This past Tuesday was my birthday, and Shane went all out for my birthday “cake”: two layers of fudge brownies, wedded together with a coffee-chocolate-whipped cream icing and topped off with whipped cream and chocolate chips.

Here are a few money shots from my Flickr feed:

We joked that the only way it could be any unhealthier is if he tossed a pig’s worth of sausage on it.

Luckily, it’s a frozen dessert, so I have plenty of time to finish the leftovers - no rush there. It’ll probably last my clear through the fall ‘06 elections. Lesson being, some forms of hell food are ok, as long as they’re eaten in moderation.

And that’s the word.

Looking for ways to help America get the oil monkey off her back? Here’s one - join the Eat Local Challenge.

Blogger Chris Clarke ’splains:

Most of the food that most of us eat travels farther than you might think from farm to table. I’m not just talking about ripe fruit from Chile in the winter here. I myself have unwittingly bought tomatoes that were picked in California, shipped to Massachusetts for packaging, and then brought back to California for sale. Figuring a diesel semi gets around 5 miles per gallon, that’s about 1200 gallons of fuel for one truckload’s round trip. The US burns millions of gallons of fuel each year just moving food cross-country, and the notion of eating seasonal produce seems to be dying out with the local family farm. And produce picked early eanough that it can travel cross country before it ripens just tastes bad. Compare the best supermarket tomato you can find with an ordinary one from a backyard garden. The difference is astonishing. […]

So what’s got me stoked? More and more people are trying to eat food grown as close to locally as possible. Some of them have issued the Eat Local Challenge, which runs through May.

The lesson: try your hand at veggie gardening, and buy your produce from local growers whenever possible. Good for you, your wallet, and the environment.

I’ve had a number of people ask me what I have done to lose so much weight. Right now, I’ve lost about 60 pounds in five and a half months, so the change is noticeable enough that people want to know the secret. I usually joke, with a large chunk of truth, that I simply stopped eating chips and fries. While that is a large part of it, I also developed a very healthy habit of exercising at least 5 times, usually 7 times, per week. Tae Bo had been a mainstay of my routine during the colder winter months, when my favorite exercise, walking, wasn’t practical.

Now that spring is upon us, I’m back to walking. First off, let me explain why I like walking so much. About seven summers ago, I decided I wanted to start running. So with a friend of mine, I started running 3.5 miles per day, and slowly worked my way up to 5 miles per day. As expected, I improved greatly throughout the summer, and by the end, I had lost weight and improved stamina. It had come at a price, though. My knees and ankles took a beating. Even making sure I had proper running shoes, had no effect. By the end, my running had become painful to do, and as such, I fell out of the habit quickly.

Walking is a much easier habit to maintain. It’s low impact, it’s easy to prepare for, and best of all, I can supplement my walking with music, radio, or audio books. I have found the best way to keep the walking habit is having something to listen to the whole way. I have three things that I have used. First, I use my fiance Kelly’s mp3 player when I want to listen to music. Every model she’s had, has kept at least 1,000 songs, and that’s plenty of variety. She also doesn’t listen to crap, so I can enjoy whatever she puts on. Secondly, I have a little mp3 player of my own, that’s very light and convenient for putting on audio books. I listen to a lot of audio books, and I should add podcasts to the list as well. Lastly, I have a portable adaptor for my XM Radio that allows me to listen to the XM while I walk. It’s great.

I don’t think you have to get all three to enjoy walking, but I would suggest getting at least one. My small mp3 player goes for less than $75.00 in the store, and can store 512Mb worth of files. That’s a lot of audio books, and also, enough music to listen to while walking. The price, though, is insignificant to the price that one will pay for a lifetime of being overweight. Paying $500.00 for an mp3 player would be worth it if it kept you to the walking routine.

I am positive my lifestyle change will add a mininum of 10 years to my life. I fully expect to reach 80 years of age now. I probably will not have a heart attack. The risk for diabetes is nil now. With my routine of walking, I expect to be able to maintain an active lifestyle for as long as I live. I look and feel better now, a few months before my 31st birthday, than I did before my 21st. Even though I find every now and then, a grey or white hair, I feel so much better, I just don’t care. Walking has taken ten years off my age, and added at least 10 years to my lifespan.

So go get an audio player, a sensible pair of sneakers, and walk your way to an eighty year lifespan.

This month is shaping up to be a good one in the icky food stories department. I first caught this little ditty on CNN’s ticker.

Drinkers shock at body in rum barrel

HUNGARIAN builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.

According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.

The website said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.

According to the website, workers said the rum in the 300-litre barrel had a “special taste” so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.

The wife has since died and the man was buried in a proper grave.

Most of the info is gleaned from a single web site, so it’s hard for an amateur like moi to determine whether this is in fact a true story.

Pestiside has a more amusing description of the incident.

Saw this story at the Veg Blog:

Piece of finger served to diner after worker accidentally cuts self at restaurant

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) — A diner found a piece of human flesh on his hamburger shortly after a restaurant worker accidentally cut his finger, and a spokeswoman said the company was “very, very sorry.”

A kitchen manager at the TGI Friday’s at College Mall injured himself Tuesday and no one immediately realized he had lost part of his finger while others rushed to help him, said Amy Freshwater, a spokeswoman for the chain.

Another staff member served the plate to a customer, who immediately spotted the piece of flesh.

Gross, yes, but I ask you: how much different from beef flanks could human fingertips possibly be?