Go Mediterranean with this delicious citrus-flavored recipe. You’ll get plenty of heart-healthy fats from the olives, plus 4 grams of filling fiber.
Ingredients: Chicken breast halves, lemons, honey mustard, fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth, whole-wheat couscous, pimiento-stuffed olives, kalamata olives, basil, olive oil, pepper
Calories: 318
This white barbecue sauce combines mayo and vinegar for a slightly creamy sauce for half the fat. Serve withSuccotash Salad and Two-Potato Salad With Crème Fraîche for a complete picnic feast.
Ingredients: Chicken breast halves, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, chipotle chile powder, light mayonnaise, white vinegar, black pepper, red pepper, lemons
Calories: 252
Combine lemon juice, soy sauce, fresh ginger, lemon pepper, and garlic to make a kickin’ marinade for grilled chicken. Fruit salsa adds sweetness, crunch, and a bit of fiber to this tropical dish.
Ingredients: Lemons, low-sodium soy sauce, ginger, lemon pepper, garlic, chicken breasts, cooking spray, pineapple, kiwifruit, oranges, mango, red onion, cilantro, cumin, salt, pepper, jalapeño peppers
Calories: 257
Whether you prefer your chicken over lettuce, in a pasta dish, or on a bun, we’ve got a recipe for you. Enjoy 15 lean and flavor-packed ways to make grilled chicken great.
Grilled Chicken With Speedy BBQ Sauce
Marinating the chicken in olive oil, peppers, and onions creates a savory base for the tangy layer of barbecue sauce.
Ingredients: Olive oil, red onion, green bell pepper, barbecue sauce, chicken breasts, salt, pepper
Calories: 191
Smoking these days can be lonely business, what with smoking now banned in many bars and other traditional smokers’ hangouts. But a new handheld device is designed to help smokers find each other–and it might even help them kick the habit.
Meet the “blu Smart Pack,” the world’s first social-networking cigarette package.
The rechargeable package–scheduled to go on sale in June for $80–connects wirelessly to social-networking sites and even flashes a blue light and vibrates if it detects other packages within 50 feet.
“You’ll meet more people than ever, just because of the wow factor,” Jason Healy, the company‘s founder, told The New York Times.
Not everyone’s as convinced it’s such a great idea.
Adam Alfandary, 24, a smoker from Brooklyn, N.Y., called the pack one of the dumbest ideas he’s ever heard. “And I’m saying that in full acknowledgment that smoking is one of the dumbest things I can do,” he told the Times.
Smoking cessation experts aren’t sure the device–which is designed for use not with traditional cigarettes but with so-called “e-cigarettes,” which deliver nicotine-laced water vapor instead of tobacco smoke–is anything more than a gimmick.
Dr. Alan Blum, director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, told CBS News the idea of a social network is “wonderful.” Blum points to a 2008 New England Journal of Medicine study (PDF) that showed smokers who joined others in trying to stop smoking were more likely to succeed than smokers who tried kicking the habit on their own.
“But I really don’t understand how this e-pack signal is going to do anything other than help you pick up girls.”
Almost 50 million Americans are regular smokers. Smoking can cause heart attacks, strokes, and many forms of cancer, in addition to other health problems.
You take a scale. You give it Wi-Fi. And then you let it log in to your Twitter account to tell the world how much you weigh each morning. That’s what this is: the Wi-Fi Body Scale.
At first it sounds silly, but the more I think about it the more I like the idea. If I’m trying to lose weight, this is a good way to force me to watch what I eat lest I embarrass myself in front of my Twitter followers. If it shows me blowing up like a whale instead of dropping pounds then I don’t just know I’m doing something wrong, my peers do, too. Shame can be a powerful tool.
The $159 scale already records the user’s body weight, lean and fat mass, and calculated body mass index (BMI) to a secure Web site accessible by the user. The Twitter integration, though, is a new feature. The Twitter feature is being called “peer motivation” by Withings, the scale’s maker, and they’re right. I’d call it “weight loss by fear as motivation,” but I’m just some blogger.
French company Withings has made a name for itself with its Wi-Fi body scale. Now it’s announced the U.S. availability of its Blood Pressure Monitor, which it touts as the only “BP cuff in the world to connect directly into any iOS device.”
While the extra hardware will run you a somewhat steep $129.99, needless to say, there’s a free app in the mix that shows BP measurements and keeps track of user stats.
Withings is calling the Blood Pressure Monitor truly plug-and-play. Wrap the cuff around your arm, then plug the cable into your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and the Withings app automatically launches.
You can access your stats from your iOS device or your personal Withings Web page. The company says results are saved denoting dates and time of day for each reading, to help when comparing morning, afternoon and evening readings. You can share results with your doctor via an integrated email link or sync with personal health record sites like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault that your doctor can access.
If you happen to have a Withings Body Scale, your weight and blood pressure are tracked on the same graph of the application. No word yet on whether you’ll be able to tweet your daily blood pressure as you can tweet your weight with the body scale app, but we certainly hope it’s an option.
Here are the tech specs for the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor:
The U.S. Air Force has begun a major transition from Windows XP and Vista to Windows 7. When the process is complete in December 2011, all of the service’s 600,000 desktop and laptop computers will be upgraded.
