2-part sugar; lactose is glucose and galactose, making it a disaccharide. There, you've learned something,) and viola, here comes the G/I discomfort. Most people who are 'intolerant,' but can eat cheese or yogurt (where microbes during the fermentation process have consumed pretty much all the lactose,) can handle raw milk easily, and there is a good chance that even people who are 'completely milk' intolerant can handle raw milk, especially from Guernsey or Jersey cows.

The other end of the milk intolerance is a mild allergy to casein, the protein in milk. Guernset and Jersey cows have a higher amount of Casein-b, which has a lower allergic reaction. Casein survives the pasteurization process, but the jury is out on UHT pasteurization (which I have heard that Oberweis uses. Boo on them.)

During homogenization, milk is pumped at high pressure through a mesh screen, and it reduces the milk fats to tiny particles that cannot coalesce back into their former selves. It solves a problem in that it makes the milk more stable for shipping, you don't have to deal with the cream separating from the milk, and it solves a cosmetic problem; When you pasteurize the milk, dead bacteria and white blood cells sink to the bottom of the milk. Homogenizing the milk spreads this throughout the milk. Makes you say yum, doesn't it?

Homogenization also completely destroys the natural flavor of milk. It breaks up the fats into smaller molecules, which produce a rancid flavor and actually make the milk sour faster. This is because the fat particles are smaller and coated with milk protein, where normally they are mostly separate.

But drinking milk is immoral (the vegan argument.)

-- Go away... If you hate me for drinking milk, what will you think when I slice into a steak? "Ethical vegetarian" is completely ridiculous. we're omnivores. Thanks.

We don't 'need' to drink milk.

-- We 'don't need' to do many things. Milk is a complete protein food (it has all the amino acids.) In addition to that, it is convenient, stores well, and has a good dose of everything you need for proper nutrition. If you are trying to lose weight, you should be cutting sugars out of your diet, so milk should be off the list anyways until you get to where you want to be, but there is no real reason not to drink some of it. And it's soooo good.

More in part II!

Philosophy, Ranting, Stream of Consciousness....

So, I am a skeptic. I would debate the sun rising tomorrow. (At 0100-- "It hasn't risen YET.")(0300-- Still waiting!!)

I tend to need proof. I'll go on sketchy incomplete information, sometimes, but really, I'd like to know why.

This is part of what has gotten me recently into health and nutrition. There are just scads of information out there, and so much of it is just wrong!

I start with the 'sniff test.' If it sounds wrong from the start, there are pretty good odds that it's a lemon. (warning, I have my mix-o-matic blender going for when I run into metaphors. I may even mix my mixed metaphors.)

So here is where it all began. We were at the Brookfield Zoo, in the Chicago suburbs, on my mom's birthday, and they had an exhibit titled something like "The world connected" Or some such thing. I figured that would be cool to check out, so why not?

They had an illustration of people fishing, and under it was 'fish are caught off the coast of Chile.' OK, I am on board with that. The following sequence came along.. 'Fish are then flash frozen,' 'fish are shipped to the USA,' 'fish are ground into fish pellets/meal,' 'the fish meal is fed to cattle,' 'voila, you eat them!' (Or some such nonsense for the last picture of a cheeseburger on a plate.'

So... I wandered on, but mentally I kept returning to that last picture, and the picture that had the cow munching happily away on some cattle kibble. To myself, I kept thinking 'cows don't EAT FISH. WTF is wrong with this picture??!?!'

Within a few days of this, I had my conversation with Ash who turned me on to FatHead, and the rest is long sleepless nights reading study after study, blog after blog, gathering up information. Learning. Unlearning. Re-learning.

I have spent hours... and I mean days worth of hours, just trying to find a single study that says HFCS is good for you. Yeah, I know, but there must be ONE. Surely our loving government would not approve a foodstuff/additive/substitute for general consumption (it's in roughly 30,000 of the 35-40,000 items in a major city grocery store) without knowing the long term effects of introducing it into the food supply, would it?? Honest??

