rolekk's blog

There is the occasional person who values both healthy dieting and exercise. The majority of these people are athletes on a training program. For the rest of the population, however, I find that many people think that diet and exercise have a reciprocal relationship. I frequently hear people who are eating some unhealthy dessert like ice cream or cake use the excuse that "I just exercised" to justify to themselves why they can eat it without it being harmful. Likewise, Ive come across many injured athletes during on past sports teams that pass up normal indulgences when injured because they can not exercise it off. I don't know if this is how its supposed to work. Exercising can burn alot of the unwanted fat calories from eating unhealthy, but their are other negative health effects like high blood pressure and the risk of diabetes that go along with eating unhealthy even if the weight is kept off.

I was in new york city over the weekend, and I was handed a piece of paper with an invitation to a free demonstration by one of new york city's top chefs, as the paper proclaimed. I decided to stop in for the 30 minute demonstration so I would have something interesting to blog about. The demonstration was better than I had expected. The chef, Eli Zabar, is the top chef at four high class restaraunts in uptown new york city. The chef demonstrated to the audience how to make a pretty simple dish: stuffed pizza. He made pizza stuffed with sausage and red peppers. It was topped with pepperoni. It only took him about 20 minutes to make the pizza starting only with dough, a link of sausage, 2 peppers, and a stick of pepperoni. He rolled the dough as the meats were warming up on his frying pan. He was very good at working the crowd, often cracking jokes and wise remarks about the city as he worked.

I don't think peanut butter and jelly were created to go together on bread. I know that chocolate and peanut butter were not created together in a reeses cup because there is a commercial showing how the reeses cup was formed (a man with chocolate and a man with peanut butter got in a car accident, and the chocolate and peanut butter combined). Sometimes foods that you would not think of going together at all actually taste very good together. I was wondering if anyone has any interesting food combinations that they like that are not normally accepted. For instance, I once tried spaghetti noodles and A-1 steak sauce. This combination will probably not become famous any time soon. But maybe one day a weird combination of two foods can yield a product like peanut butter and jelly.

This blog is in response to cassie's stance on the distribution of peach oatmeal to bananas, blueberries, and strawberries and cream. I agree that it is unfair to the other flavors that a quaker executive decided that peaches should be present in a 2 to 1 ratio to the other flavors. However, their are viable alternatives for those of you who don't like paying for 10 packets of oatmeal and getting 4 in peach. For people who don't like peach, their are boxes available the feature all strawberries and cream. I have purchased this box myself. Although I have only ever seen strawberries and peach sold individually, the others could be available if your desire to search for them to be able to resist the peach in the variety pack is strong enough. For me, my problem with the variety pack is the banana.

In steingarten's book, he tries to make fun of the way that in America, different foods such as raw cheese and milk are not allowed, even though they are commonplace in other cultures and don't have highly significant negative effects on one's health. Why, then, does America keep out raw milk products. I think it is fair to say that America has many more rules and regulations that most European countries, including France which is where the cheese Steingarten was discussing was most ubiquitous. France's culture might include transporting indulging on raw cheeses freely. They are a more laid back society in general. America is more up tight about many things as a society. I am not surprised that the small chance that raw milk has of carrying disease versus pasteurized milk leads America to enact legislation against it.

Most people today seem to always be in a rush for something. To accommodate this, food companies sell products that are meant to fit into the on the go lifestyle that many of us live today. TV dinners, the microwaveable instant dinner that could be stored in a freezer, seemed to gain popularity throughout my childhood. Now, it seems that every type of food comes in some form of freezable and microwavable. In the grocery store yesterday, I noticed a few items in the freezer section that got my attention. They sell eggs that come pre-scrambled...all u have to do is heat them up. This was found in the same aisle as frozen lasagna in a box. These items appeal to people either because they are too lazy to cook, can't fit the time to cook into their schedules, or both. I just thought it was strange that people actually buy pre-scrambled microwaveable eggs.

Obesity is a huge problem in our nation today. The availability of unhealthy food options is partly to blame, along with the generally excepted portion sizes being too large, and people's lack of self discpline when it comes to decisions about one'e diet. I have a difficult time understanding why so many Americans allow themselves to fall into obesity. I ask myself if the taste of that greasy burger is really worth the health issues that rise with this type of food becoming habit instead of indulgence, especially when their are plenty of viable alternatives if people can exhibit some self-discpline. Probably the food I eat the most is deli meats. Having worked in a deli in high school, I know that these foods are almost all very healthy. Turkey, Ham, and Roast beef are loaded with protein and other vital nutrients and have very little saturated fats in them.

If I could chose only one type of food that I could eat for the rest of my life, it would definitely be cereal. I ate cereal every morning for breakfast in elementary school, middle school, and high school. I still have never gotten tired of it. After eating it for breakfast, I will often follow up with a post-dinner bowl of cereal sometime before bed. Cereal never gets old for me. I love the way the cereal absorbs the cold milk in my bowl and the way it tastes when it gets wet. My favorite cereal is cinnamon toast crunch, but I also really like frosted flakes, raisin bran, fruit loops, reese puffs,and many, many others.

I was out to eat this past weekend at a local Italian restuarant, and I could not help but notice the amount of food on the table next to me that had recently been vacated by a party of four. Their was enough food left on the table from their meal to feed a poor child for a week. And I don't blame the family. I was extremely hungry before I began to eat but about half way through my meal I was stuffed. I brought the rest home and ate in in my dorm the next day, but I doubt most people make use of the boxes for extra food. This extra food just goes to waste, probably millions of pounds every week at restaurants across America, enough to put a huge dent into the hunger problem if their was an iffecient way to recycle and transport these leftovers to people in need.

Simon's added some new items to the menu that I liked alot. They have some breakfast meats and egg sandwiches at decent prices compared to the sandwiches they've always had. Probably not that healthy, but not as bad as McDonald's im sure.