Please Keep Trying!

I weighed myself the other day. I had a really bad feeling I’d gained weight and I was even told my face looked fuller. My thighs felt heavier too. Turns out I did in fact gain weight, about ten pounds to be exact. Ouch. Well that wasn’t much of a surprise, seeing as how I knew I was pigging out more than usual and not exercising as much with my bum knee. Stress and disorganized thinking have that effect on me.

I’m going to stop writing my book for the time being and focus on writing for magazines. I’ll also be doing my damnedest to lose the ten pounds and then some. We’ve had a rough time lately with personal issues, (car was totaled by a deer, knee isn’t getting any better, issues with family health, etc.) so I’m going to focus on resolving what I have in front of me before going on to other tasks.

I actually felt much better after I accepted I wouldn’t have the time or energy to be writing. This site won’t disappear, and I will keep writing on it as much as I can. I’m just going to take stock of the “little” things I need to do and then re-evaluate how to tackle bigger issues.

After going to the doctor three weeks ago for my diagnosis for Leftie, I left with a prescription for three weeks of physical therapy. The physical therapy, aka, PT, took up about forty five minutes of my day twice a day. The goal was to strengthen my quadriceps so they would lessen the unevenness created from my injury in July.

Every single day I did my PT, sometimes once, sometimes two or even three times. I even started doing my therapy with weights. I went to physical therapy twice a week which sucked another hour outta my day. There wasn’t much time to write during the day, what with driving to and from PT, doing PT, going to doctor’s and such, so I had to work through dinner and into the evening, which cut me off from all sorts of activities.

I improved some, but when I went back to the doctor on Monday, he checked me out and declared, “There’s still no muscle tone.” Huh? Excuse me, but I do my PT, I don’t shirk it even though it hurts like a mofo. Apparently, the physical therapy script he wrote wasn’t tough enough and combined with my atrophied muscles, it didn’t do diddly. I was po’ed, massively, po’ed.

Anyone who knows me, knows I work my butt off in whatever needs to be done. It’s an attitude which became pretty adamant during my weight loss: If it needs to get done, just do it, sans complaining and whining. Who cares if it hurts? Just do it, get it done with and move on. But I did do it, and went the extra mile with it but it still wasn’t enough. I feel as though I flushed X amount of hours and cash down the drain. This wretched knee problem has caused everything in my life to hover in a holding pattern of suck, including my weight loss, which irritates me beyond words.

So now the folks at the PT office have devised a new way to torture Leftie. They strap electrodes to my atrophied muscle and run a strong current to the quad which isn’t firing, enough to make it contract on its own. Then I go through all my exercises, which are much tougher now, with my muscle contracted. It feels like crap. It feels like some phantom has reached its corpsey fingers into my leg and is yanking my muscle.

I get to do this fun exercise for three more frick’n weeks. I hope to god this pays off, because frankly, I can’t afford any more wasted days and money. Either this works and the knee problem “lands” safely, or it runs outta gas and takes a header into the sea of crappiness it’s been flying over the past eight months.

There are times I wish I wasn’t watching how and what I eat. These moments come up and remind me strongly of the cravings I used to have when I quit smoking eleven years ago. I used to have these horrible urges to buy a pack of cigarettes and smoke every last one of them in one sitting. While it seems to be perfectly acceptable for an ex-smoker to experience cravings, it doesn’t appear that food cravings from an ex-fatty are as OK. I figure if it’s fine for society to accept nicotine cravings, it should be just as acceptable to embrace piggy moments.

Whenever I feel an intense desire to go out and buy a bakery cake and scarf down every crumb, I know I’m having a piggy moment. If I ever feel the need to have seconds whenever everybody else is content with firsts, I’m having a piggy moment. Wanting the Twinkie, piggy moment.

I’ve been having many piggy moments lately, some of which have been indulged. The entire plate of shrimp lo mein plus a bowl of egg drop soup and two spring rolls was most assuredly a piggy moment. Two buttered slices of Irish soda bread, two eggs and two pieces of toast, ouch, piggy moment. I always have to step back when I’m getting hit hard by piggy moments and take stock of why I’m having them. Am I really that hungry? Am I bored? Stressed? Depressed? Am I satisfying an addiction? Which one? What am I getting out of eating so much food? Can I get the same feelings from something less destructive?

