Bella Costa Ristorante

Bella Costa

I went to Bella Costa in Framingham on 3/22/11 for dinner with Andy.  The restaurant caters to the “dinner special” crowd as Andy put it.  We were the youngest people there by a good 30 years.  The atmosphere was relaxing and it seemed like everyone inside the restaurant was a regular because they all seemed to know the wait staff.  The bread was very dry and the oil that came with it needed a little extra oomph as it was a bit on the bland side.  I ordered the fettuccini with prosciutto and it was really delicious.  The pasta was cooked great and the sauce was just the right amount.  Andy had a veal dish with mushrooms that was rather bland the veal was a bit on the thin side.  The portion sizes were the perfect size as neither of us had leftovers but we were defiantly full afterwards.  I had a coupon for $5 off $25 or more.  The prices are in line with that of an Olive Garden but the food quality is much much better (I am not a big fan of the OG).

I would give this place 3.5 stars out of 5 and I would go back but I would only go back if I had a coupon.

Danny Needs a New Pair of Shoes!

I finally broke down and got a new pair of nice dress shoes.  My other ones had finally kicked the bucket.  The back of the shoe had ripped and they desperately needed to be replaced.  While walking around Nordstrom’s Rack, with my friend Andy, I was trying on shoes and found these.  They are black slip on ones and they are really nice.  They were originally $110.00 marked down to $49.  And honestly, who could pass up a sale like that.  I hope that I and my shoes go many miles together!

A Breakfast a Day

One of my goals is to eat a hot breakfast every day for a week.  I was reading this article and thought that this would be good to follow:

Big Breakfasts for Big Results

By Joe Wilkes
Breakfast. It seems like forever since Mom told us breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but one study shows it's actually true—she wasn't just nagging us. Breakfast is a key component of weight management: A study presented at the 90th annual meeting of the Endocrine Society showed that participants who consumed large breakfasts high in protein and carbohydrates followed by a low-carb, low-calorie diet for the rest of the day lost almost five times as much weight as the participants who followed a low-carb, high-protein diet throughout the day. So what's the big deal about breakfast? And what is a big breakfast anyway? It doesn't seem like the lumberjack special at the local diner would do much to get the pounds off, so what should we be eating?

The study supported the idea that when we wake up in the morning, our bodies want food. You've burned through all the fuel from the previous day, and now your body's ready to burn anything—even muscle—to get a jump-start on the day. And if you skip breakfast, muscle is indeed what your body will burn. Later in the day, your brain is still in starvation mode from breakfast (or lack thereof), so your body will store all the calories you eat as adipose tissue, or fat, to save up for the next day when you try to starve it again. This study also found that levels of serotonin, the chemical responsible for controlling cravings, were much higher in the morning, which is why breakfast is the meal so many of us are willing to skip. But if our bodies are left unfed, our serotonin levels drop, and our bodies' craving for sweets begin to rise throughout the day.
But before you hit McDonald's^® for their 800-calorie Big Breakfast, or worse, their 1,150-calorie Deluxe Breakfast, or you swing by Denny's^® for a 740-calorie Grand Slam^® or 950-calorie All-American Slam^® with hash browns, keep in mind these weren't the breakfasts the study participants consumed. The big-breakfast group had a 610-calorie breakfast as part of a 1,240-calorie day. Breakfasts included milk, lean meat, cheese, whole grains, a serving of healthy fat, and one ounce of chocolate or candy to defray the craving for sweets. The other group's participants consumed 1,085 calories per day as part of a high-protein, low-carb diet; only 290 of their daily calories were consumed at breakfast. Both groups were on their respective diets for 8 months. The high-protein group lost an average of nine pounds, but the big-breakfast group lost an average of 40 pounds. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the big-breakfast group complained less about cravings and hunger.
The big-breakfast group's breakfast consisted of 58 grams of carbs, 47 grams of protein, and 22 grams of fat. Study reviewers attribute some of the success of the big-breakfast group to the fact that the protein and healthy fats eaten kept the participants full and reduced cravings. They also said that nutritional requirements were well met and that there weren't empty calories consumed, because the breakfasts included lots of whole grains, fruits, lean proteins, and healthy unsaturated fats. So bad news for the lumberjack-special devotees—a big plate of greasy hash browns, bacon, and biscuits with gravy isn't going to get the job done, unless the job we’re discussing is clogging your arteries.
Here are some healthy big breakfasts, similar to the ones consumed by the study's participants.

