Downtown Disney

It has been a busy two days. Tonight, after work, I headed downtown to see a play. After getting home, I quickly changed and headed out for a run. It wasn’t a great run, but it was something, and when I add up the time spent running with the brisk walking warm-up and cool-down, I was on the streets for 45 minutes. I was antsy to go on the run, because yesterday ended up being a rest day. I didn’t work out before going to the office (I’ve been failing all week at morning exercise), and after work, I had dinner with an old friend from high school that was in town for a convention. And by ‘in town’ I mean Anaheim, which is an hour away, so when you factor in drive time, that left no time for a workout.

Gator

Happy Saturday!  How is your weekend so far?  I had a lovely evening last night with a bunch of friends, nearly all of whom I’ve mentioned or talked about on this blog at some point.  Robyn was there, as was Lisa, and so was Joe and Giana.  In fact, the only person in attendance that I haven’t ever mentioned before was my friend Blair, who I haven’t seen in a few years.  So congrats on your first blog mention, Blair!

We met at a restaurant/bar in Burbank called Michael’s.  I’ve been to Michael’s many times before, but not in a few years.  Michael’s calls itself a “Mardi Gras Steak and Seafood House.”  I opted to eat dinner beforehand so I didn’t even have to crack the menu open.

While I enjoyed a few bottles of sparkling water, my companions ordered food, and, a little while later, the food arrived.  The waiter started setting down plates, and said, “OK, who ordered the gator?”  There were some quizzical looks, because no one had ordered the gator.  “Oh, that was my mistake,” said the waiter.  “I’m sorry about that.  Would anyone like to try the gator?  It’s on the house.”  I was curious – I don’t think I’ve ever had gator before – and some others were curious, too, so the gator stayed.

According to the menu, the Fried Gator was “Gator nuggets tossed in a light breading and fried crispy.  Served with our Cajun dipping sauce.”  I wasn’t interested in the breading, which also had a buffalo-like sauce on it, so I took a few pieces of gator and peeled the breading off.  It was dark, and I didn’t have my camera, but a got a picture with my cell phone:

That’s Blair’s fork on the right, with a breaded gator nugget.   My fork is on the left, with a de-breaded gator nugget.

So how was the gator?  It wasn’t bad!  A touch on the chewy side.  As the picture shows, it kinda looks like chicken, but it’s denser than chicken.  The texture is more steak-like, and it wasn’t nearly as gamey as I thought it might be.  I don’t think I’d go out of my way to find or eat gator again, but since gator isn’t really on menus very often (at least outside of Louisiana), that probably means it will be a long time before I eat it again, if ever.  I’m glad I tried it… you know me, always willing to try something new!

Because I was curious, I just looked up some nutritional information.  Per serving, gator is higher in calories than chicken – almost twice as many calories.  But gator is also a protein powerhouse, with 46g per serving (over twice as much protein as chicken), so that explains the calorie count (46g, by the way, is almost all your protein needs for the entire day).  Gator is also very lean, with about the same amount of fat as chicken, and because it’s free of cholesterol and saturated fat, gator is considered a heart-healthy protein source.

Until you bread and fry it.  Which is why I’m glad I peeled the breading off.

Have you ever eaten gator?  Have you ever cooked it?  Do you like it?  Share your thoughts in the comments section!

Keep it up, David!

Silver Lake Breakfast

Because I’ve been so wrapped up in preparing for my motivational speaking gig and getting my business cards made (and, oh yeah, there was the matrixectomy too), this blog has veered in recent days from two of its main focuses: eating and exercise.  So this weekend I’m going back to basics.  I’m gonna write a little about food today, and a little about exercise tomorrow.

OK.   So, food.  Hmmm….

Well, I’ll be honest:  My eating at home has been super boring this week.  I’ve done nothing that warrants a blog post: no new recipes, no RediSetGo usage, no new types of produce. I’ve been eating lots of veggies and fruit, lots of lean proteins (mostly eggs and protein shakes), some yogurt, so oatmeal, and absolutely nothing that I find at all interesting or worthy of sharing.

But I did try a new restaurant the other morning!  It was the day after my speech at Whole Foods, actually.  My friend Mat invited me to breakfast in Silver Lake, his super-trendy, hipster-filled Los Angeles neighborhood (it’s where I got my awesome new glasses).  “There’s a couple super-vegan places I’ve been wanting to try,” Mat said, coining the word ‘super-vegan’ in the process.  I’m not vegan, but I love vegan restaurants, because they tend to be creative and interesting and have fun things I’ve never heard of on the menu.  “I’m in!”  I responded, and at 9am, I was knock-knock-knocking on Mat’s door.  A few minutes after that, we took off on foot for a super-vegan breakfast.

The super-vegan breakfast establishments had other ideas, though.  One turned out to be not a restaurant at all, but a juice bar.  The other one was closed.  Apparently super-vegan hipster restaurant proprietors can’t be bothered to open for breakfast on weekdays.