Yeah, it’s work to step back and admit there’s something not right with the way I’m living or eating. Taking mental notes of good habits and bad habits is uncomfortable at best. I’m still going to the gym, still exercising, which is probably my only saving grace right now. If I wasn’t lifting or doing my interval training, I imagine I’d be really putting on the fat. As it is, there’s a hint of out of control-ness, a bit of, “My, that escalated quickly”, that has me scared I might take a turn for the fatter if I don’t find out what’s going wrong, now.

Personally, I think what’s happening with the food is a bit of sugar addiction, self rewarding, boredom and stress eating. Admitting the problems, sadly, doesn’t make them automatically disappear. There’s more work to be done, more re-education, more switching of one bad habit for a better one. It’s a constant battle to overcome bad habits which resurge if not monitored on a regular basis. Whenever I think I have my weight problem fixed forever, I realize I’ll need to keep learning, keep doing better, keep moving forward, in essence, keep trying.

We had a bit of a scare in the family this past week. The matter of heart health came to light for an immediate family member and required a heart cath test. The test came back normal; nary a narrow artery in sight, but it opened everyone’s eyes as to the necessity of a heart healthy diet and regular exercise.

Ironically, I returned home to St. Louis today after the heart testing and was welcomed with the results from my physical. I haven’t had a physical or blood work in seven years plus. The last time I even thought about my cholesterol was when it was 256. But the week before, when I had my blood work done, I kept thinking, what if I’m not as healthy as I think I am? Sure, I don’t eat meat, much dairy, or much fried foods, but what if I’m in a bad spot? Maybe this heart thing runs in the family. All these thoughts were before the test for the family member came back spotless.

I didn’t even think about my test results until I tore open the envelope and read them.
My test results were:

• Total Cholesterol: 134
• Triglycerides: 85
• HDL (good cholesterol): 50
• LDL (bad cholesterol): 67

I’m told that’s good. But I don’t want good; I want great. I want sparkly award winning cholesterol. I want arteries so shiny I emit light every time I bleed. That may seem far-fetched and a bit of a reach. Fair enough. Yet I made a goal to live to a vibrant, energetic 120 years, with all my faculties and all my functions. I was hoping I would end my days in a spectacular gliding accident right after I hit 120. I have this whole life thing pretty mapped out, and I need to be in the best shape possible to achieve my goal. So “good” won’t cut it. It’s got to be great.

Now I’m going to make it a goal to up my HDL to 60, 10 points higher than it is now. I’d also like to lower my LDL to 60, 7 points below its present point. Why bother if I’m in good health now? Part of it is the longevity factor but part of it is also the challenge. I’ve come so far in customizing my body and making it look and run better than it ever has before, that my health has become an almost obsessive past time. It’s become a hobby to see if I can make my body do this, overcome that, and look how I want it to. How could I not take up this challenge for better heart health?

I can see how my family member and I may become slightly competitive about improving our cholesterol levels. I don’t mind the competition. As long as we both cross the finish line, I’m happy and won’t give them a heart time if I come in second place.

This flu season hasn’t hit David and me hard thus far, knock on wood, but it has made me aware I need to beef up security on the home front, i.e. my immunity. The ways to increase immunity are manifold, and start with proper nutrition; lots of veggies and fruits, balanced vitamin intake, and probiotics. Adequate sleep is another biggie for a tougher immunity, as is plenty of exercise and water.

I have the veggies and fruits down pretty well, along with the sleep and exercise, but I find I need to work on my vitamin, water, and probiotic intake. Vitamins and water should be easy to fix, but getting the priobiotics I need to maintain a healthy immunity is time consuming and potentially expensive. Yogurt is an OK way to get some probiotics as is popping pills filled with the lil’ buggers. However, I’m lactose intolerant and I hate taking pills if I don’t have to. The solution? Kefir.

Kefir is a milk beverage developed hundreds of years ago by the nomadic tribes of the Causcaus. They discovered if they poured freshly obtained milk into a sack and added kefir grains to it, the milk would ferment at room temperature into a sour, slightly carbonated beverage. The milk was thus preserved and kefir was born. The milk doesn’t go bad when it’s fermenting at warm to hot temperatures due to the colonies of yeasts and bacteria which break down sugars in the milk and which also keep harmful microbes from spoiling the milk.

