Honoring Myself - Doing what makes me smile

Last week, I made a mistake: I purchased brown crisped rice cereal from Erewhon to stir into my yogurt and fruit.  I didn't put two and two together that crisped rice would go soggy in about 2 seconds.  And it did and it was yucky.  What to do with the expensive cereal?

Rice crispy treats.  Yeah.  Why not?  Hubby goes - why on earth are you doing this?   "I want to"  I retorted.

My version will have marshmallows and peanut butter.  And butter.  I haven't made this in ages  - as in close to 15 years.  But making treats makes me smile.  I'll make them today and take them into the office tomorrow.  Yes, I'm an enabler.   But except for the marshmallows, I'm using real food.

Peanut butter:  peanuts, salt
Butter:  milk cream
Brown rice cereal:  brown rice
Marshmallows: more than 5 ingredients, so not real food.

My concoction will be 75% real food and OH SO MUCH better than the crappy commercial ones they sell in the vending machine. Yuck.

The next time I decide to make such treats, though, I'll skip the marshmallows - I found this recipe this morning: Peanut Butter Crispy Bars.  I don't have all the ingredients, but these do look like a wonderful indulgence to make at a later time.

What are you doing to make yourself smile today?

Soapbox: Pizza A Vegetable?

My husband and I are splurging this evening - we're having pizza.  We found a local pizza shop that makes fantastic pizza.  It's not healthy.  It's a splurge. And I plan to have a big salad with it so I'll be satisfied with one piece.  Even with the salad and the 1 slice limit, I know this type of splurge needs to be the exception to my eating - not the rule.  I'm sure I won't have any argument from my readers on this point!

So, my question is - why are we allowing our tax dollars to go towards putting unhealthy foods in our public schools?  I can see pizza every now and then - maybe every other month or so.  Part of teaching our children to make healthy food choices is to actually limit the unhealthy choices.  When the food budget is spent on pizza, then how can the healthier options be the focus?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/15/142360146/pizza-as-a-vegetable-it-depends-on-the-sauce

For the past few weeks, I've noticed a trend when NPR reports about obesity:  it's turning overweight people into victims.  There's an excuse offered in each article.  Is this so we can feel better about ourselves?

The obesity issue in this country is not simply a matter of calories in, calories out.  Or "Eat Less Move More."  It's also about big business.  It's about manipulation.  It's about dumbing down.  We have a choice - we can be victims - or we can opt to disengage.

How?  Choose to cook using real, not processed ingredients.  Choose to not frequent restaurants that serve food product in enormous quantities and assure us that's how normal people eat. (Chilis, The Cheesecake Factory, etc).  Choose to never frequent McDonald's again.

Choose to pack lunches to take to work and school.  Choose to learn to cook.

Choose to tell our government "leaders" that we will not stand by idly and allow them to sell out to big agri-business so that they can keep poisoning our children with crap food because they got the low bid on school lunches.

Choose to create a new normal where real food, real meals cooked and savored at home are the norm, not the exception.

One of the reasons I've put on some weight is because I started opting into the accepted food norms - eating cookies and sandwiches from the trays brought into the office instead of sticking to my healthy real foods brought from home.

Now - I'm choosing to opt out again.  I'm worth it.  Aren't you?

Home

So, vacation was fairly low-key.

Saturday: raked leaves

Sunday: moved leaves

Monday: defeated by hard mountain soil - hired cute young man to till the area where I'll plant my daffodil's next time.   Finally ate lunch at Yonah Burger.  Yum and thank goodness it's too far away to become a weekly or even monthly habit.

Tuesday: drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway - beautiful.  No pics, though.

Wednesday: down day - I did some knitting, some reading and some thinking.  And some posting on this blog.  Committed to moving the line closer to my happy health

Thursday: still pretty much a down day - went to the local yarn  store that is "going out of business" (it's really just changing owners) and scored on some great yarn

Friday:  still pretty much a down day.  Lots of knitting

Saturday:  time to come home

Today - slowly getting back into the grove of things.   We went to Whole Foods for lunch.    Expensive but good.  And then some shopping: kale, wild rice, trail mix, cashews, lettuce, an apple for me, peanut butter (I LOVE their 365 brand - it has two ingredients: peanuts and salt).  Some ground beef and a chicken breast, and some butternut squash soup.

In a little while, I plan to do some cooking for the week:

Roast some peanuts for D
Make some healthier muffins for D (they aren't low fat or high fiber, but they are better than a pop-tart)
Make some salad for me (steamed broccoli, hard boiled egg, frozen english peas, and chopped lettuce, lightly tossed with an herbed vinaigrette that I made this morning)
Make some chicken and rice soup for me.

Lots of cooking - but I'm in the mood for it.  Fall does that for me.

