Mentaiko-Potato Baguette

Though it's not Blue Zones approved, I think this might be the best thing I've ever eaten in my life.

It's a mentaiko-potato baguette made with a light warm baguette that is topped with mentaiko (seasoned pollock roe) mixed with what seems like Japanese mayo and potatoes, and melted cheese.

When warm, I can't think of much things that I like much better than this.

It's from Bakery + Table, a Japanese-French pastry shop in Honolulu.

Blue Zones eating

After reading the Blue Zones Solution, I decided to try to make at least 8 or 9 meals a week Blue Zones approved, meaning lots of beans and healthy fat from avocados, olive oil and fish.  I should start to add in way more fresh fruits and veggies, and I did this morning with tomatoes.  It's really convenient to eat like this when opening cans, but I should really convert over to dried beans and fresh fish.  Still, good quality food tastes great, even with simple things.

I think if I vary these things with other legumes (soybeans, lentils, navy beans, garbanzos and hummus), vary the oily fish from sardines and salmon to maybe some small Japanese fish, and maybe sometimes incorporating rice and pickled Japanese and Korean vegetables, this would be a really good way to keep this kind of eating habit interesting.

First is a sourdough toast with olive oil, kidney beans and sardines.

 Next I did the same thing with canned salmon.

I did a Costco run and got Japanese pears, vine ripened tomatoes, gluten-free bread and avocado.

Here's kind of the same thing with kidney beans on toast.

I really love Japanese and Okinawan sweet potatoes.

And here's a meal with fresh salmon.  This was a breakfast that keeps me full from 5 a.m. until 11:30 a.m., about 6 1/2 hours!

As I get older, I really enjoy these kinds of meals!!

I hit a goal this weekend

I wanted to lose more weight before my birthday on Saturday, and I managed to drop down below 190 pounds.  I think the scale read 189.6. That makes roughly 10 pounds lost since June.

I also have a goal to read 50 books by the end of the year, and I'm definitely on my way there.

This has been a transformative year for me.  I'm walking like crazy, reading voraciously, maintaining my social network, learning Japanese daily, studying spirituality, learning meditation, revamping my eating, and spending quality time with my beautiful children.  I feel great, physically, emotionally, and intellectually, the best I've ever felt in my life.

Now I have new goals to set, but perhaps I'll wait until New Years!

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann

This book is about the mysterious murders of the Osage Indians, whose fortunes arose from their headrights from their oil rich land, and whose murders were perpetrated by the white criminals who exploited them.

The book centers around Molly Burkhardt and her murdered mother and sisters, a rich white man named William Hale who masterminded the murders, and Tom White, the FBI agent that investigated and ultimately solved the mystery.

It was a really good book.  I thought it was sad for the plight of the native Americans, but it was good that the FBI formed and helped stop the killings.

Your Inner Will - Piero Ferrucci

I really enjoyed this author's book "The Power of Kindness", and wanted to read this book.

It was really good!!  He talks about the will, and the strength of having a strong inner will.  He breaks down several key concepts that contribute to personal strength as follows:

• Freedom
• Center
• Will
• Plasticity
• Autonamy
• Mastery
• Integrity
• Depth
• Courage
• Resilience
• The State of Grace

He concludes the book by discussing Homer's Odyssey, and how Oddyseus's journey reflects these different concepts.

This is another book that I intend to read again.

Paramore

I'm so stoked!!  We're going to see Paramore live in February, and the concert is sold out.  This is going to be a killer show!!!

Pedalboard, a work in progress

My pedalboard is a work in progress, but I am loving it so far.  The Friedman Dirty Shirley pedal is a beast of an overdrive that, when combined with the graphic equalizer, can easily do metal tones.  It's so good that if I only need one overdrive sound, I can probably take the EVH overdrive off of my pedalboard.

As it stands, this pedalboard is so versatile, it can do everything from Jimi to AC/DC (R.I.P., Malcolm Young) to Van Halen to SRV to Slayer to Entombed to Cannibal Corpse.

But I still want to add some pedals - a Phase 90, a fuzz pedal, maybe something to do lower gain tones (another Dirty Shirley?), a drop tune, a smaller reverb pedal, an envelope filter, and a different delay pedal.

Beautiful weather

It was such a beautiful weekend.  I started the weekend by taking off on Friday and spending time with my daughter.  We walked for two miles on the beach in Kailua, on the most beautiful day.

I also woke up at 4:30 every day on my three-day weekend and walked 6 miles a day in chilly 60 degree weather, and the morning air was crisp and beautiful, punctuated by an occasional rainfall.

Psychosis - Cavalera Conspiracy

I've been waiting for this album to come out for months now.  I really love Max Cavalera as a songwriter, a vocalist, and a guitarist.  He has had some really great highlights in his career, from his early Sepultura thrash albums, to his later groove oriented stuff on Chaos A.D. and Roots, to Soulfly (which sounded like an extension of late-Max Sepultura), all the way to his Cavalera Conspiracy albums where he reunited with his brother Iggor after he also left Sepultura.

This is by far my favorite Cavalera Conspiracy album.  I think this is the album most fans wanted him to make since Sepultura's Arise.

The songs on the album range from early thrash songs (complete with the original tom sounds from Beneath The Remains) to songs that harken back to his electronic work with Nailbomb.

This and the new Cannibal Corpse album are really inspiring me this week!

