Chettinadu Lamb Curry and Green Beans Poriyal

Oh, what a perfect day today has been, with respect to my diet! Started the day with a 3 berries 'n' banana shake with soy milk and whey protein. For lunch, I tried cooking Chettinad Lamb Curry and garlic-beans-spinach poriyal based on the recipes from Arusuvai.com. The lamb curry turned out to be spicier than I prefer, but still I found it to be tasty with a nice aroma of black pepper!

by the way, here are some nutritional highlights of lamb and green beans from whfoods:

• 100 gms of lamb provided 100% of Trytophan - a essential amino acid thats increases Serotonin levels in the brain as well as Melatonin. Seratonin, as you might have heard is a neurotransmitter that affects Appetite, Sleep, Sex Drive, Attention and Pain. (the ubiquitous pill :-) Prozac works by increasing Seratonin levels to treat depression, OCD etc.,) In addition, Melatonin also induces sleep. So, eat more Lamb when you are depressed or want to relax ;-)

• 100 gms of Lamb also provides around 40% of Selenium, vitamin B12 (), vitamin B3 (Niacin), 25% zinc (boosts immunity), 20 % phosphorus (increases calcium absorption)

• Since Lamb has Purines which are broken into uric acid, people with gout or kidney stones should limit their intake of lamb :-(

• 125 gms of green beans provides 25% vitamin K (aids blood coagulation), 20% vitamin C, 18% manganese (aids healthy skin, bone, cartilage formation), 16% vitamin A(vision), 16% Fiber, 10% Potassium, 10% Folate, 9% iron!
  

In the evening, after burning some 700 calories in a elliptical :-) , I made a quick dinner burrito with a multi-grain tortilla (130 cals, 5 gms fiber, 5 gms protein) with some lamb curry pieces, some yogurt and the left over beans poriyal!

and then had a mango for dessert :-)

hmmm... wish everyday I ate healthy food like this!

Free Audiobooks from LibriVox

Hearing about Helen Keller in recent news about some new photos of her, I was searching for the audio book of her autobiography, 'The Story of My Life' and found it in LibriVox's website - This is a project for offering free audio books of famous books in the public domain. Here are two books that I am listening to, while panting in the gym :-)

Story of My Life - by Helen Keller

Origin of Species - by Charles Darwin

There is also, works of Jane Austen, Mark Twain etc.,

I feel that LibriVox is a perfect complement of Project Gutenberg which provides free e-books in public domain!

Indianized Black-Eyed Peas Chili!

okay, I am calling this dish as "Chili" just for lack of a better term - or may be call it Hummus ? though it does not have any Tahini and Olive Oil! some other closer indian names could be "Chutney" or "Thuvayal" or "Thogayal" :-) in my my mother tongue (Tamil)...

anyways, whats in a name - don't we all know that "A Dish by any other name would taste as Good" :-) I loved its taste and I just ate it without even bread or something - it kind of tasted similar to "Ven Pongal" and I have to admit that I found it's taste so irresistible that I ate like 2 cups of black-eyed peas just standing in the kitchen :-) and still had the satisfaction of eating a perfect meal (low fat, high protein, high fiber :-))

oh, here's the 1-line "recipe" :-) just fry 1 or 2 green chillies, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tsp turmeric and grind the fried mixture along with 2 cups of boiled black-eyed peas and 2 tbsp (or less) of coconut and Voila!

here are some nutritional tidbit that make me love this dish and eat it more often :-)

• Black-eyed peas is one of the top low carb beans - only 116 cals per cup compared to 164 cals per cup of garbanzo beans (here is the beans nutrition comparison table)
• Has good soluble and insoluble fiber that will give all the goodness of fiber including satiety, good glycemic index, avoid constipation, reduce blood cholesterol in the long run etc., :-)

Enjoy!

[AmazonForum] Vegetarianism discussion

In the wake of the largest beef recall in the history of US, here's an entertaining discussion :-) on one of those never ending discussions - vegetarianism, halal, kosher, PETA, Soylent Green! etc... seems like there is a growing feeling abt turning back to the old way of eating less meat due to the meat "production" process and due to health risks associated with high consumption of red meat!

