Hows my little fill in?

Briefly:

For some reason lately I've been forgetting my camera left and right. Its really really bothersome.

This weekend was Awesome! Kalahari at the Dells with a bunch of my best friends. There was lots of great catching up, laughing, water sliding and alcohol abuse by all. Uncle Ralph visited me Saturday night and told me I shouldn't take every free shot the people standing on the bar pour even if it is right into your mouth. It was fun buying different bachelorettes drinks, hopefully that karma balances out to Laura in a couple of weekends. I still kick ass at Laser Tag, but I came in 2nd to BJ, that sneaky devil.



Monday we headed out to see Third Eye Blind (remember them?!) at the Canopy Club in Champaign. Who knew they put on a rocking good live show? They all seem to be pretty excellent at their various instruments and hearing all of those sing along singles from High School was an awesome blast from the past. I'm pretty excited about my autographed vinyl (weirdest spelled word ever) that I made out with as well.



Life? Awesome. Thinking about the future has me excited, its the first time in a long while.

I feel inspired to become at one with myself. Maybe through Wii fit yoga? OK.

I'm running my first 5K is this weekend. Wish me luck its been like 4 or 5 years since I ran 3 miles. Training for this has reconfirmed, this guy is not meant to run long distances.

Hows my little Blank Slate?

I had a really difficult time figuring out a title for this post, which is uncommon.

Thank you everyone for your insightful comments about my stupid food post. Sarah you're right I have leaps to go, but as Sam pointed out I think I'm making great strides from eating Doritos smothered in cheese for dinner weekly. None the less I plan on broadening my horizons a bit more from here, and as many of you now learned, I do live in the middle of nowhere. I started doing a bit of research on some CSA farms and crop share programs but alas there is nothing to be had here...yet. If I lived about 100 miles north I would have TONS of choices. I did find an organic pick your own place sort of nearby (35ish miles?) which will be helpful come canning season. In the meantime I will be extremely happy with the winery a few miles down the road and our garden in the back yard.

Anyway, this weekend Laura and I headed out to Indianapolis with my Mom and Dad for a grand time. Side note, Indianapolis has continually blown my expectations as far as coolness goes. It seems to have a lot of the hustle and bustle of Minneapolis, some of the cleanliness of St. Paul, and much more prominent history than either.

For whatever reason I didn't bring my camera with me so I apologize for a lack of pictures. We went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway which is really a HUGE place. If we lived in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, this is where the Quiddich World cup would take place. I've known about the speedway since I was a wee lad, My mom is big into racing, and I've grown up with many of the familiar Indy car racing names. So it was pretty neat to finally walk around where the famed Indy 500 takes place. Our purpose today was to race around the track in a car, so we got all checked in walked right onto the road they drive on and got to walk all over the brick finish line and zipped around the oval going over 100, which was really cool! I can't imagine what it would be like with thousands of spectators but I would imagine it would feel like you're going twice as fast as you really are.

Next we headed out suit shopping for me and I finally found one! I can get really picky with things I wear (hard to believe I know) and months ago I spotted something I liked and for whatever reason wouldn't accept anything else. Aside from that hard to find style, my gorilla arms and skinny body make it hard to find a suit that will even fit me nicely. It was kind of an odd experience getting all of my bits measured up for a proper fit, I found out my left shoulder is higher than my right and my right arm is longer than my left, weird, but fun.

After those shenanigans we made our way to one of the coolest ideas for a Bar I've heard of. It was called Tastings, you load up a card with the cash you want to spend and go around to these different wine vending machines (for lack of a better description) and put your card in and pick out a wine you want to try. Its an awesome concept because if one was really serious about trying all sorts of different wines you could get a whole bunch in one evening without committing the money for a whole glass or bottle. I think I could have sat in that room for the rest of the evening just walking around and trying all of the different wines, they had to have close to 150 different varieties. Since we had other plans we sadly had to leave.

We went out to dinner, I've been impressed by a meal in Indianapolis before at St. Elmo's Steakouse (try their shrimp cocktail sometime it will melt your face off! Honestly!) so I had high hopes with this one. We made our way into a Brazilian Steakhouse called Fogo De Chao. I'm sure its a chain but if you're not familiar with it this is what its like, you go in and pretty much immediately head over to the salad bar, your food will be out whenever you're ready to eat it, no ordering needed aside from drinks. At the "salad" bar, which for me was awesome because instead of usual salad fare there is all sorts of meats and non-lettuce veggies to choose from and even a few cheeses. I had to show restraint though because of what was to come.

