DiJa Know? Is Richard Eeds your favorite local broadcaster? Well you can watch him live at work here a Joe’s every 1st Friday of the month from 1PM to 4PM. 1260 AM Radio.
DiJa Know? Joe’s showcases a new set of local-only artists every six months. In the main dining room, we have Nancy Nickerson showing her beautiful NM landscapes. In the Red Room Bill Todino’s elegant, lean black and white photos grace the walls. All are for sale.
DiJa Know? Joe’s now serves cocktails. All are made with locally distilled spirits. Roland’s favorite is an Old Fashioned made with Dry Point Bourbon. Sheila’s is Wheeler’s Gin and soda with a splash of tonic. Customers are loving our Bloody Marys and of course what’s a New Mexico bar without a good Margarita? Enjoy!
It may be a bit early, but … we can start thinking about special events at Joe’s. Valentine’s Day – we don’t advertise it but still, best to make a reservation. March brings our insanely popular St.Paddy’s Corned Beef and Cabbage week. Then there’s our Burger Week just in time to save money around tax time – crazy but fun.
What is food? Stupid question. Right? But to those paying attention to their health, it’s become a problematic and pervasive question.
How do we judge the quality of food? How do we know what groceries to buy? As more and more shelf space is allocated to highly-processed, high-margin food-like products, choosing nourishing food has become rife with land mines.
Take for instance Beyond Meat – OMG, it’s Beyond Me! If you’ve researched the ingredients, you’d never put it into your mouth!! Except on a dare. And Beyond Meat is just one Frankenfood. There are now many similar products that have a pretty face and an irresistible sales pitch. Tasty? Possibly. Sickening and deadly – assuredly so.
We have been wooed into a “saving the planet, saving the animals, saving starving nations” narrative that Big Food marketers are spewing endlessly. If it were true, I would give pause. But it’s a crafted ruse and we are not the beneficiaries, nor the animals and certainly not our lands. Funny how it all converges into an obscenely profitable funnel to the industrial food complex (Big Food/Big Ag: Monsanto, Bayer, Synergy Seeds, Billy Gates foundation, Tyson, etc etc).
Rich farmland is being decimated by GMO mono crops doused with glyphosate (RoundUp), notably soy, corn, cotton, canola, sugar beets, but many many others.
Those formerly rich prime growing lands, mis-used as they are, may never recover. Once a treasured ecosystem, now gone. And with it a myriad of endangered or extinct living creatures we claim to love and respect – bees, bugs, worms, reptiles, birds, deer, wild horses, bison and on and on.
Once, decades ago, it all balanced!
Now, addressing the connection to human health – to be ruthlessly blunt, we have gone down a dangerous and possibly morbid path. Our biology has not changed in 100’s of thousands of years. We cannot adapt to digesting and processing the synthetic chemicals in so many of our foods today. Do this: take out some old family photos. Or view some old movies from before the 90’s. How many obese people did you see then? Kids were skinny. Adults were trim. The few corpulent people stood out. I single out obesity because it’s been identified as a risk factor for almost all now-common diseases. Even in children!!!
If we are ever going to turn this disaster around, we must make intelligent food choices. Our dollars need to be spent on trusted food sources, those that are labelled NON-GMO, organic or better than organic, and best of all – LOCAL. Get to know your local growers. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store (meat, fish, fresh produce). Venture into the “pretty packaged processed food aisle” and you’re in trouble. Patronize restaurants that prepare high quality food sourced locally when possible. Best of all – grow your own food. At all costs, avoid Beyond Meat and similar FAKE products. Remind yourself of what your great grandparents ate and grew on their farms and in their gardens. And do your best to copy those habits. Perfect impeccable food choices are almost impossible. Just do your best. “Let food be thy medicine.” Any step in the right direction is wonderful.
DiJa Know? ’tis the season for tummy-warmers. They are again featured on Joe’s daily specials menu. We rotate Beef Bourguignonne, Stroganoff, Antonio’s Lamb Shank, Hungarian Goulash, and of course Tuesday Night’s Spaghetti Bolognese Special for two. Tummy warmer soups that our customers love include clam chowder, black bean, Thai shrimp bisque and always our chicken-ginger soup.
DiJa Know? the salt on your table here at Joe’s is Redmond salt, one of the oldest and purest salts on Earth. Although we once had sea salt, we feel that sea salt is now contaminated with microparticles of plastic. Good grief! Will it never end?!
