100+: the fastest growing age segment!

That's right! The US and Japan lead the world in populations of centenarians as a population growing 20x the rate of the total population by 2050. In 1950, there were only a few thousand over the age of 100 while today there are an estimated 340,000 worldwide [1].

Why is this?

Demographers declare medical advancements and improved diets are to thank. How'bout it, nutrition!? Genetics, lifestyle factors, and doctors willing to treat chronic diseases aggressively are also key contributors to the climb in age [1]. There's so such thing as "too late" in today's medical field to reverse the progression of disease. Nope, nope, nope!

While Japan leads the projected number of centenarians at 627,000 by the year 2050, the US is not far behind. We come in second with an estimated 600,000 come 2050, which is up from the current 75,000 in the 100+ age segment [1].

What does this mean for Medicare and Social Security? Well, it means something better if we each do our part in preserving our health. The cost of chronic disease management is perverse...obscene, even. The reality is, the younger generations may be SOL when it comes to government assistance come post-retirement age. 401k anyone?

Though the average American lives to be 78, most Americans would like to live to 89. Twenty percent of Americans would like to live to 90 with 8% wishing to live to see 100 [1]. With those goals and aspirations, we'd better aim to better our health or else it could certainly feel like a really long life.

Well, I'll have you know, I take my health very seriously and I intend to preserve it to the best of my abilities. It's a personal aspiration of mine to live to be 100+. When I was growing up, every Sunday at church there was the cutest little old lady who used to handout candy to kids as they exited the sanctuary. Every week she was there. While I appreciated the candy, I had come to appreciate her over the years. It wasn't until after her passing that I learned she was nearly 103 years of age. She was mentally sharp as a tack, and physically well enough to never require mobile assistance. She even posed in a Harley Davidson photo shoot on her 100th birthday I later found out. Seriously though, what a woman!

I see much of the same in my own 86-year-old Grannie. I'm sure you recall my boasting of her dance moves at my recent wedding reception...but here's a new story for you. On my way home from work last Friday I gave her a ring. I figured she would be heading downstairs to have dinner shortly (she lives in an independent living facility), but I tried her anyways. Turns out, she invited her "friend" Bill over (I use the term "friend" loosely. Grannie likes gentlemen, and has forever required several leading "friends" in her life. Bill just happens to be geographically desirable, however). They ordered in a pizza and were listening to music together. Maybe she was planning on showing off her dance moves, I'm just not quite sure. She did mention he was handsome. But, my point is...besides some short-term memory loss, the use of a walker (by choice), and some controlled hypertension, the woman is kickin' strong. You go, Grannie!

Aging can be a beautiful process, and I look forward to it...because I plan to do what it takes to do so gracefully. Kudos to those over 100 or well on your way...you're my inspiration!

[1]. Yen, Hope. Starting to Get Crowded in 10o-Year-Olds' Club. The Washington Post. July 20, 2009.

POMFRET FISH CURRY

Ingredients:

Onions ..... 2-3 (finely chopped)

Pomfret ..... 1/2 Kg. ( or any other fish)

Green chillies .... 3-4 ( long slit)

Ginger-garlic paste.... 1 tbsp.

Kokams ................. 5-6 (soaked in water)

Coconut milk ......... 1 cup thick & 1 cup thin

Cloves ... 4-5

Cinnamon stick .... 1 piece

Garam masala ..... 1 tsp.

Turmeric powder ... 1/2 tsp.

Jeera powder ......... 1tsp.

Salt .....to taste

Oil.

Method:

1. Wash and marinate the fish pieces with salt.

2. In a flat bottommed pan, add a little oil. Add the cloves and cinnamon and the ginger garlic paste. Now add the chopped onion and stir-fry for a few minutes till the onion is light pink.

3. Put the fish pieces and the thin coconut milk, green chillies, garam masala, turmeric powder, jeera powder and kokams. Add salt carefully as the fish is already salted. Simmer it till almost done.

4. Now add the thick coconut milk and cook for 1-2 minutes till you get the required consistency of the gravy. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and serve with plain rice.

Because it’s not all about fine dining

June 21 (that's not when I'm writing this, but when the events told herein took place),



