When I recently stopped at Major Market in Escondido to check their prices on some flavored extracts for my sugar-free Nanaimo Bars, I took the opportunity to browse the whole store. Major Market carries a lot of International foods and they carry a large selection of British foods. It also happens to be where I has previously purchased the Bird’s Custard Powder that is an essential ingredient for my sugar free Nanaimo Bar recipe. I happened to browse the frozen food section and saw they had some bags of imported Aunt Bessie’s Frozen Yorkshire Pudding.

I’ve only had Yorkshire Pudding one time in my life and that was in the home of my good friends Sara and Paul Russell when I spent a week in the United Kingdom in 2006. I thought they were amazing and I really liked them. But I’ve not had them since. Seeing the bag of Yorkshire Pudding in the store, reminded me of those tasty Yorkshire Pudding pastries that Sara had made during my visit. While looking at the bag in the store, I decided to use my cell phone and look up recipes for Yorkshire pudding to see if it was going to be easy to make or if I should just buy the overpriced bag of imported frozen ones.

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I love the Internet. My previous post about the Margaritaville Tailgating Grill that I had seen while shopping at one of the local San Diego area Costco Membership Warehouse stores was only supposed to be a one off post. I never in a million years thought I’d be writing a second blog entry about the grill and for that matter so soon. Click here to read that entry. But the nature of the Internet being what it is, my blog post was spotted by local tailgating enthusiast, Dave Lamm, of TailgatingIdeas.com and he decided to leave a comment here on my blog.

Dave wrote to say that not only does he have the Margaritaville Tailgating Grill, but he’s also taken it a step further and completely customized it with the team colors for the San Diego Chargers and of course, decked out the grill with the Charger’s logo as well. Dave has literally taken the grill from a novelty level of coolness to practically must-have level of coolness. Gone are the plain looking grey swing arm and the obnoxious lime green look of the original grill. In their place are the ultra-cool looking Chargers team Golden yellow swing arm, and Blue accent colors for the trim. In fact, I’ll even go so far as to say the finished grill resembles a football helmet now that’s sporting team colors. It looks great. It definitely screams “Sports Fan” where the unaltered grill kind of screams “Yuppie.”

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When I met up for dinner with my good friend Caroline the other night, we met up at one of the San Diego area Costco Membership Warehouse locations to do a little shopping before dinner. One of the products we encountered in the Costco that just made us laugh was from Jimmy Buffet’s line of merchandise branded as the Margaritaville Tailgate Grill. Now it’s not unusual to see a small portable barbecue grill being sold for the purposes of tailgating, but what makes this one unique is that you can actually mount this one your vehicle if it has a standard trailer hitch connector.

Now you can actually always have your portable grill attached to your vehicle and take it wherever you go. It seems like an incredibly funny concept to me that anyone would want to mount a portable grill to their vehicle but if you do a lot of tailgating or camping out with your truck or SUV, then it may be the perfect item for you. I can see it being handy when you’re actually using it, but I would be concerned with nosy people seeing the grill on the back end of the vehicle while you’re shopping somewhere and just having to touch and look at it. I would not be a big fan of that if I were to have such a grill attached to my vehicle.

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As an adult, usually the first thing that pops in your mind when you hear “Oscar” is an Academy Award. And I’m sure had my “Oscar” have been that kind of an Oscar, than I’d be getting lots of compliments on that too, however the Oscar I mean is the usually the first kind of Oscar that pops into mind for the pre-school set. That being Oscar The Grouch from Sesame Street.

As a child of the late 1970′s and early 1980′s, I like many other children, grew up watching Sesame Street. According to my mother, my very first favorite Muppet from the show was Oscar the Grouch. I certainly don’t remember this being the case, I would have figured it was more Grover, or Ernie, or even Kermit because he was on both Sesame Street and the Muppet Show and I can certainly relate to Kermit’s experience doing double duty and in the Muppet Show trying to be the sole figure of calm in the realm of chaos that surrounds him. (And no kids, it wouldn’t have been Elmo, as Elmo didn’t exist as he does now in the Sesame Street I watched as a kid.) But since my mother says Oscar was my first favorite, we’ll just accept that as fact.

