Archive for March, 2009

More wheat-free flourless pancakes

March 28, 2009

Spring break has allowed a little time to explore some new wheat-free pancake ideas.

pancakesmallThe first is a variation of an Old Time Egg Pancake recipe from the “Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking” (original copyright 1947). Basically it’s four eggs, 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream, a pinch of salt, two tablespoons organic lard or butter and an apple, sliced. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Whip the eggs and whip the cream into the eggs along with the salt. Turn out into a hot cast-iron skillet with the lard. Top with the apple slices and place into the oven for about 20 minutes.

The second is a waffle made using the grain-free almond pancake recipe. 

waffle

The almond pancake/waffle recipe has been greatly improved with the recent addition to the kitchen of a Vita-Mix 5200. I bought mine reconditioned from the company and saved hundreds. This blender literally makes flour out of the almonds, much better than the Cuisinart I was using previously. Then I drop in the eggs and it makes a perfectly smooth batter.

These pancakes and waffles are an enjoyable and healthful alternative to those made with wheat-flour.

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Posted in Real food nutrition | 2 Comments »

Bracing for a big spring storm

March 26, 2009

Big spring snowstorms are our most important source of moisture here in the Wet Mountains. But for as much life as these storms can bring, they can also be deadly for those who are unprepared.snow1

This time of year I keep my eye on the Weather Channel and NOAA, which has a website that allows a user to zero in tightly on a forecast for a local area. Today NOAA’s forecast indicated the storm I’ve been tracking for the past week could dump anywhere from 16 to 28 inches of snow here in the next 48 hours.

I went into high alert and began to prepare for the worst. In 2003, a storm like this brought 7 feet and stranded us here for five days. Over at Bear Bones Ranch, which I manage for Ross and Jan Wilkins, we feed both the horses and cattle with 1,200-pound round bales that I set out in feeders with a tractor. This works out great, but you need to be careful with the timing so that you don’t run low right before a big storm.

I checked the cattle hay feeder and saw it was less than half full, probably enough for two more days, but maybe not. There’s an arena in the pasture where the cattle are, so I put a big round bale inside the arena and closed the gate. If the cattle run out of hay in their feeder during this storm, I can now open the arena and cut the strings on this bale and they’ll be fed for several more days.

There also are eight horses at the ranch. They had a significant amount of a round bale left, but I decided to put out another one just in case.

I topped off all water tanks, 170 gallons on hand for the horses, and 350 gallons for the cattle. If the power goes out, as it often does during heavy, wet storms, this should be enough water for a couple of days.

Back at home I made similar preparations for my burros, though it’s much simpler to fill two 70-gallon tanks and set a small square bale of hay out by the fence not far from my front door.

With all this done before noon, I decided to go for a run before the storm set in for real. I headed out into the wind, and shortly before being blinded by the first squalls of snow, I saw something most people probably never will — two red-tailed hawks mating in an aspen tree.

Soon after I arrived back home the storm set in for real. The only thing left to do was to wait it out.

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Footloose in the Nike Free

March 21, 2009

feetYou’d think after 30 years of running (I started in 1979 and ran my first marathon in 1980) I’d have some sort of clue about running shoes. But feet, bodies and training styles do change over the years. And, unfortunately, so do shoe models.

For many of those 30 years I’ve been able to trust the Nike Pegasus models (even pre “Air”). But I’ve also had success with a number of other shoes. I won the Pueblo River Trail Marathon in 1984 in a pair of Brooks Chariots. And I won several World Championship Pack-Burro races in Montrail’s Vitesse. I had a sponsorship from that company for a few years, but the Vitesse became difficult to get, even for sponsored athletes (it now appears Montrail may have discontinued the model — I can’t find it on the website), and so I had to change shoes.

In recent years I had gone back to the Pegasus and, aside from some minor pain on the top of my right foot, everything had been pretty good until Nike decided to change the model this year. I bought a new pair a few weeks ago and my feet and ankles hurt after just a couple of runs. I decided to return the shoes.

The only running shoes in my closet that didn’t look like they’d been through a meat grinder were an old pair of Nike Free. These shoes were designed allow the feet to act as if they are barefoot, and I’d run in them periodically. Recently I’ve been editing Dr. Phil Maffetone’s 5th edition of “In Fitness and In Health” and he’s a big advocate of barefoot running. I thought, “what the heck,” and started running in the Frees daily. They are very flexible, low to the ground and have basically no support or cushioning whatsoever — sort of like wearing slippers.

