Get On My Level

What's the point of being on a diet if you're going to be miserable?  If you hate what you eat, can't think straight because you're hungry all the time, and have no energy because your body is screaming out for nourishment - how in the hell are you to be expected to sustain any kind of positive change?  If you are on a diet you hate, you will fail.  Period.

I'm a keto fanboy, this much is true.  I love it, so hard. I've been doing it for three weeks and I've lost 25 pounds while eating "like crap" (according to my mother).  What I've learned is that what I've been told about how to eat has been all wrong for my body.  I'm slowly re-learning how to feed myself.  As I do this, I am experimenting with all different kinds of ways to prepare greasy, fatty, protein-rich, delicious-as-shit food.  I'm a mad scientist and the kitchen is my laboratory.  More often than not, the recipes I come up with are experiments. This is the best part about cooking at home -  I'm free to make mistakes!    Don't be afraid to try new things, or take a chance with a particular spice or flavor combination.  If you fuck it up and it tastes like asshole-from-concentrate, oh well.  Your punishment is that you're hungry and will still have to eat it.

The recipe below is what I had for dinner last night before going to the gym and crushing some deadlifts and bench presses.  If you want to get on my level, make this recipe.  And don't forget your helmet... this will blow your mind.


If you aren't making explosion sounds with your mouth, you need to re-evaluate your life.

Keto-style Jalapeno and Cheddar Stuffed California Burgers.

Here's the deal.  I live in the Midwest now, but I grew up in Southern California.  It wasn't until moving to Minnesota and going to a restaurant that I learned the rest of the country differentiates between "normal" burgers - which have nothing on them except ketchup - and "California" burgers - which have lettuce, tomato,  onion, and mayo.  This fills me with burning hot rage.  Who likes burgers with nothing but ketchup on them?  Not me.  And not you either, stop lying.  A burger devoid of toppings is about the most un-American thing I can think of.  If you like plain hamburgers, go to your nearest VFW and find a team of angry World War II veterans to kick your pinko ass back to whichever communist shithole you came from.

Don't tread on me.

That being said, I now have all these toppings that need to be stacked on my burger before consumption. The problem is, I'm way too fucking lazy to do this every time I want to eat some ground-up cow. Fortunately, those crafty Minnesotans found a way around my crushing, burger laziness..  It's called a juicy lucy... and its better that sex.  Juicy lucy's single-handedly solve man's age-old problem of burger eating by putting all the extra goodies inside the burger.  It's like Inception, but with meat.  These things are fucking tasty.  And the best one's in the Twin Cities Metro are from Blue Door Pub.  GTFO if you think Matt's, 5-8 Club, or The Nook is better.

"A burger within a burger, you say?  Impossible, it'd be too unstable!" BURGERCEPTION

I digress.  Given the tastiness of lucy's, and how I love to take what I'd pay 12 dollars for in a restaurant and make it at home for 3 bucks -  I decided to try and create my own lucy.  Even though I now claim Minnesota citizenship (because California is a hot, sweaty, dirty, smoggy, crime-infested, trash-ridden wasteland populated by idiots) I still like to bring some of that "left-coast" swag into my cooking.


Proof that my brother and I are straight outta Compton.  Thug Lyfe.

To me, labeling something "California" means that it incorporates Latin elements and highlights the super-fresh produce available to Californians.  Things like avocados, fresh chilies, and cilantro are classic California flavors.  These burgers are my take on how things are done back home.  Make sure the veggies you use are fresh.  If your tongue, mouth, intestines, or asshole are made of partially-reconstituted vagina paste, and you can't handle spicy food, substitute those jalapenos for Anaheim chilies.  If you live a life of conquest and victory, add a habanero pepper for a nice smoky flavor and some serious punch.

Let's get started with ingredients.  Keep in mind my measurements are rough.  I don't give a fuck about being precise - and neither should you.  Use what tastes good to you.

2 lbs. ground beef (the fattier the better - lean ground beef is for chumps)
1 avocado
2 medium-sized jalapenos
1/4 cup cilantro
1 cup extra sharp cheddar (if it's not extra-sharp, you're a cheese pussy)
6-8 strips of butcher's bacon
Black pepper (not pictured)
Lawry's seasoned salt (not pictured)





1) Chop up your vegetables and grate your cheese before your hands get all dirty from handling raw meat.  I chopped my cilantro coarsely and sliced my avocados lengthwise.  I also chose to cut my jalapenos in rings, but you can dice them if you'd like.









2) Make 4 patties with the ground beef and arrange them on a plate.  They don't have to be perfect, but they should roughly resemble a hamburger patty.  Lightly season them with the pepper and Lawry's.  Protip: make 2 of the patties slightly smaller than the others.  Also, don't be a dipshit like me and make sure to thaw your meat in advance.





3a) On the smaller patties, stack your jalapenos and about 3/4 of your cheese.














3b) Then take the larger patties and place them on top of the smaller patties.  Gently pinch (giggity) the ends together until you form one large patty.  I like to fondle (giggity) my patties (giggity) to make sure those edges are nice and tight (giggity); otherwise, you might experience some leakage (giggity) while grilling.

4) Heat up your grill, set the heat on medium low, and start grilling your patties.  I cooked mine medium with a little bit of char.

 5) While the burgers are grilling, start frying the bacon. Do it how you like. I generally like my bacon underdone, but I made it somewhat crispy for this recipe.

















6) When the burgers are done, take them off the grill and immediately sprinkle the remainder of your cheese on top.  Put your avocados on top of the cheese and your cilantro on top of the avocados.  Finish it off by adding your bacon.  At this point you should be salivating uncontrollably.







