(My friend the doctor swears this actually happened to his patient.)

A man of late years was admitted to the emergency room with pain in his leg. They hooked him up to a few machines to check his vital signs, and noticed that his oxygen saturations were in the low 70s.

That’s like breathing nothing. That’s like being, well… DEAD.

But he was sitting up and talking to the nurses. All of his other vital signs were in normal ranges and he didn’t exhibit any signs of difficulty breathing. The staff panicked when they saw that number on the monitor, though, and scrambled to put the man on supplementary oxygen.

With the tubing placed and the oxygen flowing, the man’s oxygen saturations jumped up to a normal range in the mid-90s. And then all the rest of his vitals started going crazy. His heart rate went up. His blood pressure made a jump. And he was coughing and struggling to breathe… until they took the oxygen off him, and his sats dropped back into the 70s and all other vitals returned to normal.

HUH?

It emerged that the patient, a cigarette smoker of many packs per day for fifty years, had all the classic lung damage you’d expect. But he didn’t have emphysema or lung cancer. His crappy lungs had adapted themselves so well to the ever-increasing damage over the years that they were able to function in a less-than-optimal state and still sustain life.

That’s some crazy shit. But that’s evolution at its finest.

I bring this up because of that whole detox thing I’m interested in. Last week, before I was able to see my doctor about the herbal system, I decided it couldn’t hurt to start drinking more water and eating better beforehand. So I committed myself to 64 ounces of water per day, no more fried foods or candy, and no more soda.

Take a wild guess at what happened.

Not only did I have the major caffeine withdrawal (I expected that, of course), I had more stomach upsets and sleeplessness without fried food or caffeine. I actually felt DEHYDRATED from drinking that much water – my skin and lips were painfully dry. Every time I’d have a salad for lunch, even with dressing and some chicken on it, my blood sugar would drop in the early afternoon and I’d have to slug a bottle of orange juice just to get enough natural sugars in me to function the rest of the day at work.

Then on top of that, I got a cold. And I just couldn’t take the stomach aches AND the sniffles.

So I’m back on Diet Dr. Pepper and McChickens and peanut butter cups for now because my body simply cannot handle the cold-turkey quit of everything crappy that I’ve fed it. It just straight up REBELLED when I tried to cut out fried and over-processed foods and replace them with greens and fruit! The caffeine withdrawal I was expecting, that’s normal… but what about the rest of it?

Can you have a physiological addiction to grease and sodium like you can nicotine? I really want to know.

The doctor said the herbal thing is fine, so the new plan is to sloooowly cut out those foods over the next two weeks or so, and then do the detox system.

Besides, it would be pointless to start a diet before the Super Bowl parties anyway, right? Beer, nachos, beer, pizza, beer, little hot dogs in BBQ sauce in a Crock Pot, beer…

What’s your addiction? Have you ever tried to quit?

(Posted by Jenny from The Reckless Chef)

Rebekah hasn’t had the best luck with fire lately. First, we discovered her lack of smoke alarm thanks to an ancient oven and a blackberry pie. Then, the laundromat brought her some more fire woes, and reminded her why she’ll never be Zen. Needless to say, she’s probably not the biggest fan of anything in flagrante.

So, while Rebekah is off catching some R & R in a warmer climate, I’m guest posting with a little fire-demon-exorcising:

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the dessert that cannot catch fire no matter how much I try…aka the Chandelier-Swinging Black-and-Blue Mini Tart!

Want your own?

You’ll need:
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
heaping 1/2 cup blueberries
heaping 1/2 cup blackberries
1/2 tsp lime juice
mini phyllo dough shells (pre-baked)
whipped cream
vodka (optional)

Do this:
Preheat your oven to 350, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange the mini phyllo shells on the baking sheet.

Stir the sugar and water together in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Add the berries, and once the liquid reaches a rolling boil, turn the heat down to medium. Let the sugar-fruit mixture hang out on the stove until the berries plump and soften, and all start to look purple instead of blue and black. Using a slotted spoon, separate the fruit from the liquid — it’ll make filling the shells much less messy!

