Best "Exotic" Fruit in Cincinnati is from Kentucky

"How can I be 30 years old and eating my first persimmon? This is amazing!"

"Because, dear wifey, they keep these suckers hidden (and priced) amongst the exotic fruit at Kroger's. They are beneath papaya$, mangoe$, and $tarfruit." Don't you feel it's time for some stick-it-to-the-man and stickin it to his big gnarly fruit grid?

Because one of my favorite bike rides in Cincinnati goes through Persimmon Grove in Alexandria, Kentucky,  I got to wondering if persimmons could, in fact, be a fruit native to this area. More importantly, if they are growing locally, then where the heck are they? So, I'm gearing up for a good ol' fashioned persimmon hunt.

Some cursory research has led me to believe that persimmons can and DO grow in So-Oh and No-Ky.

The best time to eat persimmons is when the leaves fall of the tree and after a few frosts. That means NOW is harvest time! They look like orange tomatoes with a waxier skin. The flesh is soft like a ripe kiwi. A nice ripe one of the non-astringent variety has almost a creamy taste that just melts in your mouth and makes you want to keep your foraging spot a secret. Ooo dagg!

Best Vegan Meal/Appetizer in the 'Nati

Dayton and Cincinnati have been coalescing into one mega-city for the last couple of decades. I-75, which connects them is one hell-hole of a road. But one of the few benefits of my one hour commute is that I can stop at Cincinnati's best vegan/raw restaurant-- The Loving Hut Cafe.

This is an international chain of restaurants, operated by volunteers who are followers of "Supreme Master Ching Hai". Any more details about the chain than that, I almost don't want to know, since I have been eating here about twice a week and I don't want to ruin it by fining out that the "Supreme Master" is some kind of kool-aid peddler. Heck, maybe I've already drunk the kool-aid.


http://www.thelovingcafe.com/

Raw Veggie Delight-- Ooo dag!!

The raw veggie delight is my absolute favorite, which is reminiscent of an egg salad, but made with sea kelp noodles. It's noodly and raw and tastes like the friggin doge! I love it.

Besides, as my wife so wisely pointed out, "Why do all vegetarian options have to be shaped like T-bones or chicken drumsticks? What's with our culinary-culture's  obsession with meat shapes?" Therefore, I'm also proud to simultaneously be supporting the noodle-shape-imitation movement. (I even sliced a zucchini into a fetuccini-shaped meal for dinner yesterday--a-freakin-mazing!).

Sea kelp noodles are made from sea vegetables, so there are a ton of healthy minerals, but they don't have the caloric density I need. The cashew mylk dressing helps beef up the calories and makes it taste yummy. But, I'd have to buy several servings to qualify as a "full meal." That's why I often end up drinking down a pound of blender-ized dry dates for dessert (after they've soaked for a few hours).

Dates about to be liquified into my favorite pre-workout "ghetto-raid".

Love Force bread and bars are made in the 'Nati.

Another one of my favorites is the raw pizza. Of course, there is no cheese on this pizza. The crust-like substrate is a piece of raw bread called Love Force Bread, which is actually made locally (how cool is that?).

The toppings include tomatoes, avocados, olives, onions, "glued" to the bread with a pasty sauce consisting of sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, herbs and spices, and who-knows-what. They place the pizza on top of a pile of salad greens, which kind of sucks, because I'd really love to wolf-down an entire pizza box full of this manna from the gods. Again, it makes a really good appetizer, but just doesn't constitute a full meal in my world. Still, my hat's off to these guys. Everything that I've tried on the menu is delicious and beautiful. Nothing will disappoint a meat/cheese-addict on the grounds of taste.

I have only two problems with eating here:

1. It kills my confidence in the kitchen-- I get suckered into thinking that all my meals should be this ornate.
2. The dishes have too few calories for my goals. 

As I continue on this journey of learning and failing, I'm going to try to continue to keep my calories up around 3500-4000 per day and also to stop spending so much time in the kitchen. As 2010 comes to a close, I'm wondering if 2011 isn't about to become the "year of the banana." Could I really do it? 30 bananas a day?