These critters are the same ones we need in our guts in order to have a balanced system. We humans are symbiotic creatures and depend on a slew of microbes, probiotics, to keep us healthy. Kefir is filled with what we need. What about kefir being a dairy beverage and hence a bane to anyone with lactose intolerance?

If kefir is brewed at home, it can be fermented longer. Fermenting longer and then initiating a second fermenting of kefir enables the microbes to digest the lactose, milk sugar, responsible for lactose intolerance. No lactose sugars, no farting. The brew is more sour due to the lengthy fermentation, but it’s possible to sweeten it with agave or honey to take the edge off. I read kefir tastes like yogurt and during a second fermentation, fruits and sugar may be added to create a yogurt like smoothie.

I bought some kefir grains this week from ebay to try my hand at making kefir. The grains looked like white mush and smelled like old socks and rotting bread, which is apparently how they’re supposed to smell; it means they’re alive.

It’s been sixteen hours since I added the milk, and the kefir is thickening up nicely. However, I read on the seller’s website to toss out the initial batch of kefir and to only consume consequent batches. I’ve also read not to initially wholesale chug homegrown kefir after you first start making it. The body may be unused to the massive amounts of good buggies and will be upset at the deluge of incoming microbes, thus upsetting the system. What will follow is a kill off of all the undesirables living in the guts at the thousands of “hands” of the probiotics, which’ll create more turmoil. Slowly titrating onto kefir is the best way to avoid stomach upset. That’s fine by me since I’m not going to have gallons of this stuff handy any time soon anyhow.

I’m excited, though; I’m back to “growing” good food which is good for me. I love being so connected to my own health and well being! I’ll keep you posted as to how my kefir turns out!

Last week was a nightmare for me; dealing with doctors, MRIs and physical therapists. I have a deep distrust and dislike of most doctors, due to years of horrible encounters. I remember a few years ago going to a doctor to complain the medicine he’d given me was making me sleepy. You know what he said? Drink some Mountain Dew and you’ll wake up. I kid you not. Geez.

I had a similar experience last week when I was wrongly told my left knee had arthritis and some kind of meniscus tear, needing surgery to fix. When I heard the doc pronounce my doom, I admit I took it badly. Two physical therapy sessions (also unpleasant) into Doc One’s pre-op prescription, I scheduled a second opinion. I couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion this guy didn’t know what he was talking about. The doctor I scheduled a second opinion with was personally recommended by a friend. Anyone was bound to be better than the guy who was ready to put me out to pasture.

Doctor Two knew his stuff. He informed me I did indeed have a tiny horizontal tear in the lateral meniscus, but surgery would make it worse. He was quick to add the pain I experience is not due to the tear but to something called patella femoral syndrome. PFM happened in my case when the knee got wacked outta alignment during taijutsu. I unwittingly made it worse by favoring Leftie, thus decreasing the muscles used to hold the patella in pain-free alignment. Not only was the pain not due to a tear, it wasn’t linked to the arthritis I had because I don’t have arthritis. An x-ray showed my cartilage to be healthy and happy. Doc Two even said, “I wouldn’t operate on those knees.”

So no arthritis and no pain from some gi-normous mystery tear. It makes sense. I always thought something was fishy with the way Leftie felt. Yes, it hurts like a sumabitch, but it doesn’t hurt in the same places Leftie One (my first meniscus tear) hurt. I initially thought it was a horrible meniscus tear due to the popping and the pain, when in reality it’s a tiny tear and the pain is due to something else. I can perform activities a meniscus tear would prohibit but it hurts to kneel, bend or to sit too long. All which point to the patella femoral syndrome. With time and the right help, I’ll be stronger than I was before the injury, how’s that for good news?

Relieved is not a strong enough word for what I felt leaving Doc Two’s office. I’m not going to be crippled, I will get back on the mat, and I will have my spring bike rides! But only after intense physical therapy. A., the friend who recommended Doc Two, warned me this guy’s hardcore with his therapy. Awesome, my kind of guy!

It should be apparent by now the recipes on the site contain no meat from land critters, the reason being I’m a pescetarian. Pesce- is Latin for fish, as pescetarians don’t eat any other meat except seafood and fish. Another term for my dietary lifestyle is pescevore, derived from a combination of pesce- and carnivore. I don’t like the latter term as it sounds almost violent.

