So, I asked my friend Victor for a gainer friendly recipe. Being that Victor is 6' tall and 300lbs of beautifully fattened gainerman (up from 140lbs) he knows a thing or two about making yummy food that gets you growing.
Photographic Evidence of Victor's knowledge of good food:
He's literally twice as big as he was in high school. Drool. Onto the food!
Here is his recipe, and his words:
"This is a dish that I got from my mother over 15 years ago, and it is a perennial favorite with all my friends and family... Pretty much everyone I serve this to falls in love with it, and with good reason, too: the ingredients are simple, familiar, unfussy, unpretentious, easily storebought, and easily prepared.
It is hearty enough for the most diehard gainer or bodybuilder -- chock full of high-protein chicken breast and nutritious spinach -- yet is cheesy and carby enough to serve as a great comfort food too. The presentation is elegant enough for serving at a classy brunch, lunch or dinner party. Good playmates include a simple leafy green salad, a bowl of crisp chilled watermelon and cantaloupe, and some fudgy dark chocolate brownies for dessert. My beverage of choice is Coke, but if you're into wine, just go with a chilled Chardonnay or some other white wine to accompany this chicken ring."
INGREDIENTS:
- 4 chicken breasts, cooked thoroughly and cubed
- two 10-oz packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well-drained
1. In a large bowl, mix the chicken, spinach, cheese, mayonnaise, lemon zest, salt and nutmeg until a homogenous blend is created.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Move oven rack to middle position.
3. Unroll pie crust onto a lightly greased pizza pan or pizza stone. Using a sharp knife, cut an 8-pointed star about 4" in diameter in the center of the crust.
4. Scoop the chicken mixture evenly onto the pie crust in between the star and the outer edge, staying about 1/4" away from both. Pat and mould the mixture until an even ring of filling is formed.
5. Unroll the crescents and separate them into individual triangles. Begin to cover the filling with crescents, by laying the wide end of a crescent at the outer edge of the pie crust; the narrow point of the triangle should be touching the 8-pointed star. Continue with remaining crescent rolls until the entire filling is covered in triangles. Note that small gaps may remain in between triangles; this is OK, as it allows for steam to escape. Also note that you may not use all 16 of the crescent rolls.
6. Using your fingertips, tuck and seal all the edges of the triangles into the pie crust on the outside edge of the ring. Do the same thing on the inside by rolling up the segments of the star and tucking the points of the crescent rolls into them. The end result should look like a giant donut.
7. Bake in the preheated 375-degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until the crescents are golden-brown. Serve piping hot by itself for brunch or lunch, or with a side salad as a dinner entree. Yield 10-12 servings.
I suggest you try and eat as many servings at once as possible, rub your belly and enjoy.
He suggests, “Pair it with a light, white wine -I don’t like white but you need something really light on the tongue, because the truffle butter with cream is rich. Serve that pasta with a great grilled steak or tri tip, and then a fresh spring vegetable with light butter/salt/pepper, or maybe a salad with oil and vinegar. Keep the other notes in the meal very bright and light.”
Fattening, luxurious, and easy. What more could you ask for? A recipe with both Ina Garten and DangerCocktail's stamp of approval. Yum.
So, in my hunt for summery gainer friendly meals, I asked my pal Cubanjew if he had anything that was good for a breakfast or brunch type meal. He suggested his Super Awesome Fritatta recipe.
8-10 eggs (I prefer organic, cage free eggs -knowing the chickens are happy makes me happy)
2 or 3 not too small potatos, washed and sliced*
Shredded/grated cheese to taste*
Salt & Pepper to taste
Whole Milk (or for the adventurous, heavy cream or half and half)
Olive oil*
Butter*
*Organic if you can manage it
In his own, awesome words:
“First I cut one of my potatoes into thin slices and sauté them a little. Once the potatoes are decently soft, I mix in the salt, pepper and shredded cheese. Melt it down and mash it all up Don't use all of the cheese though! I generally do grated parmesan and then either a shredded cheddar or mexican mix and have it all combined. Trader Joe's has some really nice, organic pre-shredded cheese mixes, if you're too lazy to grate your own. Let it be a little lumpy! We like it like that!
