Today marks the 18th day of my “Kill Fatty” plan and I weight 324.8 pounds. Those of you following along at home may notice that’s a bit higher than my Saturday weight of 323. I’m thinking that 323 was one of those weird scale anomolies instead and of weighing myself again for accuracy, I jumped on that shit with vigor.

So I really haven’t lost any weight for 7 days or so, which completely sucks. I appear to be doing everything right:

• Eating within the low carb diet plan
• Walking 2 miles at lunch every day
• Snacking sensibly
• Drinking a crapload of water

Yet, I am still not losing the weight. That being said, I appear to be losing weight. My clothes are fitting better, my belt is now on it’s first hole and I just look a bit thinner. I can see veins I haven’t seen in a while, feel bones I didn’t remember were there. So generally, it’s looking good, I just need to start seeing it on the scale.

I’m confident that I will though.

I found an interesting treat on my doorstep the other day: Meyer Lemons. Meyer Lemons are guessed to be a cross between an orange and a lemon, but more to the lemon side. Apparently they are now selling them at Giant Eagle and they thought I’d appreciate having them.  Well they were right, because with them I was able to make delicious candied Meyer Lemon slices.

Candied Lemon Slices Recipe

3 Lemons (cleaned very well)
Water for boiling
Bowl of ice water
2 C Sugar
2 C Water

1. Put a pot of water (doesn’t matter how much) on the stove on high. That will come to boil while you are slicing the lemons very thinly. Slice all three lemons.

2. In a separate pot, combine the 2 cups of water and the 2 cups of sugar and place on medium-high heat.
3. Place all of the sliced lemons in the pot of boiling water, turn down the heat a bit and let the lemons simmer in the water for a minute or two. This process softens the toughness of the peel and removes some of the bitterness.

4. Remove the lemon slices and place them in the bowl of ice water to cool down.

5. Once your sugar/water pot comes to a simmer, add the lemons. Do not boil this mixture! Keep it at a low simmer for 1 hour and 20 minutes. This amount of time will allow the sugar/water mixture to permeate the lemons and candy them.

6. Before you take your lemons out of the solution, setup a few baking racks. Place your lemons on the racks and let dry. Drying can take up to 24 hours and even then they may remain a bit sticky.

Once you’ve got your candied lemon pieces there are a number of things you can do with them. You can get them dry and crispy by putting them in a low oven for a few hours. You can coat them in sugar or if you’re really looking for something tasty, you can dip them in dark chocolate.

Whatever you decide to do, store your candied lemon in an airtight container for best shelf life.

Although my first post about my decision to lose weight was yesterday, today is actually the 12th day of the process. In that 12 days I’ve lost 13 pounds. Hells yes. That’s some pretty sweet shit. So I’m down to 323 pounds.

One might ask, how can you lose 13 pounds in 12 days? Low carb baby.

I know, I know. All those people that wished me well yesterday are now going to give me shit because I picked a method of losing weight that has a lot of flaws. I’m well aware of all the reasons low carb diets suck: you can regain the weight quickly once you stop, missing out on a lot of essential nutrients and vitamins, hair loss, bad breath, fatigue, smelly pee (no, really, my pee stinks, it’s like asparagus pee all day long). You name it, I’ve heard it. And I’m fine with all of them.

Here’s why I chose to lose weight with a low carb diet:
-I eat less – it’s really easy to load up on mashed potatoes, but it’s a hell of a lot tougher to eat a mountain of beef.

-I eat healthier – No more sugar is a good thing. I basically get to choose between hearty vegetables and meat, and most of the time to fill myself up, I’m eating a ton of vegetables.

-No more snacking – Well I snack now and then, but it’s a lot less often then I used to.

-I exercise more – When you see positive results almost immediately from exercising, it’s a lot easier to keep up.

And there are a 100 more reasons that I like low carb. My thought is this, the more weight I lose, the less I will want to eat and the easier it will be for me to exercise. Let me tell you, lugging around 336 pounds, even walking is difficult. If your house is on fire, you don’t start picking out new paint colors or furniture, you have to put the fire out first before you can work on the repairs. I’m simply in the process of putting the fire out in my life and I’m using low carb to do it.

