1) I’m planning on seriously launching a freelance writing career, but I realize this means accumulating clips and some sort of credibility. This presents a curious case of Catch 22 — I need to be well-known in order to be well-known. I’m a little stumped with this, but hoping I can reach out to enough people for help.

2) I’m planning on starting two separate blogs. One is tentatively titled KeyPress Media, and the other is Nerd By Day. Nerd By Day is simply a sort of tech-related linkblog, with some commentary mixed in. It’s more of a daily mental exercise that forces me to stay informed. I’m not sure if I should go with Tumblr or WordPress with this one.

KeyPress Media is a more ambitious project. I’ve been fascinated with media issues for a long time, especially in the age of “citizen journalism” and “content curation.” My initial idea with the site was to host a podcast, where I invite various members of the media to talk about their career path, their thoughts on the state of the industry, etc. Inspirations for the podcast include NPR’s On The Media, Bullseye (formerly The Sound of Young America), and WTF with Marc Maron. Now I’m thinking I could try to build the site into more of a destination for online journalists. Not sure how I’m going to do this, as my HTML and CSS-fu is weak.

3) I’m hoping to put all my foodie and crafty type posts into a separate blog. I started a site called Noodles and Needles a long time ago that I should probably go back to. Maybe I can use this blog as a place to put drafts and simple ideas, and I can post a more polished version on the other site. I’m not sure how to do this yet either.

4) Also, I actually want to make at least a little bit of money from some of these endeavors. That’s why I was thinking of doing a self-hosted WordPress blog for a couple of them, since WordPress.com doesn’t allow ads. I think Tumblr does. Self-hosting three WordPress blogs is going to drive me insane though. As you can see, I’m still figuring this out.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll iron the details out sooner or later. If someone can offer any advice, that would be much appreciated.

Welsh beef soup

Here’s that “Welsh beef soup” I mentioned. I don’t really know how Welsh it is. It’s essentially beef with cabbage, I guess. It’s a really good hearty soup though, and lasted me a few days. I should probably make an extra batch and freeze it just in case I get the flu and need a quick pick-me-up.

Lunch triptych

Sardines, cucumbers, and tomatoes is probably the easiest lunch combo ever. And super tasty if you like sardines.

Paleo burger

Headed on down to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market again on Saturday, where I enjoyed yet another Paleo-style burger from 4505 Meats. I had it without the egg so that it would be easier to eat (and it was). I came home with a couple dozen of Eatwell eggs (I think they’re better than Marin Sun Farms eggs), some Moroccan-style lamb sausage from Prather Ranch (I looked really carefully to see there’s no sugar in the ingredients), and a few other produce items.

Lots of make-ahead meals: Stir-fried kelp noodles, roasted broccoli, and braised kale.

I decided to clear out the fridge on Saturday, and made a whole batch of food. First I braised some kale and carrots using leftover chicken stock, then I roasted some broccoli with bacon, and then I stir-fried a bunch of ground beef, tatsoi, and kelp noodles. I also made a huge batch of beef stock with some meaty beef bones from Marin Sun Farms with the pressure cooker (Not seen in photo). It was a lot of cooking for one day, and I was pretty beat up by the time Sunday rolled around.

Shrimp & tomatoes

I took it easy for Sunday dinner. I just defrosted a bag of shrimp, seasoned it up, and threw it on a cast iron skillet for a few minutes. This was after I had already sautéed some onions and a handful of tomatoes.

Lamb sausage and kale

Monday dinner was even easier. I just cooked up the lamb sausage and served it along with leftover kale. Leftovers are pretty awesome that way.

One of the points of this exercise is to eliminate the sort of food that is commonly known to cause gut irritation with people, like legumes, dairy, etc. Living a whole month without any of these irritants is supposed to act as a “cleanse” of sorts, like a sort of nutritional reset. Quote: “Think of it as a short-term nutritional reset, designed to help you restore a healthy metabolism, heal your digestive tract, calm systemic inflammation and put an end to unhealthy cravings, habits, and relationships with food.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced negative experiences with most food. Gluten, dairy, legumes, etc. I mean, I certainly know that if I eat a lot of pasta, my stomach feels like a brick. But I feel that’s the same with eating a huge amount of any starch. I don’t discount the possibility of a mild lactose intolerance (I’m Asian after all), but I’ve never experienced the sort of indigestion that really lactose intolerant people get. I’m not saying I never get indigestion ever — of course I have (the occasional cheese over-indulgence, etc). But not so often that it bothers me. And to be honest, gluten doesn’t bother me at all. Not one tiny bit. I’m not saying that the gluten-haters don’t have a point — I’m sure they do — but I’m just saying that I haven’t really been affected by it.