About that line - so far, I'm keeping true to my commitment to log every day.  I LOVE the iPhone App I bought over the week.  It's free form on the food so that takes a while, but amounts are not necessary.  Instead what the app has helped me to do so far, is to start stopping when the food no longer has an appeal to me.  It reminds me to stay focused on eating. To eat slowly and taste the food.

As I've mentioned before, I have a tough time with the stopping part when it comes to mindful eating.  I almost always wait until I'm hungry to eat.  But in the past, I have almost always cleaned my plate regardless of my satiation levels.   This app changed how I look satiation.  It suggested looking at the pleasure I derive from the food.  And I have noticed that food starts to lose it's appeal when I'm becoming satiated.  And thinking of it as I'm no longer enjoying this so I'm going to stop is working for me.

The app - very simply called MindfulEating  by ViaLean

The result: I came home from vacation weighing 2 lbs less than I did the Tuesday before we left.   And I enjoyed some great food - chocolate cheese cake, carrot cake, a yummy hamburger (with mayo, but no cheese), home made potato chips, fried shrimp, shrimp bisque, roast pork, chili, etc.  The key this week, is that I didn't eat too much of anything and I stopped eating when the food no longer held any appeal.

Chinese Style Marinated Celery and Carrots

Have I mentioned that I have a long-distance, one-sided, completely unrequited crush on Mark Bittman?

I loved his Bitten column in the NY Times (now changed to a food/dining column I don't like so much), his book Food Matters, and I finally splurged and purchased the How to Cook Everything iPad app. For an app, it's a bit pricey: $9.99 - but it is well done and I really like it.  So much I'm thinking about gifting one to my mother.  (I love that iTunes lets you do that).

Another Reason To Cook

Tufts has just release information from a study that shows restaurants average understating caloric values of their foods by 18%, but some items were under by 200%.   The same study shows frozen foods consistently being understated by 8%.  http://nutrition.tufts.edu/docs/pdf/releases/100106_Calorie.pdf

Add this information to what David Kessler has already told us about what the food industry is doing to restaurant and packaged food (I call it pre-digesting), you have a very strong case to stay home and COOK.

Of course, cooking doesn't mean opening a can, or plopping a frozen dinner in the microwave.   It doesn't mean opening a plastic tube of boiled egg whites.  Yes - can you believe it, we can't even boil our own eggs now.

Cooking is not hard.  It can be complex if you want it to be, but it doesn't have to be.  My partner and I have a home cooked meal every night.   During the week he spends, at most, an hour on prep.  Usually its' about 30 minutes.   We have roasted chicken,  hamburger steaks, steamed broccoli, braised brussel spouts, mashed potatoes, etc. on a routine basis.   On the weekend, every now and then, we'll have a more complex dish.  But the ingredients are whole, real food.

I typically make my own yogurt.  We make our own salad dressing.  I'm considering making my own peanut butter.   Sometimes we even make our own butter!

Those are weekend chores when there's more time.  But the sense of satisfaction I gain from knowing that I've made myself a staple food (yogurt) is worth the time.   I don't need to worry about what guar gum is.  Or why carrageenan  is in my yogurt.   Those are mild additives.  But I get worried when I start seeing yogurt packaged in plastic and branded Go-gurt.   What have they done to this pure, wholesome food?

Anyway, that's my rant for the day: Let's COOK. Real food.

Five Guys Burgers - never again

It's not that my burger was bad or even outrageously big.  It's the French Fries.  D and I ordered one regular fry to share.  Their regular fry could feed at least six people!

I will not knowingly frequent restaurants whose practices perpetuate the obesity cycle.  Five Guys Goes on The List

Being Realistic When It Comes To Food

As I type this, I just started a batch of yogurt incubating so some of you may think I'm being hypocritical. I know I've been struggling with it for a while myself.

As many of you know, I strive to avoid processed foods whenever possible. My definition of processed is fairly lax or I'd never be able to eat cheese or chocolate and well, life isn't worth living if I can't have cheese and chocolate sometimes. Mainly I avoid prepared foods like any of those "_____ Helper" boxes, frozen dinners, canned vegetables, mass produced yogurt, cereal, chips, etc. It's actually fairly easy to avoid these foods when I shop for the foods I like to eat on a regular basis. For the most part, I follow the mantra of sticking to the perimeter of the store. (Thankfully, my grocery store's wine department is on the perimeter!)

Anyway, lately, I've been wondering if a compromise might be in order as the time I have available to planning and preparing healthy foods and snacks for myself is diminishing. My snacks actually take planning - I don't eat just an apple. I combine fruit with peanut butter or some form of fat/protein for balance. My appetite is dimishing (thanks metformin) and I want to take advantage of that - but it's hard to stay balanced when working with just a few calories. I've been thinking about substituting Kashi Go-Lean Roll bars sometimes. But that's caused me much inner turmoil - is that compromise worth it? Can I just eat 1/4 of an apple with a smear of peanut butter instead of 1/2 with 1 TBSP? How do I keep the rest of the apple? The Kashi Bar can be cut in half and easily preserved. But the apple? Ack.