Fill the mini phyllo shells with berries (and a little bit of juice), and bake for 3-5 minutes. Eat the rest of the berries. And, just between us…I won’t judge you if you drink the juice.

Top the mini tarts with whipped cream, and enjoy. They’re bite-sized and have fruit in them, so feel good about the (relatively) healthy dessert you just made!

Optional: Forget the whipped cream. Pour vodka over the tarts, and attempt fail to light on fire for the amusement of Rebekah and her readers.

Oh yeah…for your amusement, a video of me trying to set these on fire:

(Note before you play: There’s music embedded. I don’t know how to lower the volume.)

As you can see, it didn’t work (no matter how much vodka I poured!) — I’m going to take that as a sign that Rebekah’s fire demons are gone

And by that I mean: “I almost forgot I have a review blog!”

Not really – I knew it was there. What I mean is that Propel sent me some yummies awhile ago and I drafted a review but never finished it. It’s up now, though, so please go read it!

I promise there will be more good ones to come in 2010. I have a new camera, a new camcorder, some new software, and more lovely tech goodies that I want to write and write about.

And maaaaybe a giveaway.

Last weekend, Jenny The Reckless Chef came over to bring me squash soup and gingerbread to comfort my poor sick self, and on a whim she grabbed a frozen cobbler at the store. We don’t usually bake from a box, but it seemed like a nice, quick treat.

Disclaimer: I’d never used the oven in my new apartment.

I turned the knob to set the temperature to 400 degrees, then went to turn the knob to set the oven to “bake.”

The knob was blank. BLANK. All of the words on it had worn off.

Jenny and I pondered for a bit what order the settings might be in – off, bake, broil, clean? I turned it to the first setting and in a few minutes, the oven was nice and hot. Figuring that I’d gotten it right, I put the thawed cobbler in and set the timer for 40 minutes. We went into the living room to enjoy squash soup and watch crappy reality TV.

About 15 minutes later:

“Is that SMOKE in my kitchen?”

We rushed in there and the kitchen was in fact full of smoke* billowing from the oven. I opened the oven door.

The top of the cobbler was ON FIRE.

“Grab a camera!” Jenny screeched.**

Yeah, never mind that there was an open flame in my gas oven. This was for posterity.

It. Smelled. DISGUSTING. Even after we opened windows and fanned the smoke outside,*** the whole house was reeking of burnt pastry. We decided that we must have set the oven to “broil” instead of “bake,” so the top heating element at 400 degrees on a piece of pastry was to blame. I’d always had an oven where the broiler was a separate drawer on the bottom, so the idea of broiling something inside the oven did not even occur to me.

The charred top of the cobbler was pretty much solid, but Jenny stuck a fork down into the bottom of the pan to see if any of the berries could be salvaged.

“These are awful,” she said, wrinkling her nose but not missing a beat. “OMG, we have to Twitter this right now!”

Fail can be funny.

_____________________

* And NEITHER of my smoke alarms went off, which you can imagine made me oh-so-happy and safe-feeling, right?

** She’s not called the Reckless Chef for nothing. Her blog is full of pictures of things she’s burned, melted, and broken.

*** The smoke alarms never did go off. I will be speaking to my landlord. For that – and a new oven knob.

Got your attention?

I’ve neglected my poor little review blog lately, which is bad because it’s just a baby blog and a weak start doesn’t help drive traffic, but it’s probably a good thing because I’ve been so negative and cranky lately. But with the help of some handmade bath bombs and other yummy body products from a local shop called Maven, I’ve calmed down enough to write a shop review AND offer a giveaway!

Click on over to my re-named and redesigned “Like. Love. WANT.” for a peek into Maven and a chance to win some amazing bath and body goodies!

If they cheered my grumpy ass up, you know they’re worth it.

…and you’ve got to click over to see what Sookie Stackhouse has to do with it.