We ended up at Madame Matisse, a tiny little corner cafe:

Their breakfast menu was full of delicious-sounding options, from Chocolate Stuffed French Toast to five different kinds of Eggs Benedict (five!) to a dish called Chef’s Revenge, which has a great menu description:

“A scramble of eggs, corned beef hash, rosemary garlic home fries, pork sausage, bacon, cheddar, and salsa with a side of toast.  Don’t ask for a vegetarian version because it doesn’t exist.”

I love breakfast food, and I was really tempted to order something that I normally don’t eat, like one of those Eggs Benedicts (maybe the one with brie, leeks, and black truffle oil) or their Homemade Belgian Waffle, but I was good, and made a healthy choice.  The thing with breakfast food is that when I order smartly, by the time my food comes, I stop missing what I could be eating, because all breakfast food is delicious!

I chose the Build Your Own Omelet option from the menu, and got it with egg whites only, and filled with tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, asparagus, and chicken.  I had them replace the home fries with fruit, and got rye toast, no butter, on the side.  Mm-mmm!

I had never seen ratatouille on a breakfast menu before, but they offered a Ratatouille Skillet, which was ratatouille with two eggs on top, sausage and toast.  That’s what Mat ordered:

I’m pretty sure both of us renewed our memberships to the clean plate club…  I know I did.  I love a good omelet, and that was a good omelet.

We walked back to Mat’s house, and before I took off, Mat and wife Maggie let me raid their little herb garden (I raided their tomato plants earlier this summer).  They have a giant sage bush and tons of rosemary, and I helped myself to a few sprigs of each:

That’s all sage and rosemary in the background!

As I drove home, I had a light bulb moment about how I would use my herbs.  It involves picking up a few things at Whole Foods (which I’ll do today) and also using one of the items in my kitchen that came all the way from Sweden…

…a brand-new recipe is in the works!  Stay tuned… I’ll be sharing it shortly!

Keep it up, David!

Downtown Detroit

A quick plug: My first public speaking gig is now less than two weeks away!  I created a “See Me at Whole Foods” link at the top of the page that has all the details.  So click on it, and RSVP.  I wanna see you there!

I have strong feelings about the city of Detroit.  While I’ve never considered myself a Detroiter, as I’ve never lived within the city limits, it’s always been there, not that far from my childhood home in one of its northwest suburbs.  It’s a major American city with a long and rich history (it’s the oldest city in the Midwest – founded over 100 years before Chicago, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee) that has given the world everything from mass-produced automobiles to Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross to the ice cream soda.  The first regular radio reports were broadcast from Detroit, and Detroit was home to the first paved road, the first tri-colored stoplight, and the first urban freeway.

You don’t hear many good things about Detroit in the news; it has a pretty bad rap.  Detroit has plenty of huge problems, and people tend to say plenty of terrible things about it.  I’m not one of them.  I like to think that Detroit will, one of these days, get out of the slump it’s been in for past 40 or so years, and rise again as a place where people will want to live and want to visit.

It’s easy for me to be positive – I live 2,000 miles away, unexposed to the crumbling infrastructure, the poverty, the rampant unemployment.  I just don’t think that being negative is very productive or helpful.  I have fond memories of Detroit from my childhood, and have heard many more wonderful stories from my father, who grew up there.  You may think me naive or unrealistic, but I think the city has a lot of potential, and I will always root for it.

My attitude towards Detroit are best reflected in this 1985 television commercial produced by the local ABC affiliate.  It’s dated and super-cheesy now, but it used to air all the time, and I remember loving it as a kid.  And since I’m sharing local commercials from the ’80s, check out this one for the Detroit Zoo, which is one of my favorite commercials of all time.

Thank you for indulging me in my little pro-Detroit rant.  It’s been on my mind because yesterday I headed downtown to meet up with a buddy for lunch.  Matt is a friend from high school who lived in Los Angeles after college, then moved back to Michigan with his wife and started a family.  He’s the author behind The Dad Scene, a funny and smart blog chronicling his experiences as a first-time father.  Matt is a tremendous writer, so you should definitely check it his blog – no, really, check it out.

Matt works at Compuware, a software company that moved their world headquarters to Detroit about 8 years ago.  Their building has an impressive atrium that rises up 16 stories, and that’s where I met Matt:

We apparently just missed a doggie fashion show in the atrium that wrapped up minutes before we got there.  I hate when that happens.

Here’s the both of us:

For lunch, we headed a few blocks away to Vicente, a Cuban place that Matt likes. 

