Food For Thought

I searched for and read about lots of good foods and bad foods as I'm on a quest to reduce my weight significantly. I've lost 31lbs in 7 months... But I'm only half way home :) So here are some lists. I had the descriptions for why they were good but decided to remove them because it made for a very lengthy blog post. I am posting several lists because it is good to know what the best foods are amongst different specialists.

Blueberries

Guava

Kale

Sardines

Apples

Coconut Oil

Green Tea

Flaxseeds

Top 10 Multitasking Super Foods

1. Low fat or fat-free plain yogurt
   
2. Eggs
   
3. Nuts
   
4. Kiwis
5. Quinoa
   
6. Beans
7. Salmon
8. Broccoli
9. Sweet potatoes
10. Berries
    

Top Superfoods Offering Super Health Protection

• Beans
• Blueberries
• Broccoli
• Oats
• Oranges
• Pumpkin
• Salmon
• Soy
• Spinach
• Tea (green or black)
• Tomatoes
• Turkey
• Walnuts
• Yogurt

Omega 3-Rich Fish -- Superfoods for the Heart, Joints, and Memory

Soy -- Superfood to Lower Cholesterol

Fiber -- Superfood Aids Weight Loss and Checks Cholesterol

Tea -- Superfood for Lowering Cholesterol and Inhibiting Cancer

Calcium

And Finally, the Yummiest Superfood Yet ... Dark Chocolate

BEST FOODS

1. Sweet Potatoes

2. Grape Tomatoes

3. Fat-Free (Skim) or 1% lowfat Milk (but not 2% reduced fat)

4. Broccoli

5. Wild Salmon

6. Crispbreads

7. Microwaveable Quick-Cooking Brown Rice

8. Citrus Fruit

9. Diced Butternut Squash

10. Spinach & Kale

I've been an abuser of a few of the following "worst foods", namely Haagen Daz (all flavors) and those Venti Starbucks frozen drinks... The other stuff is pretty easy for me to stay away from.

WORST FOODS

Judging by the label, Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie has 520 calories and 12 grams of saturated fat. But look again. Those numbers are for onlyn half a pie. Eat the entire pie, as most people probably do, and you're talking more than 1,040 calories and 24 grams of saturated fat (more than a day's worth).

Can't decide what to pick from a restaurant menu? No worries. Now you can order not just one entrée, but two…or three…all at once. Olive Garden's Tour Of Italy—Homemade Lasagna, Lightly Breaded Chicken Parmigiana, and Creamy Fettucine Alfredo—comes with 1,450 calories, 33 grams of saturated fat, and 3,830 milligrams of sodium. Add a breadstick (150 calories) and a plate of Garden-Fresh Salad with dressing (350 calories) and you'll consume 2,000 calories (an entire day's worth) in a single meal.

Progresso Traditional, Vegetable Classics, and Rich & Hearty soups are brimming with salt: Half a can averages more than half of a person's daily quota of salt. Instead, try Progresso's Reduced Sodium soups. All the flavor, but up to 50 percent less salt than most other canned soups.

Häagen-Dazs ice cream An average half-cup serving of squeezes half-a-day's saturated fat and a third-of-a-day's cholesterol into your artery walls and makes a 300-calorie down payment on your next set of fat cells—if you can stop at a petite half-cup!

The Cheesecake Factory Chris' Outrageous Chocolate Cake has "layers of moist chocolate cake, chewy brownie, toasted coconut pecan filling, and creamy chocolate chip coconut cheesecake." Each five-inch-high slice weighs three-quarters of a pound and has 1,550 calories and 32 teaspoons of sugar. By the time you hit the exit, your arteries have 43 grams of saturated fat circulating in them that they didn't have when you walked in. It's a though you had ordered three McDonald's Quarter Pounders for dessert.

