Bachelor Batches

     I doubt you are as fit and free as me.  I'm certain you are not as free.  Bake some bread.  Whole wheat.  Yeast, sugar in water, some salt, some oil.  Mix. Knead and allow to rise.  Punch it down, knead, section into loaves, allow a second rise.  Bake.  If you can take the time to bake your own bread, you are on the way to freedom.
     If you eat no bread you don't bake, you are on the way to fitness.  Jesus said man can not live by bread alone, said nothing about living without bread.  Man needs bread in his diet.  Once you've eaten your own fresh from the oven still steaming,with the pats of butter still melting, nothing else comes close to being real bread.
     In California, I once had a crock pot on for months.  I was houseman to two chicks.  Here's a lesson I had to learn even though I had an example before my early eyes.  No matter the combination, i.e. sister/sister, sister/mother, mother/wife, wife/sister-in-law, sister/daughter, wife/daughter...no man has any chance when his viewpoint is challenged by any two women.  It is useless, say it once, shut up, listen.
     Buy a crock pot.  Cover the bottom with pound of dry beans and fill it up with water.  Put the lid on and turn it up to high.  Leave it until you notice the smell.  Next day, dip out a bean and see if you can masticate it.  Turn the dial to low.
     With a pot of beans on heat, you have something to eat.  All the time.  Anytime.  In a bowl with salt and pepper.  Plus your bread.  You could live on it.  But the bean base is only a beginning.  A crock pot will not boil over or burn.  As long as there is liquid, anything which makes soup in your mind may be added to the pot.  Tomatoes are necessary in our diet.  Pizza is not the best way to get your daily requirement of tomatoes.  Put tomato in your pot.  Sauce is easy and inexpensive.  Any vegetable you can name can go into the pot.  Give it time and it will cook to the consistency you prefer.
      There are numerous types of dry beans.  I once bought a half-bushel of soy beans from a grain elevator in Ohio to use in California.  For years, those beans were the base for my crock pot ingredients.  Nobody would have tried soy bean soup, so I always said it was vegetable/bean.  Soy are the best beans for crock pot because they never cook to mushy.  Try many: red, black, pink, speckled, gray or white.  Split peas and lentils cook faster than beans so they may be added to thicken the mix.  In the past, my crock pot was always hot.  One time a downstairs neighbor  brought frozen fillet mignon to my wife as a peace offering after she'd gone down to threaten his ass after he'd disturbed our sleep the night before.  I sliced it into cubes and put it into the pot.  The neighbor hood came by and asked what kind of soup I had.  Steak.  He spooned a chunk and began to chew.  His eyes widened and he said, "It's really tender, man, like...?"  "Crackers?"  "Yeah, man, that meat is as soft as wet crackers."
     Actually, over the years most of my carrots,onions, garlic, potatoes, etc. were fixed in the pot.  Today, I am free enough to use it just for beans.
     Beans can be prepared for anybody's taste.  Homemade whole wheat toast is tasty to everybody.  For the past couple of decades, my intake of food is mainly beans and greens.  I eat all day long but have a morning meal after my run or lift (every other day.)  Peanut butter and chicken or fish on whole wheat toast with hot tea.  Later, I chop an apple, shred a carrot, crack an egg white into it, add pepper and cinnamon and nuke for  four minutes.
      99% of the bread I consume is my own.  No commercial bread approaches the taste and feel of mine.  I could take my loaves door-to-door for $5 per and be baking full-time.  For decades, double-kneading has been my method.  Just yesterday, I had to change, due to the fact I'd used more water than I had whole wheat flour.  Tried some powdered milk and oat flour (oats in coffee grinder), but it was too wet to knead.
     My recipe is so automatic, I just run an amount of hot tap water into a white plastic bowl. add some sugar and stir in two packets of dry yeast until it's dissolved and wait for the explosions.  Depending on the humidity, each grain of yeast will expand in a burst until the water is covered with tan foam.  Add flour, salt, oil, knead, allow to rise, knead and put into pans. My recipe is for four loaves, but I never replaced a broken glass one and now bake in two glass and one metal pan.  My mixing bowl is from a $-store set of four lidded ones which are long gone, except for the largest.  Imagine what you can do with a steel mixing bowl and matched set of loaf pans?
       I have a friend who makes biscuits with wet dough.  She takes self-rising white flour and works it into a watery ball between her fingers while flipping and adding more flour until she has a huge flat biscuit shape not sticking to her fingers.  Baked on a greased sheet, they become large fluffy biscuits to keel over forever for.  You have to see the procedure to appreciate it and when I tried it, the value became more evident.  The only lesson from it, which I applied last night, was the "wet" factor.  I ladled the mixture into well-greased pans, to half full.  They doubled but were still runny when I put them into the 350-degree oven for 45 minutes.  Turned oven off and let them coast for another 15 minutes.  Nice flat-topped loaves with dynamite texture.  Only hitch is the over-browned bottoms.  Need pressure on the slice knife.  Point is, I completely eliminated the kneading process and ended up with good loaves.  Can't imagine doing it on purpose, though.
     Most dudes don't get to savor bachelorhood early enough in life to appreciate the style.  In the first place, getting a place one can handle alone grows ever more difficult.   Looking for a mate who cooks like you're used to, i.e. modeled after your mother's, is probably useless.  As well as less nutritious.
     A bachelor crib should be the place you eat food you fix.  Anything else is paying someone to prepare food which makes a profit.  You pay for the food and the profit.  Free food will put money in your account immediately.  Homemade food is the next best way save big bucks.  You try my diet, exclusively, and you will  increase your muscle mass and monetary worth.
     Anybody can sing The Anthem,  Jimi made The Anthem sing.