I have many reasons why I changed my lifestyle from a ravening carnivore diet to what I have now. Initially, I used to be quite the meat eater, tucking away three pork chops at a meal and then some. I would go back for seconds and thirds at family barbecues, sampling every meat offered. Going to a store when there was a meat sale was hazardous. I’d buy bags and bags of pork, beef, chicken and whatever else was proffered and stockpile them in the freezer. Ironically, although I loved to fish I hated to eat fish, unless it was deep fried. I loved beef jerky and Slim Jims. In short: I loved meat.

I couldn’t understand what the hell vegetarians saw in a Boca burger or a block of tofu. Yark. Meat was all, there was no other alternative. Then I met my vegan neighbors in Murphysboro. I had offered them hot cocoa and was about to add some milk when I was stopped short by, “We’re vegan.” Come again? Vegan? Like vegetarian? Why don’t you drink milk then? Vegan, as in no meat, no eggs, no dairy. WTF do you eat then? How do you live? Yeah, that was my stellar answer to their veganism: How do you live.

It was through my neighbors I was introduced to meat and dairy alternatives and actually began to like them. My neighbors didn’t lack for food or variety and my eyes were opened. Although I still ate meat, I wasn’t as averse to the concept of vegetarianism as I first was. That changed when I topped the scale at 350, my blood pressure was 149/90 and my cholesterol was 214. Oh, lookie, Boca burgers are on sale!

It wasn’t until we moved to St. Louis in 2005 I weaned off of meat along with David. After moving, I no longer bought meat or cooked it. We would “meat out“, that is to say, we’d only eat meat when we were dining out. In July 2005, we no longer ate any meat, except seafood. It had taken us almost three years to get to that point. It didn’t happen overnight but we were happy with the change.

The top reasons I no longer eat meat are my decisions and affect me personally. I won’t force my views on anyone and don’t talk about my decisions unless asked or provoked. But for those who are curios:

My Top Reasons I Don’t Eat Meat

• Meat is expensive. Damn straight it’s pricey! I can buy a bag of smeat (soy meat) for $2.59 and have it last four hearty meals.
• Meat can be dangerous. With tainted meat recalls, antibiotic and hormone injections, and diseased animals making it into the food stream more and more often, yes, I feel smug about my lifestyle. Sue me.
• Meat is high maintenance to prepare and cook. When cooking with TVP, it’s perfectly OK to sit it on a counter top for two hours to reconstitute and TVP can be eaten “raw”. Not just that but TVP and meat analogies don’t take long to defrost if frozen. Can’t really do that with chicken. Who ever heard of getting salmonella from TVP?
• Meat, even the healthy cuts, has more cholesterol, fat and calories than its analogies. I don’t need anymore cholesterol, fat or calories .
• Meat hurts my digestion. Badly. It wasn’t till after my second intestinal cleanse I realized meat made my guts hurt. It takes the human body a long time to digest meat, compared to digesting vegetable matter. Stopping my meat intake alleviated many, many gut problems for me and gave me renewed energy.

Yep, I’m glad I don’t meat anymore. I feel better than I ever have, but that’s me. And if I ever feel the hankering for a chicken leg or for some sausage, Taiwanese manufactures like VegeUSA have me covered completely. To those who scoff at meatless or pescetarian lifestyles as lacking in variety, protein, and substance, all I have to say is: I can eat hot wings, curl 12 pounds each arm and am satisfied after every meal. Plus, I’m no longer a plus size.

With Valentine’s Day gone and Christmas but a memory, Easter is the last day of the Candy Season. The Candy Season extends from Halloween through Easter and is the time of year when no more than two months pass between major candy geared holidays. Those holidays are: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter. These are the days whose celebrations are punctuated, if not defined, by candy specifically manufactured for that holiday. Halloween candy is cheap, but looks pretty gruesome and cool. Christmas candy has a touch of class and sports minty and festive flavors, but isn’t necessarily quality. Valentine’s Day goodies (mostly chocolate) aren’t as inventive as Halloween or Christmas offerings, but are usually of a higher caliber and quality. Usually. Easter ends the line-up with style with both quality and variety. We have Easter to thank for Cadbury Cream Eggs and for those yummy lil’ Cadbury Mini Eggs.