Next, put your mixture aside and preheat the oven to 400. Wash your remaining potatoes and slice them fairly thin, but not transparent cause you want some substance to them, and microwave them submerged in water for a minute and 30 seconds to start their cooking process. Let them sit. Then, in a medium-large pan, combine your olive oil and butter and let it get hot, but don't burn the butter! I suggest medium heat on your range for this. Mix your potato cheese mixture up and cover the bottom of the pan in the mixture, and let it sit for a few minutes.
In a fairly large bowl, crack and combine your eggs as if you were making an omelette, and salt and pepper it to taste. Put that aside and look at your potatoes in the pan. Start flipping it over when it's brown on the bottom and add more of the mixture in. It's good when it's golden and crispy. When you have a little potato mixture left, remove it all and place it back in the bowl and mix it all together. Now you want to put more oil and butter in the pan, and arrange your potato slices in an even layer and let cook with a cover on the pan for 4-5 minutes. Put a thin layer of your grated cheese on top of that, and then your mixture of browned mashed potatoes and unbrowned mashed potatoes on a lumpy textural layer over that. You can toss in anything here; bacon, veggies, anything you have laying around, it'll taste good. I suggest if you add veggies to sauté them beforehand, and make sure that any meat you add is cooked through. Let it cook for another 3-4 minutes with a cover on it. Now you'll want to pour your eggs on top and then place a final layer of grated cheese and cook for 3 minutes with a cover on the pan.
You'll want to see it start to bubble. That's when you uncover and place in your preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, with you checking in 5 minute intervals by sticking a knife in. When the knife comes out clean, you're done and you can take it out of the oven. Let your frittata cool for a few minutes, then flip onto a plate and serve! When going to a party or somewhere I'm expected to bring a dish, my frittata never fails to impress! Or you could always, ya know, eat the whole thing yourself... lol”
And there you have it -a simple, fattening, versatile calorically gifted brunch recipe perfect for any growing gainer. Up next, DangerCocktail's summer dinner suggestion :)
I found this study on the relation of body compisition (how lean or fat a guy is) and fitness levels (thanks to sometimesgainer) and I figured I'd let you guys take a look at it.
The conclusions, as stated in the abstract, are that fit men have a lower mortality rate than either unfit lean men, or unfit fat men. They even go so far as to say "being fit may reduce the hazards of obesity." This speaks to the point that I've made in earlier posts that the perils of having a bigger body are much more complex than society generally believes, and that health conscious gainers are not necessarily as prone to the complications of being overweight as someone who is not as careful about exercise and what they put in their mouth.
Obviously it's one study, albiet a credible one, but, I was just heartened to see someone looking at obesity in a more complex way.
My pal DarknessShadowL from Beefy ordered some Grub-On Appetite Enhancer, so, I asked him to write a review of it when he and his boyfriend tested it's effects. Here's what he wrote:
Grub-On: Magic Potion or Placebo?
The answer is that either way, it works and works well.
Appearance: The bottle it comes in is rather sketchy looking, to be honest, looking like something made in a basement or by a do-it-yourself home chemist.
Ease of Use: Drinking Grub-On is no problem, just add it to water (or whatever) and slowly drink it making sure to swish it around your mouth and then hit the food.
Taste: Very weak, almost unnoticeable. Not unpleasant at all, could easily be added to someone else’s drink without them noticing…
Value: Great, with the use of only a few drops per use, Grub-On will last through many big meals.
Effect: This is what everyone cares about: Can Grub-On make me eat more? And in my opinion, I would say definitely. Adam and I ate dinner, came back to the room and killed some time (a couple hours) and I had some Grub-On and then we went to Buffalo Wild Wings and I had the 24 piece boneless wings with no problem. With someone pushing you to eat more, I was able to get in bite after bite without even feeling full, although my gut was getting rounder and rounder. This was followed by a large bowl of banana pudding (Southern style, not instant from a box) and this pushed my gut to a new size and roundness that I had never achieved before. I was able to lay back and chow down while being completely comfortable watching my gut swell up more and more as Adam fed me without slowing down. Grub-On turns you into an eating machine.
