New Fruit Man Makes Me Feel Re-Nude!

My ultimate goal is to NOT pay for my food at all. After all, isn't mama Earth's bounty available to all, with some better soil management practices? What was God's original plan?

 

In the meantime...
I am having to buy my produce. I was recently gifted a membership to a local restaurant supplier-- Restaurant Depot. All I do is flash my card and I'm in like Flynn. It's been way better than shopping at the overpriced grocery store.

Here's what I bought the other morning:

I can't imagine how I will grow the equivalent amount of calories living where I do. I'll probably need green thumb neighbors and a deep freezer.

7 Romain Hearts
2.5 lbs of spinach
70 lbs bananas
60 eating oranges
3 cantaloupes
40 lbs of juicing oranges

22 mangoes

TOTAL = $100.35

TOTAL Calories =19,000

CALORIES PER DOLLAR = 190

When I compare the calorie/$ value to the menus at some traditional fast food places, one can see that the Cal/$ is similar. 

The real metric to consider, though, is the nourishment per calorie. And I don't just mean "nutrients"-- since that merely considers food from the paradigm of chemistry, which isn't adequate to describe wellness, (at least, not our current understanding of it). 

UPDATE ON INTERGALACTIC COMPOST BATTLE
To catch everybody up, I built a new compost for the garden AND an indoor worm bin a couple of weeks ago. I pitted them against each other in a good-ol' fashioned compost duel, to see which method would generate high quality organic matter fastest. Sus and I have heaps and heaps of fruit/veg peels and they definitely aren't going in the trash, (as "the man" might have us do). That's high quality organic matter, which is the basis of any nation's wealth.

Worm Bin

Whenever I turn the lights on, the worms worm-away. If they are so fast, why are they not eating very much? I have decided to leave the lid off the bin so that mold doesn't grow on the worms' food. It was looking and smelling like rotting fruit. That can't make worms happy. 

My worms will be so happy with all my scraps. They are munching their little fannies off, but they are slow as dirt at making dirt. More than hungry, right now I need them to be horny. About 1/3 of the weight of the produce I just bought is skin that will either go into the new compost pile or the new worm bin. With only 1 lb of worms in the bin, who only eat about 1/2 their weight in kitchen scraps per day, I'm thinking that most of the kitchen scraps will continue to be diverted to the outdoor compost.

C'mon, worms! Start making horny worm babies who make horny worm babies. Your poop is amazing!

Compost
The compost continues to grow in height, but I can't tell if decomposition is happening. The microorganisms in the composts don't seem to be too fast at decomposing in the cold of winter, so I sprinkled about a half pound of store-bought "compost starter" on the pile.  Luckily, the high temperatures are starting to peek above freezing and there is a bit of spring in the air. Thank God for Puxitawny Phil--early spring on its way! The added heat should help get the microorganisms happy and hungry. In other good news, I also found out that I have a neighbor who loves to brew his own beer, and I've got good intel that says if I can get him to give me his "waste" from the fermentation process, I can sprinkle it on my compost bile and it will quickly decompose the pile.

If I were a worm, this is where I would be. It's quickly becoming the Kilimanjaro of Oakley--you could build a ginger bread house out of my orange peels alone. I see bio-fuel in my future. Maybe I'll build an anaerobic digester this spring. 

An Amazing Week for Bio-Mechanics and Efficiency Gains

I know you've heard of the Princess and the Pea, but what about the Prince and Perineum? The perineum is the fleshy island of the human anatomy that feels like it is being attacked by a mafia of jackhammers after 6 hours on the bicycle saddle. In my version of the story, I'm the prince, oblivious the root cause of his suffering nether-region.

My Valentine this year bought me an amazing experience-- a bike fit appointment with the brilliant Brett Hungerford, owner of Element Cycles, utilizing the fast-growing Retul technology. Beyond male sexual health issues, a proper bike fit can deliver cheap and easy speed improvements, as well as ensure safe and long-lasting bio-mechanics.

I think I've been deliberately riding with my saddle way too high just to over-correct my awful experience at Ironman Louisville 2009, where I broke my seat post clamp 30 minutes before turning my bike into the corral. I rode the whole race with my saddle too low. It wrecked my knees. Lesson learned-- don't F--- with your S--- before a race.

