Primal Nutrition Cowboy

Once in a great post, a cowboy’s got to talk health.

That post has come and I’d like to express my gratification with Mark’s Sisson’s Primal Blueprint. It’s a cowboy’s way of staying healthy. Why do I say this.

Because of chili.

All common folk know a cowboy’s favorite meal is a hearty bowl of trail-cooked chili. Chunks of beef slopped in with tomatoes and chilis, spiced with enough cumin and hot pepper to send children running, and slopped into a bowl the size of a ten gallon hat.

And chili just happens to line up with the caveman diet, or the paleo diet, or– as Mark calls it– the Primal Diet. No sugar, no grains, no unwanted carbs in a bowl of chili. Just good old fashioned meats and vegetables.

Of course, even a cowboy needs omega 3 supplements. So, I always take a couple omega 3 vitamins with my spicy stew. It helps with the damage control.

So get out there and wrangle yourself up a bowl of the wild west’s finest meal. And leave out the beans!

My son wants to be something called a Master Chief for Halloween.

The costume is popular; it was sold out at the three halloween stores I checked. I told him I’d make him a master chief outfit instead. I went to the attic and found my old indian head dress I’d made when I was in boyscouts. I bought a couple plastic war hatchets from a dollar store and some kid moccasins from one of those hippie vendors down near Venice Beach. Then I asked my wife about sewing the hunting pants. She blinked a couple times and told me, “He doesn’t wan’t to be an Indian, he wants to be MASTER CHIEF. From the video game Halo.”

I had no idea what Halo was, but my wife showed me and that just about through me through a hoop of fire. I thought it was bad enough that my son wanted to be a cowboy scalpin’ indian. Now I find out he wants to be a god damned robot space soldier? What’s this world coming to.

All I’m saying is I better see a few cowboys trick-or-treating tonight, or I’m lible to stop handing out candy altogether. Sure enough, this certainly is No Country for Old Men.

And now I’m going to throw some health links your way, and I do hope they do you a bit of good. Take a look at the best multivitamins if you’re interested in that sort of thing. And after you get done with that, head on over to a site that might tell you how to relieve stress. Try anything, that’s the only way to live. That’s the cowboy way.

A couple new cowboy movies have come out. 3:10 to Yuma and the other one with Brad Pitt. I never saw Brad Pitt as much of a cowboy, even though he wore a cowboy hat through most of his breakout roll in Thelma & Louise.

Christian Bale doesn’t strike me as a cowboy either. He’s just a little too pretty. I must still hold final judgement, for I haven’t seen either of these movies, but my question for the week is:

Who would make the best American cowboy actors today?

My choice would be Vigo Mortensen. He’s got that grizzled look (no razor jokes necessary). He’s also got the style of a “man with a past” which is just essential if you’re going to play a man of the west. Somebody put some spurs on that guy and give him a six shooter, it’s time for a new American Cowboy.

Also, just to keep you updated on the health aspect of this blog. I’m including a couple links to other health blogs worth a look. One deals with the ever important omega 3 capsules, and the other one is all about vitamins online.

There’s a lot of controversy over who the best cowboys were.

If you boil the term down to its truest meaning, you are looking for the men who steered cattle across the plains from ranches to slaughterhouses in the days of the wild west which begins around the 1840’s and trails off in the early 20th century, closing out around World War I.  Basically just historical figures here, Wyatt Erpp, Billy the Kid, etc.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can define a cowboy as anyone of any era who is a pioneer, a lone gunman with a cause, a man who dwells in a new territory, orderless or lawless, and makes something of himself and his land. Buzz Aldron could be called a space cowboy. Donal Trump a sort of real estate cowboy, forging paths and taking risks. Is the man who designs a fuel efficient car a cowboy? Or the man who searches for and creates the best multivitamin? Is Bill Gates the cowboy of the wild wild web? Maybe, but I’m a bit more of a traditionalist myself.

And finally there are cowboy symbols. John Wayne. Was the man really a cowboy, or did he just play one on the screen? And Cowboy poets like Gene Autry. I say yes, these men had just as much strength and soul as men like Erpp, with the right amount of real cowboy grit too.

So, who is the best Cowboy? One man fits all three categories. He was a real ranchman, he lived in the west, ate beans, and hunted bears. He was a pioneer, charging into lawless territory, and eventually changing the face of the world. And he was a symbol, an American soul, and a country’s figurehead. The man was Theodore Roosevelt, and I consider him to be the best cowboy living or dead. 

I ride a horse and I have a desk job. I eat beans on the prairie on Saturday and Panda Express on Monday. Nothing thrills me more than the open range with a storm heading in, it’s a shame I’ve got to return to my filing and reporting at the end of a good ride. I believe the cowboy way of life is the healthiest way of life. Lot’s of physical labor, dealing with the weather, getting three full meals of protein; this is a primal sort of health. An early rise and fresh air, plenty of sunshine and water straight from the earth. This is primal nutrition. I’m not a primal nutrition purist. Everyone these days is entitled to a little starbucks, but coffee tastes better after a hard night sleep on the hard clay. Coffee tastes better when it’s black and mean.