After you finish your salad you flip over this little card from the red side to the green side and a few minutes later a gaucho with a giant Skewer and Knife comes to you and slices you a chunk of the meat he has, different gauchos come all the time until you flip your card back to red. From what I can remember I gorged myself on Top Sirloin, Bottom Sirloin, Pork Sausage, Rib-eye, Chicken Leg, Fillet Mignon, Pork Tenderloin, Pork Ribs, Beef ribs, and Lamb. But there were even more things I didn't/couldn't fit into my belly no matter how I tried, the most exciting sounding was the pork wrapped in bacon. We even had sides to munch on that they would constantly replenish of Mashed potatoes, fried bananas and some rectangular vegetable thing. The star of the show though was definitely the meat, each slice was delightful and left me yearning to try to eat more, the only thing that wasn't out of this world was the chicken, but that was because it was just good.

Sunday I made some excellent progress with our honeymoon in Spain and I'm getting more and more excited for it, especially as we start to learn more Spanish. It should be a grand time. In general its going to go something like this: Art, Pictures, Walking, Food, Wine, Touring, Kite Surfing, and whatever else honeymooners in Spain can find to do.

Today I pooped out all of my Fogo De Chao and actually lost 3 pounds.

Hows my little food ranter?

Many of you may remember this post all about corn, and this post will echo it a bit. First let me restate, I really hate corn. Its weird to hate something that grows all around me but whatever. Since last summer I have been annoying Laura to the max in the grocery isles reading ingredient lists on nearly EVERYTHING. First I look at if it has corn in it, then I look up how much sodium hangs out in it. After that I compare it to everything else to see if that doesn't have corn, and then from there if I can I compare my options with each other to purchase the one with the smallest amount of sodium.

Here is a short list of things that were tricky/surprising to find without/with HFCS in it:
Non-Diet Pop, Ketchup, Grape Jelly(or Jam or Preserves), Yogurt, "Maple" Syrup, Cereal.

I recently read an article that said many food manufactures are concerned that by adding less sodium on boxes consumers will think, oh no! less flavor! This is weird because I think awesome, less salt, less opportunities for heart disease to strike!

So where does all of this comparing get me? Pretty much with a larger grocery bill. But after thinking about it, buying a brand that is a few cents or a dollar more I think its worth it in the long run. $10 extra dollars every couple of weeks to hopefully prevent thousands of medical dollars in the future? Yes please.

This is what separates America's educated vs. uneducated. The educated citizen will spend more now but be wealthier later in life where the uneducated will be wealthier now and plateau while their learned peers continue rising. Weird how that relates to food.

I'm also seeing the food I eat as a standard of living. If I am only eating what I need to in order to survive, that is all I ever will do, survive. But eating good food that isn't processed much is one way to thrive in life.

I have a real hangup with the location I am currently residing in. As I would love nothing more to raise the standards of the food I eat I realistically have only one place I can buy groceries. This store has got to cater to everyone who has money and everyone who does not. Danville, IL (where our store is) has a wide spread of it, and only two grocery stores in town which belong to the same chain. So there is so very little variety. The produce section is appalling, last week I went to buy some peppers and they only had 6 SIX!!!! shrively ancient looking green peppers available for purchase.

There are also no organic food stores to speak of within 15 miles. Which is a problem, I would love to move much of my grocery buying to an organic store that sold many locally produced and organic products, but there aren't any. I also do not want to drive a half hour or more to buy these because then I'm adding more to the premium this food costs. So I'm stuck, I'm cheap but still demand good food.

Another probable place to buy good local veggies is farmer's markets. The ones around here mostly sell crafts and wares and less farm produce. Imagine that, here in the world's bread basket we grow so much "food" its not even edible in its raw form. This is a sad point to make.

But really what got me inspired to write about food was the Juice I buy. I love me some never from concentrate juice. I've been a Tropicana OJ fiend since I found that I could get that in the 128Oz Jug. HOT DAMN! As I mentioned before selections can be vast but still very limited yet for some reason I have 3 not from concentrate OJs to choose from as well as the usual brands from concentrate, like minute maid. Even fake juices like SunnyD have a showing at our local grocer.

As for other juices though I am pretty much stuck. I only have Mott's Premium and when available Simply Apple. My biggest juice difficulty though is grape juice. Can ANYONE?! help? I can't find for the life of me a brand of grape juice not from concentrate. Really I don't have a problem with from concentrate juices but if my extra appley juice is any indicator I feel like grape juice is going to be out of this world. So let me know.

Anyway thanks for listening to me rant about my food. I encourage you to read labels and empower yourself with some knowledge of where your food comes from, it might shock you.