Cold Turkey Coffee. Holy Cacao!

Speaking of Thanksgiving and "cold turkey" I've been off coffee for three months now--WOW! Still no regrets. My training and energy levels have only improved.

I'm wondering if I've recently discovered that raw cacao is like the opposite of a "gateway drug". Rather than lead someone to more dangerous addictions, it seems like it has a ton of potential as a coping mechanism for someone going off coffee. 

I thoroughly loved my addiction to coffee since college. I averaged about 4 cups per day. I just love the ritual. The aroma. The warmth. The food pairings. The buzz. The romance of a dimly lit espresso bar. The opportunity to meet neighbors. I also loved that Starbucks almost single-handedly made the global market embrace shade-grown coffee beans. How cool is that? Forests don't have to be cut down!

But there was a lot to NOT like. The energy crash. The stained teeth. The nasty breath. The shakes. The depression. The feelings of powerlessness without it. The expen$e!

The first couple of times I tried quitting almost ruined my marriage. My wife came home from work and didn't rinse out a dish or something, and I just started yelling at her. She was like, "what's the matter with you?! Did you try to give up coffee again?"

"Yeah"

"Well, get your ass back on again, please."

How does one argue with that? But funny thing that finally pushed me over the edge was truthfully the stink of my kitchen compost container when I let it sit too long with coffee grinds and the wrong combination of food scraps. GROSS! You know how pleasant or unpleasant smells conjure up powerful memories? Well, I was immediately flooded with lots of childhood memories of "scary grown-ups" with bad BO and nasty breath. And there I was, becoming one of those stinky grown-ups.

Getting off the "coffee-grid" just so happened to coincide with a book I had been reading called Naked Chocolate by David Wolfe. Now, I've never been a chocolate or candy-eater in the least, but it was just so strange that I had been having profound chocolate cravings like pregnant woman. I checked-out the book from the library because I wanted to see if I could find if there was something within chocolate the my body was asking for. I truly believe that cravings are a conversation our bodies are trying to have with us, and while it may not always be healthy to indulge the craving, it is always worth engaging in the conversation.


What I learned from the book:

• Aztecs used raw chocolate beans (cacao) as money
• King Montezuma consumed 50 cups of chocolate before spending the day at his harem
• Chocolate has lots of magnesium and most Americans are very deficient in magnesium
• The key to chocolate's nutritional power is in its raw form-- prior to excessively heating, processing, melting, chemicalizing, sugarizing, dairy-ladening, packaging, shipping...
• 100 grams of raw chocolate has 10,000 milligrams of antioxidants--that's 10% by weight!!! Twice as many as red wine! Three times as many as green tea! (To compare, processed chocolate powder has less than 1% antioxidant by weight)

There were pages and pages of nutritional information that I was finding too exciting (and too boring) to read. So I went straight away that night to nearest whole foods store and bought 1 lb. for $12. It felt like a total rip off but I tore into the bag. As bad as I was craving chocolate, I could only eat two handfuls of raw cacao beans. They had a pleasant aftertaste, but they were too bitter to really enjoy. So, I probably ate $1 worth of my new superfood, but it would have taken about 14 KitKat bars to take the edge off of my craving. So maybe, by some logic, it's a deal.

The real magic happened that night, and I'm not referring to the aphrodisiac properties-- I couldn't sleep a wink. I got zero sleep that night and I was only mildly tired the next day. Initially, I thought to myself, "Chris, you're a dummy-- you haven't had caffeine in months and then you had a bunch of chocolate in its raw form right before going to bed. Are you mad?"

Yes, that may have been a stupid decision, but according to Naked Chocolate, there is apparently very little research about the effects of raw foods with caffeine and/or its cousin theobromine. The belief expressed in the book was that cacao doesn't act nearly as wildly as a coffee-like stimulant in its raw form. That sounds crazy after my latest cacao binge.

For me it's not a matter of what the book said or any scientific studies. From now on, I won't be eating much raw cacao, unless I'm craving it. When I do, I will be balancing its bitter taste with some natural sweetness like dates or bananas in my smoothies.

