Recently I have started working out, weight lifting and bodyweight training, accordingly I have tweaked my eating to include MORE calories (yes you’ve heard me correct, I am eating more, a LOT more) and a higher quantity of Quality protein.

Being on the go it’s not easy to keep up with all that food, that’s where Protein Bars come handy, very handy.  But unfortunately the commercially available protein bars out there have one drawback:  too much sugar.  A few weeks ago I developed a recipe for No-sugar almond and banana pancakes, which I thought would make a good starting point for making my own power bars.  After a few interactions, a couple of disasters, this is the version of power bar that I am making right now, it’s easy to prepare, delicious, and each bar provides:

• 125 calories
• 12 g proteins
• 13 g of carbs (healthy carbs! No refined sugars, no dates, no HFCS)
• 3 g fat

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 cup fat free milk
• 2 medium bananas, mashed
• 1/2 cup shaved almonds
• 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 5 oz of Double Rich Chocolate Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard

STEP 1: mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl (almonds, flour, oats, protein powder)

STEP 2: in a mixer (I use my KitchenAid and it works great) mix the wet ingredients (eggs, milk, almond extract, bananas) for about 20 seconds.

STEP 3: add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix thoroughly, about 60 seconds.

STEP 4: line the bottom of a brownie pan with parchment paper, I use 2 7×7 pans.  If you use non-stick pans, you can skip the parchment paper.

STEP 5: pour the mix in the pan(s)

STEP 6: bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

DONE!  Let it cool, cut into 16 bars.

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

Cypripedium (Lady's slipper orchid)

For more info on this weed:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypripedium

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{Photography © 2011 by Toscana Enterprises Corporation, all rights reserved}

If you want to be YESsed to death, I know a few business consultants that you can hire. They have great pedigrees and as long as you pay their hourly rate, they will tell you how wonderful you are, how everything you do is the greatest thing; and that there are just a few tweaks here and there that need to be ironed out . . .

Then, there’s Steven Pressfield who dares to tell you with a straight face, “Better to be stupid than to be smart”, which makes you ponder:

• I’ve been called smart in my life, actually I’ve been told that I am very smart; and it made me feel good, really good. I thanked those individuals profusely for going out of their way to pay me those compliments.  In my eyes they are pretty smart people themselves.
• I’ve been called stupid (not many times, I swear).  Shame on those people.

I can assure you that after reading Steven’s latest book Do the Work not only I feel smarter, in a dumber kind of way, but I truly believe that he’s got a point. Or two, or three . . .

Do the Work is unadulterated, un-coated preventive medicine for the Artist-Entrepreneur in you.  It is not bitter, in fact it is quite humorous.

“Doctor” Pressfield’s prescription covers an interesting array of modern day maladies:

1. The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.
2. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.
3. Any diet or health regimen.
4. Any program of spiritual advancement.
5. Any activity whose aim is the acquisition of chiseled abdominals.
6. Any course or program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction.
7. Education of every kind.
8. Any act of political, moral, or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or conduct in ourselves.
9. The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others.
10. Any act that entails commitment of the heart – the decision to get married, to have a child, to weather a rocky patch in a relationship.
11. The taking of any principled stand in the face of adversity.

In other word, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity.

It’s a fast read in terms of quantity (lower cap, of course), but it is an important read in terms of Quality (let’s capitalize what’s important); important for anyone involved in DO-ing and Creating Art, in whichever form your Art presents itself.

But wait, there’s more!  In the present transition state of the publishing industry at large, this project represents a rare piece of innovation since the Kindle edition is free, always free thanks to the generous sponsorship by GE, and part of uncle Seth’s Domino Project.

Chances are you’ll read it at once, you’ll love a good part of it, let’s say half.  You’ll hate the other half; and it’s this second half that – if you are like me – will make you go back and re-read it again. And then you don’t want to read anything else, go on a reading diet; and stART something ASAP.

If you are smart, don’t read it.
If you are stupid you might already know everything in there, but something inside you tells you that it’s worth a refreshment, so that you can get closer to be a stupid genius (a process, not a destination).

Related Steven Pressfield’s videos at SODBTV.com

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{Photography by Paul Downey}

Mario Alfano

There are a few people that we encounter during the course of our life that define the word exquisite.

Mario Alfano is one of those rare individuals.  Me and so many of his friends are lucky to have shared with him much laughter, lunches at the North End, espresso, and stories about Italy, food, Polaroid, and crazy Ferrari rides.

Mario is an exquisite, kind, generous, opinionated great guy that epitomizes the fact that being Italian is not only a national origin, but more importantly a state of mind; demonstrated mostly with a humble smile and a sincere hug.

Mario’s body gave in his fight with the c-battle, and yet his spirit is alive in all of the people whom he touched and who are lucky enough to call him a friend.

