What is it?

Meet, the Tangelo.

 

I saw these fruits at the grocery store yesterday being displayed in it's very own stand.

They are a hybrid of a tangerine and a pomelo (similar to a grapefruit).

They are super, super juicy inside and are very tart like a grapefruit. They taste like a tangerine in flavor and have all of the juiciness and none of the bitterness associated with grapefruits.

They are quite tasty! It was a fun new thing to try this week.

Go try some! Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I would not try these if you currently have cankers or other sores in your mouth.

Again, it is very tart.... in a good way......unless you have cankers. =)

Organization is Not for Everyone...

I've discovered that organization is for those without hobbies and those without jobs....

....but I'll get-r-done.

Radioactive Ben ~ The Low-Iodine Diet Chronicles

So today we started the low-iodine diet required for Ben's radioactive iodine treatment coming up in 2 weeks. We were given a very long list if "can't haves" and a very short

bland list of "eat-these-insteads".

Essentially Ben can have no iodine.....meaning no salt.....meaning no taste..........totally kidding!

We actually had a very delicious meal tonight. It was surprising!

We have discovered that we will have to get a little inventive.

The diet includes no iodized salt (which is in almost all prepared and manufactured foods), no dairy of any kind (ice cream is out... wah wah), no commercial breads or grains, no egg yolks, no canned foods, no foods with any added salt in the ingredients, no chocolate (gasp!), and quite a bit more foods you never thought had iodine in them (red dye 40. What the....?!). We took our tiny list of foods we could eat and went to the store tonight. I will be posting our food adventures to our blog if anyone else would like to check out a no-iodine diet menu. I think it will actually be the start to a wonderfully healthy relationship with our food. Your meals have to basically be prepared out of fresh food only so you can control the amount of iodine. We are both actually really looking forward to it. Being the supportive little wifey that I am, I am going to stick to the same diet but still having a semi-functioning thyroid and need for thirst and metabolism control, it is essential for me to have iodine in my diet (as it is for most of you) so I will allow myself to cheat and not feel bad about it one bit. :) In all actuality I am helping Ben by eating the foods he shouldn't have. ;P

Tonight we had our own version of a taco salad. We used country style hashbrown potatoes pan fried up in a small amount of oil with ground beef, lettuce, home-made salsa (using tomatoes and sweated onions) and fresh avocado chunks. It was really tasty! 

We bought some un-iodized salt to use.... thank heavens for that!

So I think I actually like this a lot better than using chips underneath. It is better for you and not so full of fat and processed gunk.  It created the perfect amount of crunchyness too.

Mmmm..... I am sure we will be making this again (even when we don't have to).

{I would have posted a picture but I didn't}

Sudden Cardiac Arrest During Marathons

This little tidbit is for my brother-in-law, Dave Phillips. :)

I read in the New England Journal of Medicine about Cardiac Arrest (Heart Attack) During Marathons and here is the consensus.
{I modified the excerpt below to make it more reader friendly.}

Results

Of 10.9 million runners, 59 (average age 42 give or take 13 years) had a cardiac arrest (heart attack). The incidence rate of having a heart attack is 0.54 persons per 100,000 participants with 95% confidence interval of 0.41 to 0.70 {meaning 95% likelihood that the "true" value is somewhere in the 0.41-0.70 range}.
Cardiovascular disease accounted for the majority of cardiac arrests. The incidence rate was significantly higher during marathons (1.01 per 100,000) than during half-marathons (0.27) and among men (0.90 per 100,000) than among women (0.16). Male marathon runners, the highest-risk group, had an increased incidence of cardiac arrest during the latter half of the study decade (2000–2004, 0.71 per 100,000; 2005–2010, 2.03 per 100,000).
Of the 59 cases of cardiac arrest, 42 (71%) were fatal (incidence, 0.39 per 100,000). Among the 31 cases with complete clinical data, initiation of bystander-administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation (chest compressions) and an underlying diagnosis other than hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were the strongest predictors of survival.

Conclusions

Marathons and half-marathons are associated with a low overall risk of cardiac arrest and sudden death. Cardiac arrest, most commonly attributable to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (enlarged heart muscle = not good) or atherosclerotic coronary disease (lard in the vessels of your heart), occurs primarily among male marathon participants; the incidence rate in this group increased during the past decade.


Moral to the story.... if you are going to run a marathon....you are most likely not going to have a heart attack unless you have had heart disease before and are a male and even then the likelihood is very slim. But if you do....you are most likely going to die from it.


Happy Running!