So about 2 weeks ago I posted some of the things I have found in the last year, and I will be backing them up one at a time, with footnotes, references, etc, so it is taking me a while to collect all the information right now. So sit tight, sports fans!

I've read more than I ever thought could be written about cholesterol. There is more to read. But I can tell you this right now, we're the only country in the world that is afraid of cholesterol. Here is a good sniff test question-- Would your body, all things being equal, and under normal circumstances, make anything for itself that was harmful?

Of course not. We would not have survived as a species. Period.

Well, your body makes cholesterol. Your diet (defined as what you eat, not a 'Diet,') has almost nothing to do with 'blood serum' levels of cholesterol. In fact, you are not measuring cholesterol in any of the tests, you are measuring the size of the proteins that carry the cholesterol around. LDL, HDL... Low Density Lipoprotein, High Density Lipoprotein. Cholesterol itself is not water soluble, so it can't dissolve in blood; it needs something to 'ferry' it around.

If you had no cholesterol in your diet, your body can manufacture all you need. This should tell you something. This is a BIG MONSTER clue that maybe this is something we need, not something we should be getting RID OF.

This will piss some people off- There are no historically vegan cultures. And vegetarians should be careful. Even historically vegetarian cultures eat some eggs, or trade for fish or fish roe, or drink milk (whole raw milk, not that low fat crap we have here.) Enjoying that low slow decline in your nervous system from lack of B12? If you MUST take supplements to support your diet, then there is probably something wrong with your nutrition.

There is an interesting concept called Bioavailability. Basically, it means how much nutrition can we absorb or take in of something before it exits the system. Bioavailability of human mother's milk is a perfect 100 for protein. For eggs it is also 100. Beef scores about 78-85, depending upon the cut/organ. This continues down until we reach the plants. Animal proteins are called 'whole proteins' due to their complete amino acid profile (This should be another one of the BIG CLUES.) If you are eating animal tissue, you can get your entire protein requirement from it. If you are eating plants for your proteins, you can get most of the amino acids, but not all.

So the bioavailability of meats tends to be quite a bit higher, so it is easier to 'access.' So in an 8 oz serving of beef liver, you would easily get a day's protein requirements for a fairly sedentary individual, but to get it from plants would require a good 2 lbs of plant. Makes my jaws hurt just thinking about it. (numbers are not exact, but the exact numbers ARE coming.)

So much more to come!

On another note...

On another note, I wanted to shout out a congrats to my cousin Anthony, who is most of the way through his IOE as a brand new FO with Silver Wings (used to be Gulfstream.) He busted his ass to get there, like so many of us have. Dealt with all kinds of crap, debt, you name it, but he persevered, and now he is flying for a living.

All the pilots already know this (so do their spouses, too,) but it takes a little bit of almost masochism to want to get involved in our job sometimes. Starting out, the pay is rancid... really not good. I think I have told this before-- flew through the night, snowstorm, heavy winds, no visibility, rain, hail, etc, from Chicago O'Hare to Kalamazoo, Michigan. 50 passengers, none of whom even glanced in the flight deck. We pulled up our arrival time, and it was an hour, exactly. I said to my Captain "I just made $19.90, pre-tax."

Thankfully he has a supportive wife, because it takes an even stronger partner to put up with what a pilot goes through just to do this goofy job.

But a better job is damn hard to find.

I know it is 'just' a Beech 1900, but welcome to the big leagues, Tony.

Congrats,

Scott

A Little About Food

So, last year, I had a conversation with a friend of mine that went something like this--

me: So, I signed up for the Chicago Triathlon this year. What was I thinking?

friend: Really? Come do the Warrior Dash with me!

blah blah blah

friend: So have you seen the movie Supersize Me?

me: Nah. I don't agree with the basic premise. Nobody eats McDonald's 3 times a day, every day for a month. At least go to Wendy's, too (yum, Frosty!)

friend: Then you gotta watch Fat Head.

