Greetings and Salutations!
Leg day this A.M. and the arms recovered enough to actually you know, like type again. The great news? I’n down quite a few pounds… I weighed in this A.M. at 347…
Do NOT ask how much I had gained.
Let’s just say emotional turmoil was not good for the waistline, nor the mindset. Which is now back in full effect. I mean the diet is going along well, I have my accountability sheet that I’m filling out daily, and making sure I keep it about 2200 calories for the entire day.
That’s waaaay down.
ESPECIALLY for a guy my size.
Add on what I’ve cut by completely going booze/beer free.
Mind you that sort of sucks, but I’m already way less bloated, and feeling better. My sleeping rhythms are back, and I’m up extremely early to either get my lift on or my walk on. Been doing a few laps around the neighborhood in a stripped down tac-vest with my XSAPI plates. Cardio donchaknow?
The left leg is doing much better as well, except that I literally ‘love tapped’ the passenger side running board on The Boat with the left shin, and because the skin is like tissue paper, I torn a big ole swath of skin off of it. AGAIN
So I’m back to square one.
However
The new secret weapon(s) which have been helping me?
One is Silver Honey:

It’s Manuka Honey and Antimicrobial Silver.
Supposedly it’s for horses.
Since I’m as large as one, it seems to be doing the job quite nicely. It also seems to be ‘fading’ the damaged areas that were inflamed and angry. Link to it is HERE
The other is a single compression boot:

Now I got that BEFORE Christmas, on the 17th so I got it for less than $50. Link to it is HERE And yeah, both wet my beak if you buy eithe rof them. The Leg Compression thing is great!!! It’s got 3 settings, the one I like most is the setting thats starts compressing my foot, and then works it’s way up my leg to my knee, squeezing all the pooled blood and lymph out or at least back into normal circulation.
The only major negative is you need to download and run it via a bluetooth connected app. I’m soooooo sick of apps I swear man… It does work however, and my leg looks much better for it, and I’m no where near as gimpy as I was.
So since the diet is now on full time, I’m cooking healthy like I did back in Baghdad. For that matter, I got a lil ‘homesick’ for my place back in Iraq from 2008-2011… Like genuinely missing my life and lifestyle from back then. It was a much simpler and straightforward existence to say the least.
The food was MUCH healthier overall as well, as Halal chow witht he Muslim Rules makes sure that GMOs are a nonstarter, and the grains you DO have available are from the same. exact. grains that Suliman the First was chowing on… Like the OG-Grains if you will.
So since I had previously stocked up on some quality meats that I had intended on using to impress a female (yeah… of course the deal fell through… story of my life amiright?) so Last night I yoinked! the meetza outta da deepfreeze and made ready for the cooking tonight.
In this case, this was Iraqi Kofta Kebabs.
I used to make these things at a minimum of 3-4 times a week in Baghdad. My Iraqi workers taught me how. God I miss them guys and gals… Anyways…
Kofta is a type of of spiced meat, usually cooked on skewers, made from ground meat (like beef, lamb, or chicken) or vegetables, mixed with spices, onions, and herbs. It can be grilled, baked, fried, or simmered in sauces, and is usually (for me) served over rice.
In my case?
I used a pound of Ground Waygu Beef, and a pound of New Zealand’s finest high-quality, tender, grass-fed Lamb. The skewers I got a lil ways back as a gift from bro who knows how much I like to cook, and got me the right skewers for the job:

Besides the spicing, in order to have a proper kebab, the meat has to cook from the inside as well as from the outside. The way this is done is that each one of those bad bois is about 3/4 of an inch wide. The tip of the skewer gets stuffed into the hot coals, allowing the heat to run the length of it, and cooks the inside of the kebab. The rick is to NOT allow the meat to peel apart and fall INTO the coals.
Thankfully I only had one do this, and I was quick enough to recover the meat. Part of the trick is making sure you have breadcrumbs as a binder… The way I did it, was I placed alllll the spices into a BIG honking bowl, and hand mixed it all together:

Where things went a wee bit sideways was I didn’t put enough breadcrumbs in, or at least that ONE skewer that fell apart didn’t get enough breadcrumbs… Meh… either way, it all cam out fantastically.
The Spices I used and how much are as follow:
One Medium Diced (via my smol food processor) Onion
Three BIG Tablespoons of Minced Garlic
1-1/2 Cups of Finely Mashed Plain Breadcrumbs (I used Pepperidge Farms)
1 Cup of Dried Parsley (or one whole fresh bunch, w/no stalks, diced up)
1 1/2 Teaspoons Ground Allspice
1/2 Teaspoons Green Cardamom
1/2 Teaspoons Nutmeg
1/2 Teaspoons Sumac
1/2 Teaspoons Paprika (I like a wee bit more, so dealer choice)
1 1/2 Teaspoons Aleppo Pepper
Large Pinch of Salt
I mashed all of it up, and then formed a small-ish ball of the meat, and skewered it. Then I worked it evenly down the skewer, thinning it out, and rounding it, keeping in mind that the first 3-4 inches needed to be free of the meat, so as to shove it directly into the coals:

Then I placed it in the outside redneck fridge to cool them for 20 minutes to keep them from falling apart. When they get to room temperature, the meat starts to seperate and fall off the skewers… chilling them keeps them together so you can get them on the grill.
Now I also chopped up another leftover half of an onion to grill, as there’s always a leftover onion in the fridge, as we use them in almost ALL the cooking around here:

I just slapped those w/some fresh ground pepper and salt, and roasted them on the grill… they came out great.
Now unfortunately, I didn’t get a pic of it cooking as I was as busy as a raped ape turning and shuffling the skewers from hot-spot(s) to cool(er) spots, and making sure nothing came completely apart. I need to fabricate a proper grill if I start doing this on the regular, as the Round Weber I have isn’t the best for this sort of cooking. I also made one of those “Middle Eastern/Spanish Yellow Rice” sides that was Meh! at best…
Sapper and I were not impressed with the rice (bland AF TBH, the majority got shitcanned it was so blah!) but at least it gave the plate some color. I served it with 2x pieces of freshly lightly toasted Na’an Bread, and some Peppered Humus for flavor. It came out looking rather good IMO:

(The onions are buried under the na’an BTW)
As you can see….
A perfect char on the outside, nice a cooked all the way through on the inside, and juicy as all get out. I think I stunned Sapper as he was beyond impressed.
I mean like I cook well, and he knows it, but there have been one or two misfires in the past. I think he was expecting this one to be a misfire, and was genuinely pleased to the point he said it’s better than the place we go out to eat at in Apollo Beach, a new Haji Shop. It’s good, but this is better AND it’s not $24 a plate. I agree with him… it’s absolutely what I used to cook on the regular back in the day, and outside of the rice? It’s healthy.
The only part that sucked was while I was doing the plating, BOTH puppers were literally drooling to the point that smol puddles formed on the floor, so now I’ll have to mop the kitchen again as this diet is heavy on the cooked meats, so both Puppers, Chili AND the Sausage Princess are in near-constant ‘hover/drool’ mode while Daddy Big Country is cooking up a storm.
Now as far as cook time for the skewers, these cannot be thrown on and left to cook. You HAVE to watch them, and constantly rotate them. I had the heat cranking on the coals to ‘blast furnace’ levels to get a good sear/char on the exterior, and rotated constantly to keep it evenly cooked so the meat didn’t get a chance to, as mentioned before, fall OFF the skewer and into the coals. YYMV.
So that’s my night and diet, and meal for dinner. Let me know what you think, and also let me now if you try it. My next experiment is going to be the same recibee, but using the Ninja Indor XL Air Fryer/Grill. The grill mode works pretty damned well, and I want to see if I can get the same results without the skewer, and making the Kebab thinner to cook evenly. If it works, I can whip up a PILE of them as pre-made food prep, freeze a bunch of them, and eat on them for a few weeks if I do it right.
What say you?
So More Later
Big Country























