Fine dining is all well and good, but it doesn’t give you a complete picture of what a community has to offer when it comes to food. And although, in my limited experience, Honolulu’s fine dining restaurants manage to refract Hawaiian culture through their unique prism, the city’s more down-to-earth restaurants really show the city's culinary character.
In an earlier entry I mentioned the magical pork adobo plate lunch that I had at Pee Wee Drive In.
I took the picture in this entry at Soon’s Kal Bi Drive In, a place hidden behind a supermarket at a strip mall. It was recommended by my old friend Steve Martin (not the commedian and banjo player, a different one), who went there, I believe, when he was in the navy, lo these many years ago (I’m gonna say the 1980s, definitely during the Cold War). He now lives in Bangkok where he is a world expert on antique opium paraphernalia. (Why not?)
Steve was following my Twitter updates and insisted (in a Direct Message, indicating his sense of its importance) that I try the place.
Twitter proved quite useful on my trip, as Hawaiians I’d never met offered recommendations of places to try, mostly @HIwrite, who suggested Yama’s Fish Market for Hawaiian takeout, Choon Chun Chicken or Choi’s Garden for Korean, and in general Hiroshi Eurasion Tapas and Town Kaimuki
@HIwrite said other recommendations I’d received were “tried + true”: Helena's, Rainbow Drive-In (for loco moco) and Diamond Head Market.
@honoluluacademy asked me to visit it's Pavilion Café.
But instead I followed the advice of my friends, and had Soon's Kal Bi kalbi plate lunch.
To reiterate what a plate lunch is, it’s any sort of protein served, often in a segmented TV-dinner-style tray, with two scoops of rice and macaroni salad. But at Soon’s, instead of serving macaroni salad, they served a sort of mixed kimchi, with a bunch of pickled vegetables all combined together and to be eaten with the grilled short ribs and rice. It was all very tasty, although I'm no expert on kalbi, and I realized as I ate it that I couldn’t find similar food in New York (or at least, I hadn't).
The next day I checked out my friend Jonathan Ray’s recommendation for Thai food: Mekong 2, where, on his recommendation, I ordered the Evil Jungle Prince plate lunch. And there, along with the two scoops of rice, was green papaya salad. The style of service that wasn’t the restaurant’s only adjustment to locals’ tastes. The curry itself was similar to a Thai massaman curry, but it definitely had a certain brown-gravy quality that reminded me very much of loco moco, which is basically salisbury steak on rice with brown gravy, topped with a sunny-side-up egg.
I had it at a food court for breakfast.

To view all the blog entries about my trip to O‘ahu, click here.

BBQ Potato Salad

Here is a wonderful recipe for a potato salad from our friends at Preemptive Karma

BBQ Potato Salad - No Mayo!
I just made this this morning for a picnic I'm going to this afternoon. It occured to me a week or two ago that BBQ sauce might be good in potato salad (it is!!). So I started looking for recipes and found a small handful of them, two of which I liked and the following draws inspiration from those two but also diverges significantly enough that I'm going to pass it off as my own.

Ingredients
5 lb bag of Red Potatoes, diced
12 slices crispy Bacon (preferably applewood-smoked), chopped
6 hard-boiled Eggs, finely chopped
1 small Walla Walla Sweet Onion, finely diced
1 cup BBQ sauce (I prefer Sweet Baby Ray's original)
1 lb container of Sour Cream (about 2 cups)
2 tablespoons spicy (brown) Mustard
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Smoked Paprika (optional but I used it)

Directions
I have yet to find the perfect way to boil potatoes for potato salad. I've seen descriptions of a number of fundamentally different ways that are supposed to work flawlessly. Either they don't or I'm not doing it right - probably the later. In any case, I use red-skinned potatoes because they hold their shape much better than other varieties, and I also like to chill them in the fridge before cubing them and making the potato salad because being chilled also helps them hold their shape... especially if you've slightly overcooked them and are worried about ending up with lumpy mashed potatoes.

Boil and cube the potatoes as you see fit. Other than that, just combine the ingredients in a large bowl. It's not rocket surgery. However I do find it easier to mix everything BUT the potatoes together first and then mix the cubed potatoes into it.

That said, this is also the first time that I've ever substituted sour cream for the more typical mayonaise in a potato salad. I like it! And I also like the fact that there isn't a drop of oil in this salad. Mayo, as you know, is mostly oil & egg whites with some flavoring. Future potato salad experiments will likely involve substituting only part of the mayo with sour cream - just to see what that's like. Supposedly the sour cream makes the salad creamier in texture.

The Charcoal Story

Henry Ford. The man. The Legend. Everyone knows about Mr. Fords little assembly line and how it changed the face of history. But we are not here to talk about the automobile, we are here to talk about Henry Ford's greatest invention. The charcoal briquette. First made from scraps of wood and sawdust from Mr. Ford's automotive factory a charcoal briquette is made by compressing charcoal from sawdust and other wood with a binder(usually starch and other additives. The additives will consist of mineral carbon as a heat source and borax,sodium nitrate,parrafin and petroleum solvents to aid in ignition. Americans buy nearly 1,000,000 tons of charcoal briquettes every year. For more information on the making of charcoal check out madehow.com

Lump Charcoal
The difference between lump charcoal and the charcoal briquette is that lump charcoal is whole pieces of wood that are exposed to high heat which drives out all the volatile chemicals of the wood and leaving only the carbon. Lump charcoal burns cleaner and hotter than the charcoal briquette. When using lump charcoal for barbecuing it is very important that you have a way to control the heat since a pile of lump charcoal can reach a temperature near 1000 degrees. Do not use starter fluid to light lump charcoal as it will leave your meat with a solvent flavor. A charcoal lighting chimney is the preferred choice here.

Usually your choice of charcoal will be judged upon the type of meat you're cooking. For those meats that call for a longer cooking time the charcoal briquette is the best way to go. If you're going to be cooking a thick juicy steak then go with lump.