I have an addiction. Unlike a lot of other people with addictions, my addiction is socially acceptable. It doesn’t cause me to miss work or smack around my wife. I’ve never had to borrow money to make it to my next paycheck. As a matter of fact, if you count this website, my addiction has actually made me money (heroin addicts turn green with envy).

Plain and simple, I’m addicted to eating.

I eat too much. I eat the wrong things. I eat to reward myself when I do something good. I eat to console myself when something bad happens. I rationalize it by telling myself that I deserve it (which is bullshit). I eat when I’m bored. Sometimes I’ll even eat when I know I’m already full. I know I shouldn’t be eating, but I do it anyway.  I often ask myself, “Why am I eating?”, yet I never answer. I get up and think what I get to have for breakfast. While I’m eating breakfast I think about lunch and at lunch I’m thinking about what I get to have for dinner. My brain is never satisfied, no matter how much I eat.

It’s a serious problem for me, and it has been my entire life. I decided two weeks ago that I was going to to change it. If I don’t, it won’t be long until Richard Simmons is in my driveway with a Sawzall and a Ryder truck.

I plan on sharing my experience with you as I go, because all along this site has been about my life with food, why change it now? It’s going to be hard for me to share seeing as that 90% of the readership is either works with me or is related to me, but I’m going to do it anyway as even embarrassment is a good motivator.

Hi, I’m Mark, I weigh 336 pounds, and I’m a fatty.

They say the first step to any great change is admitting you have problem, on to step 2, doing something about it.

A few weeks back, I wrote about a great Thai place, Bangkok Thai, and I mentioned how much I liked their Pad Thai. I figured letting people know that a Thai restaurant makes really good Pad Thai would be a helpful bellwether for the rest of the menu. I am such an uncultured rube:

So I can’t order Pad Thai at a Thai restaurant because that’s backwoods American Thai food. Oh yeah, it also happens to be THE NATIONAL DISH OF THAILAND! Boy are those Thai people going to be pissed when they find out how “unworldly” they are.

I’ve compiled a list here of other foods you should not be eating if you want to be as cultured as these two broads:
Bratwurst and Sauerkraut  in a German restaurant
Pasta in an Italian restaurant
Sushi in a Japanese restaurant
Ceviche in a Peruvian restaurant
Pho in a Vietnamese restaurant

And you’re right elaine, these critics are real d-bags, makes this site awful.

I’m sure this is another one of those posts that is going to piss people off, but I had a horrible meal at Tommy’s in Coventry, and I wasn’t real impressed with their food. Tommy’s is a Cleveland favorite (OMG! Rachel Ray luvs that place!), especially for vegetarian hippies as much of the menu is either vegetarian or vegan.

**Before I get going on the food, a big FU to Marc’s in Coventry. “We don’t give change.” In order to park in your parking lot you need change, but you won’t give it out? You can go and get bent Marc.

I asked our waiter what he recommended with meat in it and he suggested the Curt Burger ($7.50). It’s was pretty weak. As you can see from the picture up there it looked like someone threw it up against a wall before they served it to me. For a cheese burger with bacon, onions and mayo, it lacked any real flavor. I was looking for something luscious and juicy, I didn’t get it.

Others in my party were underwhelmed as well. I tasted my wife’s meat pie and it wasn’t anything special. My friend stopped eating her spinach and mushroom pie half way through because it got “gritty”. That’s not pleasant.

While I’m being negative, our service was horrible. Our waiter must have had something very important going on in the kitchen because he was M.I.A. almost the entire time. At one point we even had to ask multiple people for refills. Maybe it’s because we had kids with us, who knows.

The one bright spot was their french fries. Oooh, those bastards are delicious. Crispy and crunchy fresh-cut potatoes, perfect doused in vinegar. Make sure you order those if you go.

It sucks having a crappy meal at a Cleveland landmark, but Tommy’s was definitely not up to par that night.