     Soon, my greens will be from the yard.  Free food.  Dock, polk and dandelion.  Broccoli is the green I use most.  Cabbage is a less expensive route.  My skillet base is garlic (halved) and onions slightly fried in soy (nearly all "vegetable")  oil.  Sometimes I use olive.  I add some sprinkles of soy sauce, put on the lid and turn down the heat.
     I take the flowers first, slice them into a shred, put them into the skillet and stir.  Ladle in the beans from crock pot.  Add cooked chicken, salmon or tuna.  Stir again.  Cover with Parmesan cheese and put the lid on.  After it is thoroughly heated, it is ready to eat.  Many times, I've eaten the whole thing.  The broccoli shreds have the consistency of creamed hamburger.  Any herb or spice you like may be added anytime.  The ones you like most should probably go in late during the process.
     Beans and greens every day.    Whole wheat home-bread every day.
     Turnip, spinach, chard, collard, kale, mustard; all greens.
Apples and carrots are daily necessities.  Each one every day.
     The only way I can avoid sweets is to not have them in my food budget.  I don't bring them home.  The only sugar in my house is granulated.   The only chocolate in my house is cocoa powder.  I use butter.  No fat powdered milk.  I use eggs (whites only).  To allay a total sweet need, I eat a teaspoon of sugar.  Not enough?  Add some powdered milk and cocoa.  Half-cup mixed and eaten dry will slowly satisfy any sweet root.
     Not long ago, I ordered thirty-five lbs. of peanut butter from Groeb Farms in Orsted MI because there were no "peanuts only" jars within walking distance.  I kept it in the space above the veggie drawer.  Today, I have a choice of Kroger, Krema and Smuckers.  Anything other than 100% peanuts is imitation peanut butter.  If you require the sugar and fat in this stuff, you must not be getting it from other food, which is highly unlikely.  If it is commercially prepared, it is sugar and salt and fat filled.  These are the flavors we enjoy.
     "I really like fried eggs and bacon."  Of course, you do.  In fact, it should be a meal savored once or twice a year, instead of a steady diet just because you "love the taste."

     Meat has to be killed to be consumed.  The act of being killed releases all manner of toxins into the carcass.  The next link in the chain is us, so these virulent microbes enter the meat eater.  The more meat, the more poison.  It will shorten a lifespan.  Meat eaters are warriors, chance-takers, quick tempered, fearless, designed to live more intense lives and die early.  Archie Moore said one of his secrets for weight control was to not swallow the meat.  If one chews out the flavor and spits out the rest, it eliminates the end result which is the difficulty of digesting and defecating meat.

     How you move your bowels is for more important than how you fill you stomach.  Here's a lesson, watch the nearest animal mammal you can observe.  No matter if nocturnal or night sleeper, the first thing it does upon awakening is take a dump.  It doesn't look for something to drink or eat to awaken fully.  It takes a short walk to a space to mark a claim..

     This could set a mood
     Which could start a feud
     But I present these facts
     About dogs and cats.

     My feline buries her waste
     With diligent care, no haste.
     Your dog, on the other hand,
     And it's obvious throughout the land,
     Leaves his above ground in bad taste.

     Before you get much older, it is necessary to train your intake and elimination of food.   It should become as natural as breathing and heart beats.  For me, the most natural intake of nourishment for natural movements is vegetable matter.  A diet of meat may be alright for certain mammals designed as carnivores because they have to work so hard to obtain food.  It has to come in gulps and stay in the system for the time between kills.    When the kills stop, lifespan ends.  If you are living to die, anxious to fly crash and burn, just for the memories, then your bag is meat.  Plus chokes, liquor and lack of sleep.  The strain of just pinching a loaf could very well kill you.