So during this past two weeks or so, I haven’t really noticed a difference in how my stomach feels, irritation-wise. In fact, I’ve had a few stomach twinges, which I attribute to bad meal timing and snacking on an empty stomach more than anything else. I find that a diet is more than what you eat — it’s how much and how often you eat.

However, I do think the low-carb aspect of it is working out well. I’ve had experience with low-carb in previous diets (4 hour body, South Beach, etc.), so I already know this is a good thing. Cutting out sugar is absolutely key. I do allow the occasional fruit, but it’s very minimal (like twice a week). Even with allowed starches like sweet potatoes, I’m only having once in awhile. The reason I believe it’s key is because sugar often acts as an appetite stimulant — after you have some, you want some more. Cutting out sugar essentially cuts out the craving. A lot of the banned foods — like dairy — have sugar in it, so that helps in curbing the craving even further.

(Aside: Read Mark Bittman’s anti-dairy opinion piece. I think he’s a bit off-base that you can’t EVER have good dairy — the Bay Area has plenty of small family dairy farms that produce excellent milk from pasture-raised cows — both raw and pasteurized. But I do agree that dairy isn’t for everyone. Quote: “Sugar — in the form of lactose — contributes about 55 percent of skim milk’s calories, giving it ounce for ounce the same calorie load as soda.” So really, if you’re going to have milk, go ahead and have the full fat whole milk and enjoy it. Forget about that skim milk stuff — it’s just sugar water.)

As a result of cutting out the sugar, I really don’t get as hungry as I used to. I eat breakfast, a very light lunch, and then a decent dinner. I don’t really get cravings that often. However, today I did get a tiny twinge of jealousy when a co-worker opened up a can of Coke Zero and that familiar crackle, fizz, and pop had me trying my hardest not to grab my own. Talk about Pavlovian. (The dangers of free soda at work. Man.) The other upside of cutting out the sugar and a lot of the starches is that you don’t get that “brick” feeling that I mentioned earlier.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t also interested in Whole30 for weight loss purposes, even though that’s not the point of the exercise. You’re not supposed to weigh yourself or anything, but I did it anyway this morning, and it looks like I went down another few pounds since I last checked. I don’t know how much of it is water weight of course, and it might all come back tomorrow, but I feel encouraged. My clothes feel looser, for what it’s worth.

Nom notes: Not much to report meal-wise. Same stuff (eggs, zucchini etc.) I did make a big batch of beef soup, which I’ll post about tomorrow. I’ll mention my new Glasslock containers as well. I’m very pleased with them.

I’m a big fan of cooking. There are a number of things that give this away: The thick cookbooks that adorn two to three full racks on my shelves, my subscription to Cook’s Illustrated magazine, my willingness to sift through Martha Stewart magazines for an interesting recipe, my undeniably dorky admiration of Alton Brown (I have a poster of him somewhere…), my ever-growing kitchen gadget collection, my prized All-Clad pans and cast-iron skillets, and much much more. I also take the science of cooking quite seriously, and often break out the scale (a digital scale that does ounces and grams) and the instant-read thermometer. You can say it’s bordering on obsession.

However, prior to this diet, we would order delivery or eat out almost all the time. It turns out there’s a competing factor to my love of cooking: Laziness. It’s just so much easier to pick up the phone than putter around the kitchen (especially since we don’t have a dishwasher). I do enjoy cooking, but I sometimes dislike the tediousness of it (julienning six zucchini! mincing five cloves of garlic! chopping up five different vegetables for a salad!), especially when I’m just SOHUNGRY and I CANTWAIT.

As this diet reveals, however, I CAN wait. The secret seems to be having enough emergency food in the fridge so that there’s literally no excuse for not having anything to eat. The other secret is to know about quick cooking techniques that can get dinner in your belly in the shortest amount of time possible. The zucchini spaghetti meal, for example, took maybe 15 minutes. A delivery person would take longer than that. While I’m not the sort of person to plan a week’s menu ahead of time, I’ve taken to having a rough idea of what I’ll cook in any given week. That’s why I made the chicken stock last week, and that beef stock this week. It’s a “just in case” measure. And besides, it excites that part of my brain that gets aroused by empirical research. SCIENCE, I declare, as I witness the Maillard reaction in my pan, and as I fiddle with the high pressure setting on my pressure cooker.

The only downside seems to be that all this cooking is taking up serious real estate in my fridge:

Fridge contents

Frozen meat taking up a big chunk of the freezer

(Yes, I bought pre-peeled garlic. Sorry. I told you I was lazy.)

