Jennie and I received the ice cream maker attachment for our KitchenAid mixer and plan on making some ice cream this weekend. I have no clue what flavor we will be shooting for, but will be sure to document the process. In the meantime, here are a few recipes that I found in my cookbooks and online. If you give any of them a shot, please be sure to share your experience with the rest of us.

Chocolate Nut Butter Ice Cream (Performance Menu)

• 1/2 C coconut milk
• 1 tsp unsweetened cocoa or carob powder
• 1 Tbsp cashew butter
• 1 Tbsp crushed walnuts
• Few drops pure vanilla extract (optional)

Prepare the ice cream about an hour before you want to eat it. Pour the coconut milk into a coffee cup or small dish. Add the other ingredients, mix well. Place into the freezer for one hour. To get a good, ice cream-like consistency, the mixture needs to be stirred periodically to break up the portions that will get frozen hard.

Coconut Milk Ice Cream (Performance Menu)

• 1 can coconut milk
• 2 C fresh fruit
• 1 tsp vanilla (optional)

Simply place all ingredients in a blender and puree. Pour into dessert cups (coffee cups work equally well) and put in the freezer for about 1 hour or until it has chilled to an ice cream-like consistency.

Optimal Ice Cream (Hyperlipid Blog)

• 1 pint double cream
• 6 egg yolks
• 10 drops vanilla extract
• sweetener to taste

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream (KitchenAid)

• 3 C cream
• 6 egg yolks
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1.5 C canned pumpkin
• sweetener to taste

Scold half of the cream. In a separate bowl, whisk the 6 egg yolks. Add the vanilla and sweetener to the yolks. Slowly whisk the scolded cream into this mixture. Add the pumpkin pie spice and stir entire mixture over medium heat for about 10:00. Be sure not to boil the mixture. Add the remaining cream and the canned pumpkin and whisk. Strain the mixture to remove any egg parts that may have solidified and chill mixture in the refrigerator. Once chilled, pour into ice cream maker. Churn for 15-20 minutes until desired consistency.

What is Sugar?

All carbohydrates, otherwise known as saccharides, are a form of sugar. The simplest form of sugar is known as a monosaccharide. The two most common of which are glucose and fructose. When two monosaccharides are joined together, a disaccharide, such as sucrose (table sugar), is formed. Monosaccharides, as well as disaccharides, are referred to as simple sugars. If multiple monosaccharides or disaccharides are joined together in a long chain, polysaccharides, or complex carbs, result. Starches are a form of complex carbs and include such foods as potatoes, rice, wheat, and corn.

You need to know that you are hard-wired to crave sweetness. You come from an environment where every calorie had to be found and then dug up or killed. Concentrated sources of sugar were very rare. Therefore, the brain urges you to eat more of these calorie dense foods whenever the tongue tastes it. This has become bad news in our current world where sugar is cheap and in great abundance.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we will discuss glucose.

With the current heat, we have been stressing hydration at the Fort. Drinking plenty of water throughout the entire day is a given, but most people default to supplementing with Gatorade for the electrolytes. If you insist on using Gatorade, be sure to dilute it with water as that stuff has quite a bit of sugar (including high-fructose corn syrup). Here are a few ideas that should help you avoid the G:

• Water with fresh lemon juice
• Add Celtic or Himalayan sea celt to anything
• Increase intake of capsicum containing foods such as hot peppers and paprika
• Emergen-C Electro mix

As most of you know, Jennie and I spent our honeymoon in Costa Rica. We stayed at the Hotel Parador in Quepos for 9 days. This hotel was amazing in so many ways, but I was very impressed with their free breakfast. I can't think of anyplace, outside of my own kitchen, that I have eaten this good for breakfast. Oh, and did I mention that it was FREE!?

Here is what I loaded up on the first morning we were there:

• Bacon
• Omelette with Cheese and Mushrooms
• 2 Hard Boiled Eggs
• Small Cup of Fresh OJ
• Multiple Cups of Black Coffee

One plate of this goodness simply wasn't going to do so I went back and reloaded with this:

Same stuff as the first time, but I added a couple pieces of fresh pineapple and papaya this time.