I’ve had Cuban dishes before, at restaurants that featured cuisine from across Latin America, but this might have been my first visit to a full-fledged Cuban restaurant.  Everything on the menu sounded good, but I settled on the Pan con Bistec, a pressed sandwich with skirt steak, swiss cheese, grilled onions, mustard, mayo, lettuce and tomatoes.  I considered having them hold the cheese and mayo, but decided that since I eat Cuban food so rarely, I should enjoy it as it’s intended.  My sandwich (with a side of plantain chips):

Matt’s sandwich was similar, but with chicken:

I love a pressed sandwich.  They’re dense and flavorful, and this sandwich was fantastic.  It was also huge, and both of us ended up eating only half.  We boxed up the other halves to take with us, but as we walked back to Matt’s office, we were approached by two homeless women who asked if we’d consider sharing, so we gave the food to them.

After I parted ways with Matt, I did something I haven’t done since I was a kid: I rode the People Mover.  The Detroit People Mover is a rather silly example of mass transit.  It’s a 3-mile-long monorail that encircles downtown Detroit and doesn’t really go anywhere.  No stop is more than 10 blocks from any other stop, so it’s not very efficient for commuters, but for someone like me who just wanted to see a little more of the city, it was perfect.  Here comes a train now!

I took some pictures from the monorail’s windows (it was gray and rainy, so they’re not great).  Here’s Woodward Avenue, which extends from the heart of downtown all the way out to my neck of the suburbs:

The old Wayne County Building:

The skyline, looking east from Joe Louis Arena (where the Red Wings play).  The towers on the right are the Renaissance Center, which I’ve blogged about numerous times before (most notably here and here, and it’s featured in my Skyscraper Collection):

I like that picture because you can see raindrops in it.

Time to get international!  This is a picture of a totally different country – it’s the skyline of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, which is directly across the river from Detroit.  I took this picture specifically for my trainer Craig, who grew up outside Windsor and asked that I say hello to it on this trip.  Hello, Windsor!

Finally, one of Detroit’s most famous landmarks, the 8,000-pound statue that honors Detroit resident Joe Louis, the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937-49:

OK – bedtime for me.  Gotta hit the gym in the morning!

Keep it up, David!

I Arrived! Then, I Dined At Assaggi.

Hello from the Great Lakes State!  I’m writing from Michigan, my home state.  After a wonderfully smooth flight experience (unlike my recent craptacular flight to Colorado), I landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.  My dad had dinner plans with a friend last night, so my mom and I were on our own for dinner.  I was already starving – I was in the air from 10:40am – 3pm (no, the flight wasn’t 4+ hours, it was 2+ hours, plus a 2-hour time zone change), so I never ate lunch.  My breakfast in Colorado consisted of a banana, a few grapes, and the leftover salad from last night, and after I landed I bought another banana and a small container of watermelon.  You can see why I was starving!

I met up with my mom as she was finishing up at her office:

Me:  “I’m really hungry.  Really hungry.  What do you want to do for dinner?”

Mom:  “Well, I never ate the salad I ordered for lunch, and it’s a big salad, so we could split that.  Or, why don’t we go out to eat?  There’s two restaurants I wanted you to try while you were in town.  One of them is pricey, so you may not want to go there with your friends, so why don’t I take you?”

I don’t think I’ve ever turned down a fine dining opportunity where I wouldn’t be responsible for the bill, and I wasn’t going to start now!

The restaurant my mom had in mind was Assaggi Bistro, a restaurant in Ferndale, a little suburb about 20 minutes away.  She had recently been there with a group of her friends, and everyone loved the food and had a great time.  The restaurant has a totally unassuming facade – you would never guess by driving by that this place was recently named one of the best restaurants in metro Detroit by The Detroit News:

Assaggi has a spacious patio out back, surrounded by lots of greenery, and we got a table back there.  My chair ended up being close to a speaker, and I noticed right off the bat the eclectic selection of music that totally had me laughing – a bizarre mix of standards like “That’s Amore” alongside cheesy wedding-band instrumental jazz versions of recent hits, like Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It).”

Assaggi’s menu combines elements from countries all around the Mediterranean.  They have pizzas from a wood-fired oven, a meze plate with hummus, tabouleh, and other Middle-Eastern items, and dishes with French, Spanish, and even African influences.

I was less concerned with watching what I ate that I normally am, on account of the lack of calories I’d eaten so far that day, although I did choose to avoid anything deep-fried or swimming in oil.  For an appetizer, my mom and I split one of their specials, California golden figs wrapped in prosciutto, stuffed with Robiola cheese (a creamy soft Italian cheese), and served with a balsamic reduction.  It was the first fresh fig I’ve eaten since I bought some a few months ago, and, like me, they had come all the way from California!

The fig had so many great textures and flavors – salty, sweet, rich, crispy, creamy – a great way to start a meal.  And how awesome is that photograph?  I normally don’t boast about my camera work – in fact, I’ve apologized for it on more than one occasion – but these pictures came out fantastically!  Probably because of all the natural light.