Thus began my descent into the Rabbit Hole of nutrition. Once I started reading more, I opened an account with Pub Med. I already know the basics on how to look for gaps in logic, and I can understand scientific literature fairly well, I was just rusty. At various times in my life, I've wanted to be :a physicist, a pilot (something came true!), a computer programmer (boring!), etc, but I always had a love for the 'hard' sciences. Those where you design an experiment based on a hypothesis generated by (hopefully) multiple observations, and then you control the variables as much as possible, experiment, and then check your results.

O.k.. small digression.. but like I said, it's quite a rabbit hole!

Here are some of the things that I have come to know. I'm sure there will be a post about the philosophy of knowledge, after all, how do we know what we know, and how do we know that we know it (or something else that will give you a slushi brain freeze.)

Some of these will be expanded upon in later posts; I've actually been working on some of that anyways.

I originally ordered this in order of certainty, but I write stream-of-consciousness, so I am sure It's totally out of order below #5. #13 could easily be #8, etc:

1. High Fructose Corn Syrup is a poison. I'm even looking for studies (peer reviewed, unbiased, etc, ) that prove this wrong, but there is just nothing out there. Get it out of your diet, get it out of your house, get it out of your life.
2. Wheat and cereal grains are almost as bad as #1 for you. There may even be a connection or additive effect here between the two. This indicts all of the modern grains. Wheat, barley, oats, rye. They are all grasses, we are not cows. It is a tribute to our omnivorousness that we can eat them to being with.
3. Sugars on the whole are not that great for you. Naturally occurring, they usually have lots of fibrous materiel around them... mother nature's packages. You have to eat a lot to get the sugar load, but modern cultivated fruits are a little different from the wild ones, especially in nutritional value.
4. Eat Meat. Like it or not, Vegetarians, modern humans are designed to eat nutrient dense foods. Plants just do not cut it for everything. At the very least, have a little fish now and then, preferably line caught.
5. Grass fed ruminants are the most nutrient dense food we have. The nutrient profile is perfect, the O-3 and O-6 ratios are exact for what we need, the nutrient levels (especially in liver, and other organ tissues,) are off the charts.
6. Eggs are awesomeness in a shell. You can do magic with them.
7. Cut 'boxed' food out of your life. The friend mentioned above (Hi Ash!) was the first who referred to it as "Shop the Outside" (I think.) Eat all the stuff around the outside of the grocery store, and skip the stuff on the shelves in the middle.
8. The jury is still out on milk. Partly because most of the studies on milk use dried casein for the study, and that has well known problems with oxidized cholesterol and inflammation. Talk about stacking the cards. If you are not allergic, milk, raw milk, is probably quite healthy. Fermented/aged milk products rock the house-- yogurt, cheese, butter, kefir....
9. Veggies, fresh and in season, are a must. I have increased my veggie intake at least 100% (which, considering how little I used to eat, is still not that much.) I eat more and more when I can. Even broccoli makes me say yum (with a small protest) now.
10. Strength training is excellent for both men and women. Girls, you will never... and I mean never... have enough testosterone to 'bulk up' the way that men might be able to. It takes years of dedication, and casual workouts ain't gonna do it. Learn how to lift something heavy. It's good for you.
11. Cardio is not that great. High Intensity Interval Training is much better. Long term cardio might even be downright unhealthy for you.
12. Cholesterol is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But your body makes it naturally, and diet cholesterol intake has almost no effect on blood serum levels. Sniff test-- Under normal circumstances, does your body make anything that would harm you? Every single cell in your body needs cholesterol to function, and your brain is a'chock full of cholesterol. More to come on that for SURE.
13. Fat intake helps you burn fat. Yup. Honest Injun'.
14. Carbs make you fat. Carbs of all kinds, from simple sugars (fructose, glucose,) to the big 'uns (starch, glycogen, and cellulose.)
15. Soy is most likely really not that good for you, unfermented. This is a mega issue with vegetarians and vegans. Lots of bad words spoken in forums on this one.
16. A calorie is not just a calorie. It is not just calories in/calories out. Your body is not a closed system. More to come
17. Most treadmill type exercise is a waste of time. You don't burn fat that way. Like Dr Lustig says in his video "That cookie you ate? 250 calories? Yeah, an hour walking on the treadmill... good luck."
18. Cooking 'oils' are about one of the worst things out there. Cook with butter, lard, ghee, coconut oil. Olive oil is for tasting, not cooking.
19. We need sunshine. Every single one of our cells can make its own Vitamin D. It takes sunshine. Vitamin D deficiencies are related to depression. Ever wonder why in the winter and when it is cloudy for days on end people get more depressed?
20. Nearly everything we have been told about nutrition in the last 40 years has been exactly 180 degrees wrong. Our grandmothers and grandfathers lived to be 90 cooking with lard, eating fat, not exercising, and staying outdoors. We are dying in our 50s with tons of exercise, cooking oils, eating tofu burgers and wearing SPF WTF just leaving the house. What are we missing here?
21. We don't get fat because we are eating more, we are eating more because we are getting fat. Subtle difference, but wildly important, related to hormonal control of the body. It's not willpower; you are trying to use your will to overpower a million years of evolution in your hypothalamus for hormone control. You ain't gonna win this fight.