Comments:

The bacon was fatty and greasy, just as any good bacon should be. I don't know what kind of cheese they use in Costa Rica, but it was right up my alley. It was a mellower white cheese that had the consistency of string cheese at room temperature. Perfect in an omelette if you ask me. Their coffee is very strong in flavor. I would even argue that it had more flavor than the espresso at Starbucks. Because of this, I had a minimum of 2 cups with every breakfast. As for the OJ, I decided that my honeymoon is a once in a lifetime event so I treated myself to something that I never have anymore. Oh, and it was worth it.

Katelyn has been on summer break as of last Friday. For the past 3 days she has done a wonderful job giving the Paleo way of eating a true chance. After counting my reps and cheering me through the WOD this morning at the Fort, we headed home for some breakfast. I rewarded her efforts over the past three days with this:

Forget Wheaties, this is the true "Breakfast of Champions". Before any of you get all worked up over the ice cream, it has some of the highest fat and lowest sugar without getting into the chemical sweetener stuff. Indulging in this ice cream every once in a while definitely won't kill any of us, but I still plan on putting our new ice cream maker to the test in the near future. As soon as I can get my hands on some raw cow's cream from the co-op I am a part of, I will make a fresh batch that will be guilt free.

As for what daddy ate, here it is:

I know, I know. Katelyn's breakfast is WAY more photogenic than mine. Here is what is in the bowl:

• Beef Tenderloin (526g)
• Beef Tallow (52g)
• Red Onion (40g)
• Red Bell Pepper (40g)
• Garlic Powder (loads!)
• Chipotle Chili Powder (a solid dusting)

This was actually really tasty and I did a great job this time not overcooking the steak...left it nice and bloody! I'll admit, I too indulged in a bowl of chocolate ice cream before this meal was said and done

Post some of the meals you guys have been creating to the comments. Let's get some discussion going to help each other discover some tasty new dishes.

I know most of us enjoy an Irish Car Bomb or some other tasty adult beverage from time to time, but are we all aware of the negative side affects it has on our training? Here are 5 reasons why alcohol will destroy your gains at the Fort (courtesy of criticalbench.com):

1. It negatively affects protein synthesis (i.e. muscle building) by up to 20%.
2. It lowers testosterone (most important hormone for muscle growth) levels and increases estrogen.
3. It causes dehydration.
4. It depletes the body of vitamins A, C, the B's, calcium, zinc, and phosphorous.
5. It increases fat storage.

The following was written by Charles Washington in response to a newspaper article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution written by Chris Rosenbloom, Ph.D., R.D. Charles is a zero-carb guy who stays active with weightlifting and marathon running. He does a pretty good job explaining how the body fuels itself so I left it in his own words. Enjoy!

Those who recommend carbohydrates as the “best fuel for the body” don’t seem to realize two very important points:

First, the body can't store carbohydrates in large quantities and most people already get more than enough carbohydrates to fuel their bodies' daily activities. All carbohydrates, whether they are bread, pasta, sugar or jam when you put them in your mouth, enter the bloodstream as glucose. And the bloodstream can only hold so much.

The body, being a well-run power plant, puts the leftovers in storage to use in the future if it's needed. Some is stored as a type of starch called glycogen, but as it can't store much of this, the body turns most of the excess into fat and keeps it on deposit in the body's fat cells. We see it walking around the streets wherever we go, hanging off bodies in a most unattractive way.

Put simply, carbo-loading cannot work simply because excess carbohydrates are not stored in a readily usable way.

The second problem lies in how the body uses its various options for fuel. Each of our body's cells contains lots of very small power plants called mitochondria. It is they that produce the energy we need from the food that we consume. Glucose is usually called the body's 'preferred fuel' because, if it is available, our bodies have been conditioned from birth to use it first. But it is not the best fuel. That distinction belongs to fats--or fatty acids, to give them their scientific name. Before the mitochondria can use either glucose or fatty acid as a fuel, it has to be transported into the mitochondria.

Fatty acids are transported into the mitochondria as completely intact molecules. Glucose, on the other hand, can be transported only after it has been broken down first into pyruvate by the process of glycolysis. This is then used anaerobically to produce energy with lactate as a by-product.

The by-products of the energy-production process when fatty acids are used are carbon dioxide and water, both of which are easily excreted. But when glucose is used, the lactic acid produced in the conversion process can build up in muscle cells and make them ache. It is this that is the cause of the aching muscles or pain involved in strenuous exercise--'the wall' as athletes call it. This 'wall' severely limits an athlete's performance.

So why would a person want to limit their performance by using carbohydrates for fuel?