Here are some interesting quotes from the thread...

"If someone were going to slaughter you would you rather they slit your throat and let you bleed out or would you rather be stunned first then have your throat slit? Halal and kosher slaughter techniques are not humane. Slaughter house techniques are more humane but worse in practice because it happens too quickly."

*****

" Oh well, so long as we're killing them in a nice way then that's OK. Do you realise how crazy that sounds?

If you had a pet dog that required euthanasia and the vet suggested just slitting the animals throat would you consider that humane or would you demand sedation?"

*****

"Chickens are usually shackled upside down and dunked in electrified water tanks. do you know what "debeaking" is? why it's done? to laying hens as well as meat chickens? do you know what "caponized" means?"

*****

"we (americans) are poised to make the decisions which set standards for the next generation of human-species-life on this planet.

time is now.

as we blithely consume (useless) products manufactured in sweatshop conditions "overseas"...

debating whether or not a "plastic-clamshell-package-opening tool" is a good investment or not

when our dna siblings are dying of aids in africa, and our president won't send them condoms, because of religious-right proscriptions against the prophylactic prevention of pregnancy

that's only a rhetorical example of the stupidity we embody

the list is endless, and i would gladly eat a chimp, a hamster a snake or any gross-seeming food if i could open the blind eye we are turning in this critical moment of history."

*****

Two folks in the thread started arguing about one person posting with some punctuation mistakes(!?) and the other trying to tell that that person needs to first learn the language since spelling mistakes in the "post" points to sloppiness and laziness... then one person, replied to them, with,
" Hey guys, why don't you move your language discussion to the "We look like fools" forum?" timely and very funny :-)

*****

"I have been a vegetarian for 35 years. Heard it all. People will eat meat if that is what they want ot do. But.......do not pretend to "care" about the animals and then sit down to a carnivorious meal."

*****

When someone asked, "whats wrong with eating milk", another replied, "Cows make milk to feed their babies. Would you object if a farmer kept human women and hooked them up to electronic pumps twice a day and sold their milk to be consumed by another species? What about if they were having their hair shaved off so we could make sweaters?"

okay, enough browsing this looooong thread! Ciao!

[Zen] Taste for Life

"There was once a man who was being chased by a ferocious tiger across a field. At the edge of the field there was a cliff. In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff.

Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death.

That's when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.

He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste."

******************************

Following are some interpretations of this story:

"There is often a desire to complete the story, to find a way out of this predicament or that dilemma. It is easy to forget that within the limitations of the moment, there is freedom. In this story, it’s the experience of the fresh taste of the strawberry. It is different in each case. Not every day can be an easy day for anyone. The freedom of the moment is always available, even when circumstances are grim."

[Zen Master Wu Kwang] "Facing our failings and our weakness and yet still again rousing up that energy of "try" is very much connected to our view of what it really means to be alive, to enliven our environment, to enliven our relationship and to be able to really be responsible and responsive."

And here is another "interesting" interpretation for this parable from smszen:

"Take this story (which is a variation of an old Zen story).
A woman hangs below the lip of a cliff, holding onto a root
that is pulling out, tiger above, thousand-foot drop below—
and, just nearby, a strawberry.
I’ve actually always disliked this story.
It seemed to be about getting what you could out of life,
and I didn’t really think that was the point.
But if we take it in as a dream,
we are all of it: we are the tiger, hungry for flesh—we are the strawberry,
hanging ripe and sweet in the sun. We are the woman whose arm aches from
holding on and who doesn’t want to fall. We are the taste in her mouth that is
fear, hunger and strawberry—whether she gets it or not.
We are the dirt falling from where the root pulls at it.
We are the air through which we are falling.
We are the falling, and
we are the vast universe in which we fall, all together, until
the falling itself is the ground we stand on.

So then the story is not at all, anymore, about what does she do!
The story is about asking, about tasting in our own mouth
—in our own life—
the full taste of our human dilemma.

The story is about love;
because when we are it, the whole thing,
when we know we are it,
we know how it is for woman, strawberry, tiger,
cliff and chasm to be falling together through space and time.
And then, tasting each bit as we fall,
we are free to do whatever it is we must do.