I guess that just means I’ll have to cook and eat more. Oh well.

Even though the idea behind the diet is not to lose weight, I did weigh myself this morning just to see if it has any effect. According to my admittedly rather inaccurate scale, it looks like I lost about 2 lbs. Which isn’t that much, really, but considering I haven’t been working out at all (except for my 3-hour long farmer’s market trips on Saturdays), it’s not that bad. I think if I eliminated the fruit and nuts from the diet, I would probably do much better.

Saturday
I got up bright and early on Saturday, and after a brief breakfast of scrambled eggs in leftover meat sauce (try it!), I headed out to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market yet again. I spent close to three hours walking around the place because after an hour, my bags were so heavy that I had to go back to the car and unload them. And then I went back to buy more items! Next time, I’m definitely bringing a cart.

What did I get? Well, all manner of vegetables (leeks, cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, etc.), a small basket of the sweetest strawberries ever, a couple of beef cross shanks, a whole chicken, two dozen eggs, and a quarter-pound of coffee from Blue Bottle. I also bought some glass jars from Sur La Table as food storage. So yeah, it was quite a haul.

When I got home, it was still only 11:30 a.m., so I whipped up a quick brunch for Brandon and myself with some of the fresh market items. It was scrambled eggs with salsa and spinach, Prather Ranch bacon, and some fresh strawberries.

Saturday brunch

We then visited our friends Chris and Vanessa who gave birth to a baby boy on July 4th (Independence baby!). We cooed over the cute little baby, and chatted with the tired new parents. They offered us dinner, so we stuck around for a few hours. I was going to decline since I didn’t know if the food would be Whole30-compliant, but they assured me that it was simply chicken soup with seaweed, with some salt as seasoning. Apparently it’s a Korean soup called Miyeok Guk that’s often fed to new mothers.

Chicken and seaweed soup (Miyeok Guk)

It was pretty good. I had two helpings.

After heading home, I was still a little hungry, so I combined the pork, cabbage, and a bit of leftover pork jus and made it into a soup.

Kalua pork and cabbage soup

It really hit the spot on a cold Saturday evening.

Sunday meals

I slept in on Sunday after the long day yesterday. I had more of the Kalua pork soup for brunch, and didn’t do much the whole day except watch sports and trashy TV.

For dinner, I combined a can of tuna with a bit of mayo, and rolled it up along with avocado and some lettuce leaves in a curry-flavored Pure Wrap.

Tuna and avocado wrap

I’m running out of wraps. Maybe I should order the 12-pack next time.

After that, I whipped up a batch of beef stock with the pressure cooker. I seared a couple of beef shanks, added carrots, onions, garlic, thyme, and bay leaves, added enough water to cover everything, and let it sit on high pressure for 50 minutes. Here’s what it looked like afterward:

Beef stock

Nice and beefy. I think the pressure cooker probably saved me around 4-5 hours, which is great since I made this at 8pm. I’ll use the beef stock in a few recipes this week.

Thursday meals
Thursday is a perfect example of a boring day of meals. Breakfast was a bit of eggs and salsa, and lunch and dinner were pretty much leftovers of the Kalua pork. Still delicious, mind you, just boring. I also had another chicken wrap as a snack, and a bit of chicken broth as a midnight meal.

Friday meals
Breakfast was leftover Kalua pork, cabbage, and half a sweet potato. I also had another swig of broth (homemade chicken stock is amazing).

When I came home, I adapted Nom Nom Paleo’s recipe for zucchini spaghetti with meat sauce instead of meatballs. I used a julienne peeler on a bunch of zucchini, nuked them in the microwave for a few minutes until they lost their grassy raw flavor (five minutes with my microwave, probably two minutes on a newer model). And voila, “spaghetti”!

Zucchini julienne aka spaghetti

Then I just sautéed a pound of ground beef (again, from Marin Sun Farms) with some minced garlic, added a small jar of store-bought marinara sauce (I made sure it was the good stuff though any non-sugary ones would do), simmered the whole thing, and made this delicious dinner bowl:

Zucchini spaghetti with meat sauce

I was pleasantly surprised by how great this tasted. Zucchini usually tastes mushy and mildly grassy to me, and having it julienned like this reduces that a lot. Well, the thick meaty sauce also helps to overwhelm the tastebuds with other flavors. I’ll definitely have some of this again.

