Plague of Strength

Before I begin, I’d like to extend a massive thank you to everyone who has been supporting the site on Patreon and by buying the books. I am currently riding shotgun on the way to the Arnold, and the fact that the fatties in Ohio drove off the expo means we have the perfect opportunity to grab random interviews with all sorts of athletes, and I’ve already got one set up with a 308 pound powerlifter who’s competing in what sounds like an utterly awesome open weight, open gear deadlift meet. I happened to run into him at Ares Nutrition right before getting on the road, which seems to be a rad sign for this weekend.

Seriously, guys- thanks a ton for the support. We’re going to be bringing you the most insane shit with which I can possibly come up, and we’re going to start working on some kind of publishing deal with someone so we can get proper editors and distribution. Until then, we’ll be back to the roughly weekly schedule I have for article releases. I won’t even pretend like I know what’s next because I’ve got no idea what craziness this weekend might bring. And there will be many pics, starting with dinner with Arnold tomorrow night. Yeah, that Arnold.

Sometimes you feel like the pickings get real slim when you’re short on cash, and you resign yourself to insipid, flavorless bullshit like chicken thighs and rice for a week. Yeah, it’s not as dry as chicken breast and a fraction of the price, but fuck me chicken and rice gets dull faster than a waterhead who just suffered a traumatic brain injury. Thinking that gains cost money you don’t have, you might end up fucking up and slacking off in the gym, and the entire house of cards you built up for a competition comeback, getting yourself as jacked as possible before going to some event, or just living a for of “train first” lifestyle mentality.

The latter bit seems kind of silly to me, because I’m not referring to the type of person who skips all sorts of cool shit to train according to some kind of rigid schedule- you know, the type who loves showing themselves in an empty gym on Thanksgiving night blabbering on about their gym ferocity when they should be higher than a Jewish holiday and drunk as shit, stuffing themselves with food and hanging out with human beings. Instead, I mean the type of people who just mentally prioritize training as essential rather than optional- the real lifters who are there for the experience rather than the posturing and the sense of community “fitfam” seems to bring the simpletons in that crew.

You guys remember human beings, right? They’re the people on the other side of Instagram from you. Turns out they exist in real life, and Tara and I recently started having a couple over to hang out and play PS4. Given that I’ve not had a real-life friend with whom I can hang out more than annually in the last five years, that seemed a bit of an occasion, and that precipitated the creation of this recipe. They were in the middle of a move fraught with all sorts of bullshit and resultingly short on cash, so we invited them over and Tara cooked up a few of pounds each of bangin’ pot roast and mashed potatoes, so we could send them home with a shitload of leftovers.

As with any time we purchase meat and potatoes, we overbought with the expectation that 4 pounds of meat is likely going to last the four of us a meal, with leftovers to get them to dinner the next day. We’d snagged an extra three pounds of pot roast and five pounds of potatoes because had the Arnold Weekend in three weeks, and I had been attempting to maximize my dimensions for that event. Mel had planned her banging Plague More Bacon Than Potato Soup (the recipe for which is in my opus 365 Days of Brutality (you can snag it electronically here or in paperback here), and that turned out to be the base for what might be the greatest muscle-building meal in the history of the culinary arts.

Having never had potato soup, I thought perhaps her claim that it was akin to eating runny mashed potatoes sounded like the same kind of happy horseshit people use to convince others that an Irish Car Bombs taste like anything other than a car tire filled with dog shit and boiled in apple cider vinegar. She’d made her Plague of Strength More Bacon Than Potato Soup for us once in the past, but I must have been too drunk to remember it. That, or she ate it before I could get to it, having thought potato soup would be the sort of vile pap one would feed to refugees or orphans.

I was wildly incorrect about the nature of potato soup (it’s beyond delicious), though I felt that to be a proper bulking food it needed more protein. I then added a couple of pounds of minced pot roast to her soup after realizing that I was essentially turning a meal of steak and potatoes into an old-timey protein shake. What follows is the method for making it, which is a mashup of my method for making the pot roast and her soup. When you see the macros you will understand that this is a meat stew with a potato base, and it tastes even fucking better than that sounds. If this shit can’t make you big, you should be in the motherfucking hospital because you’re too enfeebled to be among real humans.

Nutrition Facts (12 Servings)

Calories- 612
Total Fat- 23g
Saturated Fat- 8.8g
Cholesterol- 248mg
Total Carbohydrate- 38g
Dietary Fiber- 5.2g
Protein- 62g

If you’ve got any erectile tissue on your body, that shit should be standing as rigidly now as it would be if you were invited to a threesome with Jason Momoa and Lisa Bonet. That calorically-dense-as-a-neutron-star, protein-riffic delectability is 34% delicious fat, 25% starchy carbs, and 41% anabolic protein. If you turned that man-mountain Hafthor into a caveman’s protein shake, it’d be this fucking soup.