Verdict: Buy Grub-On, it probably won’t work for everyone, but I had awesome results with it.
Although you can get it from many places online, at various prices, DarknessShadowL bought his from this site. I also heard via my twitter that ubergainer GainerguyCdn felt that Grub-On had "some semblance of effective on a very minor scale." Though I haven't tried Grub-On personally, I would posit that at nearly 450lbs, GainerguyCdn's appetite couldn't possibly be enhanced much more. A big thanks to DarknessShadowL and GainerguyCdn for their input, and happy stuffing guys.
One of the most dubious and avoided questions in the gainer community is the issue of how purposely gaining weight affects health. Mainstream society tells us that fat people have a host of problems avoided by the thin, ranging from heart issues, to diabetes, and just about everything in between. There are several points that one should make about how a gainer is different from your average fat guy. The first and most important is that a gainer, most of the time, is not someone who is naturally fat. What the studies generally do not account for, since they monitor people who are already overweight in comparison to people who are currently skinny, rather than comparing the before and after rates of skinny people who put on weight, is that maybe, whatever predisposes a fat person to be fat, is the factor that predisposes them to be more susceptible to the maladies that we associate with being overweight. Another difference between a gainer and your average fat guy is that your average fat guy is most likely fairly sedentary. A gainer doesn’t have to be sedentary. In fact, a gainer should make sure he works out. It’ll help him be able to easily and painlessly carry more weight, help shape a nice round gut, and, most importantly, keep his heart and body healthy. Most studies linking disease to overweight people don’t differentiate between a fat person and a sedentary person. An active fat guy is almost definitely going to have fewer issues than a sedentary twig.
Similarly, unlike someone who is fat by accident, a gainer likely pays great attention to his diet. Many of the crappy preservatives that is in processed food are things you really do not want in your body. Diseases linked with obesity (cancer, diabetes, heart disease) are definitively linked with the consumption of food additives such as high fructose corn syrup. So, what we can take from that is that a gainer, who generally eats a lot more food than the average person, is at risk to consume a lot more of this toxic shit if he doesn’t pay attention to what he puts in his mouth. But since a gainer is trying to get fat, making sure he’s putting all the calories he can in his mouth, it’s not a huge jump for him to pay attention and make sure he’s not putting crap in his mouth that’s gonna make him sick. Here is a list of stuff you just shouldn’t be putting in your body, even if you are a gainer (in no particular order)
Things to avoid:
Sodium nitrite -bad for you, makes you sick, found in cheap hotdogs and some cured meats. Hummel makes nitrite free hot dogs that are really yummy.
Butylatedhydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylatedhydrozyttoluene (BHT) -Preservatives that have been suggested to cause cancer. Read the ingredient list, and just don’t eat ‘em.
Propylgallate - Another toxic preservative. Don’t eat it.
High fructose corn syrup - This stuff is terrible mainly because it screws with how the body metabolizes sugar, and has been linked with the development of type II diabetes, a disease that makes gaining in any way that isn't totally self destructive very difficult and time consuming.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG) - is an amino acid used as a flavor enhancer in soups, salad dressings, chips, frozen entrees, and restaurant food. It is commonly associated with Asian foods and flavorings. MSG can cause headaches and nausea in some people, and animal studies link it to damaging nerve cells in the brains of infant mice. Don’t eat it, look for Chinese delivery places that advertise that they don’t use it.
Trans fats/ Partially hydrogenated oils - are totally horrible. They’re oils that are altered to make them more stable so food with them won’t go rancid as quickly, and although they do preserve food well, they do it at the expense of how they are metabolized by the people who eat them. Fats you eat go into not only building your belly, but also into maintaining cell walls, sustaining a healthy heart, keeping your skin looking good, your hair shiny and strong, literally tons of important processes in your body. Don’t eat transfats if you can avoid them, because they don’t exactly fit like normal, naturally occurring fats do when trying to fill into those bodily processes, and thus create all sorts of problems when they are too concentrated in your body.