Also in the sugar bowl you will not find aspartame by any of its brand names NutraSweet, Equal, and Canderel, Spoonful. Aspartame has been around long enough to have been the subject of multiple studies. It has been implicated in the following: heart disease, cancer, weight gain (yup!), Alzheimer’s, dementia, stroke, seizures, mood disorders, migraines.
Building your muscular strength lowers death risk. A flood of research is now supporting that fact. It’s not necessary to build bulk unless you want to! By building your muscular strength, you ward off cardiometabolic risks. A higher level of muscular strength has a protective effect on premature death from any cause. Just 30-60 minutes a week of resistance training can make a world of difference in your strength and health.
Resistance training is superior to cardio exercise because the greater your muscle mass, the higher your survivability against all diseases.
You need protein reserves (amino acids, peptides) to survive serious disease, and those reserves are stored in muscle. If you have very little muscle, you have no amino acid reserves. It’s never too late to start building muscle using diet and exercise even if you’re in your 70s or 80s. High-quality animal protein is essential for muscle growth. Most people need 1 gram of protein per pound of your ideal body weight. For the average adult that is about 30 to 50 grams per meal.
Good chocolate news! A recent review showed that cocoa can improve insulin resistance, balance blood sugar, lower bodily inflammation, lower elevated triglyceride levels and increase good cholesterol (HDL). Since all of these are direct indicators of your risk for heart disease, researchers believe regular cocoa consumption is a heart-healthy practice. Now, don’t go overboard – the darker, lower sugar chocolates are the most beneficial. By the way, women have always known how good chocolate is for us!
DiJa Know? I’ve been advocating for many years that we need sunshine. It is our prime source of the hormone commonly called Vitamin D3. One study found that people who got direct exposure to sunlight in the morning had significantly lower BMIs than those who had most of their light exposure late in the day. Researchers conclude that exposure to the morning sun helps your body synchronize its metabolism, allowing you to burn fat more efficiently.
Coffee Love. DiJa Know? the average metabolic rate of people who drank caffeinated coffee was 16 percent higher than that of those who drank decaf.
DiJa Know? What the heck is DancingBones®? It’s a wellness center here in Rodeo Plaza focused on stopping bone loss and beyond that, recovering bone density . . .naturally. Call Hattie for your introductory hands-on session. 505-557-6209
Gluten sensitivities? Alleene, Joe’s pastry chef, is creating some wonders without gluten: Joe’s Morning Glory Muffin, Chocolate Ganache Torte and Carrot Cake – all gluten free! Also Richard Eeds favorite, Tres Leches Cake (not gluten free).
A Tuesday night tradition at Joe’s – it’s Spaghetti and Chianti Night. $49 for two will get you Caesar Salad, Spaghetti with homemade Bolognese and a great ½ liter of Chianti. The Bolognese sauce is made with our grass-fed-and-finished beef, slow-cooked in the traditional Italian fashion.
Joe’s will give you $10. What’s the catch? Well the way we figure it, if you cut out the middleman by NOT using a credit card, we can give that back to you and then some. Credit cards cost the retail merchant about 3-5%. Now in today’s world one cannot function without cc’s. But there are a few (legal) alternatives that reduce our dependency on the Big Banks and actually save us all money: (1.) Joe’s Check List – If you are a “regular” and wish to pay by check, please ask your waiter to get you on the list. (2.) Joe’s gift card – purchase $100 gift card with cash or check or silver or gold coin, get a $10 free bonus! Your $100 gift card will actually buy you $110 worth at Joe’s.
Some of the farmers & ranchers who supply Joe’s: They get their fertilizer from animals and compost and their agronomic advice from tradition: Monte Vista Organics, Mesa Ranch Beef and Liver, Jacona Farms, Green Tractor, Camino de Paz, Synergia Ranch, Romero Farms, Shepherd’s Lamb, La Montanita, Susan’s Sprouts, Maya’s Mushrooms and others.
Giggles – Funny signs
- Keep door closed. Don’t let the cats out no matter what they tell you.
• People write “congrats” because they can’t spell congrajulashins.
• We offer 3 kinds of service: GOOD – CHEAP – FAST
But you can pick only two
Good & Cheap won’t be fast
Fast & Good won’t be cheap
Cheap & fast won’t be good.
Joe’s Dining
2801 Rodeo Rd (at Zia Rd) Santa Fe, NM 87507 n 505-471-3800 www.JoesDining.com
Mission: to strengthen our health,
to protect our land,
to grow our economy
by serving local sustainable food.