Best Posts in Forum: Food and Diet

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a black-owned brewery.

Out of the 66 breweries in Georgia, only one is owned by black people: Down Home Brewing Company. Chris Reeves and William Allen Moore, the two men behind the brewery, started canning beer in March 2018 at BlueTarp, Georgia’s smallest production brewery, east of downtown Decatur.

The two spoke with WXIA-TV and expressed that starting this business was a challenge and that they haven’t quit their day jobs quite yet.

“It was fun seeing people’s reactions to it, saying, ‘Oh OK, this is cool.’ Then you see the backstory behind it and we tell our story with our families and how this comes from a place of family,” Moore, a Morehouse College of Medicine alum, said.

Apparently, the only investors in the company are members of their families.

Down Home’s graphic icon is of Herschel Thompson, Reeves’ late grandfather, a church deacon and a Walton County sharecropper. Reeves explained that his grandfather wasn’t a drinker, but he was “a good God-fearing man. Loved God. And I learned a lot through him.”

The two hope to eventually open a stand-alone shop and to leave their day jobs.

1st African American brewer hits GA craft beer scene

 

Anybody else like seafood. Like fish, shrimp, oysters, lobster, crab, shellfish, crawfish?

I do. I love seafood a lot.

 

Props to @ControlledXaos for creating WTCA V2 after my lil bitch tantrum from the first volume. After a final review from a panel of secret judges, the results are in:

Winner of V2.0 is...
@Tyroc (Most entries, very nice pics)


@KritiKal Analysis (best dessert)

@SB3 (most humorous entry)

Honorable mentions:
@cypher21
@NikR
@ControlledXaos

Alright...let the games begin for Where the Cooks At Volume 3

 

It took me 27 years to look after my body.

I’ve done some stupid crap to my body. Nothing too outrageous, but I’ve drunk my way through more Bowler’s Run than any human being should. It’s nasty wine that costs literally $3 a bottle. It tastes like regrets.

I worked at McDonalds' for 5 years, 4 days a week, and ate a minimum of a double cheeseburger meal, 4 cokes and a sausage mcmuffin every shift. I’ve smoked, eaten like crap and rarely worked out in any meaningful way.

When I first started out as a creative and an entrepreneur, I was popping No Doz pills like tic tacs. They’re tablets that are supposed to keep you awake and alert, and I thought I needed them to get through 8 hour studio sessions recording music and working on my business until 4 AM. Never mind that the side effects were anxiety, nervousness, irritability and depression.

In general terms, I have always been very far from being a fitness fan. You know the guys who post gym selfies and love working out? Yeah, that’s not your boy Jon. Over the past 27 years, I can honestly say that I’ve treated my body as the opposite of a temple.
I used to think it didn’t really matter. I suppose a part of me always thought that sooner or later my life would magically change and I’d become healthy, and before that happened I was on a free pass to do whatever the hell I wanted to my body. I couldn’t see how it mattered. I couldn’t see how it could affect me if I wanted to eat a little more and drink a little more.

Looking back on it, it seems clear that it was affecting me in so many different ways. I was unproductive, prone to feeling exhausted all the time. I was often depressed and listless. I would swing between not being able to sleep more than 3 hours a week, and not having the energy to get out of bed in the morning.

It took me 27 years to get to a point where I started making positive decisions. It took me 27 years to start looking after my body.
I was in so many habits that I was barely living a few hours of my day with my brain switched on, it was all based on action/reaction. I started making small changes, at first. Trying to cut down on the soda, trying to drink less, being more conscious of my choices around what I put into my body. I finally picked up a Fitbit and began working on being a little healthier every day. Even those minor adjustments were incredibly difficult.

But the scary part was, I could feel almost an instant change. Some of it was mental — being aware of my decisions, and knowing I was making better ones, had an instantly motivating effect on me. I still struggled to keep to any commitments I’d made to my health, and I still fell down from time to time, but it was the beginning of my changes.

From there, it’s been a process of trying to add a new, healthier element to my life or cut out one negative element every week. I’ve been winding down on my junk food, I’ve stopped keeping beers in my fridge, I’ve been hitting the gym for 30 minutes a day.

I know I’m supposed to enjoy working out, but I hate it. I hate every part of it, every minute of it, and I make myself do it anyway, because I’m seeing results. I’m not trying to change my health around because I want to look a certain way, I’m happy being pretty average and not turning heads on the beach. Looking hot doesn’t appear on my list of goals.

My goal has been to feel like I can take on my days without go to pieces, and I’m getting there.

I’m sick of feeling tired and wasted and like everything is too much to handle. And day by day, that feeling is slipping away. All I want is to feel better. To feel more alive, and in control, and focused, and productive. To feel like I’m not going to keel over and die before I’m 30.