In the event you want a contextual basis beyond that, you can pretty much look anywhere potatoes are frequently eaten. Potato soup is obviously made from potatoes, which began getting cultivated in Peru about 7,000 years ago. When potatoes were introduced to Europeans in the late 1600s, they though the things were poisonous because they were eating the greens and tossing the tuber. Had they done it the other way round, they wouldn’t have shit themselves so hard they thought they had dysentary and puked like they were trying to preempt the Exorcist.

Having gotten that sorted, Europeans started eating potatoes as a low-cost staple food just after the Seven Years War (even I had to google the stupid thing- it grew out of the French and Indian War and was a weird world war involving a ton of countries of which you’ve never heard fighting on the behalf of either England or France. Almost all of Europe was involved save for Spain, the Dutch, and the Danish-Norwegians. in any event, postwar France suffered a horrific famine, and an all-around intellectual badass named Antoine August Paramentier established a bunch of potato soup kitchens in Paris to help alleviate starvation. Paramentier, clearly not a Republican, was a hyper-vocal and early proponent of smallpox inoculation and the George Washington Carver of the potato as a dietary staple. ewhich led to the naming of a shitload of potato-related dishes after him.

Those of you recoiling in horror at the thought of a human inoculating themselves against disease and helping the less fortunate should tuck away your tinfoil-lined MAGA hats for a moment, though, because no matter how distasteful you might find Paramentier for his humanitarianism and love of science, you should love him for bringing the joys of the potato to your plate.

At this point, potato soup is a staple dish of Ireland, Poland, Russia and America, but it’s likely most commonly known for being Irish. Given that Tara is violently Irish, I thought perhaps we would give a nod to a man who lived in the peak time of potato consumption in Ireland and thrived on the diet- bare knuckle boxer Dan Donnelly. At 5’11” and 200 pounds, Dan Donnelly (1788 – 1820) was a fucking giant compared to his contemporaries, and fought like the fucking badass he looked. Donnelly had gone to work as soon as he was old enough, swinging a hammer to help his ailing dad at his trade. That must’ve built up a level of spite in him at being so underpriveleged, and he was known to be a hard bastard at the bar if someone happened to cross him.

The town’s fighting hero, Donnelly fought off two sailors who were in the midst of raping a woman at the docks, but the fight left his arm mauled to the point that amputation was recommended. He was taken to the home of Dublin’s most prominent physician, who saved Donnelly’s arm and claimed him to be a “pocket Hercules,” which means that nickname was given to Donnelly over a century before it was given to a chain-smoking Turkish weightlifter. The doctor believed Donnelly to have been the physically strongest person he’d ever seen, which clearly lends itself to my narrative of the potato as an essential pillar in your temple of gains.

Donnelly became a boxer mostly to cover bar tabs and excelled at it, but would spend the entirety of the time between fights drinking away his money and opening pubs that would fail almost immediately. Donnelly became one of the first modern prize-fighters and in doing so an Irish hero, as he fucked up every Limey dickhead who crossed his path. Though Donnelly died at 32 of what seems to have been a drinking binge-induced bout of pneumonia, his legacy was massive, as he stood as a folk hero fighting the oppression of the evil English, their legions of aristocratic pederasts, and herds of adorable wild corgis. If you want more info on this dude, and his story is beyond legendary, here’s some cool info on him.

And with that, on with the recipe.

Ingredients for Roast

• 3 pounds boneless beef eye round roast or bottom round
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 5 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp parsley
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp rosemary
• 2 tbsp mustard powder (I use Chinese mustard powder for the extra wasabi bite)
• 3 tbsp horseradish (I love that flavor with my beef, and it adds a ton of punch to the beef. Plus, pungent foods are fucking awesome for you)
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan

Directions for Roast

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Season the roast like you would any steak or roast- pepper it like a motherfucker, but go a little lighter than usual on the salt. I’d not go too crazy on the salt, though, as you’ve got a shitload of parmesan in the mix as well. When you’re satisfied with your coverage, pat the meat to push the salt and pepper into the meat a bit.
3. In a medium saute pan over medium-high heat, add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, sear roast on all sides about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove roast to a sheet tray lined with a wire rack.
4. Meanwhile, place garlic, horseradish, parmesan, parsley, thyme, oregano, rosemary, mustard powder, 1/2 cup oil, and more pepper if you want (if you coat the thing in pepper it’s both delicious and crusty) in a food processor and pulse until mixture forms a paste.
5. Rub paste all over roast. Bake in the oven until the roast is cooked to medium-rare or registers 125 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, about 45 minutes (the rule is 15-20 minutes per pound).
6. Mince half of the roast into bite size pieces and store the rest for sandwiches or something.