As I write this, I'm enjoying a some killer Chocolate Energy Bars (or "energy turds" as my wife calls them). There's no real recipe, just the following raw ingredients chopped up in a food processor and rolled into balls:

• pitted dates, 
• chia seeds
• pumpkin seeds
• pecans
• cacao beans
• (Option for dried coconut and/or dried mango slices)

Raw cacao energy bars-- AKA "Energy Turds"

The Bootstrap Method vs. Barefit Method

I had a great 16 mile autumn run today and my "barefit" minimalist running shoes inspired a couple of new perspectives about globalization vs. socioeconomic localization and a world not addicted to fossil fuel or enslaved to dehumanizing work.

Will we "bootstrap" ourselves out of this mess or will we forget the laces and boots all together?

Let me first put it on record that this blog is a question about what our transition town of Cincinnati will look like, not an answer.

I had a "chance encounter" a couple of weeks ago with a fascinating man named Pat Murphy while doing energy audits in Yellow Springs, Ohio (one of the coolest towns in the mid-west). He produced the film titled The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. It's an award winning documentary which tells the story about how when the Soviet Union pulled out of Cuba and the U.S. imposed a trade embargo, oil imports dropped by 50% and food by 80%!! The results effectively pulled the economic rug out from under the Cubans' feet. It was an economic disaster.

Looking back on it, the Cubans themselves call time "The Special Period". The Cuban economy is no longer based on fossil fuel prices made artificially cheap by government subsidies or environmental negligence. It's super-inspirational. But it begs the question-- can the transition happen without economic disaster?

I wonder if we can really expect to bootstrap our way to betterment through greenifying our current consumer habits. Will it look like ever-increasing fuel-economy for our cars? Do we just continue to pimp-out our washers and dryers and help the Chinese do the same? Is bootstrapping the same as an incrementalist approach to evolution? Or will changes be more punctuated, far-reaching, and paradigm-shifting? Will we recognize the new future and interdependence?

There is, in fact, a growing movement of futurists and designers who are devoting themselves to a reactionary approach that is bracing for the worst-- "designing for disaster", as if disaster, on some level, is simply inevitable. They are in Haiti after earthquakes, in Indonesia after tsunamis, in Africa during droughts. They see the current trend of "going green" as an underwhelming, misdirected effort, hi-jacked by advertisers, gadget makers, product lobbyists and politicians.

greenwashed crap

For many unemployed Americans, and others entrenched in the global-economy, disaster isn't such a far stretch of the imagination. It's practically upon us. And for those middle classers who have managed to stay employed, how many of us are happy working as cash register clerks and greeters and big box stores? How many are challenged and rewarded working on factory assembly lines or in cubicle-call centers as debt collectors? How many of us can actually afford organic food that nourishes our bodies and weans us off our over-medicated lives?

Below is a fun/depressing math exercise inspired by one of my heroes, Amory Lovins. It underscores how we drive in order to work and we work in order to drive.

The average American drives about 12,000 miles each year.
The total average cost of car ownership per year is $7,356 according to this cool calculator.
With a minimum wage job, earning $7.25/hr...
And counting "lost of hours of life" spent in the average daily commute to work...
We end up traveling 12,000 miles for a man-hour-cost of about 1200 hours of precious life.

...And don't we know a better way to go 10 miles/hour?


I can think of two ways.




It doesn't have to come down to disaster-based design.

Foam-a-home-phobia

Cincinnati is a mixed climate with extreme highs in the summer and extreme low temperatures in the winter. But, since my wife and I regard AC as more of a luxury, we are not big air conditioning people. We are way more concerned about keeping warm in the winter which we can't do without spending a ton of money and feeling really guilty about all the fossil fuel energy required to do it.

The wonderful thing about a 1920's craftsman/cape cod home is the predictability of it's energy sins. Cute as they are, they are little bastard children unfit for any performance challenge. They've got lots of problems...but at least we know where to find them--everywhere!

Look at my cute home.

Oh my gosh that's cute!

