5. Guacamole!

Not only do I want to share my cooking experiences in Cookin' with Plaid, but I also want to share milestones in the progress of my self improvement project, and I'm definitely losing more weight!  Unfortunately, I still outweigh my bathroom scale's max. capacity of 330 lbs. and I haven't been weighed since I went to the doctor.  However, I have another indicator of weight loss.  Some of the following story I wrote about in my first entry of this blog.  It was about how a debacle with my pants really got me motivated on my weight loss program.  However, I assure you most of the following is new.  It just rings a few bells.

Over a year ago, I ballooned to a size that limited me to one pair of Levi's 505, with a waist of 54.  Actually, they got to a point where I could fasten the top button and bring the zipper up to within an inch of the top.  Absolutely humiliating, but the truth.  I think it was last November or December that my roommate in Columbus offered to get me more jeans as an early X-mas gift.  I told him that our best bet would be to go on the internet and order them rather than running all over the city of Columbus on some wild goose chase for jeans.  

I went to the Levi's website assuming that I could find every kind of Levi's made in every size they made.  The largest size I could find were 54 waist in any style.  I guess the assumption would be that Levi's "Loose Fitting" 560s are the logical choice for a fat bastard like me, but those jeans are actually made for people with protruding asses.  Despite the fact that I'm morbidly obese, I still have a flat cracker ass.  If anything, I'm a muffin top.  My fat bulges out from about where the top of my ass is all the way around and then droops as if my legs were in some sort of baking cup and the rest expanded from there.  So the jeans fit strangely on my strange body shape and tend to slip off my ass even if they're snug.  I know it barely makes sense, but try telling that to my almost amorphous body.  So I ordered the straight fitting Levi's 505 with the 54 waist.  

I guess the jeans I had been wearing stretched or something (despite the fact that Levi's are more notorious for shrinking), because when the TWO pairs of jeans my roomie so generously bought me came in the mail, they didn't fit.  They really didn't fit.  I couldn't fasten the button at all.  I had a good four inch gap that I could not bridge, much less zip them up.  Even back then I was trying to lose weight (Although it wasn't working very well.  I was still dealing with some health problems that seem to be better now.  I was also battling with a bout of my depression and feeling very self destructive at the time.)  So, I sucked it up and hoped that I would fit in them after some progress with my weight loss program.

Yet, just over a month ago, I developed the rogue-ish tear that I spoke of in the first entry of this blog that inspired this whole project.  Mind you, even after I had a large tear in the back of my pants with a patch sewn on it, I still couldn't zip my pants all the way up.  The first week of August my roomie, a couple of our friends, and I traveled together to Indianapolis, Indiana to attend Gen Con Game Fair.  The trip lasted from Wednesday until Sunday of that week.  Early in that trip my patch came apart again.  It didn't fall off completely but the stitching along one of the long sides came undone.  The only repair I could think of at the time was to buy a box of safety pins at the hotel gift shop and pin the patch to my pants.  It wasn't a very good repair and started to look mangled too.  Mind you, I didn't go to this convention with money that I should have used for pants.  I worked the con for Mayfair Games and they covered the hotel and admission costs, even some food costs.  The rest of the expenses were provided by my generous friends.  Speaking of generous friends, on the way home one of them gave me some money and told me to get some pants without holes in them.  

Just a couple of days after my return from Gen Con I tracked down some Levi's at XL Casual Male that were 60 waist, but 560s.  Now while I was at Gen Con I noticed that I could start zipping my pants up all of the way.  I didn't know if this was weight loss or maybe the tear in my pants provided some give.  So I got the larger pants thinking that if I got the same size I'd be screwed like the jeans my Columbus roomie bought for me.  I went to the store and tried on the jeans and they fit rather comfortably.  I could sit down in them comfortably too.  See, because of my drooping gut my waist expands a few inches when I sit down.  (Yep, this is the gross stuff that makes you hate fat people!)  So I happily bought them.  When I wore them out for a real test drive I didn't notice until then, I was swimming in these jeans.  It's all I can do to keep them from falling down when I walk.  But when you're fat, too big is always better than too small.