Mario, we miss your smile, your presence, your voice and your savoir faire.  We know that your spirit lives on wherever you are now.

(I hope they have good food there).

Ciao, we’ll see each other, one day.

Mario’s Obituary

Where Magic Happens– © 2011 Toscana Enterprises Corporation, All Rights Reserved

What did Johannes Gutenberg invent?
Most people would answer that Gutenberg invented the printing press, but that is incorrect.  What Gutenberg invented was even more ingenious, he invented a Movable Type System.

The genesis of printing press technology can be traced back thousands of years to wood block printing in China.  So next time you have a book in your hands, rectangular in shape with black printing on white paper . . . think about the fact that its technology is thousands of years old.  The invention of the Kindle innovates on the acquisition and transportability of text, but the book paradigm remains the same, text on rectangular pages.

In a time where multimedia and mobile internet are tried and true technologies, what is the meaning of a book?

The way I look at it, since the dawn of men, the purpose of a book has been one of the following two:

1. Knowledge transfer (e.g.: Polya’s How to Solve it)
   OR
2. Entertainment (e.g.: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo)
   (or a combination of the two)

Personally, I LOVE books. I like the feel of holding it in my hands, the act of turning a page, the smell of an old book, the look and feel of libraries, bookstores, or a stack of books; and recently, I have even started to write on books, making notes on the white space surrounding the writing.  To me the experience of reading an engaging book is akin to an intimate conversation with the author.

But let’s not confuse the medium with the message.  There’s still a charm in experiencing typing on a mechanical typewriter. I still have my dad’s Lettera 22, arguably one of the first portable writing instruments and a precursor of the modern-day  laptop.  But the book as we know it, rectangular shape, ink on paper is a shrinking business opportunity, soon to become a niche opportunity.

Just like any shift, we have some attempts that give us an insight into a more sensory rich experience when it comes to “books at large”:

• vook.com is publishing rich-media ebooks, richer than Kindle and Kindle-type publisher;
• AdCracker has been publishing for many years a hybrid Web site/CD-Rom freemium service, excellent content, interesting medium;
• The Domino Project by Seth Godin is a promising new business model, but no technical innovation; at least not yet;
• CafePress.com and Lulu‘s  print-on-demand efforts have yet to dominate the marketplace;
• eBookBurn.com removes any and all technical barrier for anyone with content to publish for Kindle and Kindle-like devices;
• I am sure there are others, and the good ones are either under the radar, or are planning the way to ride and direct the wave.

Maybe this is the end of the business for books as we knew it.  The web has indeed replaced a lot of the printing business.  I see nothing wrong with brochureware sites; they serve their own purpose. White papers and case studies can only be found online where they get consumed, and paper user manuals are about to be extinct.

Rebecca Black’s phenomena has entertained us not only on video but also on the YouTube commentary, MP3, traditional media interviews and Op-Eds; all amplified by the Web.

• Knowledge Transfer:  if any of us has a question on “how do I….”, a quick search on Google or Amazon will yield if not the direct answer at least a pointer to the answer.
• Entertainment:  Seinfeld & Co. has entertained and continues to entertain us with not one iota of ink or paper being used, and it’s not available on Kindle either.

The book of the future has written itself off, the message is now free to pick the right medium for its context & timing, from Twitter to YouTube to more and more people sharing more and more of their creative genius in real time via photos, videos. . . so, what happens to authors in search of a book to share with the world?  Maybe “author” is a too restrictive of a notion.  We need to re(think+define) authors into content generators.  The art of transferring knowledge or entertaining has expanded to include more tools (photos, videos, social media…) and platforms.

Ink on paper: how quaint!

Interesting and somewhat related articles:

• The End of Content Ownership
• Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes
• Post-Artifact Books and Publishing (Update)
• The Last Hardcover (Update)
• How the long tail cripples bonus content/multimedia (Update)

___________

{Photography by: Thomas Guignard}

• The future is not what it used to be (1,850,000 Google results as of this writing);
• Things are not like they used to be (1,470,000 Google results as of this writing);
• We live in a brand-new world (2,460,000 Google results as of this writing);
• The Internet has changed everything (505,000 Google results as of this writing).

And so on, and on, and on.  Everyone has a smart sounding readymade phrase to offer as a commentary to any headline or social conversation (online or offline).

And here’s my contribution:  I disagree.  The future is exactly as it was to be expected.

Fundamentally, nothing has changed or is new in the world as we’ve known it for the past 6,000 years or so, give or take a handful of centuries.  The only observable and finite variable which clocks at a different measure than previously recorded is the speed of change, not change itself.  Alas, observation for any period of time demonstrates that such speed has always been increased speed, so any formulaic expression would have to take into consideration acceleration as a variable, and not speed as a constant.