Pillsbury Grands! Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll with Icing has 310 calories and 2 grams of saturated fat plus 2 ½ grams of trans fat and 23 grams of sugar. Two-and-a-half grams of trans fat (the worst kind you can eat) may not sound like much, but some health experts recommend 2 grams of trans fat as the limit for the entire day. "My heart to yours," says the package. How sweet of the Pillsbury Bypass Boy to share.

Pop Secret Movie Theater Butter Popcorn Snack Size Bags has 9 grams of bad fat, 6 of which are trans, in just one snack-size bag (6 cups popped). Instead, try Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop! or Smart Balance Smart 'N Healthy!, both of which are trans-fat free.

Starbucks Venti (20 oz.) White Chocolate Mocha with 2% milk and whipped cream is more than a mere cup of coffee. It's worse than a McDonald's Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Few people have room in their diets for 580 calories and 15 grams of saturated fat that this hefty beverage supplies. But you can save 130 calories and two-thirds of the bad fat if you order it with nonfat milk and no whipped cream.

Chipotle Chicken Burrito (tortilla, rice, pinto beans, cheese, chicken, sour cream, and salsa)? Think of its 970 calories and 17½ grams of saturated fat and 2,200 mg of sodium as three 6-inch Subway BLT Classic Subs! Getting the burrito with no cheese or sour cream cuts the saturated fat to 5½ grams, but you still end up with 750 calories and more than a day's worth of sodium. Yikes!

Cold Stone Creamery Gotta Have It Founder's Favorite Into the chocolate-dipped waffle bowl of a goes, not just a 12-ounce, softball-sized mound of ice cream, but pecans, brownie pieces, fudge, and caramel. The tab: a startling 1,600 calories and 42 grams of saturated fat. That's roughly what you'd get if you polished off five single-scoop ice cream cones.

Photo Scanning Project Of My Old School 35mm/Paper Photo Memiors

This post has been updated on 1/13/10

I've been interested in getting a photo scanner to transfer all of my old school paper photos to digital and I've actually already done a whole photo album. It took me a ton of time on my large HP 6100C antiquated flatbed scanner, which only works with a SCSI connection. It's a fabulous scanner, does legal size docs, but it is ancient, huge, scans to .bmp format only (can be converted to .jpeg later), etc. The point is, it is a slow process using a flatbed scanner (despite the scanner itself being quite a fast scanner with the high-speed SCSI interface and all).

HP Scanjet 6100C - a $1200 scanner at one time

I need something that doesn't require a lot of effort or mental focus to get through the 20 or 30 large photo albums I'll need to tackle. I was looking at this dedicated paper photo scanner, the PANSCN02 (see just below), which just might be the ticket. Reviewers say you can scan photos while watching movies and that it is literally one-touch with button controlled roller-feeder making it essentially a brainless and mindless effort. Contrast that to laying out the photos just right, adjusting the scan area, cropping the photos, etc. of my flatbed. One drawback to the PANSCN02, the quality of the scans is marginal. This wouldn't be a problem for a good number of my prints that were taken with sub-par cameras in the first place (in other words, the quality of those prints stinks to begin with).

Here's the commercial:

Pandigital PANSCN02 Photolink Scanner

"The PhotoLink Print Scanner is literally the easiest way possible to turn print photos into digital images. The one-touch scanner simply requires customers to insert the photo into the feed and push the button to begin scanning.

(Grammy, you could put Sydney to good work, a work that she would probably absolutely love, scanning those shoe boxes of old photos in).

The PhotoLink Scanner can be used right out of the box. There is no software required, and the scanner even comes with a 512MB SD Card to store the photos. In addition, consumers can also use the USB cable included with the product to connect the Photolink One-Touch Scanner via its USB 2.0 port directly to a computer.

One nice feature, the Pandigital PANSCN02 is small

The device is incredibly portable, weighing only eight ounces and measuring only 6.15W x 1.8H x 1.5D inches. As a result, it's easy to take it anywhere to scan and share photos with friends and loved ones.

