A n a r c h i c _ U n i v e r s e ®

I Can Read: SUMMER reads DIET

Every year the women of America and Brad Pitt worry about summer. Unfortunately, their worrying is ineffective if not before the Halloween benchmark. I am very overweight right now.

How much, Tina?

None of your business, Craig.

Some of the most useful tricks I learned were from a terrific leader at Weight Watchers. I  have been to all of these weight loss programs. The ones in earnest use the diet for someone wirh diabetes: a balanced small portion diet, with three main meals and three snacks.

These are some rules of thumb:

• Don't forget to drink your eight glasses of water. I woul say ask for the wonderful tap water of ______________ . After reading about our water being recycled from waste, click here to see it for real, I guess I will recommend indulging in Evian or  San Pellegrino.
• Drop those addled brownies. You don't want to hsve  the munchies, do you?
• Alcohol. What an enemy . First, it relaxes  you, lowers your guard, increases your appetite. Second, next day you will have a bunch of problemas: hangover, the blues - alcohol is a strong depressant  in the central nervous system. Finally, alcoholic drinks add a considerable amount of calories in your body.
• Salad dressing? Forget about it. Eat  your salad au naturel. Or use a pratically zero calorie dressing for it: mustard with lime juice. It's great and  the mustard makes it seem like salt has been added.
• Don''t get all freaked out when you go cruise the streets of Beverly  Hills and run into size zeros left and right. No despair, please. A diet that works is a lifetime  plan. On this note, I must bid you adieu. t's my snack time.

More on this subject. I am fat today but shall be svelte in two years. Plus, remember: some of this is genetic. Check out how thin is the great singer of bar rock group Téléphone. If you click here, you'll hear Au Cœur de la Nuit, my favorite song of theirs. Click on thr name of the song for the lyrics. Distribute words of songs for educational purposes, only.

Voilà! Unless I am hijacked by the Sandman, I will be back.

All Vultures Have Been Fed - Now to "My Restau"

The commotion generated by the death of little girl Isabella in São Paulo was colossal. I can imagine when "O Globo" and its TV arm recicled the  news about  Isabella Nardoni non-stop. Brazil is big, São Paulo is very big and Globo network is on day and night, as you saw in Bye-Bye Brazil. Click, please.

Here in Santa Monica, the wagging tongues were restless over ESL teacher Beltrán's alleged molestation of one girl, then another and yet others. SMMUSD had mummed on this teacher's previous incident. Da police knew about it. It seems the teacher videoed himself and the girls in lewd acts. Whatever nevermind.  I have a series of posts ready for when I'lll be away. I'm going under on Monday, my first Mother's Day without Mommy.

Brain surgery is scary. Living with NPH is a lot worse. Click. Tonight I want to write about our home away from home. It's Robert and Teresa Bourget's restaurant/bistro, Le Petit Café. Click. They are like family. The restaurant is close to our house, its ambience cozy. There's a limitation on the available dishes; the kitchen is tiny. I like to start from cold to warmer dishes. For example: an ahi-ahi seared tuna salad, followed by a soup. I recommend the soupe d'onion next. It's your basic onion soup, with pieces of French bread diced, and Gruyère cheese melted on top. Boiling hot. Heeeeey!

There's only one soupe d'onion I know  that somewhat resembled Robert's; it was in  forgettable French restaurant for afterhours on Broadway. After the soupe, I recommend the salmon with dill sauce; the crab cakes; the filet mignon au poivre, soft like buttah, and the white fish with capers. All come with rice or mashed potatoes; cooked carrots and string beans. If it's a day for le beef Bourgignon, take it.

Photo: Oscar Night, 2004, Zefa's birthday. Teresa and Robert chez nous.

(continue tomorrow) Don't forget to check out our del.icio.us anarchic_universe network links!

Mediterranean Food - the Healthiest for All

Most nutritionists agree "Mediterranean food" is the best for our health. Those of us used to meat-and-potatoes shiver. First, we have no idea where this Mediterranean is. Second, if it is where we think it is, it's got to be bad, bad, bad.

Mediterranean diet does encompass Italy and Greece, Northern Africa, Brazil and Latin America by extension. So what is this key to health and longevity?
Fish, rice and beans. fruit. For those who drink, one glass of red wine. Water.