Where once a Blue Chip company could live off the power of its own inertia due to its sheer size for decades, with one of the by-products being lifetime employment for many people; nowadays a 10 year cycle is beyond Long Term. At the end of the present decade, in the year 2020, not one established company in existence today will be alive, and if they are, they will  look nothing like what they look like today.  Not even Facebook.
Ask AOL or MySpace.

As kids, we have all heard grownups telling us:  “Question Everything”, but now as adults, when it is our turn to pass on the Question Everything wisdom, it’s a good exercise to reflect on when did we ever Question Everything.  And I mean Everything!
Discussions with your boss who wouldn’t let you do that brilliant paradigm-changing idea don’t count. Nor do your discussions with your significant one, let alone your in-laws.  Talk with no action is just noise, no points there.

Let’s face it, you never started with a blank slate and questioned everything, as in Everything.  A part of you was either brainwashed or had a conflict of interested with the status-quo, or a subset of it, so that you haven’t pioneered any game-changing ideas, no new paradigms, and no disruptive technology either.  And the jargon gets really boring too.

And now for the good news:  There’s a Revolution underway. Smart individuals the world over are truly questioning everything, for the very first time.   No attachments and no anchors to any assumptions whatsoever, re-thinking and re-defining what it means  . . . .  with it being everything that surrounds us.

One of the businesses that epitomizes such a change is: outstandinginthefield.  Let’s start with the name.  Does it mean “Outstanding in the Field” or “Out, Standing in the Field”?  To me it signifies both: it’s clever, brilliant, fun . . . .
It’s a about food.  Is it?  Surely it’s not a grocery store, but . . . is it a restaurant?  It sounds more like a party.

This is how I imagine the brainstorming went:
What is a restaurant?  It’s not food.  A restaurant is an experience, a multi-sensory experience centered about food.  And centered about the people you share the meal with.  What does it mean to go to a restaurant with someone important in your life to celebrate a special occasion?  To have a good time celebrating . .  life?  What’s a special occasion? What if the meal per se . . . the experience of the meal per se becomes the special occasion?
And how can we make it a win-win-win-win proposition for everyone, for the field owners, the local farmers, the local winery, the local town, the diners, their guests . . . .
The trend in restaurants are: temporary restaurants, slow food, local ingredients, pop-up restaurants, celebrity chefs . . . put it all together and  . . . what have you got?

Outstanding in the Field is one answer.

Dinner in the Sky is another answer.

Of course, it’s easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback.  And yet the principle remains the same.  Now more than ever the Art of Entrepreneurship is about taking a NEW approach to everything, re-think it all and re-define what it means to _____ .

What is a charity? What is the function of a conference? Is graffiti the new art?

Answers are boring, stick with the questions; better questions are the sources of pure innovation.

ReThink + ReDefine Everything = inNEWation

How’s that for a formula?

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{Photography © 2011 Toscana Enterprises Corporation, All Rights Reserved}

An Italian Kiss– © 2011 Lor3nzo, All Rights Reserved

“My point, exactly!”

There is no Art.  If we believe that Art exists on its own, we disconnect Art from the Artist; and we can accept that one can live without the other.  They can’t.  Art and the Artist are tied to the hip, but unlike the chicken and the egg, the Artist came first, and then Art was created.
There cannot be Art without the Artist behind it.
And once an Artist, everything he does becomes Art, or at least should be.

Calder, Picasso, Julian Schnabel, Marcel Duchamp are wonderful examples of Artists creating Art in every aspect of their lives: from ready-made and urinals, to miniature circus performances. And let’s add to the list the Art of Leonardo da Vinci, Man Ray, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol. Their Art, their truest Art, is not an object or something tangible that you can touch. It’s not the piece that you can buy or sell; their Art is an extension of who they are, just like an arm or a leg.  It is more like their mind and their soul, and it is a verb:

I ART THEREFORE I AM.

To borrow a quote from the Seinfeld-Star Trek collaboration:  They “are not really dead if we find a way to remember” them.
Their bodies might be buried somewhere, fertilizing daffodils, but they live in the Art that they have left us. Their ideas are like viruses that infect the mind and capture the creativity and the imagination of Artists the world over, who get to stand on the shoulders of these giants.

What does it means to be an artist today?

Make art, not war.

Picasso on Art

If you disagree and think it’s not one of the best song ever, despite 44,075,303 youtube views as of 3/24/2011, watch Rebecca’s interview with Jay; the crucial point is when she says I’m 13

The Beacon Hill's Wild Turkey

{Photography © 2011 by Toscana Enterprises Corporation, all rights reserved}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_%E2%80%93_Live_in_Berlin