For my entree, I ordered their Moroccan duck legs, which came with dried fruit and pistachio couscous, spinach, and a pomegranate barbeque sauce:

I don’t eat duck very often – maybe once or twice a year, and always at restaurants.  And it was goooood.  The meat fell off the bones and melted on my tongue, and the pomegranates, pistachios and dried fruit perked up every bite.

My mom ordered the rainbow trout, which came with squash and heirloom baby tomatoes, a creamy dill sauce, and the same couscous I had (minus the fruit and pistachios):

I tried a piece of the fish, and it was smooth and well-cooked, but I liked my dish better.

Oh, and our meal started off with a bread basket that I didn’t photograph – we each had a piece of what seemed like a fresh-baked, warm (steamy, in fact) pita.

The dessert menu looked appetizing – who doesn’t like chocolate lava cake or creme brulee? – but we decided to pass and call it a night.  It was a delicious meal!

A quick update on my lower back before I call it a night:  Today I didn’t experience any discomfort or pain at all.  I’m so glad I’m healing so quickly after my move-induced injury!  Today was another rest day, exercise-wise, but tomorrow I’m gonna head to the gym for some light cardio.  I’m not going to push myself – I just wanna see how it feels, and how my body responds.  If there’s any pain or discomfort, I’ll stop.  With 3 of the last 4 days being rest days, I’m getting antsy to move!  I also have a massage scheduled for Thursday – which Richard Simmons recommended I get – and I’m looking forward to that as well.

Keep it up, David!

Chart Update and Veggie Grill

The good news keep comin’ this week.  After yesterday’s exciting and positive health update, I have more excellent news… and I’m gonna let my weight chart do the talking.  Take it away, weight chart!

I lost another pound over the past week!  That puts me at an all-time low!  A weight of 235 pounds represents a loss of 167 pounds.  I really feel like I’m on a roll right now, and not just because I’ve lost 4 pounds in 3 weeks.  It’s because I’ve been having great workouts lately (today is actually my first rest day since last Tuesday), and I’ve avoided binges and eaten really well, too.

A couple more chart shots:

 

Moving on…

Yesterday I hung out with my friend Steve, a friend I’ve known since sixth grade.  We went to the Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA (I’ll hopefully share a couple pics soon), and afterwards, we went to lunch at Veggie Grill.

Veggie Grill is a small chain of vegetarian restaurants in southern California.  They have seven locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including one that I drive by every time I head into West Hollywood.  I’ve eaten their food a bunch of times, because my old office used to order catering from them regularly, but I’ve never been to one of their actual restaurants, and Steve hadn’t either.  We ended up at their Farmers Market location, which is just up the street from LACMA.  The Farmers Market is a permanent collection of vendors and restaurants located on the site of one of the earliest actual farmers markets in the city.  You can buy tons of stuff there, from produce and meat to candles to jewelry, and there are specialty retailers that sell things like hot sauce or stickers.  There’s also a strip mall element, where there’s national retailers like Cost Plus World Market and Chipotle, and that’s where the Veggie Grill is located.

I ended up ordering something that I’d never tried before: their Thai Chickin’ Salad, dressing on the side.  It has romaine, cabbage, roasted corn salsa, green onion, mandarin oranges, cilantro, and sesame seeds, and is covered with carrots and a generous handful of fried wonton strips:

The salad was delicious.  It had too many wontons for my liking.  Next time I’ll have them leave the wontons off.  For this time, though, I already had them, so I started by picking a lot of them off and putting them on the side.  Then I ate everything else, and quickly – the dressing had a great spicy kick, and their fake chicken is some of the best I’ve ever had.  When I was finished, I ended up picking at the pile of wontons, and, by the time we left, I had eaten most of them.  And they were good.  And I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

Because did you hear?  I lost a pound this week.

Keep it up, David!

SEATTLE Part 1 (and Chart Update)

Are you comfy?  Do you have a blanket and a (healthy) snack?  Good, because you may be here a while.  After sharing lots and lots about my trip to Vegas last week, it’s time to tackle part two of my tour of the western United States: The three days I spent in Seattle.  There’s tons to share, so I decided to break it up into two posts.  Today’s post will be kinda sorta mostly about food, and tomorrow’s will be kinda sorta mostly about exercise and activity.

But first, since I wasn’t near a scale on Tuesday (instead I was on virtually every form of transportation invented), my weekly weigh-in got pushed a day.  When I got on the scale today… well, I’ll just let my updated chart share the good news:

That’s right, bitches - down 2 pounds!  This puts me back at my lowest weight ever, 236 pounds, which represents 166 pounds lost.  It also means that I’m successfully lost the 3 pounds I gained two weeks ago, and can continue on my downward path to new all-time lows.  Today has been a good day in many ways, but seeing that number was definitely a nice boost.  I think back to a couple weeks ago, and how awful I felt when I gained those 3 pounds, and how I almost skipped a weigh-in to avoid the inevitable, and it almost seems silly and over-dramatic.  But I’m not embarrassed or ashamed at how I felt at the time, because it reflects how important all of this is to me, and it provided the kick in the nuts that reinvigorated me.  Had I gained three pounds, shrugged it off, and gave up… that’d be a different story, now wouldn’t it?

