Month: December 2017

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Bulletproof Coffee

A few weeks ago as a van full of music geeks were heading back from the Chris Thile – Brad Mehldau duet concert in Vienna, I found out that I am also sitting with some serious food geeks which devolved into quite a conversation with one revelation (at least for me).

From the colleague who (objectively) offers the most popular course at the ECPR methods school (who also turned out to be a serious food geek), I already knew about the importance of medium chain triglycerides (MCT – translation: fats) for anyone (like me) on a low carb diet. It is an important substitute of carbohydrates in providing quickly accessible energy for people whose bodies are already used to burning fat for energy. Best (natural) sources of MCTs: coconut oil, palm oil and cheeses.

So apparently this is a thing. One spoon full of coconut oil, one soon full of butter and coffee. (And it is not as bad as it sounds. I add a sweetener and top it off with some milk.)

So since my body adjusted to the low carb diet, I really have not been eating lunch. Even before the diet, when I had a nice big egg breakfast, I was always OK until an early dinner. (But when I ran out of the house without a breakfast and grabbed a pastry on the way with a yoghurt drink, I was already starving by lunch.) But this may just become my substitute for the run out of the house quick meal (and plan on, probably, an egg based lunch). Last week’s experiment did not work so well, but I think the 4 hours of sleep had more to do with that than the meals.

Give it a shot… but until then, enjoy Chris Thile and Brad Mehldau (though I prefer this instrumental cover of theirs from the late Elliott Smith… and also Don’t Think Twice and Marcie for which I did not find good live recordings). But this is the most representative of their work.

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Innovation in music is generally bad, but…

I think it is fair to say that just about every technological innovation in music since about the time I was born left the world being a worse place (be it the CD player, mp3s, mp3 players, mp3 compatible CD players… transistor amps, digitized techno, digitized anything, everything in the 80’s and etc.). Exceptions are few and far between, but today I came across a big one.

This trinket is certainly not for me. But I appreciate the fact that it is a modernized classical coil based guitar pickup design with the string separation nobody ever cared to develop. And the possibilities for musical creativity is are quite amazing starting with the idea carried by its predecessor allowing the insertion of a (low) octave effect on the lower two strings. An ability to put effects on certain strings independent of each other, and to do so with the same analog effect pedals running into the same tube amps that made music (before I was born) what it is, is kind of amazing. For someone to approach the same problem that has already been addressed (with disastrous results) by Roland midi pickups in the 80’s in a truly analog and sonically conservative way is true genius. I cannot wait to hear what people do with it. Until then, if you are a more creative guitarist than me, get one of these! But definitely see the demo.

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How you can never be smart

Apparently, when I was a toddler (not like I remember, but I am often told), my parents were also not morning people. So to prevent me from waking them up, they left sufficient entertainment and some food (chocolate milk) for me in the crib at night before they went to bed. This way I would not stay hungry and entertain myself in the morning while they crawled out of bed.

Some 38 or so years later, Stela and I are also not morning people. So we decided to try this same approach to manage our little monster. Been doing this for a week or two. One day she didn’t drink the bottle. Otherwise all seemed cool.

Yesterday we noticed that she found the bottle shortly after we left it, a little after midnight. OK. Must have been a fluke. Today, we noticed that she woke up at midnight and was frantically looking for the bottle of milk.

Try to be smart in this world and a 16 month old will outsmart you. Now we have to figure out how to decondition her from waking up at midnight in search of food. We’ll never know but I am fairly sure she has been drinking the bottle of milk just minutes after we left it for a week or two now.