Why does this matter?
It matters because when we shut our lives out
when we refuse to taste, and refuse to fall
the shutting out creates lies in and between us,
and those lies hurt us and hurt others.

Life calls to us, calls again and again
asking of us our true and loving response,
which is what we have to offer
in thanks for the joy,
for tiger, strawberry, friend and wind, the taste of falling."

- Sarah Bender, Sensei

Warren Buffett...

Having heard his name everywhere as being the greatest investor and always amused by the "highly" priced Berkshire Hathaway stocks (BRK-A now trading at US $135000 per share - yes, thats the number - no typos :-)), was just reading his biography... It is very interesting!

His Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters shows his funny side too, besides his investing genius! here are some cool facts and quotes about Warren Buffett...

• Forbes 2nd richest person on earth with net worth of $55 Billion
• Has agreed to donate $30 Billion to charity and here's his quote :

"I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil... I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well—disproportionately well. Mike Tyson, too. If you can knock a guy out in 10 seconds and earn $10 million for it, this world will pay a lot for that. If you can bat .360, this world will pay a lot for that. If you're a marvelous teacher, this world won't pay a lot for it. If you are a terrific nurse, this world will not pay a lot for it." "I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. ... I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."

• Despite the riches, he still lives in the same house in Omaha that he bought for $30,000 in 1958!

• Buffett was the only student to get A+ in "Security Analysis" course from Benjamin Graham in Columbia Business School, dubbed as the father of modern security analysis
  
• When asked about not leaving the bulk of his fortune to his kids in an interview with Charlie Rose, Buffett reiterates his view about leaving wealth to kids,

"I want to give my kids just enough so that they could do anything but not nothing!" and he goes on to joke that,

"we have a choice between having a foundation like this [Gates foundation], doing tremendous things to people all over the world, OR having it go to a bunch of people that came from a lucky sperm club!" :-)

• Enjoyed his funny comment about Gold, "It gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."

• Some more quotes...

"In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield."

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."

Crocheting ?!

last week, I got a chance to try crocheting (crow-shay-ing :-)) for the first time and I realized that it is a fun hobby that gives instant gratification in the form of scarves, hats, mufflers, tote bags etc that could all be done in a evening just watching tv! I was even thinking that if I get any bedridden due to some handicap, I would want to take up Crocheting as a hobby if possible :-)

tried doing a hat and a mini-shawl using the knifty knitter circular loom and it was really satisfying to see the hat and the shawl that I made myself ;-)

looking forward to learn some real crocheting without the loom now!

Quake 4 - the Network Guardian

After a scary intro of the Network Guardian when going through the elevator in, i think, Data Processing Terminal (revisited level), I finally met the monster in the third tower...

Despite the intimidating looks, the Network Guardian (NG) is actually an easy kill once you know some basic tricks against his attacks! He is equipped with a massive blaster and guided rockets and can also try to hover over you and burn you with the fire from his Jet Pack. When you get real close to him, he will also try to stomp you down with his big, smelly feet!! In between, 1 or 2 strogg aircraft might try to drop some bombs on you... Here are some tricks that can make this a piece of cake!

- Strafing left and right is the key! Do you remember what Dori, the absent minded fish sings in Finding Nemo ? "just keep swimming, just keep swimming" :-) that is what seems to help a lot in Quake 4!

What I found to work well is that as soon as you see the NG raise his blaster arm (his right arm) to fire at you, just change the strafing direction immediately - before he starts firing. and you will dodge his bullets :-)

- I tried various gun combinations for killing NG - even shot gun by circling around the NG at close range :-) and I feel that the best choices are the quick firing ones! Machine Gun, Hyper Blaster, Nail Gun (probably the best gun since it has homing capability), Rockets and the Dark Matter Gun (DMG). Since there are refill ammos here for Nail Gun, Rockets and DM cores, I preferred using those...

Since the DMG takes a while (2 or 3 seconds :-)) to recharge, you can consider it using in the beginning when the NG comes first.

hmmm, these are a tip-too-many for this silly NG ;-) Just enjoy the game without thinking too much of strategy and you will be fine :-)

"Use you intuition, Luke!"