So.  I managed to lose 2 pounds during a week when I spent most of it traveling.  It’s not easy to travel and stay on program, but no matter where you are, you can always make the best choices you can, in any situation.  Sometimes, like my first day in Vegas, you can alleviate temptation by bringing your own food, but that wasn’t really an option for my time in Seattle.  So how did I do it?  A lot of it has to do with the choices I made every day in Seattle.  And that, my friends, is what I’m sharing today and tomorrow.

Wow, that transition really couldn’t have worked out any better!

SEATTLE – Part 1.

I headed up to the Emerald City to spend a few days with a really great friend, Collin.  I met Collin a few weeks into our freshman year at college, and we’ve been friends since (and roommates, too, during our senior year).  Collin and his boyfriend Blayne live in a charming little house in Seattle, and, shockingly (and embarrassingly), this was my first time visiting him since we graduated, in any of the three cities he’s lived in.

Plum.  My plane from Vegas landed on Saturday afternoon, and after dropping my stuff off at Collin’s house, the two of us went on a walk.  First order of business: lunch.  We ended up at Plum Bistro, a vegan restaurant in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Since it was Saturday, we ordered off their brunch menu.  Collin went with their Mayan Blue Corn Pancakes, which had a tofu scramble on top:

I ordered the Mofongo.  That’s right, you heard me – Mofongo.  I’d never heard of it either – apparently it’s a traditional Puerto Rican plantain-based dish (here’s a non-vegan recipe from the New York Times) and, well, I’m a sucker for trying new things.

The Mofongo is the ball in the center, which is plantains mashed with other things, and fried.  Those strips are baked tempeh, and there’s a creole sauce.  Had I known the Mofongo was fried, I probably wouldn’t have ordered it, but I’m glad I did, because it was savory and flavorful, and incredibly delicious.  Collin’s pancakes were great too.  You know how sometimes you crave sweet breakfast food and sometimes savory?  I’m glad I went savory, even if it was fried.

Pike Place Market.  Our Saturday walk also included a brief stroll through Pike Place Market, one of Seattle’s most famous destinations.  It’s a market that stretches a couple blocks, and features vendors selling food of all kinds, as well as souvenirs and crafts.  Since it’s right on the water near the port, it’s best-known as being an extraordinary fish market – the fishmongers there like to throw fish – but what caught my eye were the beautiful produce displays:

Oprah Fish.  That night, Collin, Blayne and I made dinner and had a quiet night at their place.  Collin’s handy with a grill, so while we were out, we hit up the seafood counter at Whole Foods, and, thanks to a staffer’s recommendation, came home with Oprah fish.  (Why didn’t we buy fish at Pike Place, you ask?  Because we knew we’d be walking around for hours more before making it home, and we didn’t want to carry it around.)

Did you know that in addition to her own network, Oprah has her own fish now?  She doesn’t.  I’m lying.  What we actually bought was opah, but we couldn’t resist calling it Oprah.

I had never heard of opah before (they’re also known as moonfish, but I’ve never heard of moonfish either).  They’re big and steak-like, and the guy at Whole Foods compared it to swordfish and marlin (both of which I rarely eat).  You can see what an opah looks like (they’re pretty!) in this Iron Chef America clip.

Here’s our opah steaks after Collin first put them on the grill:

Collin seasoned the opah with a Hawaiian ginger salt rub.  That’s onions and zucchini, and a chicken breast for Blayne, who’s not a big seafood eater.  My plate:

My contribution to the dinner was the salad – mixed greens, orange cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, red pepper, and bottled dressing.

The opah was mellow, satisfying, and delicious!

Farmers Market.  On Sunday, we headed to Ballard, a neighborhood in Seattle that has a Sunday farmers market.  We picked up some blackberries and raspberries and ate them as we strolled the stalls, and ended up finding a food stall that intrigued us so much we decided to get lunch there.  It was Patty Pan Grill, which offers tamales and roasted vegetable quesadillas:

Collin got the roasted vegetable quesadilla, and I got a black bean tamale with roasted veggies on the side:

I don’t know if you can tell in the picture or not, but the roasted veggies must have contained well over a dozen types of veggies, from onions and peppers to beets to many types of leafy greens like chard and kale.  They were insanely delicious.  I wish I took a picture of the cook workin’ those veggies: she had a big flat top that had heaping piles of veggies cooking away, and she was stirring it up and flipping those veggies every-which-way with two spatulas.  I want to go back!