I will give you a recipe we have perfected here at our house.

Appetizer:

• pita bread with humus

• salad: chopped Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, olives, shredded feta cheese, chopped bell pepper, vinagraitte.

How to for vinagraitte:

•mix equal parts of pure olive oil, balsamic vinegar, French mustard. Add think diced onion, black pepper. Stir.

Main dish:

A)
• Slab of fresh salmon or tuna, your favorite fish.

• One grapefruit.

• Raw onion rings.

• A tiny bit of palm oil (poison but good.)

• A tiny bit of coconut milk ( poison but good.)

In a pan, greased with olive oil, place the salmon, squeeze the grapefruit juice over it, the coconut mick and palm oil. Add onion rings on top. A dash of black pepper. Put all this to bake and remove when fish is shredding apart.

B) Cook some couscous. In the USA we have it sold in packets. Cook it in a ricemaker or in the microwave oven. Add some flavoring, making sure there is no MSG.

C) While the couscous is cooking, prepare a can of organic beans.

Voilà! Presto. If needed, serve some asparagus, we have so many in the summer.

D) For dessert, sorbet. I like passion fruit.

Don't Die, Yet; Just Diet

Just a teaser tonight.

The topic will be diet and why not to deprive yourself just because you want to go shopping in Beverly Hills, where an XX-Large is a 2. I don't think Superman was a fool staying away from poisonous kryptonite. We are fools who can't stay away from poisonous foods either by eating them in excess or by eating no-nos for humans.

How many different diets have you heard about even if you are as thin as a rail? The yo-yo, the grapefruit, the vegetarian, the South Florida, the Atkins, the Zone, waaaaaaaait!

Aretha is singing, "Think!" It is you who needs to make decisions about diet; not diets make decisions for you. I must have gained and lost about a ton during my lifetime. I don't have the resources Oprah does, and I don't think you do, either. However, not all is lost. It's a combo of diet and exercise that does the trick.

When talking exercise, think of kissing goodbye to modern equipment. Take the stairs, walk to the grocer, to the newstand, to the pharmacy. Each step you take is cumulative. At the end of the day you may have burned 800 calories, enough to eat some icecream.

Eat slowly, don't read or watch TV when you eat. If you do other things while eating you don't register the intake, psychologically. Eat at fixed times, sit down, make a plate in a bigger plate, don't pile up more food than reasonable.

What are reasonable foods? Did I say please become a goat named Sylvia? No, that is Albee's play. Eat vegetables you like, and remember potatoes and ketchup are vegetables for school programs, and even that has been changed. Just tasty vegetables, seasoned with mustard, garlic or onions, a tiny little bit of olive oil. When you make your salad, be creative, toss in some nuts and dried cranberries.

The name of the game is be creative, be active, be frugal. Make a commitment to keeping a food diary, to maybe joining WW, having a nurse from your health insurance follow your progress. Don't go for the "I got to lose 50 lbs." attitude. Go slowly but surely, easy does it, like a Harlem shuffle. Before you know it, not you but others will ask you if you're losing weight. Just shrug your shoulders, as you have shrugged away the black outfits, and murmur, "Gee, I don't know."

Water; six cups a day. Water fills you up and is necessary. Mantra: "Water Good Wine Bad." Did you know a shot of scotch packs 150 calories just like that? And it makes you retain water. When you look at older British rockers, or even younger American ones, you can see how some of them are bloated.

I am not a calorie-counting freak. Or portion-counting ogre. However, fish is better than steak, vegan is best. The egss made with whites only made be less tasty than the sunny-side up ones you were used to having as a kid. Each daily sacrifice is a day in your life gained. As for meat, the standard count is a fistful measure of steak. There is fake bacon and there is kosher everything these days. Furthermore, the middle-eastern diet is considered the healthiest there is. Diet without religious borders, great!

Today is John Lennon's birthday. Born John Winston Lennon, murdered John Ono Lennon, he discovered healthy food as a post-Beatle adult. I met a former student, who was twelve when i taught him, at a clinic in Brazil. He remembered my teaching "Imagine."

Just for today, for our tavaritch in Russia, in Sudan, click. Thank you. Click again.