Last night I salted about 5-6 pounds worth of pork shoulder with Hawaiian sea salt, stuck about five garlic cloves in the meat, and threw them in the slow cooker along with three pieces of bacon. This is based on Nom Nom Paleo’s kalua pork recipe, but I used two pork shoulders instead of the Boston butt. No liquid added.

I then went to sleep, got up, said Happy 4th of July to the kitties and Brandon, and made a quick breakfast of bacon, eggs, and leftover veggies (Or should I say lunch? Hey, I slept in on a holiday, okay?)

About 15 hours after I placed the pork in the slow cooker, this is what it looked like:

Slow cooker kalua pork

You see all that liquid? That is all the drippings that were rendered out of the meat. Yeah, it’s a lot.

I took the pork out, and shredded it.

Pulled pork

The meat literally fell off the bone. It’s tender and fatty, though it does need some of the liquid to keep it moist.

Since I had a head of cabbage sitting in the fridge, I shredded it up and added it to the slow cooker liquid and continued to cook it on low. After about two hours, I had a whole mess of cabbage to eat with the pork.

Cabbage in kalua pork drippings

Here’s my final dinner plate:

Kalua pork and cabbage

Om nom nom indeed. The best part is I now have a whole mess of leftovers that I can save for tomorrow!

Monday meals
Had a big serving of eggs in the morning, and didn’t eat lunch. I did drink a lot of liquids and snacked on macadamia nuts, so that helped to tide my appetite.

Lemon paprika chicken

As for dinner, I had some chicken thighs defrosting in the fridge, and decided to follow this recipe for lemon paprika chicken. I marinated it for a few hours, and then roasted it for half an hour. Nice and easy weeknight meal, though I would probably cut back on the cayenne pepper next time. For a side, I fried up more of the bacon + broccoli + spinach dish, and nuked another sweet potato. Dessert was more berries and coconut milk.

Tuesday meals
Yep, more eggs in the morning. I didn’t manage to pack lunch, so I cobbled together a simple salad from the Petaluma Market salad bar. I combined spinach, hard boiled eggs, olives, cucumbers, and tomatoes into a box without any dressing. Instead, I bought a tin of Ortiz Bonito del Norte tuna packed in olive oil and dumped the contents of it onto the salad. I probably should’ve gotten some vinegar or a lemon, but the lack of acid didn’t bother me that much.

For dinner, I whipped up some homemade mayonnaise, and combined a few spoonfuls with leftover paprika chicken for a makeshift chicken salad. I layered a couple of lettuce leafs onto a Pure Wrap, scooped some of the chicken on it, and rolled it up.

Chicken salad wrap

The Pure Wraps are essentially flattened coconut meat. They taste really good, and are quite filling. I had two wraps and I was done.

Ghetto sous vide setup

Yep, a cooler and lot of hot water.

It’s pretty crazy, I know. I followed the steps outlined in J. Kenji López-Alt’s article on Serious Eats, and it worked surprisingly well. However, I do have a few important lessons and caveats:

1. It takes A LOT of water to fill up the cooler. I must’ve boiled several quarts worth before I got the right temperature. It would’ve probably been a lot smarter to simply fill it up most of the way with hot tap water, and THEN fiddle with the temperature with boiling water.
2. Putting the cooler in the cool part of the kitchen (my back porch) and experimenting with this during a cool night were probably not optimal conditions for the sous vide. It lost temperature a lot quicker than I would like, and I had to resort to using a bath towel to insulate the cooler.
3. As a result of the dropping temperature, I definitely had to revisit the cooler to add hot water about every 30 minutes or so. I would advise STARTING at a higher temperature — probably about 5 or so degrees above the desired temp — then you won’t need to do the constant revisits.

I decided to cook the chicken first because they require a slightly higher temperature — about 140 degrees for a couple of hours. I used kosher chicken breasts because I wanted to really make sure the chicken would be nice and juicy. I did salt it a little bit more plus I added some ground pepper. That’s it — no more seasoning. After about two hours, here’s what it looked like:

Chicken cooked in a bag

Pretty good, I’d say. I’ll admit that the cooler dropped to about 138 degrees for what was probably a good chunk of the time, so the insides were maybe a TOUCH pink, but it didn’t taste raw at all.

Perfect chicken breasts

It was nice and moist. Really great chicken. And if you’re scared about the hint of pink, a quick nuke in the microwave will fix it. To be honest, I ended up doing that anyway because I didn’t eat the chicken straightaway — I stored it in the fridge and reheated it later, and the pink was pretty much gone.

