Re: OT: Bagels...
 

Olives? Ugh! Can't stand em (although I luuuuurve olive oil, wierdly).

I fond bagels to be a little doughy, but tolerable with the right toppings. Soft cheese and the like would be a good start. SImilarly crumpets: That's a pretty hefty slab of bread to be chewed through, although I will partake if one is offered.

Love hot foods, although in the last few years I have developped a wierd reation to them: Anything moderately spicy (a Madras, say, or even a good pathia) will bring out a bright red "zorro mask" on my face. It's wierd to watch, but it does nothing to mar my enjoyment of the food. My wife and I both like it hot since visiting Sri Lanka (although I wouldn't ever go to a phaal, and I'm wary of vindaloos) and the curries and chillis we cook have to be carefully watered down if anyone else is going to be eating them. It helps that my father in law grows his own super-strength chillis in his greenhouse=-)

Did a really nice dahl the other night:
Finely chop an oni*n and a chilli, crush lots of garlic. Fry it all gently in curry powder, cinnamon & chilli powder. Curry leaves too if you have them , and saffron if it costs less than diamond dust where you are.
Now put some red lentils in water. When the onion is soft, drain the lentils and chuck them in the pan with some coconut milk (tinned is fine if you don't happen to live in the tropics.) The creamier the better, so avoid the "low fat" stuff. It's all good fats anyway. Probably. Add mustard powder, black pepper and, if you like, more curry powder & chilli powder. A little bit of tomato puree for colour & thickness won't hurt, as long as you don't add so much that you start to taste it.

Let is all simmer, adding more coconut milk whenever it starts to look a little dry. When the lentils are soft enough that you could eat them without teeth, it's ready!

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

I think the idea is that the flavor of the bagel is supposed to be less savory than the toppings. When I have bagels, it's usually onion bagels with some variety of flavored cream cheese. If I'm feeling ambitious, though, I like pizza bagels: spaghetti sauce, ricotta cheese, some oregano.

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

It's not that weird if your experience with olives is limited to the the canned black and green jar types. The flavor of fresh, fully ripened olives is must closer to the oil that you enjoy so much, but unless you live in the Mediterranean or some other area where they can be grown you've likely never had that.

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

Where's the meat man! And don't tell me pizza or a burger...that doesn't count as real meat. Go out and fry yourself up a nice, thich, juicy, medium-rare steak! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

(Cold/flu not coming = coincidence methinks http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) You need some meat, where are you getting trace minerals from; Iron, magnesium, etc. As far as I know, salad contains none of those http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif


If you really want a way to lose weight, try my caffeine diet. At lunch and supper, eat enough to keep you almost full, but not quite. As soon as you start getting hungrey, drink coffee. Lots of coffee. Coffee fills you up with 0 calories (if you drink it as I do, with no cream / sugar). If you can get to bed without feeling too starved, you'll wake up in the morning quite hungrey, but that's ok since breakfast is right there waiting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif Only downside is you have to pee about as often as a pregnant woman every night from all that coffee http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

And then you'll be like that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o9HbP6-P1k

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

Bagels are bread in the shape of a donut. So, absent any toppings they taste like plain bread. Yeah, that is kinda boring. That's why there are so many interesting toppings. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Not all bagels are 'plain' though. Try some of the fancy flavors offered by this company:

http://www.oldworldbakery.com/
Apple Cinnamon
Banana
Blueberry
Caraway Rye
Cherry
Chocolate Chip
Combo
Egg
Everything
Garlic
Jalepeno
Multi-Grain
Onion
Pesto
Plain
Pineapple
Poppy
Potato
Pumpernickel
Raisin
Raisin Cinnamon
Sesame
Sourdough
Strawberry
Sun-Dried Tomato
Whole Wheat

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

That still leaves the big problem, that being eating them being like chewing rocks.

Subway has a cheese steak option; good, but could use some work.

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

Due to one of those just plain strange things in life, the prepackaged lettuce at the grocery store tends to be fresher than the "fresh" heads of lettuce that they sell, so I tend to buy those instead. The bags I usually buy tend to be 60% iceberg & 40% spinach. I'm not a huge spinach fan, but a good strong garlicy dressing drowns the taste out quite nicely. Co-incidentally, spinach is a very good source of both magnesium and iron.

As for the lack of colds & flus, I attribute that more to the half litre of fresh-pressed fruit juice I have every morning. Well, 1/4 litre in the morning and the rest for lunch. That, coupled with my borderline-unhealthy obsession with pumpkin seeds (dunno what it is, I just love em!) means that I'm probably getting a bit more Vitamin C and Zinc than I need, and of course Vitamin C & Zinc are great for your immune system.
You'll have no arguments from me on that point. You might here arguments from the pretty young thing I'm fortunate enough to spend a bed with, since meat, especially beef, doesn't make my digestive tract happy, and the inevitable result of this is that within seconds of me waking up the night after a steak, my very small bedroom suddenly becomes an environment quite hostile to all forms of life. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif
Funny thing... At one point, I weighed a little under 190lbs. Given that I'm 6 foot 4-and-a-bit, that ain't healthy. But at the time I was drinking at least a litre of Coke a day. I also worked with a fella half my size who drank 4 litres a day, and if he turned sideways, you wouldn't see him.

My current method might not be the best, but it's delivering everything those crazy fad diets promise: I get to eat food that I like, in big quantities, do minimal exercise (I only get in about a half hour walk a day), and still lose weight.

Victory would appear to be mine.

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

190 is actually a normal weight for someone your height. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif On the high side of normal, admittedly.

Re: OT: Bagels...
 

Um... No? One of my classmates is in very good shape (he'll tell you "pretty good" because he doesn't *quite* have his six-pack done), weighs 180lbs, and is a full foot shorter than me.

When I was going to the gym regularly and had gotten rid of my tubbiness and built up a respectable amount of muscle, I weighed in at around 220-225.

When I weighed 190 I could see my ribs, and seeing your ribs != healthy.