Speaking at a Pentagon press briefing on Nov. 2, Air Force Chief Information Officer, Lt. Gen. William Lord described the process as “a daunting task.” He added that the transition is not really a technical challenge so much as a user experience issue.
When the Air Force moved from Windows XP to Vista, Vista provided the service some “very good” security fixes, Lord noted. However, the security features also made deployment more difficult, he said.
One of the Air Forces’ goals for managing the migration to Windows 7from Windows XP and Vista is to make it seamless or “almost real time,” said Lord. The migration will provide users with the benefits of Vista’s security features without forcing users to experience the inconvenience of an extended transition. For personnel using Vista, which is the majority of the service, the transition will be nearly transparent.
Windows XP users will see more changes. There is good and bad news in this process, said Lord. The good news is that Windows 7 will provide many new features, but the downside is that the transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 will force users to change all of their computer settings. “Just when they have their machines set up exactly the way they want it, we push a change,” he said.
Due to the major differences between Windows XP and Windows 7 software, Air Force officials anticipate a higher level of support and help desk requests. In an Air Force news release, Col. Mark Ware, director of operations for the 24th Air Force, explained that the upgrade is also tied into the acquisition of new equipment. In the statement, Ware said that with the implementation of Standard Desktop Configuration 3.1, newly purchased equipment must support Windows 7, and that that hardware will have the operating system loaded on delivery to the customer.
The Air Force needs about six to nine months to roll out a new operating system across the service, Lord said. There are about 19,000 applications running on the network, all of which can potentially experience problems when a major upgrade is implemented. “The process takes a long time because we’re trying to make sure that we fix each of applications,” he said.
Besides upgrading to Windows 7, the Air Force is also looking as IT consolidation as an efficiency and cost saving measure. By cutting the number of applications from 19,000 to 10,000, Lord said the service expects annuals saving of between $600 to $800 million by not having to maintain legacy connections.
The other services will also either migrate or are considering the possibility of moving to Windows 7. NextGov reports that the Navy is planning to migrate desktop computers connected to the Navy Marine Corps Intranet to the new operating system in January 2011. But the Army will continue using Vista for the time being, although it is testing Windows7.
The Army plans to install microgrids in Afghanistan as part of its mission to reduce its energy-related vulnerability in the field.
A three-month experiment will deploy a system designed to use fuel more efficiency and pave the way solar and wind power in the field, the Army said earlier this week.
Right now, the Army uses diesel generators to power its bases. Transporting that fuel for generators and its vehicles comes at a significant financial and military cost as fuel convoys are often targets for attack.
The microgrids the Army plans to install will include diesel generators that are able to communicate with each to dole out only the amount of power that’s needed, saving on fuel. The basis for one microgrid will be four generators able to produce one megawatt. That will replace 22 smaller units, a move that should make maintenance simpler and cut fuel use.
The microgrids will include controls to integrate power generated from solar panels and storage systems. One of the design goals for the Army over the long term is to have modular systems where different sources of power can be used without complex on-site engineering.
“They’re being designed so that a soldier can just hook them up any way and plug things in and not have to worry about doing prior analysis of how the power grid should be laid out or what load should be placed where,” said Chris Wildman, the Hybrid Intelligent Power program lead, in a statement. “The generators automatically talk to each other, recognize each other and can control each other without Soldier intervention.”
The target application for Army microgrids are bases that start small but grow rapidly and see a rapid increase in power demand. For its tests in Afghanistan, the microgrids will power non-essential operations, such as laundry and kitchens.
The U.S. military has already tested solar panels in Afghanistan as a way to cut down on diesel generators, solar-powered shade tents, and portable solar panels for soldiers on patrol, all of which is part of a strategy to minimize the amount money spent on fuel.
Is it fair to imagine that some people just don’t want to know about how certain things are done? If they did, perhaps their irrational side might overwhelm the blinkered side that helps them get through each and every painful day.
Does everyone want to know, for example, that the Boeing 737 in which they are strapped is flying on the detritus of some very fine french fries?
In the last few days, KLM and Thomson Airways, two European airlines, announced that they would be flying a plane or two using cooking oil.
In KLM’s case, the BBC reported that no fewer than 200 flights between Amsterdam and the home of cooking, Paris, will be powered by biokerosene. This fine fuel happens partly to emerge from the ashes of used frying oil.
Thomson announced this week that it would use the very same fuel–an even 50-50 mixture of Jet A1 fuel and hydro-processed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) on, according to the Telegraph, a flight from Birmingham, England, to Palma, Majorca.
Of course, the theory behind this fuel is that it will reduce carbon emissions. And experiments with such biofuels have been going on for some time. For example, Air New Zealand flew a 747 partly on old cooking oil back in 2008.
I know the more technically minded will throw their arms up in the air and raise their eyebrows beyond their tattooed foreheads when I suggest that not everyone might immediately want to know all this. Not everyone will feel comfortable that their plane is flying on gallons of old extra virgin that might have been used to saute carrots.
I fancy that those who already find flying a trying experience might not want to imagine that their plane has suddenly been co-opted into the food chain.
If airlines truly feel the need to advertise their green credentials, perhaps they should consider giving each of these cooked-up flights a cooking theme.
Perhaps they could serve food within them that has been prepared with the same cooking oil. Or perhaps they could at least release a pleasant cooking odor into the planes, so that nervous passengers can bathe in the smells of home cooking, while the leftovers are being used to fly the plane to Paris.