Fat Guy

I noticed variation, was intrigued by it, and wanted to get a bigger sample than just the kitchens I've been in.

My impression is that this is the norm. I think our old wall cabinets were about that high. The new ones seem high to me, though some folks here seem to have some radically higher ones.

Fascinating.

So what do you have above your countertops?

I'd be interested in confirmation of that measurement. I've never seen anything near that.

In most kitchens there are two sets of cabinets: base cabinets and wall cabinets. The base cabinets sit on the floor. The countertop sits on top of the base cabinets. There is then some distance from your countertop to the bottom of your wall cabinets, which are mounted to the wall above the countertop. I'm asking people what that measurement is, because I've noticed variation.

The question is the distance from your countertop to the bottom of your wall cabinets.

21.5 inches here. You?

Do you slice it thick, thin, on the bias, never? I'm starting to realize that there's a lot of variation here.

Arianne Batterberry of Food Arts magazine has a letter-from-the-editor in last month's issue where she details several of her most common complaints about comfort in restaurants: noise, temperature and inconsistent seat height chief among them. I'll also add dim lighting to the list. I thought surely the good people of this community would have some thoughts. I don't believe the piece is online, so I can't link to it.

I'm told it is vintage Arcoroc.

Probably 95% of the hard-cooked eggs I eat are cold. I cook them one day, peel them, refrigerate them and eat them over time. Today I had one just after cooking and peeling, and I was reminded of how delicious a newly-minted hard-cooked egg can be. This happens to me once every few years and every time I wonder why I don't attempt to recapture that experience. Then I go back to eating cold eggs.

5 & Diamond, Bier, et al. are on or near Frederick Douglass, not Morningside/Manhattan, aren't they?

I think it's at least a couple of decades old, but I don't really remember its origins.

Found it. This thing is huge, and it is about one millimeter shy of being too small for the brick. But it just makes it.

Fear not. I am still quite heavy.

I make frozen desserts with fruit, yogurt and stevia all the time in my Blendtec. I never thought to do something based on Greek yogurt. But stevia definitely works in that sort of application (I use the Stevita brand).

So true. I had no idea how much cereal, pasta and such I was eating. Now I'm having slightly smaller and more consistent portions across the board and it makes a big difference calorically -- without really changing my sense of being satiated.

I'm around 42" in the waist. I'm pretty sure I'm less than 84" tall. Then again I'm not arguing that I'm thin. I'm still Fat Guy, just somewhat less so.

I've eaten enough bhel puri to feed a village, but I haven't prepared it in something like seven years and even then I did so under close supervision. Now I find myself needing to make it for a party. Can we get a bhel puri crash course here?

In the past five or so years I've lost more than 70 pounds. I've already told the story of how, in 2005, when our son was in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) and I was running around the hospital 24/7 sustaining myself with Snickers bars and bacon-and-egg sandwiches, I experienced acid reflux for the first time. At the time my weight had crept up to over 290 pounds. During my life up until that point I'd never suffered any discomfort that could be attributed to my weight. I could eat anything, drink, stay out all night, and I felt fine. I had plenty of energy and stamina. I was a person of great appetites. I'd rarely felt the need to lose any weight. The research on the benefits of dieting has never been all that compelling, and I felt -- and felt the best evidence supported the position -- that if I was healthy in other respects then my weight alone didn't much matter. 2005 marked a turning point when, at age 36, I started to feel that I was slowing down. So I started eating a little better and pushing the stroller more. This evolved into a lot of walks to school (approximately two miles, mostly through Central Park) with our son, first in the stroller, then on his Like-A-Bike, then on foot. Getting from 290 to 250 over the course of three or four years required nothing more than slightly increased awareness of consumption plus a little more exercise. Still, I really felt that I wanted to get down to 220, but I didn't know how to make it happen. Earlier in life I'd tried various diets -- Atkins, Weight Watchers, you name it -- and found them all gimmicky, temporary and not particularly sensible (Weight Watchers is actually not that ridiculous, but I find the culture of Weight Watchers annoying). I've long known as an intellectual matter that counting calories is the only way to go but I couldn't stand the thought of doing it. Then one day my wife mentioned that there are several apps available for smartphones that allow you to track calorie intake. I did a little research and started testing a free app on my Droid called My Fitness Pal. (It is also available for iPhone and BlackBerry and, in all cases, is free.) My Fitness Pal is pretty clever. If you're eating a commercially available food product you can scan the bar code with your phone and it can pull up the nutrition data -- you can then choose from the dropdown menu that you had two servings or whatever. If you type in most any food it has numerous references that can get you close to an accurate calorie count. It's somewhat less able to handle food in good restaurants: there's no database entry on elBulli's "pillow like a cocktail," but I just estimated that my 50-course meal at elBulli had something like 5,000 calories and that's how I recorded it. (It took a few days to bounce back from that one.) The thing I like about My Fitness Pal is that it's very literal about the equation of consumption and exercise. You start the day with X number of calories (determined based on your weight, height and goals -- in my case 2,080) and as you eat food it subtracts calories. If you do exercise, such as the 40-minute walk to school (at what I estimate to be 2.5 miles per hour -- 199 calories), you enter that and it adds calories to your allowance for the day. I suppose in the wrong hands this could be a recipe for fitness bulimia and/or exercise addiction, but I'm far too lazy to be at risk for those conditions. I've found it helpful. I've also found that on days when I do about 40 minutes of walking I wind up with enough of a calorie allotment to satisfy my appetite, whereas without that little extra bump up I either end the day hungry or I go over my allowance. My Fitness Pal got me down to 220, a weight I hope to maintain -- I've been there for about a month now. I have some confidence in my ability to keep off the weight I've lost in the past few years, if only because I feel so crummy if I weigh much more than I do now. I may even feel crummy now. For example the other day I overate and was just not feeling right later on. Feeling pretty good about myself, today I went to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) website and plugged my data into the . Here's what you get for 5'10" and 220 pounds: I have got to say, with respect to the statement that "For your height, a normal weight range would be from 129 to 174 pounds," the CDC has got to be kidding. I'm pretty sure on my frame those numbers would be downright anorexic. With unreasonable goals like those it's no wonder so many fat people give up on losing weight. Nonetheless, I'm pretty happy with my accomplishment, going from pretty obese to a little less obese.

So far I've tried boiling water plus baking soda, followed by Barkeeper's Friend. I've got most of the stuff off, though I'm wondering if the Barkeeper's Friend hasn't been too harsh on the surface. I'm not in love with this pot so I'd rather have it be clean than beautiful, though.

Today I had a Greek-yogurt-based facsimile of sour-cream-and-onion dip. It was pretty good. It got me thinking about other uses for Greek-style yogurt, aside from eating it straight or with standard fruit/nut/granola-type things. Any great ideas out there?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the local places these days are very competitive. Blue Smoke, Hill Country and Dinosaur each produced 'cue that I thought was in the ballpark of what the out-of-town pitmasters were doing. It rained some, but the upside was that it kept things cool. The organization of the event is getting so good that it feels manageable despite zillions of people in attendance. I'll be interested to hear if numbers were down on account of the weather. At least one place ran out of product early yesterday, so that would indicate that there are still a lot of folks there. We'll find out later in the week when they release the estimates.

What's your vote for greatest snack crisp? I think Munchos. Second place in my book goes to Funyuns.