slamboard

The above video is best presented without commentary.

I want to make a short post about how I recently found a VISA card that had been left in an ATM. I approached the machine that was outside on a main street. It was beeping frantically and displaying in a language that I cannot read. I pressed a random button and the card came out. I looked at the name and then looked around for possible card owners. I didn’t see any, but I saw a police officer and I showed the card to her. She pointed way up the hill at an old man walking with a cane and told me to run after him. He responded to the name on the card and I gave it to him with a pat on the shoulder. He thanked me.

Seafood like Gulf oysters are a great way to make a low carb diet interesting. Six raw oysters add up to about 57 calories. They contain 5.9 grams of protein, 2.1 grams of fat and 3.3 grams of carbohydrate. They are also an excellent source of Zinc (76mcg), as well as Vitamin B12 (16.3mcg).

So what is stopping us from enjoying these slippery dudes on a regular basis? Well, some of us may be in the at risk groups for exposure to the food borne bacteria that is commonly in oysters. The bacteria that we are talking about is called Vibrio vulnificus and it does not make healthy people sick. However, people who suffer from conditions such as liver disease (from hepatitis, cirrhosis, alcoholism, or cancer), iron overload disease (hemochromatosis), diabetes, cancer (including lymphoma, leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease), stomach disorders or any condition that results in a weakened immune system are at risk. Go to BeOysterAware.com for more details.

If you want to minimize the risk, you have options. The easiest thing is to opt for fully cooking your oysters. If you prefer the raw experience, you can buy oysters that have been processed in such a way as to reduce the bacteria to non detectable levels. The industry has developed a few ways of doing this. Individual quick freezing works and so does a heating and cooling pasteurization method. They can also use a heat and pressure pasteurization method. I have to assume that there is a detectable difference in taste. Roughly 10% of the oysters sold in the USA are subjected to either individual quick-freezing (IQF), low heat pasteurization or heat-cool pasteurization (HCP), or high-hydrostatic pressure (HPP). I have purchased IQF seafood before and I was satisfied with the product.

Take a few moments to check out the information at www.ShrinkYourself.com and then think for yourself.

There is a picture of a lady in red on the website. She is Michelle Fiordaliso, the Clinical Director of ShrinkYourself.com. She lost 40 pounds and she hosts the Shrink Yourself blog. Tackling emotional eating is often a prerequisite to following weight loss plans. This site makes it the primary goal. This makes a lot of sense to me. A lot of overweight people eat as a response to a number of emotional triggers. Ideally, we should only eat when we are hungry.

There is an online program, a book and also a community. The forum is free to join and it is moderately active.

I used to work for a Fair Trade Coffee company. I think labeling is vitally important to that business because they had to effectively differentiate the product from all the conventional coffee on the shelf. Since part of the branding was environmental responsibility, packaging decisions had to preclude any of the wasteful, gimmicky stuff. When I worked there, they were opting for unlabeled bags from a large domestic manufacturer. They then had a local printer mass produce self adhesive labels in huge quantity and they contracted a workshop that employs mentally disabled people to put labels on bags on a weekly as needed basis.

Labelworldusa.com can make your Wine Label or other label in large quantity. If it makes more sense for you to print your own, they have solutions of various capacities for that as well. They have design services and they know about branding.

I like the idea of insert labels made with FDA approved food safe inks. They allow for more flexibility with your food packaging decisions.

FoodConnect.com looks like an excellent resource for people regardless of what way of eating they choose. Users can submit their recipes to www.foodconnect.com and nutritional information is generated by the site. The accuracy of this information may not always be precisely accurate, but I think it would be a great guide when you are looking for new recipes to fit into your life.

If you are looking for unhealthy food, try the recipe that someone came up with when they tried to replicate their favorite rib recipe from a restaurant that closed in Hawaii. One serving has 104% of your daily recommended sodium and 84% of the fat that you should have in a day. There are recipes with goat cheese and dates that are a lot healthier.

I like the rating system. There is a sidebar table of the highest rated recipes for each category. That’s how I found the rib recipe. It must be really good. I might try it with a reduction in the salt.