The Pandigital PANSCN03 - small too, but I do not recommend

The more cycles I've spent mulling this over, checking reviews and the opinions of others who have already blazed these trails, have put me on a different course. I first started looking at the sister offering, the PANSCN03. It got horrible reviews for the most part, poor quality and nowhere near the ease of use of the paper fed sibling, 2 good reasons to avoid that scanner. The biggest objection, it still requires time to line up each negative photo in the scan area, if that was somehow automatic (thus drastically reducing time), that would make all the difference in the world.

But scanning negatives does sound appealing. If only you could do mass scans (multiples at a time), not to mention the quality of the film vs. paper would likely be substantially better. My wife also pointed out that she has taken great care in organizing and preserving our large quantity of 35mm negatives that are stored with the photo albums (as usual her forethought was perfect). Being able to scan a strip of 6 negative photos at once sounds like productivity x 6 :) But what about x 12, how much would that be worth? x 24???

Epson Perfection V300 - a great low priced photo scanner

This lead me on a journey to a research "film" photo scanners. I was quite happy to stumble upon the $100 Epson Perfection V300, which does the 6 negative photos at once with exceptional quality to boot. The beauty here is that once the scan is complete, it puts stores the 6 digital photos in their own separate .jpeg files. In the old days, I'd have lay out a flatbed full of photos and make a single file scan. Then I'd have to go crop out each photo and save them into separate files.

I next was lead to the Epson V500 and the Epson V700. The V700 is $550 and really out of my price range. The biggest advantage, it does 24 negative photos at once, that's productivity! The software is supposedly very good, the image quality is superb but at the same time overkill since the human eye would not be able to detect any difference (the benefit of a higher quality scan comes into play when printing 8x10 and larger prints, my intent is merely to share them electronically).

Epson Perfection V700 - a great high priced photo scanner

The $200 V500 is intriguing, it can do 12 negative photos at a single scan (that's decent productivity, I thought 6 was good). It also benefits from what is called ICE, a component that removes 98% dust and scratches from the scan. You can accomplish this after the fact with photo editing software, but at the expense of investing time with each photo to do that (painful). The downside with ICE, it does slow the actual scan time down quite a bit. But from what I've read, it seems to be well worth it compared to the time you'll have to invest later. FYI, apparently ICE does nothing for dust/scratches on Black and White photos.

Epson Perfection V500 - this one is just right!

So I'm leaning toward the V500 at this point. Need to discuss it with my wife, but from my days/hours invested in this research, I think this is the best solution. Perhaps the only other consideration would be to buy the V700 with the intention of selling it off once the project is complete. Don't think we want to lay out that money up front like that. By the time we're done with the project, the V700 will likely be old technology and not worth much...

A side thought, 35mm film cameras can be purchased for peanuts these days. People who were photography extremists spent thousands and thousands of their hard earned dollars on lenses and camera equipment which you know they took better care of than they did their children. Unfortunately today they will have a difficult time even giving that stuff away. Who really wants to store a bunch of obsolete useless relics from the past???

But, consider if you had a really decent/efficient way of getting your film converted to digital (the illustrious Epson Perfection V700), might be good justification to buy the V700 and to buy up some of those phenomenal film Canon and Nikon relics at fractions of pennies on the dollar costs... Granted you'd still have to buy film, you'd still have to go have your film developed, and worst yet, you'd have to wait (my least favorite thing in the world to do). The positive side of this argument is that it would undoubtedly make people be better photographers. First, you'd want to pour over the manuals and all the Internet postings to learn how to optimally use and get the most out of your technologically brilliant and economically wonderful new toys. More importantly, knowing each photo will cost you time and money, you'll make your shots count more, you'll be forced to be less lazy (like the old days), you'll have to work harder to focus on getting the perfect composition and/or exposure. It could then become more of an enthusiasts hobby thing again...

Right, like I've got time for that??? I guess I'll stick with my Nikon D40 bottom of the line digital SLR, the Epson V500 and be happy that I can snap gobs of photos and scan marginally large quantities of photos with a single button press, all without exercising too many brain cells.

Surely in the mountains of photos snapped I should be able to get at least one coincidentally good exposure worth sharing. And the other 200-500 out-takes, what of them? If you are unfortunate to be anything like me, throwing anything out is painful, even redundant digital photos of your kids that nobody in this world but you will ever care to look at... I can't shake the "more is better" mentality. Maybe living in Argentina among a people with very little ingrained that in me? But I think instead it is just genetics, defective Ronzonie dementia that causes me to hoard and store...

Wait a minute, a collection of old school film cameras with accompanying varieites of cool lenses, filters, flashes, shutter-release gadgets, etc. might be just the thing I need after all!

COFFEE FILTERS! Who Would Have Thunk?

Better than paper towels and a lot less expensive...

Coffee filters .... You can buy 1,000 at the Dollar Tree for next to nothing, even the large ones.

Here's what you can do with them:

1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the microwave. Coffee filters make excellent covers.

2. Clean windows, mirrors, and chrome... Coffee filters are lint-free so they'll leave windows sparkling.

3. Protect China by separating your good dishes with a coffee filter between each dish.

4. Filter broken cork from wine. If you break the cork when opening a wine bottle, filter the wine through a coffee filter.

5. Protect a cast-iron skillet. Place a coffee filter in the skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.

6. Apply shoe polish. Ball up a lint-free coffee filter.

7. Recycle frying oil. After frying, strain oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter.

8. Weigh chopped foods. Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale.

9. Hold tacos. Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods.

10. Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot. Line a plant pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through the drainage holes.

11. Prevent a Popsicle from dripping. Poke one or two holes as needed in a coffee filter.

12. Do you think we used expensive strips to wax eyebrows? Use strips of coffee filters..

13. Put a few in a plate and put your fried bacon, French fries, chicken fingers, etc on them. It soaks out all the grease.

14. Keep in the bathroom. They make great "razor nick fixers."

15. As a sewing backing. Use a filter as an easy-to-tear backing for embroidering or appliqueing soft fabrics.

16. Put baking soda into a coffee filter and insert into shoes or a closet to absorb or prevent odors.

17. Use them to strain soup stock and to tie fresh herbs in to put in soups and stews.

18. Use a coffee filter to prevent spilling when you add fluids to your car.

19. Use them as a spoon rest while cooking and clean up small counter spills.

20. Can use to hold dry ingredients when baking or when cutting a piece of fruit or veggies.. Saves on having extra bowls to wash.

21. Use them to wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.

22. Use them to remove fingernail polish when out of cotton balls.

23. Use them to sprout seeds. Simply dampen the coffee filter, place seeds inside, fold it and place it into a plastic baggie until they sprout.

24. Use coffee filters as blotting paper for pressed flowers. Place the flowers between two coffee filters and put the coffee filters in phone book..

25. Use as a disposable "snack bowl" for popcorn, chips, etc.

Walmart Bingo

I asked my wife out on a date last night, to Walmart. We have a new super Walmart down the street, open 24x7 which is very convenient. I was short a few strands of Christmas lights and asked if she'd come with me. My son Gregory, upon hearing this, told us to have some fun with it and play Walmart Bingo.



They missed a few: "Man wearing the ever popular sleeveless muscle-T wife-beater attire", "Men in camo-wear", "Man wearing cap with potato chip curled bill", "Mullet hairstyle", "Mohawk hairstyle", "Pregnant woman smoking", "People using double negatives and other talking like neanderthals", "Dude wearing pant waistline around thighs", "Parents cussing at their kids", "Butt crack siting", "People in costumes who don't know they're in costumes", "Dress slacks with athletic shoes", "Dark socks, shorts and athletic shoes", "Gut hanging out", "Face and/or belly piercings"...

For more Walmart fun check out: http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/

US Customs & Border Protection

The People I work with (I know, I look like a dork)

Why Dogs Hate Halloween!

The cat isn't overly fond of Halloween either...