Damn! I broke my seat post clamp minutes before having to turn the bike into the bike corral the day before IM Louisville 2009.

After my 2:30 hour session with Brett, I was absolutely flabbergasted at how different my bike felt. It felt like the proverbial glass slipper this prince(ess) has been waiting for. THE PERFECT FIT! It actually feels like my bike now. I can't wait to get some miles in this weekend.

Brett attaches the string of Retul LEDs to my main joints. I am riding my bike (for road riding rather than time-trial riding), which is being held up by a computrainer. Brett adjusts the resistance of the computrainer with a remote control.

Brett explains how the Retul camera will be able to trace the motion of every LED and can instantaneously measure my body's positioning dynamically--while I ride. This is better than measuring position statically with old-fashioned plumb bobs.

Brett discovers that my left leg's extra length resides in my thigh and I have inadvertently compensated for my body's asymmetry by having a strange left cleat position compared with the right. My left spindle rides closer to my left mid-foot, while my right spindle rides much closer to my right toes.

Brett blows my mind with his ludicrous geometry speed and fluency. The Retul software captures about 25 different metrics which Brett carefully explains to me.

In keeping with this week's theme of bio-mechanics of racing... 

I also had a fantastic running analysis session with the talented Eric Oliver. Eric has been working with me on healing my knee injury and re-designing my stride so I can safely endure the IM Madison training season and maybe win a few local triathlons, and qualify for Boston this year. Eric is a dynamite physical therapist who offers an occasional injury prevention clinic at Studio S. He was just named national coach of the year for Team Challenge (a training/fund-raising group for Crohn's & Colitis Foundation). He leads the Flying Pig Marathon training group out of Studio S and it's unanimous that he is "an amazing (and amazingly handsome) physical therapist and coach".

Eric (the handsome one) sets up his computer/camera to capture my stride at different treadmill speeds (7, 8, 9, 10 mph).

Eric uses a cool golf swing analyzer to measure angles of my body as I run. In super-slow-motion, it becomes obvious--he discovers that the source of my knee pain is a funny by-product of an overextending/lazy left foot. Multiply this hitch in my stride by 1000 strides per mile and you can see why my knee always hurts after 10 miles. The funny thing is, the hitch gets worse as my speed slows. So, it's a vicious cycle--the longer I run, the more the knee bothers me and slows me down and thus the worse I run and the more pain I feel and the slower I go.

Here, we're looking at Eric's monitor-- I've greatly reduced my crossover angle since December. But there are still plenty of issues to work on. My left foot over-strides so I will be focusing on shortening my forward plant and taking quicker steps to keep my cadence at about 90 revolutions/minute.

 Thanks Eric and Brett, for your time and talent! I feel faster already.

Paw-Paw-- Ohio's Official Native Fruit is the "Kentucky Banana"

A majority of my 5200 daily calories are coming from bananas (~20-25/day). They are my "bread and pasta". And as JC said in so many words, Man does not live by "banana" alone.

Thus, as I pursue my goal to get all my food from local organic sources, I have been struggling to figure out how to sustain this insanely amazing and raw diet/lifestyle from my confines in Cincinnati. The ecological footprint of transporting all those bananas is way smaller than say raising cattle for beef (<1/7 the carbon footprint, so says a German study), but it's still non-trivial. Furthermore, what if the supply chains to Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico were to be disrupted by drug lords, the politics of soccer, or the fallout of an oil-based economy? What if the price of gasoline shot to $8/gallon? It's not unrealistic. In fact, it's inevitable.

These issues got me interested in alternatives to the banana, which is, as the commercial says, quite possibly the world's perfect fruit. Nervertheless, I'm discovering the pawpaw is quite possibly the world's perfectER food.

Pawpaw trees are easy to identify by their long tear-shaped leaves.

Spending summers working with Cincinnati parks, we learned about a local fruit called pawpaw, which is sometimes referred to as the "poor man's banana" or the "Kentucky banana". Most of the fruits around the local parks get gobbled up as soon as they are ripe by the local deer/bird/squirrel/dog/hippie population. But I'm going to start researching ways to source deer-proof pawpaw.