If you are thinking to yourself, "It needs new windows" You need to come back to planet Earth, take my class, and wean yourself off of the marketing teat of those window companies advertising on the back of public transportation. If you've taken my class, then you know how to do my Curb-Side Energy Audit in about 30 seconds and can name 4 of the 16 architectural features of my home that need to be addressed, and CAN be addressed with some foam insulation.

I've actually formed a great friendship with a guy who has access to a new formula of cavity filling foam and is open to alternative no/low-cost transactions and bartering. SCORE!

My stick-framed walls were built with true dimensional 2x4's in the balloon-framed style, which means behind the plaster and lathe walls there are stud cavities are open to the basement and they have no insulation. (It used to be a perfect getaway route for the mice we had until our cats learned to hunt like a pack of velociraptors. Although foaming the walls has immediate sex-appeal...NOT SO FAST.

There are several ISSUES to be concerned about:

• What do we do about existing knob and tube wiring in the wall cavities?
• How do we trace and stop the moisture issues at the roof/chimney?
• What is the home's Building Tightness Limit (BTL) and will we need to revise our ventilation strategy?
• What are the indoor air quality effects of the foam to be installed?
• Where will this foam go and could it damage anything?
• Do we fill the stud cavities from inside the home or out?
• What is the long term performance of this product?

I'm not quite foam-a-home phobic about these issues, but consider the following:

• knob and tube wiring was installed in the 1920's and is rated for 20 amp circuits because it can stay cool by dissipating its heat into the air around it. Insulating the cavities however would cause it to stay hot. There is a lot of urban lore out there that says insulating the cavities with K&T wiring is a fire hazard. I haven't found a lot of available information to substantiate these claims. Electricians have told me my house will catch on fire unless I rewire. Their bids range from $4000-$8000 to rewire my house. (Fear tactics from the fox guarding the hen house?) Insulation contractors have told me they can insulate without rewiring, but they won't pull a permit. Electrical engineers have told me I can insulate the cavities around the existing K&T but I would have down grade the circuit from 20 amp to 15 amp.
• The only thing worse than no insulation in the walls is wet insulation in the walls. Now, if this were dense-pack cellulose or even fiberglass insulation, that could be a major problem, but installing a closed cell foam, we would would hope that would be a much smaller problem. But we can hope on the one hand and $#!X in the other and see which one fills up fastest. Why hope? Let's just fix the roof first, regardless of whether this is open cell foam, closed cell foam, cellulose, soy or mushroom insulation.
• The Building Performance Institute (BPI) would say something like, "There's no such thing as a home that's too tight. But there is such a thing as an under-ventilated home." There is a quick calculation I will show you in a later blog that lets you know when your home has become under-ventilated.
• Insulating from the inside requires drilling holes every 16" in the plaster and filling the whole house with plaster dust. I'd drill them in the middle of the wall so I wouldn't have to climb a ladder to install the insulation or, more importantly, when I have to patch, sand, prime, color match, and paint, and paint, and paint those holes at the end. 
• Insulating from the outside requires taking off the cedar shakes and risking breaking them, or else drilling holes in the cedar shakes and risk breaking them, definitely breaking drills bits drilling through 3/4" of pine sheathing, patching, sanding, priming, color matching, painting, and paining the entire exterior walls of the home. 
• The long or even short term performance of foams has been mixed in many of my infrared inspections. I have seen some installations where foam was injected into stud cavities of walls only to shrink like a refrigerated waffle and leave air pockets of no insulation at all six sides of the stud cavity, making it very ineffective. I've also seen foam spray out of outlet covers and switch plates and beneath toe molding.

Even if we were swimming in money and answers and remedies to these issues, we would still NOT start our retrofit project here. Instead, AS ALWAYS, we need to start up high in the attic with air sealing.

When I say "air sealing", I don't mean what most people think. It has been my experience, in the thousands of homeowners I've visited with, that most of my clients have this bucolic image of Little Red Riding Hood skipping her way to the home improvement store and coming home with a satchel of baked bread and two or three tubes of caulk. They say, "Can't I just climb in the attic and do the air sealing myself?"

