Older Bolder Life

Stronger | Leaner | Sharper | Longer - From Older Bolder Fitness

Our New Older Bolder Fitness Site is Up and Running

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Our new Older Bolder Fitness main site is up and running, though we have a few more “i’s” to dot and “t’s” to cross to make everything fully functional. Our Older Bolder Fitness site is mainly dedicated to our coaching and teaching programs.

As we’ve shared before, we’ll be blogging here on the Older Bolder Life, providing our flow of free content focused upon tasty, healthy recipes and information you can use to make rational, practical decisions about your nutrition plan, your overall approach to fitness with a decided bent toward function, improving your metabolic flexibility, and much more.

As we bring more features online I’ll provide quick updates here on the blog.

Cheers, and get moving today.

the Older Bolder Life Salsa Monday: Quick Chipotle Table Salsa

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Friends back home in Montana tease us about having picked up some seemingly bizarre regional food tastes growing up in Texas, but they always enjoy the fresh “table salsas” we often serve with our main meals; in fact, if it’s not on the table, they’re quick to ask about it. (Table salsa is a common term here in Texas, typically referring to a simple, most often tomato or tomatillo-based fresh salsa served at any TexMex joint worth going to.)

We have our favorites, or are otherwise probably serving one of our favorite guacamole recipes, though have been reaching of late for this Quick Chipotle Table Salsa, particularly when serving beef (think braised briskets, chuck roast or chuck roast steaks, and more…).

This one can be finished in 15 minutes while you’re multitasking with other tasks in the kitchen, and you can play with the heat level (more chipotles!) and even add a smidgen of sweet via the molasses (maple syrup or honey would probably work too), though we rarely do.

1-2 tbsp avocado oil
1 medium onion, chopped small
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbsp good tomato paste
1 can (14.5 ounce) fire-roasted tomatoes, crushed
1-2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, chopped
1-2 tsp adobo sauce from the chipotle can
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
Good salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Optional
1 tsp ancho chile powder
1 -3 tsp dark molasses

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat; sauté the onion until softened and just beginning to caramelize around the edges. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute or so.

Now add the tomato paste, the chopped chipotle(s), the ancho chile powder if using, and the adobo, stir into the onion mixture and cook for 2-3 minutes until darkened slightly. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, stir to mix well, and simmer for 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened.

Remove from the heat, let cool for 5 minutes or so, add the vinegar and molasses (if using), then blend until mostly smooth with an immersion blender (or in your trusty blender). Taste for salt and pepper and adjust to your palate.

Enjoy.

Don’t Forget About Your Local Farmers Market in Winter

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We spent a lovely early Saturday morning at the Dallas Farmers Market this past weekend, talking to several very friendly grass-fed beef, pork, and poultry purveyors (always, always, always ask about bulk discounts), and picking up a surprising array of just off the farm vegetables, including a very tasty butter lettuce, kale, brussel sprouts, and organic beets.

Those of you hunkering down for the “polar vortex”, aka Arctic cold fronts that roll in every January, might not have the opportunity until Spring elbows it way in, though in much of the country Farmers Markets are running year round.

Speaking of grass-fed meats, we’re building out a preferred list of providers for clients, which will of course include bulk discounts for bigger orders – more to come.

Starting a Web Transition Week This Morning

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After this morning’s post, we’ll be starting a web transition week, moving this blog and site to new hosting, updating our software engine, dropping in a new theme, and more. We’ll be intermittently offline during the week, and will not be loading new posts on the blog until everything is settled in – we’re guessing it will take most if not all of the week to get it done.

See you in February!

the Older Bolder Life Sauce Sunday: Two Quick Hollandaise Sauce Techniques

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Several friends and clients have been asking lately what method we use to make hollandaise sauce. Hollandaise is not something most of us would eat everyday, though in the Primal, Paleo, and keto worlds, it’s an indulgence that’s packed not only with great flavor but a load of good fats (never forget that good fat are your friend) as well.

For years we’ve been using Kenji L’s method he posted on Serious Eats years ago, and find it just about foolproof. Here’s his video, with his recipe posted here…

Our compadre Chef Libby in Austin shared the following video with me a couple of months ago, and I have to admit, the NO-blender 5 Minute Hollandaise technique has worked wonders for us as well…

There is of course the classic whisk in the butter by hand technique, demonstrated in the first video above, though I can’t imagine ever going back given the consistent and much more simply attained results from these two techniques.

Of note, there’s a fairly wide variance of recommendations as to how many egg yolks one should use per unit of butter (classically one per 2 ounces from most resources that I’ve read lately), though 2 yolks per stick of butter (or even one large) seem to work wonders.

Enjoy.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, and More 26 January 2019

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Keto and Nutritional Ketosis in the News This Week

Men’s Health Asks the Question: Can You Build Muscle on Keto? They take the long way around to get to the right answer…
You know nutritional ketosis is gaining exposure when celebrity trainers start whining about it.
Another high end ‘athletic consultant’ looks at NK safety in the lay press (NOLA.com).