7) Let the burger cool for 5 minutes before stuffing your face so you don't burn the shit out of your mouth with molten hot cheese.  If you have a leathery man-mouth capable of withstanding the most extreme heat conditions, then by all means - go nuts.







As a side note, this recipe will adequately feed a very hungry predator, or two slightly less hungry predators.

I hope you all like it.  But if you don't, haters gonna hate.  Feel free to use this as a loose guideline and put your own spin on it.  Make sure to post your feedback in the comments and stay tuned for my next post: "Steak The Way Jesus Intended."



Haters gonna hate

Last night, while I was crushing wings at bdubs like a starving predator, a rugby teammate told me I was fucking hilarious.  I contemplated this statement while I continued to jam deep fried chicken into my mouth and arrived at the conclusion that he was absolutely right.

Too bad being a clown and making half-drunk people laugh isn't terribly interesting.  And neither is what I do with my life. My life is equally as interesting as jury duty, and people would rather churn butter than read about my stupid bullshit.  But guess what?  I give a sum total of zero fucks what you think about me or my life.  I do what I do.  So I'm gonna write this blog anyways.  Haters gonna hate.

This blog will be about rugby, my job as chemical dependency counselor, my experiences with a ketogenic diet, my interest in cooking (and eating) like a man, and whatever else I choose to write about.  So lets get started.

First post.

I'm currently on a ketogenic diet.  I've lost a metric ass-load of weight in about two American-standard hot-seconds.  In order to explain how keto works, one must grasp the basics of the body's metabolism.  Strap yourself in, here comes the broscience.

Glucose (sugar) is broken down by insulin and converted to glycogen to be burned for energy.  This is a good thing.  However, the Standard American Diet (SAD) causes people to flood their body with carbohydrates (which metabolize into glucose) and sugar.  In fact, people consume so many carbs and sugar that the body cannot produce enough insulin to keep up.  The body isn't stupid.  It knows how important it is to have enough fuel to power the body throughout the day, and it isn't about to let all that perfectly good glucose go to waste.  So like a hoarder packing their house full of garbage, the body stores all that extra energy in - you guessed it - fat.  There's no off-switch for this.  Exceed the amount of sugar your insulin can metabolize, and you will gain fat.  Conversely, if you deprive your body of carbs and sugar, it will have to rely on it's fat stores for energy.  If you're a fat-shit like me, you've got plenty to spare.  Start using your fat stores for energy, and you will lose weight.  It's simple.  The goal of a ketogenic diet is to limit carbohydrate intake in order to force your body into using ketones to break down fat stores for brain fuel, rather than using insulin to convert your dietary carbs for energy.  I won't get into all the detail of how this works, but I encourage you to visit www.reddit.com/r/keto and read the FAQs.

Needless to say, I love ketones.  They hunt down fat and kill it with extreme prejudice. They're like a roid-raging Arnold Schwarzenegger chasing a panicked Linda Hamilton through the streets of 1980s Los Angeles - except in this analogy Sarah Conner is a fat cell and the Terminator is a ketone.

"My last name is really hard to spell without Google!"

Sounds great right? Cue the haters.

"But Brad!  How can I live if I can't eat anything?  Everything has carbs!" she said angrily as she began to suck doughnut glaze from underneath her fingernails.  "If you want to lose weight you need to eat lots of bread, rice, and pasta.  Trust me, I've been on lots of diets!  I lost five pounds seventeen years ago eating nothing but cake batter and pasta while main-lining Mountain Dew.  There's no fat in Mountain Dew!"

Sadly, she was killed by Japanese whalers later that day.  Whale Wars was on the scene, but the crew of the Sea Shepherd was too busy to intervene as they were trying to un-wedge their captain from the door of an Old Country Buffet.

"Bring me the Wookie... and a dentist."

I'm sure you're wondering: "What the hell can I eat if I can't have carbs?"  One word: fat, protein, and fiber.  Well, that's three words. Let me try again.  Delicious shit.  Meh, close enough.  The main reason why this diet works for me is that I can eat copious amounts of delicious shit - fat, protein, and fiber - all while having the energy to maintain an extremely active lifestyle consisting of rugby, power lifting, and 54 hour work weeks.  I eat gigantic burgers (no bun) covered in bacon and cheese, massive steaks, hot wings, and anything else that is full of fat and protein, but no carbs.  Everything I eat tastes amazing, makes me full as shit, and gives me so much fucking energy I can't sit still.  I'm throwing more weight around in the gym than ever before, sleeping better, and dropping pounds like Chargers wide receivers drop passes in the 4th quarter.

I don't have it in me to be clever.  I hate Philip Rivers and everything about the organization he plays for.  I'm not even joking.  Fuck the Chargers.

Keto is flexible enough to accommodate my hectic schedule and so easy that even the mouth-breathing hermaphrodite Philip Rivers could do it.  But what makes this diet the absolute, undisputed champion of all other diets is that it affords me one epic cheat day a week.  In order to make sure my metabolism doesn't over-produce ketones (creating a nasty condition called ketoacidosis) I have to hit the reset button each week.  Basically, I get to consume anything and everything in front of me.  6 days of discipline affords me 24 hours to wreck every buffet in town or attempt to put the local Pizza Hut out of business.  Most importantly it satisfies my urge to eat like a fat kid.  It's a great reward, and flooding my system with carbs after a week of deprivation is an amazing, euphoric high.

It's like this, only with more bread.

In upcoming posts I'll be sharing my favorite keto-friendly recipes, as well as those that I save for my cheat days.  If you want to try keto, I recommend visiting that reddit page I posted above.  Oh, and one more thing.

Haters gonna hate.