I think I’ve always put barriers up, around my health, because I’ve believed that only people who are incredibly toned and hot, posing with green smoothies can be healthy. That’s not even remotely true. But it’s an easy trap to fall into.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot more people like me out there. We’re not trying to be health gurus, and we’re living lives that are full of tough, day to day shit that we have to get through. We’re busy with our careers, kids, our responsibilities, our businesses, our art…there’s always a list.
When we see people who are motivated about their health, who are able to show lives full of smoothie bowls and kale, we’re not motivated by it. We’re kind of intimidated and demoralized, because it seems so unattainable.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize though. None of that shit matters, none of the stuff we’re told to think about, when it comes to our health, has any weight. What does matter is the way our bodies interact with our emotions, and the effect that our health will have on our lives in the future.

Because we don’t need to get up at the crack of dawn and do a million sit ups. We don’t have to be hot on Instagram, or be anyone’s #goals. If someone tells you that, tell ’em to fuck off. We just have to be healthy.

This cartoon from one of my favorite artists sums it up:



(Sarah Andersen is an incredible and utterly hilarious cartoonist who is a talented being of awesomeness.)
I’ve got a long way ahead of me before I can get my health and my body back on track. Correcting my patterns is going to be tough, but I believe I can stick to it. Because I’ve started to understand that my success and survival as a blogger, as a writer, as an entrepreneur — it doesn’t have anything to do with how I look. But it does depend on me being healthy enough to handle it.

Original Post on Medium Here:

 

Chicago Restaurant Owner Feeds His Community


Quentin Love's restaurant, on Chicago's west side in a neighborhood called West Humboldt Park, lives by a simple rule: "No beef. No pork." There you can get unique dishes like the Jive Turkey Burger on a whole wheat bun or the Rich Boy Sandwich, a grilled fish twist on the classic Po Boy, which usually uses roast beef or fried seafood.

But Love knows it's not just well-to-do Chicagoans who need more diverse meal options. Chicago's sizable homeless and poverty-stricken community could sure use a helping hand, too.

So every Monday afternoon, the restaurant closes for business and offers free meals to the community, instead.


Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill opened in 2012 as a continuation of Love's years long effort to "attack the food desert theory." He wanted to bring more diverse eating options to neighborhoods around the country in dire need of them.

In 2014, he took the concept even further at the West Humboldt Park location by transforming the restaurant into a local food pantry once a week.

On Monday afternoons, residents of the community pour in to grab free, ready-made meals. It's for anybody in need of a hot, fresh, nutritious bite to eat, whether they're homeless or not.

Love also runs a cooking class out of the restaurant on Monday nights that teaches people in the community how to prepare nutritious meals for themselves and their families.

With support from the Chicago Food Depository, Love and his staff at Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill have given away over 60,000 meals in the past two years, mostly on the back of donations and community volunteers.

But Love says funding has been a constant issue, with him spending nearly $2,000 a month out of his own pocket to finance the project.

When Love got the chance to compete on Food Network's "Guy's Grocery Games," though, he knew he had a chance to fund the program for a long time to come.

"They called me (to be on the show)," he said. "It was just a random call. And I saw it as an opportunity."

An opportunity to battle against other chefs in a nationally broadcast, pressure-packed cooking challenge. But it would help him keep his restaurant's community program going.

If he won, anyway.

And that's exactly what Love did. In "Guy's Grocery Games" (or "Triple G"), contestants sprint up and down supermarket aisles, scavenging for ingredients that fit their allotted budget, and have 30 minutes to whip up a meal that'll impress the judges.

Love blew away the competition with his cooking skills and a little help from his grandma's famous mac 'n cheese recipe.

When all was said and done, he walked away with $36,000 in prize money. And he knew exactly what he was going to do with it.

Half of Love's prize money will go toward making sure Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill can continue to feed the community.

The other half will go to another cause close to Love's heart, the United Services Organization, which provides relief to military members and their families.

"The prize money pays for sustainability" for the program, Love said. There are no grand plans to expand nationally, renovate the restaurant, or launch more ambitious projects.

That's not what really matters to Love.

For now, the Turkey Chop Gourmet Grill is just going to keep on giving delicious, nutritious meals to Chicagoans in need.

And thanks to Love's big Food Network win, that's not going to change any time soon.

"Being on the show was great," he said. "I just kept thinking about what I had to do. And the rest is history."

A selfless chef won a reality game show and used the prize money to feed his community.

 

im subscribed to these ppl on youtube thought ill share some of there vids to help if the new year diet or change in food and mind set.






i love his dude




i was thinking about doing this no sugar challenge wanted to know if guys wanted try it with me?