Other Older Bolder Topics That Caught Our Eye This Week

A revisit of aspirin’s propensity to increase hemorrhage (bleeding) risks, based on this study.
LDL-C Levels, baseline and post-lowering, and their connection to all cause and CV mortality.
BPA-laced paper receipts are being questioned by the biz sector now too.
An extraordinary, short-term weight loss tale from the sports world. Don’t try this at home.
So how much money do you really save cooking at home? Not geared to healthy eating, but quite interesting anyway…
Somebody should warn Mark Sisson – Florida is the deadliest state for pedestrians/walkers.
Grandparents who babysit live longer.
For those who would prefer to eat and live in days long gone, here’s a view of life in ancient Mongolia.

Our Older Bolder Recipes from the Week

Quick Meatza Pizza Sauce No. 1
Green Chile Cauliflower Mac and Cheese
Birthday Potstickers (Gyoza)

the Older Bolder Life Friday Feast 25 January: Birthday Pot Stickers (Gyoza)

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We’re serving up something a little different for today’s Friday Feast – two links out for Pot Stickers (Gyoza) – and sharing a short story about one of our family’s birthday traditions.

Nearly thirty years ago, as I was finishing up my postdoc medical training, my lovely wife and I interviewed with a team in Albuquerque with our then newborn daughter in tow. The practice opportunity wasn’t a good fit, though we fell in love with the very unique tricultural amalgam that is Albuquerque.

Ironically from a food perspective, one evening our hosts took us to an astoundingly good Japanese restaurant (the name of which for the life of me I can’t recall), where we dined on the uber-specialty of the house – a collection of all the house specialties served on an imposing model ship (6 or 7 feel in length) carried into our dining area by four of the staff.

The ship was endowed with dozens and dozens little nooks and crannies filled with food treasures of all shapes and sizes, including a fascinating and tasty array of gyoza (potstickers). Immediately upon our return to SLC we began a quest to reproduce our favorite pot stickers using a recipe that was tasty, reliable, and efficiently reproducible (as best can be for pot stickers).

It took a few years, and lots of trial, error, and tasting trials, though we finally (in our pre-Primal/Paleo days) settled on this recipe (note the posting date in 2012), which at the insistence of the entire family became our go to birthday meal for most of the past two decades.

Over the past few years as our nutrition plan has become Primally-aligned, we’ve taken to forming the filling mixture (swapping the soy sauce out for tamari and dropping the corn starch) into oblong patties and sautéing, grilling, or roasting them, and wrapping in lettuce leaves (with a great dipping sauce or two of course), which in all honesty, we now find more tasty than the original.

For those who can’t imagine life without a pan-fried or steamed pot sticker or gyoza in a crispy wrapping, try this one (Paleo Potstickers from Nom Nom Paleo). They’re beautiful, though the dough from scratch endeavor is an impressive undertaking – I agree the tortilla press is an absolute game changer here. And I have to admit, Michelle’s wrap dough recipe is the best gluten free alternative we come across.

So today, in honor of our now young adult offspring’s birthday today – yep, they were born on the same day – it’s pot sticker day!

Questionable Science Thursday: The Save the World Dietary Guidelines (and 7 Grams)

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There’s been a flood of commentary on the EAT-Lancet Commission’s report in the general media, conventional health, and ancestral communities over the past week.

I’ve not had time this week to round up everything worth sharing about the commission’s report and ongoing work, though some of the talking points presented (via the media, and the dietary recommendations released) are certainly worth noting.

From a Guardian article posted 17 January 2019 (emphasis mine) –

A complete overhaul of what we eat may be the only way to meet the needs of a planet in crisis. So what’s on – and off – the menu?

The world faces many challenges over the coming decades, but one of the most significant will be how to feed its expanding global population. By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at. The Norway-based thinktank (sic) Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem – and the ambition is huge.

The commissioners lay out important caveats. Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things. But they are clear that it depends on far more than just these basic requirements. The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet...

7 Grams You Say???

The article goes on to ponder what the plan would allow the typical Brit to consume; one point of interest to the author (and Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple as well) is the suggested limit of 7 grams of red meat per day (the allowable range is listed as a whopping 0-14 grams).

Just for grins, I thought it might be notable to see what 7 grams of food might actually look like.

Seven grams of red meat is so tiny it’s all but impossible to creatively capture in a simple, single image, hence the use of small (about the size of my little finger nail) salad olives above – three of which weigh right at 7 grams.

Impressive.

Some Further Reading to Do After Enjoying Your Steak Tonight…

By all means read the full article linked in the Guardian above as an example of recent media coverage.

Here’s the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health site. For the inquisitive, there are a series of “Briefs” posted at the bottom of the landing page.

Here’s the EAT-Lancet Commission Hub page at The Lancet.

There have been a plethora of spirited responses to the guidelines across a broad spectrum of perspectives, one particularly insightful one from an ancestral health angle is this one from Diana Rogers, RD at Sustainable Dish – 20 Ways EAT Lancet’s Global Diet is Wrongfully Vilifying Meat.

More to come (getting a big project put to bed this week…).

Enjoy that steak tonight, even if you chew up (literally and figuratively) an entire year’s EAT-Lancet allotment of red meat in one meal.