The Blue Zones Solution - Dan Buettner

The Blue Zones are five regions in the world where people live the longest.  They are Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (Italy), Nicoya (Costa Rica), Icaria (Greece) and among the Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California.

Buettner talks about the foods that they eat and the lifestyles that they live.  From Wikipedia:

The people inhabiting Blue Zones share common lifestyle characteristics that contribute to their longevity. The Venn diagram highlights the following six shared characteristics among the people of Okinawa, Sardinia, and Loma Linda Blue Zones:

• Family – put ahead of other concerns
• Less smoking
• Semi-vegetarianism – the majority of food consumed is derived from plants
• Constant moderate physical activity – an inseparable part of life
• Social engagement – people of all ages are socially active and integrated into their communities
• Legumes – commonly consumed

In his book, Buettner provides a list of nine lessons, covering the lifestyle of blue zones people:

1. Moderate, regular physical activity.
2. Life purpose.
3. Stress reduction.
4. Moderate calories intake.
5. Plant-based diet.
6. Moderate alcohol intake, especially wine.
7. Engagement in spirituality or religion.
8. Engagement in family life.
9. Engagement in social life.

I really enjoyed this book.  While I've already implemented several of the items in my life (daily physical activity, stress reduction, social life, engagement in spirituality), since reading this book, I've increased my consumption of legumes and nuts, and I'm incorporating a pescatarian diet.

I give this book a solid 10/10, and I intend to read this again.

Astrophysics For People In A Hurry - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

This was a pretty quick audiobook - at 4 hours, maybe one of the shortest I've listened to in awhile.

Tyson discusses the composition of the universe in micro and macro levels, from the molecular level, all the way to the expansion of the universe.  He talks about how scientists study these things, in mostly an informative way, but he opines a little about the scientific process and challenging the things we accept as true.  He cites great scientists like Newton, Einstein and Kepler, and talks about the spherical manner of most astrophysical phenomena, and the scale of the universe.  He talks about energy and the light spectrum, and the elements in the periodic table.

It's a good primer for astrophysics, complex enough to teach you something, yet simple enough to keep you engaged.

On the nature of existence

After reading 1984 (or more appropriately, listening to the audiobook), I have been pondering the nature of existence, reality, and perception.

Exercise vs. caloric reduction for weight loss

I watched a couple of videos about exercise versus reducing your caloric intake, and how each affects weight loss, and I (mistakenly) took it to heart that exercise wouldn't aid in weight loss.

While I still believe it's true that reducing your caloric intake is a much less time consuming way to lose weight, I think exercise can affect your weight.  I have managed to maintain how much I eat, but changed my exercise routine to walk 11,000 steps per day (with at least one half-hour walk in) on weekdays, and about 15-20,000 steps on weekends (usually incorporating a 2 hour walk per day).  Having done that for about 5 months now, I managed to lose about 8 pounds.

If I can slowly start reducing the amount that I eat and continue to walk, I think I can lose more weight.

Red Before Black - Cannibal Corpse

I've been listening to this album for the past week.  I read on Instagram that one guy thought that CC were phoning it in on this album, but I don't agree with that assessment.  It seems like the guitar players (Pat O'Brien and Rob Barrett) have been solidified in the line-up for a couple of years now and have found a very cool balance (though I understand that whoever writes the song plays most of the guitar).

CC sound in fine form and still heavier than ever.  They're not the fastest death metal band around, but they are pretty brutal.

1984 - George Orwell

This is another classic book that I had never read, so I gave it a shot.

I was only vaguely familiar with the plot of the story, or rather, I only knew the idea of "Big Brother" from cultural references.  I didn't realize that I'd enjoy the story so much, and that it seems to mirror what's happening in North Korea today.

I loved this passage in the book, where Winston finishes reading the book from the opposition:

"The book fascinated him.  Or more exactly, it reassured him.  In a sense it had told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction.  It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order.  It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear ridden.  The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you already know."

I won't reveal the ending, but the overall tone of the book makes you think about a lot of things - What is reality?  (Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if there's nobody there to hear it?)  Is reality external or is it contained within human consciousness?  What is human nature?  What are we to believe about what we are told by the government?  Are there external forces that are controlling us?

I really enjoyed this book, but it was very dark.  I can't decide whether I liked the ending or not.  It was interesting in that it juxtaposed both triumph and tragedy.

I do understand why this is regarded as one of the greatest books of all time.

Seven Deadly Sins - Corey Taylor

In this book, Corey Taylor (singer of Slipknot and Stone Sour) talks about the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, glutton, wrath and sloth) and why they are not sins, while injecting personal anecdotes that relate to each.

In the last chapter, he posits seven new deadly sins - murder, child abuse, rape, torture, theft, lying, and bad music.  He points out that some people might be lost on the last one, and I was and still am.

The book was okay - it was interesting and funny, but philosophical far from where I stand about a lot of things.  I'd give this book a 7 out of 10.

Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation - Bill Nye

This is the second book I read by Bill Nye, though sequentially it came before the last one I read (Unstoppable).

The basis for this book was Bill Nye's live debate with creationist Ken Ham.

Like the last book, Nye starts with the subject matter, but delves into the science that is tangentially related to what you think the subject matter is.  Whereas I thought this book was going to be solely about the argument between science and "creationism", Nye talks about evolution and the thought experiments on the origins of life and the possibility of life on other planets.

I enjoyed this book.  Nye is intelligent and a little wacky, but always presents plausible but out there theories.