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Twelve weeks ago, when I first met Jorge Cruise, I was 47 pounds heavier and 10 inches bigger around my belly. I had read in the Costco Connection magazine that Jorge was looking for 100 participants to take part in his Belly Fat Cure challenge. The purpose of the challenge was to find testimonial cases for the program when it officially launches either in December of this year or January of 2010. Jorge had previously done a couple of local based testimonial case groups through San Diego Magazine, and the Costco Connection was the third and final group to get the chance to preview the materials before it gets officially finalized for the launch.

I had submitted my name and a couple of shirtless photos that I wasn’t too proud of along with my application to the program and a hope for the best. I was pleasantly surprised to not only be selected to be part of this group which would meet online weekly for the duration of the challenge, but I was also selected to be part of a smaller group of San Diego based Costco members that got invited to Jorge’s office to personally get introduced to the program. Unfortunately, Jorge’s busy schedule prevented more than one additional in person group meeting with him, but it was still an honor to be selected.

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Sometimes all it takes to convert a meal that would have too much sugar and too many carbs into one that would meet the recommendations for Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure are some minor tweaks. Take for example of a lunch consisting of a hot dog. A lot of Americans will grab a hot dog at their local Costco Membership Warehouse, and why not? It’s a great deal as the hot dog includes a soda in addition to the hot dog all for the amazingly low price of $1.50

Between the bun and the dog, it would have a Belly Fat Cure Sugar/Carb Value (S/C Value) of 11/3, based on the nutritional information found at TheDailyPlate.com. The information doesn’t specify if any of the condiments Costco makes available are on the hot dog or not. The condiments available are ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions. Whether or not these condiments are included in the nutritional information, the Belly Fat Cure program recommends a meal consist of no more than 5 grams of sugar and two carb servings or an S/C value of 5/2. (To learn how to figure out an S/C value, download the free Belly Fat Cure Report from JorgeCruise.com). This means the Costco hot dog has more than double the allowed sugar grams and slightly too many carb servings.

The most likely cause of the overage in the Costco hot dog is the bun. A lot of bread products are loaded with sugar as a lot of bread is made with High Fructose Corn Syrup. And the bun is also the cause of the carbs as the wiener in the hot dog is an all beef meat product. And of the condiments, if those are included in the nutritional information, the ketchup, relish, and onions would be the cause of additional sugar. If the ketchup is made by Heinz, then the ketchup has 4 grams of sugar per serving and since a single serving of ketchup (about 1 tablespoon) isn’t going to cover much of a Costco hot dog, most people would pour on considerably more than one serving. So how do we turn this into a Belly Fat Cure acceptable meal?

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Since running has become part of my routine and my endurance has been building steadily since I started my running program at the end of November 2008, it seemed that the cheap Court Classic brand shoes I bought from Costco many, many years ago but barely used prior to my running program needed to be retired. They were fine for a couple of months, as I went from a complete novice at running to about the point when I first got afflicted with shin splints. I suffered through the shin splints and the increasingly sore knees for longer than I should have, but what can I say, I’m a little stubborn about feeling like I’ve not gotten my money’s worth out of the products I buy.

I was chatting with Antonio Roderick, a friend of mine from college via the chat feature of Facebook and he was applauding my running program having read one of my progress reports I posted here to my blog. He suggested that I really ought to go to a store specializing in running shoes and have them evaluate my run so they could pick out running shoes that are ideal for my feet. Not only would the shin splints go away, but they would make a world of difference.

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Today I had the opportunity to meet fitness guru Jorge Cruise today. Jorge is the author of several books including the “8 Minutes In The Morning” series of exercise books, “The 3 Hour Diet,” and his newest book, “Body At Home: A Simple Plan to Lose 10 Pounds.”

Jorge’s latest work has been in regards to a book he’s writing called “The Belly Fat Cure” which is set to be released to the public tentatively at the end of the year or very early next year. Jorge is currently offering a free special report on his website at JorgeCruise.com which outlines some of the basics of the program. According to Jorge’s research it seems waist circumference is more an indicator of poor health than the actual amount of weight. And there are two big contributors to belly fat, high sugar intake and low fiber intake. It is well worth your time checking out JorgeCruise.com to get a copy of this special report to read about it yourself.

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