Chicken and the Egg

2 large eggs, scrambled
2 slices whole wheat toast
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, grilled
1 grapefruit

Calories	Carbs	Protein	Fat	Saturated Fat	Fiber
589	52 g	48 g	19 g	5.5 g	12 g

Oats 'n' Berries Breakfast

1 packet plain instant oatmeal, prepared, with 1 scoop Beachbody^® Whey Protein Powder
1 cup fresh blueberries
3 oz. roasted turkey breast
1 large hard-boiled egg
1 oz. dark chocolate

Calories	Carbs	Protein	Fat	Saturated Fat	Fiber
631	62 g	47 g	21 g	8 g	10 g

Two Egg Sandwiches

2 whole wheat English muffins, toasted
2 large poached eggs
2 slices low-fat Swiss cheese
2 slices Canadian bacon, grilled

Calories	Carbs	Protein	Fat	Saturated Fat	Fiber
597	57 g	45 g	13 g	5 g	8 g

Vegetarian Breakfast

1 cup cottage cheese (2% milk fat)
1 cup sliced peaches, canned in juice, not syrup
1 slice whole wheat toast
1/2 avocado
2 vegetarian sausage links, cooked

Calories	Carbs	Protein	Fat	Saturated Fat	Fiber
621	62.5 g	47 g	26.5 g	4.5 g	16.5 g

Pescetarian Breakfast

1 6-oz. can light tuna, canned in water, drained
2 Tbsp. mayonnaise (preferably olive oil or canola oil-based)
2 slices whole wheat toast
1 oz. dark chocolate

Calories	Carbs	Protein	Fat	Saturated Fat	Fiber
592	45 g	51 g	22 g	7 g	10 g

Reference
http://www.endo-society.org/media/ENDO-08/research/New-weight-loss-diet-recommends-high-carb.cfm

White Teeth

White Teeth

By: Zadie Smith

White Teeth was a great novel about how history is never really history and the conflict that different cultures face in new environments.  I found that this book was a great read and went by quickly.  I will try not to give too much away in my review incase someone wants to read it.

White Teeth can be divided up by the characters, there are: Archie Jones and his wife Clara and their daughter Irie, then there is Samad Iqbal, Alasna, and their twins Magid and Millat, and there are the Chalfens. 

The book starts out with Archie trying to kill himself because his wife is divorcing him.  He does this by attaching the hose from the vacuum cleaner (that he never got around to fixing) to the exhaust of his car.  His attempt is unsuccessful because he is interrupted by the shop owner in front of the shop where he is parked because the owner doesn’t want his shop blocked for deliveries.  Archie then goes to a commune and meets Clara (a Jamaican Jehovah Witness) his futures wife (who lost her teeth and her faith in her religion in a moped accident).  They end up getting married and having their daughter Irie.  Irie ends up wanting to be a dentist.  Archie’s best friend is Samad Iqbal who he met in WW2 because they were both stationed in the same tank.  They end up in a back town in Europe.  In this town there is a scientist that is a Nazi.  Samad wants Archie to kill the scientist.  Cut forward a few decades Samad is in an arranged marriage to Alasna (both are from Bangladesh and have immigrated to England after the war). They have twins named Millat and Magid.  Samad ends up sending Magid back to Bangladesh to make him a better Muslim and learn their ways (he only sends one twin because it’s all he can afford to send).  Meanwhile Millat stays in England and becomes the complete opposite of what his father wants him to be.  Millat ends up joining KEVIN a fundamentalist gang of Muslims and Magid becomes scientist.  They meet up with the Jewish Chalfens because Millat and Irie got in trouble for smoking pot in school.  The Chalfens are the perfect middle class family that Irie wants to be so desperately bad.  The father Chalfen is working on a project called FutureMouse which is an experiment on cancers and genetic engineering.  At the end of the book they all meet up at the public showing of the FutureMouse Project and that is when everyone’s history comes to the present.  Zadie Smith has a quote “don’t fall for ‘the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect’.”