     Take half a can of tuna and stir it into a couple egg whites.  Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and pepper. 'wave for 2-3 minutes and sandwich between slices of toasted bread.  Cup of green tea.  Total time can be cut to 3:33 if the cup of tea water is nuked at the same time.
     I seldom drink tea without a spoon or two of powdered milk and teaspoon tip of cocoa powder.  Anything made with water can serve as our daily requirement of water.  Sugar water (all of the soft drinks) may keep us from dehydrating but it won't keep us from amplification.  The most water I consume at one time is during a shower.  Warm water is best for the sluice to our insides.

     Have to admit the "batter" loaves seemed worth attempting again.  Still whole wheat flour, still yeast rise.  The time savings is substantial.  Have three pans rising right now.  This recipe is too simple to ignore.  Going through the "double rise" method may be something I used to do.

     My beans are black with split peas and brown rice.  Stir-fried with garlic, onions and broccoli florets, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese; too good.

     Baked a double-rise recipe and can't believe I was enamored by that batter bread.  No comparison.  That  little side-step induces me to finish this up.  The male prostate continues to grow, just like your nose.  In time, it will intrude on elimination.  Piss stream begins to flow more slowly and turd gets a curb to climb over. The longer you last the more pronounced, no matter what else happens.  As long as you can get it up and get it off,  prostate is happy but still growing and waiting for you to get old and slow down.  Most of us slow down long before the old part.  Whatever "old" is to you. No matter, beans and greens.

     You have to do something every day.  As Easy Beans expounded enthusiastically:
                              Something that you do every day.
                              Something.
                              Just something that you do.
                              Having a dog that jumps
                              Into the ocean.
                              You gotta do something cool!

 All year long, I jog for ninety-minutes or lift weights for at least one set, every other day.

     Most any larger lidded skillet will hold a chicken in an inch or so of water.  Cook it out of its skin, fat and bones.  Separate the lean and give all the rest to the dog.  Use the clear broth in the crock pot.  The white and dark meat is ready for sandwiches or beans and greens.  For variety, I use canned tuna or salmon.
     I always remember a guy telling me about not having enough iron in his blood to donate.  The nurse told him to go home and eat a handful of raisins.  He did, came back and was able to give a pint. I eat a handful every day.  Plus almonds, pecans or walnuts.
      The only known aphrodisiac is oats.  Water, salt, dry milk, quick oats, two-minutes in 'wave.  There is nothing special about one rolled oat from another.  Generic is the same as Quaker.  I use oat-soaked water as a pre-lift drink.
     If you run (jog) for any number of years, it is likely you will have some knee problems.  In Eureka , California, in 1979, my right knee pained so badly, I walked home.  I thought, at the time, my jogging days were finished.  But the knee healed and I began jogging.  The only trouble was a bony protrusion on the inside of my knee if I did any fast dancing.
     A couple years later, living in Santa Rosa, the knee got so bad that when I walked, it felt as if there was no more than a tendon holding my calf to my thigh. So I began lifting free weights as a primary athletic activity.  Years previously, while lifting with Willie Wagner, I read a magazine article by Sergio Oliva which pointed out  that if a person was restricted to one exercise, parallel thigh squats with heavy weight was best. I concentrated on this exercise as a lung expander (breath in on the way down and push it out on the way up).  Soon, my knees seemed to strengthen and I resumed running.
      Decades later, while in Maui, eating large and lifting little, I blew out my left knee.  It took three years to recoup, mostly by long walks and a new lifting method.  The bar I use is a vertical grip type.  With 40 lbs. of iron, I do twelve exercises times ten reps, without putting the bar down:  front grip squats, straight leg rowing (lowering the weight each rep until the iron touches the floor, seated triceps extensions, standing curls, seated presses, wide grip (bar behind neck) squats, behind neck seated presses, wide grip curls, wide grip front press.  Then I put down the bar, lie flat and do 100 elbow to knee crunches, followed by vertical grip triceps extensions behind my head and ten reps to forehead level.  I finish with ten full sit-ups and ten push-ups.  That's one set.  I always do one.  Two is better and three is a real workout. I lift every other day, after a cup of green tea and prior to anything else.  On the other days, I do a ninety minute run.  I've been running pain-free for about ten years.  There is little doubt in my mind, that the front grip and behind the neck squats is necessary for keeping the knees in shape.
     If I'd had the wherewithal or or medical insurance, I would have had my knees 'scoped years ago.  But I didn't and I'm glad.  Unless one is a professional athlete, the rehab from arthroscopic surgery seldom restores full knee recovery.  Pros are pushed to push past the discomfort which most citizens can't suffer through.