Most modern running shoes force you to land on your heels, which is natural for walking but not for running. Try running barefoot on some grass or sand and you will find it virtually impossible to land on your heels. The natural way to land is mid-foot. In the Frees I found my footstrike to be very natural.

There was some adjustment as my feet, ankles and all associated tendons and muscles had to remember to do their actual jobs. But after about three weeks I felt comfortable using the Frees as my daily training shoes. I’ve been getting in 35-45 miles per week, and I’m not running on pavement, but rather on gravel roads, rocky trails, through snowbanks and mud, and on generally hilly terrain, often leading or driving a pack-burro.

Because of this mountain environment, I still felt like I might need more shoe. So after perusing the catalogs I settled on returning the aforementioned Pegasus (there was a 60-day return policy) and trading them for a pair of Nike Air Zoom Skylon +2, which looked a little like the Free on steroids. The shoes arrived this week and after just three runs I was practically crippled with pain in both forefeet.

A closer inspection of my feet revealed that their shape had actually changed over the past three weeks in the Frees. They now were shaped like, uh, feet. Not shoes.

I went back to the Frees today and felt immediately better on a 7-mile run. I’m sending the Skylons back.

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Posted in Fitness and running | 3 Comments »

Finally, the first calf of spring

March 19, 2009

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I’d been keeping my eye on a cow I call “Number 30″ for more than a week. Her udder had been swelling during the days running up to the full moon last week, and I thought for sure there’d be a calf then. But no. A minor snowstorm passed through on Friday but still no calf. The weekend passed and I began to think maybe Number 30 was just “bagging up” early. But today I found the cow off by herself in a group of trees, and this dandy little calf with her. When I came back with my camera to get a photo I was able only to snap one shot of the calf before his protective mom wisked him away.

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‘Wild Burro Tales’ in the works

March 18, 2009

519kg6y4jtl_sl160_aa115_Back in 1998 I put together a collection of 11 stories I had written about my pack-burro racing adventures and published it as a 106-page book that I called “Pack-Burro Stories.” It wasn’t exactly Ken Kesey’s “Last Go Round,” which was a fictional account of the 1911 Pendleton Round-Up rodeo based on real-life characters and events, but my little book did serve to introduce a number of people to pack-burro racing, some of the characters involved, and burros in general.

Over the years I’ve been surprised at the continued interest in “Pack-Burro Stories.” From time to time people still contact me looking for a copy. As the number of these books dwindle to about 50, I’m putting together a new collection of burro essays that will be published under the title “Wild Burro Tales” in the spirit of the old Ben Green books. What I’m planning to do is keep the original 11 essays from “Pack-Burro Stories” and add several more that I’ve collected over the last nine years. I’m also arranging some new artwork to help make the book more interesting.

When the book is out, hopefully in the next couple months, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, check out “Last Go Round,” and any of the Ben Green books such as “Horse Tradin’,” “The Village Horse Doctor,” “Wild Cow Tales,” and “A Thousand Miles of Mustangin’.” All these books are great reading for those who love animals and the West.

And if you want one of the last few copies of “Pack-Burro Stories” get in touch with me at jackassontherun@gmail.com.

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An a-peeling way to lower skin cancer risk

March 9, 2009

orangesSeveral times a week I like to slice an organic orange thinly across the sections and eat some of the peel along with the slices.

Why eat citrus peel? Because a substance called d-limonene in citrus peels may help lower the risk of skin cancer.

And why organic? Some conventional citrus may have been genetically engineered to remove limonene, which is a bitter phytonutrient, in an effort to develop sweeter fruit for the consumer. In addition, if you’re eating citrus peels you’ll expose yourself to less pesticide residue if you eat organic.

Limonene has proven to be safe and to also have chemopreventive effects against other types of cancer, including breast cancer and colorectal cancer.

Another way I eat citrus peel is a cold grapefruit soup. I chop up a grapefruit, peel some of the fruit and toss it and some of the peel into a food processor or high-powered blender. A little honey will take the edge off it.