The teeth symbolize that everyone, no matter race or socioeconomic class has white teeth.  When someone looses their teeth in the book it represents that they are losing part of who they are (whether be believes or religion) it always brings about change in a person.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking to see the struggles of immigrants and anyone that believes the past stays in the past

Easy Chily

I made easy chilly on Presidents Day (2/21/11) and here is how I made it

You will need:

2 Pounds Ground Turkey

1 Onion

1 Green Pepper

1 Red Pepper

2 Jalapeños

2 cans of Red Beans

Couple handfuls of frozen corn

Salt

Pepper

Chili Powder

Ground Cumin

Hot Sauce

To start cook the ground turkey though and set aside.  Add a little oil to a large deep pan and put in the chopped onion, peppers, jalapenos and cook until tender (about 5-7 min) add back the ground turkey and put in the two cans of beans (make sure you drain and rinse them off first!).  Add the seasoning until desired amount of spice and cook for a couple of minuets.  If it looks a little on the dry side add a little bit of water (or if you have it chicken stalk) until you get the desired thickness of your chili.  I then added in a couple handfuls of corn and then let simmer for an hour on really low heat mixing occasionally.  Enjoy with some corn bread

This came out really good and I made a lot of it because I wanted to take it to work for lunch all week and it lasts.  I hope you enjoy my chili recipe as much as I do!

1 Puzzle Down 5 to go!

Here one of the 5 puzzles that I will be doing for my 101 goals.  I finished this on Monday (2/21/11) and is a 1,000 piece puzzle.

The Plunge - Dun Dun Dun!

This past weekend (2/20/11 to be exact) I did the Winter Plunge.  I ran into the freezing Atlantic Ocean for the Gay Mans Domestic Violence Project (GMDVP) and it was cold.  I heard someone say that the water was 34 degrees.  I must admit I did have a lot of fun that day. 

The day started off with Andy, Brandon, Erik and I going to Dunkin Donuts and getting breakfast.  (I treated myself to a chocolate donut, yummy; I haven’t had a donut in many years).  Then we headed to Carson Beach in Boston.  When we got there, it finally hit me what I was about to do.  While we were in the car, everyone was pointing out that there was still snowy spots on the beach.  Curiosity took the best of us and we got out of the car and went down the ocean.  I put my hand in the water to test the temp and there were chuncks of ice floating around. 

We got there early and helped with the set up, I helped with the balloons.  After things were set up people started to arrive, and I put on my little bathing suit and the festivities began.  There was the introduction by a drag queen in a mermaid costume and she was rather funny.  After everyone was announced the “Ice Queen” got up and gave a little speech.  Turns out that together we managed to raise over $13,000!  After the speeches, we all went outside in our little costumes and posed for a picture in front of the GMDVP Sign.  The Ice Queen then gave a count down and we all ran full force into the ocean…and it was COLD!!!!!!!!!  After I went in and dunked myself I ran back inside to change so fast and then met up with the crew.

After the event, we all went to a local restaurant called dBar for a couple round of cocktails to warm up.  It was such a fun time and cold time!

Rock Climbing

This Sunday (2/13/11) I went Rock Climbing and I had so much fun!  Before you go rock climbing, one must learn how to tie a figure 8 knot to secure yourself to the rock course.  There are videos on YouTube about this, I learned from my friend Andy (whom I went with).  Also, one must learn the belay technique and how to properly set up your belay device for the other person who is climbing incase they fall.  I put the vidos on how to do this below.  The place that I went to offered a training course incase you are a more hands on person.  I would recomend the training course if it is your first time.

 Figure 8 knot

Belay Technique 

We went to this place in Worcester, MA called Central Rock Gym. (website: http://www.centralrockgym.com/ ) It was $22 for everything (day pass and rental of the equipment).  I don’t have any pictures because it was just the two of us, but next time we go (and I will be going back again!) I will go with a group of friends so we can all take pictures of everyone climbing. 

When we were at the rock gym we each did 5 courses and completed 4.  I got stuck on this really hard one that was vertical and then jutted out.  It is really such a great workout because you are using your strength, balance, and coordination (talk about synergy!)  Afterward my hands were sore from gripping the rocks; it’s not very often that we use our finger muscles to hold our body weight. 

Rock climbing was a great way to build communication between friends.  We were helping each other out on footing also egging each other on a little.  Also, you have to put your faith in the other person when you decide to come down that they won’t drop you.  Again, I can’t say enough how much of a great time I had!  (Shout out to Andy for taking me!)