Every year for the past fifteen years, I’ve gone to the store the day after a major candy holiday and stocked up on half price candy. It’s a thrill for me to grab four boxes of marshmallow Peeps for a buck. I always feel the consummate bargain-ess when I can get a mountain of goodies for a fraction of the price by just timing my purchases.

The trouble I encountered with binge buying was with binge eating what I bought. With little to no self control back in the old days, I could tear through a heart-shaped box of chocolates in twenty minutes, I kid you not. I could go back for seconds within an hour. So post-holiday candy buying wasn’t really the bargain it first seemed, especially with the interest I was paying in calories and fat.

I love my holiday candy however, and the bargain hunter in me finds it a sin to pass up such good deals. What to do with so much temptation just lying around the house? It’s not a good thing for me to have a bag of conversation hearts staring me in the face everyday. Sooner or later, it’s gonna get eaten and eaten all at once.

The thing I learned to do with candy in order to save myself from myself is to hide it. That’s right, I tuck it far away in a place I’ll forget about. Put it in the back of the freezer and bury it under the hot dogs and the fish sticks. Hide it in the closet, in one of my old purses or boots. Fill random drawers with a chocolate bunny here and a Cadury Egg there. Squirrel away the candy and forget about it till it’s found by accident. What I do nowadays since I have a partner in candy crime, is I have David squirrel it away. If he hides the candy, I’ll be less inclined to look for it since I’d feel ashamed to go rooting through drawers and tossing underwear on the floor to get my sugar fix. That’s an image of myself which shames me into reaching for a carrot or an apple instead of a piece of candy.

We have a pile of loot which’d make even the staunchest of candy proponents sick to see. It’s huge, mammoth in scale, and the reason it’s so large is we don’t eat it often. Seldom do we dip into our sweet savings. I forget it’s there except when the sugar crazies hit. Then, with frightening clarity I’ll remember I have a bag of Jelly Bellies left over from Christmas or I have a box of chocolates from Valentine’s Day. Only then does the loot get broached, and only with three pieces, max. This method works great and doesn’t deny me either my bargain hunting or my chocolate. In fact, the candy practically lasts until the next Candy Season. We’ve even thrown candy out since it staled.

Squirreling is a method which may or may not work for other people. Some may have an eidetic memory and the process is pointless. Others may not have the will power and polish off the candy before they have a chance to hide it. Still others may find themselves frantically trying to discover their squirreling holes. Like I said, it’s not for everyone, but squirreling works for me. I’d be nuts not to use so great a compromise!

The other day a friend commented I had quite a sweet tooth. I don’t know if he judged for me having one, but I felt kinda bad he mentioned it. Being addicted to sugar seems to be more frowned upon than being addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. Maybe that’s something I’m projecting in my head, but it seems people who overeat, and who are consequently overweight, are judged much more harshly than people who drink or smoke too much. I would always hear, “Yeah, it’s tough to quit smoking”, basically excusing a smoker’s life threatening habit. I’d also hear, “Why don’t you just stop eating?”, which essentially negates the addiction food can be. Like it’s ever that easy to just quit any addiction.

To that effect, I’m trying to cut down on my refined sugar and food intake by switching to alternative sweeteners like agave syrup and xylitol for my sweet fix. I’ve been doing a lot of research and have found natural sugars with a low glycemic index can potentially satisfy my insane sugar cravings and won’t shut down my immune system when I need it most. That and the energy I get from agave will be a slow release of energy and not the spiky high white sugar socks people with.

Agave is obtained from expressing the core of select agave plants. The resultant goo is a very watery liquid which looks and tastes exactly like honey, except sweeter. However the glycemic index is only 27 compared to the GI of refined honey, which is 83. Plus, agave dissolves readily in any liquid, hot or cold. This stuff is actually pretty amazing. It’s not as thick as honey, and it’ll never crystallize on the shelf like honey. Agave syrup is still sixty calories per tablespoon, just as honey and other refined sugars are, but I find I don’t need to use as much as I would with honey. So far, I’m loving the agave syrup.

Xylitol is a natural sugar found in corn husks and hardwoods, such as birch. It’s not so much a sugar as a sugar alcohol and doesn’t have the nasty aftertaste other sweeteners, such as stevia do. Stevia, sweetleaf, is a great sugar alternative, don’t get me wrong. However, it has a horrible bite, which I can’t get around. Xylitol sounded promising but I wanted to try a small amount of it before I invested $8 a pound for it online. I finally found some bulk xylitol in the St. Louis area at New Dawn Health Foods and bought a pound.