Blueacre.  On Monday, my final full day in Seattle, Collin and I met up at Blueacre Seafood, because they have happy hour specials on oysters, and you don’t go to Seattle and not indulge in some seafood!  I don’t ever crave or think to seek out raw oysters, but when I do have them, about once a year, I really enjoy them.  We split a dozen, which came with a horseradish cocktail sauce, a champagne mignonette, and a ginger soy sauce, and they were well-priced at $1 apiece:

These oysters came from Dabob Bay in Puget Sound, less than 20 miles from where we were sitting!  We also ordered the potted salmon appetizer from the happy hour menu:

It’s basically a smoked salmon mousse, served with pickled red onions and herbs… I’m a sucker for smoked salmon, and it was tasty.

Collin and I wanted to do some shopping before having dinner (we treated the salmon and oysters as an appetizer), so we took off from Blueacre.  Before we left, though, we looked over the dinner menu (because we were curious), and saw something that caught our attention:

Angry lobster?  Do they poke it until it gets pissed off?  The next time our server came by, we asked her what that meant.  “We poke it with a stick,” she said.  “That’s what we said!” Collin and I said, simultaneously.  A good laugh was had by all, and then the server explained it’s prepared with a some sort of spicy rub or sauce or something – I guess I stopped paying attention.

Shopping.  A few blocks from Blueacre is a Nordstrom Rack, so Collin and I ducked in and I ended up purchasing a bizarre item of clothing that I really like.  It’s made from soft sweatshirt material, but it’s cut like a blazer.  Collin combined those two words and came up the name I will forever call it: it’s a Swazer, and it’s really comfortable.  Here I am, in my Swazer, lookin’ orange thanks to the setting sun, back down by Pike Place Market:

It looks like the sleeves are comically long, but my right hand is cropped out of the picture, and my left hand is blocked by my body – I assure you the sleeves fall at the right spot!  Be sure to come back tomorrow, though, for a photo of me wearing a truly comical article of clothing!

And now that I’ve mentioned Collin 10,000 times, how about I show a picture?  What a good idea!  Here’s the two of us:

A stranger took this picture, and then her hubby/boyfriend insisted on taking one too, as he was convinced she took a crappy picture.  So he took a picture of us, and then they argued about whose was better.  They were kind, and probably a bit tipsy, but for the record, that’s the lady’s photo that I used.

Seatown.  Our final dining excursion came after the Swazer purchase, when we sat down at Seatown Seabar & Rotisserie, a well-known restaurant right near Pike Place Market.

I ordered the dungeness crab cocktail off the appetizer menu:

And a side dish of watermelon and grilled corn:

The menu didn’t mention the part that the watermelon would also be grilled!  Just like when I grilled watermelon on my RediSetGo a few months ago!  Does this place have a RediSetGo too?  How hilarious would it be if they did!  My RediSetGo melon doesn’t hold a candle to this dish – the melon was velvety-smooth, well-spiced, and amazing.  I could eat stacks of grilled watermelon!

Phew.  Are you still with me?  Has anyone made it this far?  Thanks for bearing with me – like I said at the top, there’s lots to share!  And I didn’t even cover everything – in addition to all those meals, I also had great meals I didn’t document at Columbia City Ale House and Portage Bay Cafe – the latter was lunch with my buddy Shawn, a friend from way back that I haven’t seen in 15 years, but reconnected with a couple years ago thanks to Facebook.  Shawn, by the way, is a rock star realtor in the Seattle luxury market, so when you’re ready to buy or sell a high-end Seattle-area property, he’s your guy!

Are you ready for more?  Because the fun’s not over yet!  Tomorrow I’ll cover what I did to stay active, and some more of the sights I saw while sight-seeing.  I’ll leave you with this little tease:  I calculated that in 3 days, I walked or ran over 20 miles!  See how it breaks down tomorrow.  Until then…

…Keep it up, David!

Mas Malo AND New Before/Current Photos!

Yesterday I headed downtown and met up with my friends Heather and John for lunch.  Heather came up in my blog two weeks ago, when we had a delicious (and noisy) dinner at Bottega Louie.  John was working and wasn’t available to join us then, but both Heather and John were free today (they work on a touring musical, so their work hours are mostly nights and weekends), so we headed to a place that I heard great things about (Heather and John had heard good things too): Mas Malo.

Malo is a popular Mexican restaurant and bar in Silver Lake (a neighborhood not too far from downtown Los Angeles) that’s really good, despite its name, which means ‘bad’ in Spanish.  Recently, the folks behind Malo opened a second restaurant downtown, which they cleverly called “Mas Malo” (More Bad).  It’s in a beautiful space that was originally a jewelry store that opened in the ’20s: high, ornate, carved ceilings, lots of rich wood panelling – I took a picture, but it didn’t turn out well, so you can check out the pics on their website.