Sugar substitutes - (excepting naturally occurring ones, like agave) generally cause cancer as a rule, and please, if you’re not worried about calories, just have some raw cane sugar.
Food colorings are a big no no. If its not in nature, it doesn’t belong in your body, and being a gainer doesn’t change that.
Potassium bromate is rare, but still legal in the U.S., and used as an additive to increase volume in white flour, breads, and rolls. It causes cancer. Don’t eat it.
I debated but ultimately chose to include both white sugar and salt on this list. They’re linked to all sorts of issues, sugar most clearly to diabetes and insulin resistance, and salt to all sorts of cardiovascular hypertensive unhappiness. Both have to be watched if you’re eating to gain. If you’re craving sugars, use sugar in the raw instead of bleached white sugar when you can. Try not to put a lot of salt on stuff cause there usually is a good amount already. Don’t kill yourself avoiding these two, but, keep them in mind.
So, after that big long list of what to avoid, we of course have to come to the what to eat list. One of the most beautiful, erotic parts of being a gainer is being able to indulge. All the rich, calorie laden delicacies of life are the domain of the gainer. Here are a bunch of healthy, appetizing little calorie bombs that will get you growing in no time:
What to eat:
Almonds (or any nuts -macadamia have the highest caloric content, but they’re expensive) Avocados -Calorie dense, full of good fats, and they taste great Although it’s not super healthy, it’s good to know that Butterfingers have no transfat, unlike most candy bars. Granola -super calorically dense, heart friendly, yummy healthy treat. The bf likes it with some vanilla yogurt for breakfast. Organic whole milk - Calorie dense, easy to drink, not full of crap like soda, used by bodybuilders when they’re looking to healthfully add mass. Try a gallon a day and you’ll blow up like you won’t believe (not for the faint of heart -whoever you are, bigger men than you have tried to grow like this and failed, but, try it haha) Root Veggies -Lots of non-sugar starchy carbs. Always good for bellybuilding. Sweet Potatoes -They’re just awesome, calorically dense, make great fries. Toss some olive oil on them to fortify the calorie count and snack away. Olive oil -Heart healthy, tasty, generally awesome. Put a little on everything. 9 calories per gram, it’ll add up and add inches to your gut.
Although it’s counter intuitive, most of the stuff for people trying to lose weight and take care of themselves actually holds a lot of useful information for a healthy gainer. Apart form things telling you to limit your calories, most of the information to be healthy can be adapted to a growing boy’s lifestyle. Being healthy and strong is basically the obligation of anyone choosing to gain. Make sure you go to the gym, run, not endlessly, but, for 15 minutes or so, enough to keep your heart pumping and healthy. Lift weights! I t will make you hungry, make the fat settle in a hotter, less cellulite-y way by increasing testosterone, and keep you healthy. If you run for 20 minutes, burn 200 calories, eat an Oreo or two and you’ve made up for the calorie loss, and still retain the benefit to your heart. I’ll get a total gainer friendly workout in another post, but, just get moving and get lifting.
To conclude - remember, that to gain one pound, a person must consume 3,500 calories more than are burned (500 calories per day over the course of a week). As long as your packing an extra 500 calories on top of what you're burning off with your daily caloric needs and exercise, you're gonna gain, no matter how healthy the food you get the 500 calories happens to be. A pound a week is a pretty respectable gain, I mean, think about it; You'd be 52lbs heavier this time next year if you just keep up that extra 500 calories a day. Pretty wild, hunh? And the boyfriend has gained nearly 100lbs in the nearly a year we've been dating, eating tons of organic, healthy food I've cooked and lifting a few times a week, so, I have first hand experience that following this kind of regiment works to get a guy healthy and growing. You just have to be consistent. So eat up, lift hard, and get growing guys ;)
Oh, and if any of you guys think of something I've missed, a good healthy gainer food, or something to avoid, a tip, a trick, just email me at getasnack@gmail.com and I'll tack it onto the post :)
