Mango Avacado Salsa

Looking for a fun refreshing salsa to bring to a party or for your family? I've made this many time and each time it's a smashing success!

Ingredients:
2 or 3 firm but ripe Hass avacados
1/2 red Bermuda onion
1/2 English cucumber
2 firm but ripe mangos
Fresh cilantro
Aged balsamic Vinegar

Directions:
Chop the cucumber, mango, and onion and place into a bowl. Do the same for the avacado (we do this last because it browns fast) and give it all a gentle toss without mashing any of the ingredients. Add a little fresh cilantro and drizzle with really good aged balsamic before you serve it up. A little sea salt and course pepper doesn't hurt either!

Serve with tortilla chips and enjoy!

Tip:
Do not refrigerate! Serve immediately after preparing.

Roasted Chicken & Black Bean Tostadas

I recently made these for dinner the other night with ingredients I just happened to have without following a recipe. They came out so good that I had to share them with you!

Ingredients:

- Corn tortillas
- Fresh guacamole
- Roasted chicken or chicken breast
- Organic black beans
- 1/2 white onion
- Goat cheese
- Fresh cilantro

Directions:

Either buy a hot roasted chicken or cook an organic chicken breast in a skillet using olive oil spray. Heat up a cast iron skillet and brown your corn tortillas using a bit of olive oil spray. At the same time in the pan you cooked your chicken, saute your onions in olive oil until they get soft and brown. Heat up your black beans in a small sauce pan and get some fresh cilantro and goat cheese from the fridge.

Once your tortillas are browned and hot, lay them out on either a cookie sheet or individual plates and begin building. Start with a dollop of fresh guacamole, then some crumbled goat cheese, followed by slices of hot chicken breast, a small scoop of black beans, a bit of caramelized onions, and completed by cilantro garnish. These will be a sure hit at any party or Mexican family dinner! Serve with a cucumber salad and a margarita or mojito! Yum!

12 Hours of Great Glen

So I headed up to Maine over the weekend for dinner in Portland with my gf and her parents and then made the drive to North Conway which led me to Glen, NH - the base of the Mt. Washington Auto Road. I made it there by 9:30, 30 minutes prior to the registration cutoff time! The sun was long gone and I had to set up my camp site in the dark when I realized I forgot my tent poles at home. Somehow I packed my entire basement into my car except for the one thing I need to sleep in my tent.


I decided to put up my 10'x10' canopy tent instead and sleep under that hoping no bears would come lick my face during the night. It was 43 degrees that night but I was really warm in my sleeping bag. The next morning brought clear skies and warm sun for the start of the race. I was feeling pretty good and my parents showed up shortly after 9am to help me set up and get my things settled before the race ... you know the usual race prep and laboratory station of drinks and electrolytes!

The rain they got on Friday made the course a bit slick but I did not preride it having been here the past 6 years, and luckily the wind and sun helped dry the course making it pretty fast! Waiting at the start line for the cannon to fire I see a fellow racer Thom Parsons pull up to the line who was racing with a 4-man pro team and thought to myself I am surely not getting the fastest lap now!


The dreaded run around the pond is rediculous in carbon soled bike shoes that are about as stiff as strapping planks to your feet and trying to run on pavement. I somehow always manage and then hopped on my bike for the lap, coming in at 41 minutes. It appears the fast team riders did a 38 or 39 minute lap which wasn't too much faster than mine and I managed to pull off sub 45 min laps the first 6 laps of the race, pulling ahead of my competition and putting myself 6th overall out of EVERYONE.

Half way through the race I find out that the second place rider was nearly 30 minutes behind me and stayed there for the remainder of the race, forcing me out on more laps until I ended with 14 right at the midnight mark. You cannot cross the line until midnight, so I had to do a slower last lap and wait until 12 rolled around. My second 1st place 12 hour finish of the year!

Results:
http://www.grannygear.com/realtime/public/gg_index.php

My parents were a great help, especially with the timing, food prep, and pumpkin choc chip cookies! We all slept in our cars that night and left early the next day where I headed to Reid State Park on the coast of Maine to meet back up wirth my gf and her parents. Dinner on the rocks 10 feet from the ocean is pretty nice after a long day on the bike!

Unfermented soy is bad!

Soy milk has gained an image as a healthy alternative to regular milk, but this image is one of a wolf hiding in sheep’s clothing.

Any soy that is unfermented -- soy milk, tofu, soybean oil, soy burgers, and all the other processed soy products out there all belong to this category -- is not a health food and in fact is not a food I would advise eating at all. This is true whether it is “organic” or not.

Unfermented soy products have been linked to everything from reproductive disorders and infertility to cancer and heart disease.

Further, unfermented soy contains isoflavones that are clearly associated with reduced thyroid function. Eating unfermented soy products is likely the single largest cause of hypothyroidism in women.

Another major problem with unfermented soy is that it contains natural toxins known as “antinutrients.” This includes a large quantity of inhibitors that deter your enzymes needed for protein digestion.

While a small amount of these antinutrients would likely not be a problem, the amount of soy that many Americans are now eating (and drinking in the form of soy milk) is quite significant.

The result of consuming too many of soy’s antinutrients is extensive gastric distress and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake, which can result in pancreatic impairment and cancer.

Unfermented soy is also loaded with phytoestrogens (isoflavones) genistein and daidzein. These compounds mimic and sometimes block the hormone estrogen, and have been found to have adverse effects on various human tissues.

Drinking even two glasses of soy milk daily for one month has enough of the chemical to alter a woman’s menstrual cycle, and although the FDA regulates estrogen-containing products, no warnings exist on soy or soy milk.

Soy phytoestrogens are also known to disrupt endocrine function, may cause infertility and may promote breast cancer in women.

It’s very important that you make this distinction between unfermented and fermented soy, and ditch any and all unfermented soy products from your diet.

Soy foods only become healthy after a long fermentation process, during which the dangerous phytate and "antinutrient" levels of soybeans are reduced, and their beneficial properties are made available to your digestive system.