Tommy’s Restaurant
1824 Coventry Rd.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
216-321-7757

Crispy crunchy little bits of spicy pork. Life doesn’t get much better than that. Now traditionally pork carnitas is made by cooking pieces of pork butt or ham in copious amounts of it’s own fat for hours until the meat is perfectly tender. Then, the meat is removed and the temperature of the oil is turned up so it gets smoking hot and the meat is returned. This gives the meat a luscious inside and a crispy exterior that is nothing short of magical.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a kitchen in my house capable of handling the heating of numerous pounds of lard. Nor do I want to deal with the hassle of messing with gallons of hot lard. You have to pick your battles people! Using this recipe can get you pretty close to traditional carnitas with minimal effort and trouble.

Carnitas Recipe

5 lbs. Pork Shoulder – cut into pieces
1 Medium Onion – cut into chunks
2 Limes – quartered
1 Jalepino – sliced
4 Ancho chilies – sliced, seeds and tops removed
3/4 T salt
2 T cumin

1. Preheat your oven to 300°. Place all of the meat into a large dutch oven. If you don’t have a dutch oven, use your heaviest oven-proof pad with a lid.

2. Get all of your other ingredients chopped, sliced and so forth.

3. Add your vegetables and spices to the meat and give it all a good stir to mix things. Don’t worry if it’s not perfectly mixed, it will all work itself out during it’s time in the oven.

4. Put the lid on and cook in the 300° oven for 4 hours. Stir everything about every hour or so. Yeah, that’s right, 4 hours. After about an hour in the oven the fat will begin to melt out of the pork and all of the vegetables will give up their water, essentially creating a braising liquid for the meat. I told you this was easy, that meat is just about cooking itself.

5. Take the meat out of the oven and let it rest for 20 minutes with the lid on. That dutch oven is blazing hot and you don’t want anything to do with it right now.

6. Using a slotted spoon, remove all of the meat to a bowl. You can discard any of the miscellaneous peppers or limes you may find along the way. You should now be left with quite a bit of liquid in your pot. Carefully, pour that off into a bowl. Cover each bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight.

7. The next day, preheat your oven to 425°. Take all of our meat and lay it out on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Now, lets take a look at that liquid we saved. It should have separated and congealed. We don’t need all the grease in there, so scrape that all of the top and discard it. (Or you can use it make the best eggs you’ve ever had!)

8. With that rather unappetizing pork jello you have remaining, spread it over the pork on the cookie sheet. During cooking, this will melt down and provide a lip-smacking glaze for the meat. Put the meat in the oven for 15 – 20. Just keep an eye on it, so that it doesn’t burn.

There you have it, easy oven pork carnitas. The exterior of the meat is nice and crispy; the inside is moist and succulent.  Those perfect little bits of pork are perfect for nachos or tacos, and they make an excellent filling for a Mexican omelet.

Our television stations and radio waves are filled all day long by people complaining about all the great injustices in this world: slavery, child prostitution, world hunger and even Global Warming. However, not a word is mentioned about the greatest injustice faced by human kind: grocery store guacamole. Have you ever had this shit? It’s horrific. It’s filled with all kinds of preservatives and fillers because god forbid they should use actual avocados. But do not fret. Making guacamole at home is super easy and delicious.

Easy Guacamole Dip Recipe

makes about 2 cups

2 Ripe Avocados, peeled and chopped
1Tbsp Jalapeño, minced
2 Cloves Garlic, minced
2Tbsp Onion, minced
1 Lime, juiced
Salt
Pepper

 
1. Mince your onion, garlic and jalapeño, then put it in a bowl.

2. Scoop your avocados out of their shells and remove the pits. Coarsely chop the avocado, don’t worry about getting it perfect. Place that into the bowl.

3. Cut your lime in half, squeeze all of the juice into the bowl with the avocados and the other ingredients.

4. Get out your potato masher and put a hurt on all of those ingredients. You may need to scrape down the bowl midway through, but mash until it reaches an consistency you like.

5. Taste it. Need salt or pepper? If so, add as much as needed.

That’s it. 5 minutes and you’ve got yourself some of the best guacamole you’ll ever have.

I really like Thai food and there are a ton of good Thai restaurants in Cleveland, but I hate they almost all of them try to make Thai food something fancy and upscale. Do I really need a garnish man? Let my plate be with just the stuff I can eat. I want Thai street food here in the US, is that too much to ask for?
That’s why I like Bangkok Thai. They’ve got really good food and nothing else. Hell, even the service sucks most of the time, but their food is awesome so it’s a lot easier to deal with the fact your waitress is a pill. 