My answer is usually, "Yes, you could, It's not rocket surgery, but you need about 2-3 shopping cars full of foam and caulk (~$900 worth), and more importantly, to complete the job, you'd have to have the physical stamina to do something like the guy in the pic below, if you don't want to kill yourself, falling between the roof trusses."

The parallel bars are about as tricky to maneuver as 24"on center roof trusses when air sealing an attic. Olympic gymnasts make great insulation contractors.

Even without a gym membership, this guy is doing his exercises to become an insulation contractor. It's the most respected job in his eco-village. Everyone falls through the drywall ceiling at least once before they realize they have to spend more time on the elephant tusks training.

And don't assume that because your home was a custom-built McCastle that you don't have air sealing issues-- you're usually the worst ones of all with all your tray ceilings, built-in book cases, bulkheads, planter walls, and recessed lights.Air follows the path of least resistance, which is almost always upward through the home's cavities.

I'll keep you updated on the foam project, but FIRST AND FOREMOST:

1. it's a roof project first because durability issues are more important than energy bills.
2. it's a rewire project because I can't afford an electrician and I can do some electrical work. (I actually just finished the bulk of this project-- see the pics below and come to my house to see that I have not yet taken care of the chimney issues--YIKES!)

White ceramic knobs hold the black and white insulated "tubes" of the so called hot and neutral wire. They travel somewhat parallel to their load but always kept at a safe distance from each other. The yellow wire is a new 12 gauge Romex now serving their load. This circuit has been disconnected. What am I going to do with the $7,800 I just saved?

That's not good. Water damage to plaster above window. The root cause of this is very likely associated with the issues I describe in my blog"Saving the Planet by Saving Cincinnati's Obsolete Real Estate (AKA Troublesome Architectural Features)"

Sweet Tooth Gone Wrong

For a week or two after my first Ironman, my teeth ached like they were filled with cavities. I don't even have cavities, and I've practiced good dental hygiene habits. And I don't eat junk food...except when I'm on long workout. Has anyone else has had this experience? I wondered if it had to do with what I ate during the course of the race...I'm so ashamed of what I put into my body. Here's a pic of some of the stuff I consumed during the race.

Junk food eaten during a typical training weekend two years ago. I think I see a banana somewhere in there.

Since then, I've had a couple of achy tooth days here and there, usually after long training weeks. It brought to mind some of the research my mom was telling me about Weston Price Foundation, which my mom is a devotee of. They are very much sure of themselves in a couple of theories that stick out in my mind--1) that animal products are essential to human health, 2) veganism is the worst thing you could do to your body, 3) tooth health is an indicator of overall health. As much as I didn't want to believe what Satan was saying, I'm sure there is some shade of truth to #3 here...

It begged the question, where does one go to get real answers to nutrition questions? There's so much bull shit "science" out there and so many passionate charlatan diet-ists, lobbyists, and nutrition gurus looking to make a buck, that I've decide to just unplug from that grid.

When you think about it, all we ever really do is defer to what others tell us about food and nutrition. From the ads on TV, to the way the supermarkets are stocked, to the latest mono-food diets (grapes only with a side of a cool whip, really?) and roller coaster fasts. It's kind of like letting a psychologist with a comb-over tag along on your dates. How is a passionate romance ever going to catch fire amidst the constant deluge of theories?

"Now would be the appropriate time to kiss the female."

Instead, I'm trying to develop a deeper intuition around food, so that I can recognize the meaning of my cravings and the nuances of my nourishment. My body has its own intelligence if I just trust it, but instead I get caught up in asking for other people's hints. I feel like I just need to go make-out with my smoothies for a while and see if I can't get to home base without anyone's supervision.

My produce delivery friend, Randall, who is also one of my nutrition consultants asked me what my cravings were this week. I told him, "you know, I never really liked chocolate that much, but I'm craving chocolate incessantly."

His reply was awesome: "I have one rule about chocolate-- eat as much as you're craving...as long as it's the good stuff."

What a concept! Trust our cravings...with some trepidation and healthy respect for the effects. I suppose it makes sense that our body is a "feedback" system in communication with the one who feeds it. It's not a one-way relationship.