We even have a nearby Ohio Pawpaw Festival in September where locals share their knowledge and skillz in paw-paw pudding and pawpaw lore. The pawpaw is a tropical-esque fruit in the same family as the cherimoya/custard apple that has grown in North America for thousands of years. It supposedly tastes like a mixture between banana and mango. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson loved them. Too bad I've never even tasted one. Uh, hello-- Earth to bucket list!

Pawpaw eating contest at the Pawpaw Festival in September.

Here is a table from Kentucky State University that compares a 100 gram serving of pawpaw with some other great fruits.

		Pawpaw	Banana	Apple
Composition	Units				Orange
Food Energy	Calories	80	92	59	47
Protein	grams	1.2	1.03	0.19	0.94
Total Fat	grams	1.2	0.48	0.36	0.12
Carbohydrate	grams	18.8	23.4	15.25	11.75
Dietary Fiber	grams	2.6	2.4	2.7	2.4
Vitamins
Vitamin A	RE b	8.6	8	5	21
Vitamin A	IU c	87	81	53	205
Vitamin C	milligrams	18.3	9.1	5.7	53.2
Thiamin	milligrams	0.01	0.045	0.017	0.087
Riboflavin	milligrams	0.09	0.1	0.014	0.04
Niacin	milligrams	1.1	0.54	0.077	0.282
Minerals
Potassium	milligrams	345	396	115	181
Calcium	milligrams	63	6	7	40
Phosphorus	milligrams	47	20	7	14
Magnesium	milligrams	113	29	5	10
Iron	milligrams	7	0.31	0.18	0.1
Zinc	milligrams	0.9	0.16	0.04	0.07
Copper	milligrams	0.5	0.104	0.041	0.045
Manganese	milligrams	2.6	0.152	0.045	0.025
Essential amino acids
Histidine	milligrams	21	81	3	18
Isoleucine	milligrams	70	33	8	25
Leucine	milligrams	81	71	12	23
Lysine	milligrams	60	48	12	47
Methionine	milligrams	15	11	2	20
Cystine	milligrams	4	17	3	10
Phenylalanine	milligrams	51	38	5	31
Tyrosine	milligrams	25	24	4	16
Threonine	milligrams	46	34	7	15
Tryptophan	milligrams	9	12	2	9
Valine	milligrams	58	47	9	40

Better than the banana? I'm sold on the theory, but I have no first-hand experience. How can I beet the deer to them in 2011? Screw triathlon-- this is exactly why I need to buckle down on my training.

Self-Sufficiency Ratings

We all want to kick the proverbial "Man" in the balls. Now we have a road map.

Hi-YAA!

I hi-jacked the following chart from the super-cool pathtofreedom.com website before their site makeover. (Thank you for your amazing work, you samurai homesteaders!)

For all of us whole-to-part learners, we can see the rubric scoring us on how handi-manly we are. It's a report card for self-sufficiency. As we evolve, so does the rubric. When we eventually become fully self-sufficient, we don't need to surf the internet and plagiarize other people's self-sufficiency charts.

I used this chart as a starting point to launch my own measuring stick to fit my slightly-different philosophy and needs. For instance, my FOOD category is a lot simpler-- it doesn't have Baking or Butter/Yogurt/Cheese Making. My AGRICULTURE category doesn't include Staples: Wheat, Beans, Rice, Sweeteners. My SKILLS/CRAFTS category doesn't include Knitting or Leathermaking.

Perhaps my only 100% fulfilled category is Hair Cutting...which my chart refers to as Hair Styling or course. I've been enjoying doing hair exchanges with my brothers for the last 10 years. It's a fun ritual, like a black barbershop or even a movie about a black barbershop, but lately the quality is hit or miss. (Sorry, John). So, I'm actually considering getting back on the hair-cutting grid. Or else, I may just either grow my hair out again or learn to cut it myself.

Stickin-it-to-the-man and kicking him in the balls is definitely fun and exciting, but simplified living has had it's own deeper reward. Remember when that one anti-establishment kick-the-man-in-the-balls guy said this?

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

O man, it gives me goose bumps.