Bangkok Thai is on Mayfield Rd in Lyndhurst which is the part after all the exciting stuff and Mayfield, but before all the exciting stuff in Little Italy. It’s in a little strip mall so it’s easy to pass unless you know what it looks like. I’d suggest taking a look at this Google Map street view if you’re not familiar with the area. 

My favorite dish here is the Pad Thai with the clear noodles, medium spicy. It’s so well done, a perfect combination of all the flavors and the medium spice is just right for me. Simplicity is also a plus for this Pad Thai, nothing fancy in it and no crazy garnishes, just what you want when you’re craving those delicious Thai flavors. 

They’ve also got a beef, lemon grass and ginger soup that is spicy enough to flat out kill the H1N1 virus along with most of your taste buds. 

Bangkok Thai has some really excellent standard Thai dishes that I just love. If you temper your expectations on what eating at a restaurant should be, courteous service and whatnot, I’m pretty sure you’ll come out loving Bangkok Thai as well.

**I’d like it to be noted that although I had every opportunity to, I did not once use Bangkok as a pun. But man did I want to. 

Bangkok Thai
5359 Mayfield Rd
Cleveland, OH 44124-2456
(440) 684-1982

In the very near future we may have a traveling correspondent bringing you restaurant reviews from around the world (mostly just North Dakota though), but I thought until then I would tide you over with some review for a couple joints I ate at while traveling over the last few weeks.

Tony Packo’s – Toledo, Ohio: I’m sure a lot of people reading this have ties to Toledo, but you’re feelings mean nothing to me, so I’m gonna just say it: Toldeo is a freakin’ dump. Hell, even John Denver though the place sucked. That being said, Tony Packo’s restaurant is worth the visit. They specialize in hot dogs (they are actually more like sausages), chili and stuffed cabbage. The place was made popular on M.A.S.H. by Toledo native Jamie Farr and just about every celebrity and politician since then has stopped in for a dog.

Campus Polleyes – Bowling Green, Ohio: Normally the food you enjoyed in college lacks distinction years later when all of the alcohol has left your system, but this is not true for Campus Polleyes. They have a unique offering that I honestly can not believe isn’t on every pizzeria menu across the country: stuffed breadsticks. These huge breadsticks are stuffed with the pizza toppings of your choosing, brushed with garlic butter and served with your choice of dipping sauces. So simple, yet so delicious. My favorite combo: chicken, mushroom and cheese with ranch dipping sauce.

Myles Pizza – Bowling Green, Ohio: Their pizza crust is horrific, just maybe a step above actual cardboard. Just maybe. Yet, I would easily place their pizza in my all time top 5. How is that possible you ask? A spicy tomato sauce that absolutely blows away any that I’ve ever had and it doesn’t hurt that they put about 3 pounds of cheese on a small pizza. A nice feature they have is that if you want to pick one up, they can partially bake it for you, so you can finish it at home.

Rusty Bucket – Northville, Michigan: Neat little sports bar/pub atmosphere, a whole mess of beer and some seriously tasty food. They have this sandwich called the “Italian Torpedo” that is out of this world. It consists of a slab of Italian sausage topped with cappicola, salami, provolone, lettuce, tomato, onion, peppers and Italian dressing. Go figure, I try the place in Michigan to find out it’s a chain from Columbus. Oh, and look, they have a location in Solon.

Zingerman’s Deli – Ann Arbor, Michigan: While exploring Ann Arbor a local vendor told us that we must visit Zingerman’s before we leave, I could kiss that woman. This place is unbelievable. It’s a deli, bread bakery, cheese shop, coffee shop, pastry bakery and chocolatier all rolled into one store. We were there on a Saturday and the place was jam packed with people looking to get a sandwich from the deli and I can vouch that their Reuben is worth every minute you have to wait for it. If it’s food or related to food there is a good place these guys sell it. I would have loved to have had a whole day there, but luckily they have an online catalog where you can order a number of their products.