So this odd dilemma got me thinking about the 2 pairs of jeans that didn't fit me last November. I figured I could try them on to at least gauge my progress even if they didn't fit.  I was happy to find that they not only fastened but I could zip them up and sit in them.  Mind you, they're a bit snug and I haven't washed them yet so I'm sure I'll lose an inch to shrinkage, but this also tells me I lost about four inches!  It just feels great to makes some progress and to know that if I keep this up, I'll have more than one pair of pants to wear.  Stay tuned for more milestones to come!

Guacamole!

"Then there are foods that sound too humorous to eat.  Did you ever hear of something too funny to eat?  Guacamole!  It sounds like something you wear to a dance.  May I borrow your green guacamole?"

--George Carlin

Carlin at Carnigie Hall

1982 

As funny as it may seem to comic genius George Carlin, guacamole is primarily made of avocados, considered one of the super foods by the likes of Men's Health Magazine and other sources.  Although avocados have some fat content to them, it's the good fats, like in olive oil.  I've been eating a lot of foods with olive oil and I'm losing weight.  Now I can't say much for the pre-packaged guacamole you buy in stores, except read the labels closely and use your best judgment, but when you make it from fresh veggies and spices you have a great dip or sandwich spread that's much healthier than most.  Only hummus or salsa can beat this stuff and that's saying a lot.

Ingredients

3 avocados

lime juice (I get the lime juice in the plastic lime shaped bottle)

1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/2 medium onion, diced

2 roma tomatoes, diced

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

1/2 teaspoon of minced garlic

AVOCADOS

Much of what I mentioned in my Avocado Kale Salad recipe goes for avocados in this recipe.  This time I got some perfectly ripe avocados and I took more photos.

Cut into the avocado from the top until you feel the pit and cut all the way around the pit.

Then, you separate the two halves and get one half with a pit.  If it's ripe enough you can gently take the pit out with a spoon without taking too much avocado flesh with it.

Now when they're really rip you should be able to maneuver the spoon between the flesh and the skin of the avocado and work around until you take out all of the flesh at once.  When you put it into the bowl, liberally squeeze some lime juice over the avocado to prevent oxidation (or browning).  You should be able to repeat the same thing with the next avocado.

  Now set aside your lime coated avocado and dice your tomatoes and onions.  

SPICES

Now place your avocado into a large bowl separate from the lime juice, but save the lime juice.  Before you add your onions and tomatoes add the salt, cumin, and cayenne.  Take a hand potato masher and mash it up.  I haven't tried an electric mixer.  So if you do, let me know how it came out.  Mash it up into a gooey mush with as few lumps as possible.  

To the left is a 14 oz bag of cumin powder my roomie had lying around his kitchen.  This is the most cumin powder I've seen in someone's kitchen.  The 3 oz. jar to the right is the biggest container I've seen prior to the other one and that one was a cheapie at just over two bucks. 

 THE FINISH

After you have a good green mush add your tomatoes, onions, cilantro, garlic, and  a teaspoon or two of that leftover lime juice you saved.  Then stir it to a nice consistency.  I used dried cilantro from the jar rather than fresh and it turned out just fine.

Another Kitchen Outlaw tactic I use is a jar of minced garlic.  It saves time and keeps from having fresh garlic around to spoil.  Fresh garlic is still the best but this isn't so bad.

Here's the finished product.  I let it marinade in the fridge for at least two hours before eating.

Men's Health Magazine says this is the best kind of tortilla chip you can buy for the low calories and low fat.  So this should be pretty good for dipping.  Pita chips work well too.

I was 12 years old when I saw the HBO comedy special Carlin at Carnegie Hall and never laughed so hard at a comedian before.  Even then, I knew the guy wasn't just a master of using filthy words but a true genius.  I was lucky enough to see him live in concert before he died.  It is amazing how he could breach topics both mundane and heavily political and make them equally funny.