Generally speaking, I’ve been staying away from Mexican food lately, because, compared to other cuisines, Mexican menus are difficult to order off of if you’re try to eat healthy, like I am.  Everything on them is so tempting, too!  What isn’t delicious when it’s wrapped in a tortilla and covered in cheese, sour cream, and guacamole?  But most good, trendy establishments in Los Angeles offer menu items geared towards the health-conscious, and Mas Malo was no exception.

I ordered their Grilled Local Fish Salad, and the fish today was Red Snapper.  The salad part was cabbage, spinach, tomato, and some avocado.  It was dressed in olive oil and lime juice, but I had them hold the oil off of mine.  How good does this look?

It tasted even better.  The fish was really flavorful.  Heather and John got chips and salsa, and the salsa they ordered (because Mas Malo has five different kinds) was Burnt Habanero and Creme, so I tried a few teaspoons of that with my fish, and it was amazing.  And spicy, which I don’t mind at all!  I could feel the residual heat in the back of my mouth a good half hour after finishing our meal.  I’d totally go back to Mas Malo – no doubt about it.

OH – And this is VERY exciting: I have a new  “Before” and “Current” photo comparison to share!  I meant to do this a few weeks ago, but forgot.  One of the “Before” pictures that I’ve been using throughout this whole weight loss shebang is this one:

It’s a classic “Before” picture:  I look huge (which I was), and it’s also wonderfully unflattering, even for a “Before” pic:  I’m shiny, I look tired (which I’m sure I was, as the photo was taken around 1am), there are sweat marks on my shirt, I hate my hair, and that background isn’t doing any favors whatsoever (it’s this weird glowing wall in the basement of a downtown skyscraper).

Literally millions of people have seen this picture.  It was featured on Richard Simmons’ website last summer, when I was his featured success story (read what I wrote here), and it was shown on national television when I was a guest on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” (which you can watch here).

But I’m not the only one in the picture… I cropped out Heather!  Wanna see the whole picture?  Here it is, I’m showing it publicly for the very first time:

Ugh – that background is so hideous.  SO.  HIDEOUS.

That photo was taken in August of 2009, and with Heather back in town now, I thought it’d be good fun to take another photo of the two of us together.  Because I’m not the only one who’s lost weight!  Heather has, over the past year or so, dropped 50 pounds and kept it off!  She did it using Weight Watchers, and it’s amazing and wonderful.  Everything about Heather, for that matter, is amazing and wonderful.

John took a picture of Heather and I today outside of Mas Malo, so here we are two years later – and what you don’t see is the 215 pounds we’ve collectively lost:

And here’s the side-by-side (for maximum comparison):

If you wanna see more “Before” and “Current” photos, check out the Photo Gallery – there’s some good pics there!

One more photo for I wrap this up…  My friend Amanda sent me this picture yesterday:

Amanda made my zucchini salad recipe that I blogged about the other day and sent a photo of the end result!  This really made my day.  Amanda made the recipe her own: she added chicken and black beans for protein, and a little feta on top, and served it on a bed of lettuce.

Does my blog or my recipes inspire you in the kitchen?  Send me your pics!  Find out how to contact me here.

Keep it up Amanda, and keep it up Heather, and…

…Keep it up, David!

Bottega Louie

I’m so excited – my friend Heather is in town!  I’ve known Heather since my first year in college, when we both started studying theater design and production at the University of Michigan.  Since graduating, Heather has built a wonderful career touring the country (and the world) as a stage manager with various musicals – often times with her husband John, who also works behind-the-scenes on tours.  Their work brings them through Los Angeles just about every year, and it’s great to see them.  They arrived in town yesterday, with the current tour of Les Miserables, and while John had to work last night, Heather was free, so the two of us went out to dinner.

A friend had highly recommended a place called Bottega Louie, so we went there.  It’s a huge, cavernous place with high ceilings, and it’s very spare: not much decoration on the white walls, simple fixtures and lighting.  It’s also very open: you can see everything happening in the kitchen, and at the other end of the room was their huge pizza oven.  During the day, you can apparently get grab-and-go items for lunch, and there’s also a long dessert counter filled with chocolates and tarts and tons of macaroons.

Here’s their website – like the actual restaurant, it’s very bare-bones!

And here’s one of the entrances:

I don’t know how I managed to take a picture without any people in it (I guess you can see part of a person inside), because the place was packed.  They don’t take reservations, so we put our name on the list, and had a drink at the bar (sparkling water for me) while we waited.  Oh, and addition to being huge and open, it’s also loud.  There’s nothing in that 10,000 square foot room to absorb any sound.

After a 35-minute wait, we got seated, and ended up getting a spectacular table, in the corner, with a perfect view of the kitchen.  Here’s Heather, with the kitchen behind her:

The station directly behind Heather turned out to be where they put butter into their butter dishes, so I got to see them do that all night!