The crystals of xylitol clump ever so slightly and are airy and light. A first taste doesn’t leave me with any hideous impressions, but xylitol is certainly not sugar. It’s sweet, but not as sweet white sugar. It dissolves fairly easily in a cup of hot tea, which is the only thing I’ve used it in thus far. Xylitol might not be as sweet as sugar, but with half the calories of sugar, I’m willing to overlook its inequalities.

Xylitol is a decent sweetener and I can see myself using it as a sugar substitute in my cooking. There are two huge drawbacks to using xylitol daily, however. One is the price. The other is the way it can cause diarrhea if eaten too much of it too soon. The packaging doesn’t mention this lil’ tidbit, but the info is online. I thought two tablespoons wasn’t enough to cause discomfort. Turns out two tablespoons cleaned me out pretty good. In order to overcome this noxious side effect, xylitol must be introduced into a diet daily and at a low dosage. I suppose I can do that, but I’m slightly bitter about doing so for a sweetener.

I’ll be using both the agave syrup and the xylitol whenever I can (read as, whenever I can afford to do so). They’re both tasty and can be used just like sugar and honey. The only foreseeable problem is the price, both to my wallet and potentially my guts. But in the long run, living longer and finally breaking my addiction to refined sugar once and for all is a small price to pay.

Living four blocks from an Asian grocery store can be good and bad. Good in that I don’t need to go far to pick up some satsumaimo (Japanese sweet potato) or dashi (fish and seaweed broth). Bad because I find myself buying stuff I may or may not use. Case in point: arrowroot powder.

Over Christmas break, I spent my free time translating Japanese wagashi recipes off the .jp. One recipe called for kuzu (kudzu to Americans) powder. Kuzu ko is really tough to get in the Midwest, but arrowroot powder is a fantastic substitute for it, if you can find it. Keep in mind I didn’t have much interest in actually making this particular wagashi, I just had a great time translating the recipe. But one day, while I was at the Asian grocery store, lo and behold, there’s a shiny bag of arrowroot powder for only $2.50!! OMG! Must buy! And it’s been on my shelf ever since, unopened and unused.

Sometimes, though, I find something at the Asian grocery which changes the way I look at food forever. That’s what happened last week when I reached into the freezer at Jay’s for some kamaboko and saw a giant bag of chicken wings. These weren’t any ordinary chicken wings. These chicken wings were from the manufacturer, VegeUSA, of my favorite fake meat products. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing were fake chicken drumsticks (they looked more like wings). Everything about them looked pretty authentic. They even had a frick’n bone in the way of a dowel rod! I then experienced the same MUST BUY urge I usually get when I’m about to purchase something I have no use for. Fighting the urge, I was about to stuff the “wings” back into their icy abode when the price jumped off the freezer shelf: $6.95. Holy crap! $6.95 for three pounds of “meat”?!! OMG!! MUST BUY!!!!

Driving home and feeling a mixture of shame and curiosity over my MBP (must buy purchase), I vowed to make a fitting meal with the lil’ buggers. I used a bulgogi recipe as a base for a Korean style barbecue sauce and grilled the drumsticks/wings in the oven at 430 degrees. First, I cooked them till the “skin” was crispy, then I simply treated them like any other barbecued meat and brushed them with a generous helping of sauce. All I have to say is, they were sooooo wrong but soooo right. The meat has a fantastic texture, right down to the crispy skin. The dowel rod gives the illusion of a bone, but is thankfully, not too realistic. It was one of the best meals I’ve had in a while, and the drumsticks are filling at only 90 calories a piece. Now that’s a bargain!

The next time I used the chicken, I made hot wings. Yes, hot wings. And they were so tasty and so sinful (not really, I used soy butter, so nah, nah, not a sin!) I wanted to share my ficken (fake chicken) experience with you because I still can’t believe VegeUSA makes frick’n chicken legs/ wings/ whatever. If I wanted to (and I do) I can make Japanese recipes which call for chicken. I haven’t posted any niku (meat) recipes, besides those containing fish, on The Anime Blog. Chikin sukiyaki and yakitori here I come!