Soup Ingredients

• A side of bacon
• 2 leeks
• a couple cloves of garlic
• 3-4 boxes of chicken stock
• 2 onions
• 5 lbs of potatoes
• Salt & pepper to taste

1. Cut up the bacon. I do it while it is still frozen because it is easier to cut, but if your knife skills suck, PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS! You will lose a finger.
2. Put the sliced bacon aside for safe keeping. (You know… In case you get mugged by a crazed bacon loving gunman.)
3. Wash your leeks, cut the roots and the woody ends off them. Split them in half (again… BE CAREFUL!), chop them, put them in a colander, then put that colander in a sink of cold water to rinse all the sand out of the leeks. While you are doing this have your stock pot heating…
4. Start cooking the bacon. (Yes, I know… this is an amazing thought, you wouldn’t consume frozen raw bacon.) Don’t have the heat up too hot, burned bacon is not what we are looking for this.
5. While the bacon is filling your house with all its bacon-ey goodness, chop or grate the garlic. I prefer mine grated, but I am high maintenance.
6. HEY! Did you forget about your leeks that were chilling in the cold water? Pull them out and let them drain.
7. Still keeping an eye on your bacon, dice your onions and if your bacon is done drain off about half the fat.
8. Saute the onion and garlic until pretty soft (Yup… Highly technical terms there).
9. Add the leeks. Stir, then cover for a minute or 2.
10. Scrape all the yummy brown stuff off the bottom of the pan, and turn the heat down to low and re-cover.
11. Clean your potatoes really well, then peel them. I usually leave a spiral of skin. It gives a better texture to the soup.
12. Dice the potatoes, and add them to the cooked down leek, onion, garlic, bacon mixture. Stir well as you are adding the potatoes. Add 2 or so boxes of stock (I go about an inch above the potatoes), then simmer the potatoes until they are tender.
13. Once the potatoes are done, bust out your blender (I am not cool enough to have an immersion blender.) CAREFULLY fill the carafe about half full with everything (solid & liquid).
14. Blend, empty into a bowl, repeat. If you have to add extra stock (hence all the extra boxes, DUH!), do so slowly and carefully through the little hole on the blender lid. Try not to over-blend. It’s supposed to be slightly chunky.
15. I take a potato masher to the last quarter of the soup so it is super chunky (that’s how I like my peanut butter too), pour the remainder into the bowl, salt & pepper it to taste and mix.

As this also fits into the Bulking on a Budget series, it stands to reason that I should run down the total cost on this bad boy. Using the prices at my local Shop Rite, here we go:

5lb Idaho Potatoes $4

Jar Minced Garlic $6

Smithfield Natural Smoked Bacon $6

Bottom Round Roast $11

4 Boxes Chicken Stock $12

2 Onions $2.50

2 Leeks $5

Total: $46.50

Price Per 612 Calorie, 62 Grams of Protein Serving: $3.88

And there you have it- perhaps the greatest bulking recipe in the history of the human experience, for less than four bucks a serving. If it gave a feisty drunken Irishman the physique of Rich Froning before the advent of modern medicine, you should fucking blow up on the stuff in the modern age.

And if you need supplements, I highly recommend you hit up my man over at Ares- it’s a rad nutrition shop with a lounge that’s in use every time I go, and the dude who runs it is crazy cool and seriously knowledgeable (plus he carries . If you’re in central NJ, go in there and check his shit out, because he’s got stuff you won’t find elsewhere (including some products that contain DMAA, though you’d have to contact him directly about that stuff). If you live too far away for that shit, hit up his site and see if there is anything that tickles your fancy. And before you ask, I have no business relationship with the guy- he’s just cool as fuck and I love his shop and selection.

I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire not limited to an interview with Judd Reid, the fifth man to complete a 100-man kumite in kyokushin karate, articles about the godfathers of powerlifting (one of whom is Mark Berry, and the other name escapes me at the moment), another about Jan and Terry Todd, more martial arts articles, and a slew of Killer Workouts articles. If there’s something you think that is imperative I write about, hit me in the comments and let me know. I will do everything in my power to snag a short interview with Hafthor this weekend, but I make no promises beyond putting aside my wild-eyed hatred for being filmed to give you guys some cool content in the coming months.

Sources:

Fahey, Denis.  An Irishman’s Diary on Dan Donnelly, Ireland’s undefeated bare-knuckle boxing champion.  Irish Times.  7 Dec 2015.  Web.  3 Mar 2020.  https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-on-dan-donnelly-ireland-s-undefeated-bare-knuckle-boxing-champion-1.2456142

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