Basically, here is what it comes down to;

Eat Real Food.

Get some Exercise and Sunshine. Go for a walk, and lift your face to the sun.

Every now and then, lift, throw, move something heavy.

Laugh. Dance. Enjoy.

Sleep well.

I have bunches more to write on almost all of this. Posting will take a little while, because I want to have the footnotes, so if you are reading this you can do what I do; just go read the study yourself.

Re-learn to engage your brain. Does it pass the 'sniff test?' If something sounds crazy, is it because it is crazy, or am I just looking through the telescope from the wrong direction? IS anything hidden? Correlation is not causation (mantra-- keep repeating this.) Just because something is observed to happen at the same time, does not mean A effects B. It doesn't even mean B effects A. --- Statistically, ownership of computers has increased on a perfect trend line that parallels yogurt consumption. Does owning a computer make you buy yogurt? Does eating yogurt make you want to go buy a computer? (Does Yoplait own shares of Apple?)Are they related through a third mechanism 'confounding' what we are looking at? (owning a computer means you can look up health information more readily, you read yogurt is good for you, more people buy yogurt. Not direct causation.)

I am going to try and index, or at least footnote, my references, so that will take a little time, too.

Plus, I may make some more yogurt, or butter, or maybe pickle some zucchini, or something, and get distracted... and... um...look! Bubbles!

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Cheers!

Scott

Food Werx, Vol 4 - Cheese!

Bring in the cheese!

So I have been having fun

experimenting with milk and milk

products. But I am out of raw milk. I saw a video on YouTube showing a

simple way to make a simple cheese and it seemed like a good idea to try.

A few notes - even really good milk, like Oberweis, may not work. Oberweis supposedly does a variation of ultra-pasteurization, the difference being in regular pasteurization, the milk is heated to 161F for 15-20 seconds, where as the UHP is 275F for a minimum of 1 second. This pretty much destroys any chance for you to use the milk to make any kind

of cheese, according to the various 'make cheese at home' gurus. So, find a good milk and use it!

I used Kilgus' Non-homogenized milk. This is our regular milk (other than the raw milk we just got access to a few weeks ago.) You gotta shake it to mix in the cream that floats to the top, and it tastes sssoooo good.

O.k, off on our adventure!

I worked with a half gallon of milk.