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Newspaper changes spark memories

March 5, 2009

I woke up this morning to find myself quoted by my old friend Ed Quillen in his Denver Post column about the Rocky Mountain News closure. The funny thing was that he pulled the “at least the cows have jobs” quote from the first column I wrote for him when he started Colorado Central magazine in March 1994.

While all eyes were fixed on the Rocky Mountain News closure last week, three other Colorado newspapers underwent a big change. The Boulder Daily Camera, Colorado Daily and the Broomfield Enterprise were turned over to MediaNews Group when the Rocky folded.

I have personal history with both the Camera and the Daily — I reported for both while a journalism student at the University of Colorado.

In those days the Daily didn’t consider itself just a campus newspaper and competed with the Camera for news both on-campus and throughout the city. My job for the Daily was mainly to cover the CU student government, which in those days had a budget bigger than some small cities. I also free-ranged any other stories I found, and once broke a story that went national when I revealed an infestation of cockroaches in the student union building. In trade for my reporting the Daily was to give me a scholarship that paid my tuition and books for a year.

But after one semester I was fired over my reporting style. There was a letter of dismissal containing points that I would dispute, and a copy was sent to the journalism school dean. I sought counsel with the CU legal services over what I believed to be a case of libel. But the dean intervened, called me into his office one day and presented me with a check for the second semester.

The next year I found myself as an intern for the Camera as part of one of my reporting classes. One day I caught wind of a story that I thought was pretty good. Beavers had built a dam in one of the campus drainage ditches and the resulting backup had flooded the engineering building basement. Besides just being plain interesting, the irony of rodent dam-builders flooding the engineering building did not escape me. I didn’t even ask first — I just made the calls and wrote the story.

When I presented it to my editor he looked it over and told me that it wasn’t a news story. He didn’t want it. I walked out of the Camera building shaking my head.

By the next day the Denver media had descended on campus to report on the beaver story and television crews and reporters were seen by the drainage ditch and pond east of the engineering building.

Sometime that day I got a sheepish call from my editor.

“You still have that beaver story?”

If my memory serves me, it ran front page with art the next day.

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My eating plan for heath and fitness

March 1, 2009

I have been working with Dr. Phil Maffetone on a fifth edition of his book, “In Fitness and In Health.” I’ve edited much of Phil’s material over the past decade and this is the third edition of this book I’ve edited. If all goes well, the book will be available on amazon.com in a few weeks. When we’re done it will be about 300 pages of the best researched and practiced advise for diet and nutrition as well as exercise, lifestyle and disease prevention.

Editing “In Fitness and In Health” again has served to remind of how I try to eat. Of course, everyone is individual and even I am constantly adjusting, but this is the basic plan that has worked for me over several years — you’ll notice I mostly eat real food.

What I eat

• Plenty of pure, clean water.

• Vegetables, fruits, berries, 10 servings per day mostly from vegetables. I try to eat a variety, raw and cooked, and one raw salad daily. I buy organic as much as possible, but use the Environmental Working Group’s Report Card on Produce to help make decisions when quality organic produce is not available.

• Organic/pasture-raised beef, pork, bison, lamb, chicken or wild game.

• Organic eggs.

• Raw almonds, cashews and walnuts, and nut butters made from these nuts, as well as whole flax and sesame seeds.

• Extra-virgin olive oil for salads and low-temperature cooking. Organic butter, organic lard, coconut oil for cooking.

• Fully cultured organic cheeses and yogurts, whole heavy cream.

• Wild-caught fish (limit to two servings per month).

• Small amounts of legumes, and some whole grains, though I avoid wheat as much as possible.

• Extras — within reason, dark chocolate, red wine, organic coffee and tea, honey and agave nectar for a sweetener.

What I avoid eating

• Foods that contain high amounts of cane sugar, or any amounts of high-fructose corn syrup and other highly processed sugars such as maltose, maltodextrin, etc., and fake sweeteners.

• Trans fats (hydrogenated oils — read the ingredients label).

• High-polyunsaturated vegetable oils (corn, soybean, safflower, sunflower, etc.) and packaged foods containing these vegetable oils.

• Foods containing wheat flour (bread, rolls, bagels, cereal, pasta, tortillas, cookies, crackers, chips, etc.).

• Farm-raised fish.

• Highly processed soy products (read labels and look for soy protein isolate, soy protein casienate, etc. — see www.truthinlabeling.org).

• Milk.

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