Then I decided, hey, I have a whole cooler of hot water, why not dunk another piece of meat in there? So in went a rack of lamb from the trusty CSA box. I dusted some salt, pepper, and “lamb seasoning” (looks like a spice blend of cumin, paprika, etc.) on it, shoved it in a bag, and dunked it in 130-degree water for medium-rare doneness. The recipe states to leave it there for about half an hour, but I was lazy and left it in there for almost an hour.

When it came out of the cooler, the lamb looked pretty mushy, to be honest. So I broke out the cast iron skillet (which I had recently seasoned in the oven) and seared the sucker. Here’s what it looked like after the sear:

Seared sous vide lamb

Not bad eh? Here’s what the lamb looked like when I cut into it:

Rare lamb rack

That is probably more rare than medium-rare — remember what I said about the dropping temperature? So I just sliced up the lamb and seared each individual chop a little bit more to have it done the way I wanted it.

In the end, it was a pretty successful experiment especially since I wasn’t expecting a lot out of it. However, I’m not quite sure it’s the sort of thing I’ll do all the time especially with the babysitting it requires. I would probably prefer an actual sous vide machine like the Sous Vide Supreme despite its high price. My interest was definitely peaked when I heard about the Nomiku, which is a Kickstarter project for a more affordable sous vide solution that doesn’t take up as much counter space. The design is a little funky (almost like a sci-fi sex toy?) but it does look neat for what it can do. If I had the money, I’d get it instead of doing this cooler thing again.

Still, I always enjoy experimenting with different cooking techniques, and this was one of them. Play with your food. I encourage it.

Saturday brunch
Before I jetted off on my Saturday adventures, I had a bowl of leftover kelp noodles and, yes, the requisite cup of coffee. I can’t seem to get over that. Still, I’m happy to drink it black most of the time.

I decided to brave potential Giants traffic and drive down to the Embarcadero around 9 a.m. to go to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market. I bought a ton of vegetables and meat, which I hope to fuel the week ahead (Next time, I’m bringing a cart. My backpack was hurting from all the loot!). While I was there, I had to visit 4505 Meats for one reason, and one reason only: They offer their burgers Paleo style. It’s essentially a lettuce wrapped burger with some Paleo-approved spread, but I also ordered an extra fried egg to top it off.

Paleo-style burger

It was delicious. Note that even though there’s a sign that says “No substitutions”, you’re still able to order the burger Paleo-style. Yay!

Saturday dinner
I was exhausted after the 3 hours at the farmer’s market (especially after 20 minutes frantically looking for my car keys, which apparently fell under the floor of the trunk into the tire compartment below when I was packing my shopping bags. D’oh!) and had a long peaceful nap. I woke up to find I didn’t really have the energy to make a complicated meal, so I just scrambled up some eggs, some mushrooms, and a handful of spinach.

Sunday brunch
No real breakfast, which is bad, I know. I mostly just snacked on things that I was cooking throughout the day, like chicken breast and lamb. I’m going to write a separate blog post about my experiments with using a cooler for sous vide, which turned out remarkably well.

Yes, that’s food cooked in a cooler. I cooked three chicken breasts and a rack of lamb using a cooler and two ziplock bags. So crazy.

Sunday dinner
I wanted to use some of the meats I bought on Saturday, so I made some pressure cooker stock with about 2.5 lbs of chicken necks (super cheap!) in about 30 minutes (super fast!). I love this pressure cooker so much.

Dinner looked to be kind of a weird mashup of sous vide chicken, chicken stock, and leftover sweet potatoes. So I decided to make a real veggie dish with broccolini that I received from the Farm Fresh To You CSA box, along with leftover broccoli slaw and spinach.

Bacon and veggies

I cooked up four bacon slices until crisp, took them out, then fried up the veggies and minced garlic in the bacon fat. I then covered the pan for about a minute so that they cooked through, then sprinkled some salt and pepper on the dish. For the final touch, I crumbled up the bacon and added them to the dish.

Rustic Bacon from Prather Ranch

A note about the bacon: One of the key parts of this diet is the omission of sugar, which is unfortunately in a lot of the bacon you find in supermarkets. The Rustic Bacon that I got from Prather Ranch, however, does not have sugar. The ingredients listed are pork, water, salt, and celery juice. As a result, the bacon is not as sweet as most bacon, but it’s definitely “porkier.” I also find that it does not curl as much as other bacon I’ve tried. Good stuff.

So my final dinner was a bit of the sous vide chicken, veggies cooked with bacon, and bit of sweet potato. I also had two bowls of the chicken stock, which was great enough to drink on its own.

I’m planning on more interesting meals this week, like a Paleo version of kalua pork, and a beefy soup. I’m spending a lot more time in the kitchen lately!