So, you scald the milk, which is heat it on medium until it reaches 170F. This can be seen visually by the bubbles starting to ring the edge of your cook pot. At this point you remove the pot from the heat, and add in a cup of buttermilk and then 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. This acts as the separator, curdling the milk and removing the whey. Let the milk sit for 20 minutes while the acids from the juice do their thing, and then skim the curds out of the milk. Reserve the whey if you want, it is good to make pancakes, or in place of water in just about anything. Maybe for risotto.... hhhmmm....

Gently skim the curds out into a

cheese cloth covered colander, either

putting the colander in a larger pot to save the rest of the whey, or let it drain down the sink if you don't want to keep it. Then gather the cheese cloth into a tight bunch, compressing it and squeezing the curds together.

Tie the top with a string, and then

hang the curds so they can drain the last of the whey and moisture out.

Let them hang for about 30 minutes or a bit longer, and then peel open the cheese cloth. Voila, there is your cheese!

It is really great spread on fresh toasted bread, and I am NOT a bread guy (anymore.)

This was really simple to make, requires no special tools (even the temp you can eyeball by watching the edge of the milk for the bubbles to gather,) and you could use a clean dish towel in place of the cheese cloth. I guess maybe the string could be a special tool. Depends on how well you stock your kitchen!

We pretty much devoured the cheese with dinner. It has a very soft taste, nothing strong at all.

You can make this with 2%, or even skim milk if you wanted. Takes under an hour start to finish, including heating the milk. Can it get any better?

Cheers!

Scott

Food Werx, Vol 3 - Yogurt

So I have been having fun making simple foods, and while I was making the butter, I remembered a video I had seen on how easy it is tomake yogurt; Since I had the time, andThomas was my sou chef, I figured it could be done.

I had separated a good portion of the cream from the top of the milk, but not all of it, not nearly. I blended the rest back in, and then did my prep work to make yogurt. Here is the plan;

The volume of milk will give you your volume of yogurt; it is not reduced, or anything, so what you start with is what you will have at the end. We need--

milk

non-reactive pot (stainless steel preferably, just NOT aluminum)

yogurt starter (from a favorite plain yogurt; I used Trader Joe's Plain.)

thermometer

large pot or sink for cooling water bath

insulated 'cooler' as a fermentor

Sterilize the jar you will be using to make the yogurt by putting it and it's lid into a few inches of water at a boil for 10 minutes or so. Nothing like being sure.

Pour your milk into the non-reactive pot, heat over medium heat until the temperature is between 185F and 190F.

A note on thermometers; A simple way to calibrate, or check the scale of your thermometer- boil water, and then read the temperature off of the thermometer. Water boils at 212F, and a physical trait of transitioning from solid to liquid to gas is that once that temperature threshold is reached,

the substance (water) will NOT increase in temperature until it is in the next state. So when you boil water, once it reaches 212F, the remaining water will r

emain at 212F while the surface water turns into a gas as it boils off. So just read your thermometer in boiling water, and adjust your temperature accordingly. Mine boiled 'at' about 209F, so I did everything with a reading 3F less than required, or stayed at the low end of any temperature bands.

Once the milk reaches 185F, take the pot of milk off the stove, and set it in the cooling water bath.

Once your milk cools to 122F - 130F, pour a cup of the hot milk into a bowl, and whisk with your 'starter' yogurt (about 2T of yogurt per quart

of milk.)

Pour the whisked milk/yogurt mix right back into the scalded milk, and whisk together.

Now pour the milk into your sterilized jar/s, tighten on the lids, place the jars into the 'cooler' and pour a 'bath' of 130F (NOT warmer, 130F+ kills the bacteria that will make your yogurt) water around the jars, up to the lid.

Close the cooler, let sit for a minimum of 3 hours. (I had let mine sit for 3 hours, and I did not like the consistency, so I let it sit another 3 hours, then popped it into the fridge while I went on a 2 day trip.)

Eat and enjoy!!

I was gone on my trip, and Nicole tried it and said it tasted great. I gave it a try when I got home, and I thought it was pretty damn good, too. It's on the menu for breakfast tomorrow!

The finished product: