Why I Cook, A Story In 1600 Calories

     I've been seriously cooking for a bit over four years now. I really enjoy cooking, but it wasn't a critical part of my life. It was just something I did to put food on the table. Most of the time it was crap food. We ordered out a lot. We ate out a lot. When you see my entries for Nutritionally Irresponsible Cooking, this is the sort of thing I was regularly putting on the table. Which leads to a doctor's appointment I had.
     I was just getting a routine physical for work. The doctor took my blood pressure. He asked me if my head hurt. He asked me if my vision was impaired. He asked me if I had any chest pain. I told him no on all accounts. He waited a bit and took my blood pressure again. He then asked the same questions. I told him if he kept asking me, I was likely to eventually develop a headache or chest pain. He arranged for me to have an echo-cardiogram. He was worried about edema,  high blood pressure, thickening of the heart. I went in and had the echo.

Sorry.

     In the end, it was nothing. I had mildly elevated blood pressure and was retaining water. My heart was fine. I was put on blood pressure medication and diuretics. The doctor told me I needed to drop weight. The doctor had successfully scared the hell out of me.  I was a shade over 320lbs. I asked his advice for weight loss. His advice was this:

• Limit intake to 1600 calories a day
• Most non-starchy fruits and vegetables can be counted as zero calories
• Take in the calories however you want. If you want to take your daily calories in ice cream, have at it.
• Once a week, you can double your caloric intake if desired

     That was it. And that was the genius of it. If I wanted to eat sweets, I could. I'd just run out of calories fast. If I wanted a big-ass salad, basically all I paid for in calories was for dressing and non-veggie toppings like cheese, eggs and meat. I found a good calorie counter for my iPod. I entered everything diligently. Every meal. Every day. I started carefully considering what I ate. If I kept to lower calorie foods, I naturally gravitated to healthier items. 

     That's where I realized I needed to cook more. If I cooked from scratch, I had total control of the calories in the meal. I could tweak recipes. I found 300 calorie cookbooks. I fell in love with cooking. I enjoyed making something that didn't at all taste like it was lo-cal, but actually was. The weight started coming off. To date, I've lost about 65 pounds with no notable exercise. I've been stuck at about 255-260 for the past two years. This speaks volumes for the diet. It creates weight loss, then maintains that weight loss. Now I've started to add regular exercise to the mix, and little by little, the weight is coming off again. My goal is 235. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I will continue doing what I enjoy, and that is putting good food on the table.

Good times!

Nutritionally Irresponsible Cooking: The Cooking Mixture

     The first time I had this particular dish, I was camping with some friends in Kentucky. We were wrapping up a long day of doing whatever it is we were doing. I remember shotguns and building a barn door. The rest is kind of hazy. Anyway, we were tired and hungry. When the subject of dinner came up, some one suggested "The Cooking Mixture." The rest of the group nodded sagely at this suggestion. I had no idea what the Hell they babbling about. I just sort of shrugged and gave a weak OK. I just wanted to eat.
     A backpack was brought out and from that backpack came an assortment of cans. A cooking pot was located and set upon a small propane stove. Cans were opened and dumped in. A block of Spam was diced and added. Vienna Sausages might have been put in. The whole concoction was set to bubble. A large bag of Fritos was opened and dumped in. Finally, with some ceremony, a bottle of Tabasco sauce was brought out. I estimate about half of it was shaken into the mixture. We ate every last bit. I'm sure this is a direct cause of my low-grade high blood pressure.
     There is no doubt the Cooking Mixture was delicious. It was however, Horrifyingly Unhealthy. The amount of sodium and fat in this dish has to be off the scale. I'm honestly afraid to calculate it. We speculate that the dish is actually healthy due to convoluted logic. We figure that the sodium pushes our blood pressure so high that the fat never has a chance to settle and cause blockages. Granted, if our blood pressure should ever drop, our arteries would immediately harden solid and we'd drop dead on the spot.

QUICK! QUICK! GET ME SOME MORE COO....

        This is one of those recipes that changes depending on who is cooking it at the time. The version I'm showing you today is not exactly how it was the first time I ate it. Why is that? Simple, you're not supposed to remember. It's a fluid recipe, much like my chili. The base remains the same (pork and beans) but pretty much everything else is up for grabs. Throw in some chopped up Slim Jims. How about a bag of Beer Nuts? The sky's the limit!

Ingredients

• 1 can, 15 ounce Beefaroni
• 1 can, 12 ounce Spam, diced
• 1 can, 15 ounce pork and beans or baked beans
• 1 bag,10.5 ounce chili cheese Fritos
• Tabasco sauce

Directions

1. Open cans and deposit into cooking receptacle
2. Apply heat until bubbly (the ingredients, not you)
3. When bubbly, pour in the bag of Fritos and Tabasco sauce to taste (don't be a wuss, put in half a bottle)
4. Serve with copious amounts of cheap, evil-smelling beer.

Good times!