The food was delicious.  The menu is big and varied: pasta, pizza, lots of salads, and tons of sides.  I could easily go back and make a meal out of the side dishes!

What we ordered:

I ordered the ceviche (the dish in front), which had shrimp and other seafood, as well as mango (I think) and it was deliciously seasoned and light.  Heather’s Italian salad is back left and my Louie salad (with shrimp, avocado, a ton of veggies, and dressing on the side) is back right, and the back center dish is a combo of heirloom tomatoes and watermelon, with a balsamic element of some sort, that Heather ordered.  It had yellow and red watermelon, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had yellow watermelon before!  It was good!  Spoiler alert: it tastes like watermelon.

Everything was really delicious.  I was tempted by their macaroon selection on the way out, but didn’t get any:

You’ll probably see Heather pop up in this blog again.  It didn’t happen last night, because I forgot, but I was planning on having someone take a picture of the two of us, because I have a great “before” picture, and we need a great “current” picture – did I mention that Heather has lost, and kept off, over 50 pounds?  Because she has.  And she looks great.  And she did it while traveling the country for work, living out of suitcases and eating out a lot.  Amazing.

Keep it up, Heather!  And…

..Keep it up, David!

Lunch at Spago

Man, did I have a great meal the other day.  Delicious food, wonderful company – it was a really special time.

Way back last fall, I was able to do something really nice for my friend Felise, who I’ve met and become friends with because she’s also a regular at Slimmons, and ever since then she’s wanted to return the favor by taking me out to lunch.  Well, months and months went by, and no lunch, but we finally were both free a few days ago on Saturday, after one of Richard Simmons’ classes.  So Felise took me to Spago.  Spago, in Beverly Hills, is the flagship restaurant in the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group.  It won a James Beard award a few years back, and was one of three restaurants in Los Angeles to get 2 stars in the Michelin Guide in 2008.  It appears Felise doesn’t mess around when she wants to take someone to lunch!

Here’s me and Felise at our table.  It was a great table, tucked away in the corner, so we could see most of the main dining room:

Felise, who is also trying to eat healthily, had called ahead, and asked if they had reasonably healthy menu options, and the host told her that we could basically order any food that was on the menu, but have it cooked any way that we liked.  So we started looking over the menu, but had barely started when our server returned, removed the menus from our hands (politely) and said, “you’ll have time to look at these in a few minutes – we’re going to bring some things out from the kitchen.”

A few minutes later, the amuse-bouches started arriving.  An amuse-bouche is a one-bite appetizer, which literally means, in French, ‘mouth amuser’ – that much I knew from watching umpteen seasons of Top Chef.  The definition also includes (and I just read this online) that in fine dining situations, amuse-bouches are never ordered from menus, but instead sent out as a present from the chef to his patrons.  In total, they brought us 4 amuse-bouches, and, true to tradition, they were comped on our bill at the end of the meal.

First up, a tuna tartare in some sort of sesame cracker that was formed into a cone.  If you’ve never had tartare before, it’s raw meat (usually steak or fish) that’s blended with herbs and maybe a light sauce:

It was fantastic.  Then they brought out 2 more, in rapid succession:

On the left is smoked salmon, with a little salmon roe in the center, served on a blini (a little savory pancake) with creme fraiche.  On the right is ceviche, which is a cold soup made from raw fish or seafood that is cooked only in acid (typically, lime juice).  I forgot what kind of fish was in this ceviche, but it also had a little blood orange segment in it, too.

I can tell now that I’m going to run out of ways of saying how delicious everything was at Spago, so maybe I’ll just stop trying, and tell you now, and for the last time – it’s amazing.  Wonderfully attentive service, exquisite food – if you have the chance to go to Spago, don’t pass it up!

The last amuse-bouche was bacon confit with a bechemel sauce, wrapped in pastry:

Confit is a cooking technique (and a preservation technique) where meats are slowly cooked in salted fat, and bechemel is a white sauce.

Some of the items in these dishes were certainly things that I wouldn’t eat on a regular basis, but since everything was literally one bite, I didn’t worry about calories or fat.  Not at this meal!

We were finally picking up our menus and looking again, when Felise asked our server what she recommended that was lower in fat and calories, but still flavorful, and without skipping a beat, the server responded: “We have a fantastic red snapper with asian vegetables, and we can steam the fish, steam the vegetables, serve the miso/ginger/soy glaze on the side, and bring you some steamed brown rice.”  Sounds delicious to me!  We both ordered it.  And here it is (I forgot to photograph the rice, but you know what that looks like):

The vegetables included bok choy and lotus root, which I don’t think I’ve ever tried before, and I’m telling you, I could eat this every single day with no problems at all!  The fish was delicate and flaky, the vegetables tender.

Although our server suggested ordering a fresh berry plate for dessert, we were both full and decided to pass.

Thank you again, Felise, for a terrific lunch!

Keep it up, David!