Anway - the above paragraph shows how good I am at making myself crazy. Then along comes Mark Bittman who also advocates real food. He also advocates eating realistically. His latest blog entry suggests we strive for good wholesome food, rather than organic or local or whatever the trendiest marketing catch-phrase is. And you know - I do put Kashi and the Kashi Go-Lean Roll bars in the category of good and wholesome. A bit processed - but it's not a fried Snicker's bar either.

Reconnecting

My partner and I are going on a pilgrimage for lunch today.  Last year, about this time, we discovered an wonderful family-owned restaurant near Jefferson, GA - The Redd House.  They have the best fried chicken outside of grandmother's kitchen.  And fried green tomatoes done right (all the slices are about 1/4" thick -no gross slabs), chicken livers, hush puppies, fried catfish.  Fried. Fried.  And More Fried.  

Luckily for me, they also have a fairly nice salad bar and vegetable table.  I can indulge in a little bit of FRIED and then fill up on veggies.

But it hit me today: we go there for more than the food.  We go for the ambiance.  It's family run and families go there to eat after church.   They all seem to know one another.  It's almost like Mayberry.   My partner and I are both from small southern towns and we're rather misplaced living in Atlanta.  It hit me today that we make the 90 mile trek to The Redd House not just for the great food, but to reconnect with our roots.

And I don't have to gorge on fried green tomatoes for the reconnection.  I'll be happy with one piece of catfish and a plate full of vegetables.  Fruit for dessert.   And I'll feel at peace with myself in all ways when we leave.

No Time is Not an Excuse

I've been seeing a lot of questions about how to eat healthfully when you 'don't have time' to plan, shop and prepare your food.  I am not a mother and I don't have 3 active teen-agers and a husband to feed.  I, did, however, grow-up in that environment.  My mother and father worked full time.  My brothers and I held part-time jobs and were very active in school.  And we sat down together and ate dinner together as a family.   The dinner table figures heavily in my childhood memories and I believe that one family activity helped shape me more than almost anything else we did.   For we're southerners and if there's food and people in the same place, there's going to be talk.  And talk we did.   I learned to shape my thoughts and debate ideas with my parents.  I'm not classically educated, but today, I hold my own with many people who are.  I know how to think and I thank my parents for that.

But I digress.  Back to the time thing.  I think that in many areas of this country we're busier than we were 30 years ago.  I don't think that's a good thing, but it is our reality.  The "food" industry as capitalized on that and as they've increased their profits by shrinking the quality of what they sell as "food" our waistlines have expanded.  When I was growing up, we ate vegetables that had been harvested from our garden and canned for winter consumption.   We didn't eat this way because we were food snobs, but out of necessity.   There was a recession going on and food was expensive.   My parents, while working full time, planned and planted and nurtured a garden big enough to feed five people during the growing months as well as provide enough produce for preservation for the winter months.  My father did the gardening - prepping the soil, planting, etc.  We ALL did the harvesting.  And my mother, with my "assistance" preserved the food - either canning or freezing hundreds of quarts of tomatoes, green beens, english peas, corn, squash, beets, pickles, peaches, fig preserves, pear honey, blackberry jam.  And more.  When did she do this?  At night, after dinner, she'd fire up the pressure-cooker and go to town.   Did she complain "I don't have time?"  No.  She did what she needed to do to provide real food to her family.   

I'm not suggesting we plow up our yards and grow our own veggies - but if you can, do.  I am suggesting, however, that we need to rethink our priorities and put healthy food back at the top of the list.  And we know we can't trust Con-Agra to sell us real, healthy food.  We need to buy base ingredients as locally as possible and then prepare it ourselves.   Since most of us are busy, we need to plan how we're going to accomplish this.

Here's my plan for the week:   This weekend, I made yogurt for myself and baked sweet potatoes to enjoy this week.  Last night, I took leftovers from a meal last week and added some steamed broccoli from last night's dinner and portioned out two lunches.  Tonight, after dinner, I'll cut celery and carrots and prepare a yogurt dip for snack variety.   Yes, I'll be tired after working all day, then working out and then cleaning the kitchen after dinner.  But - I'm worth the effort of making sure I have a healthy snack of real food instead of risking what the food industry wants me to buy from the vending machine.

And that's the point - I'm worth the time and effort it takes to eat real, healthy food.  So are you and so are your children.  Re-think things.  What can you do in 15 minutes today to have a healthy snack tomorrow?  

When I was single and super busy, I did take some shortcuts:  Amy's or other high quality frozen dinners if I didn't have anything else for dinner.  That's preferable to McDonald's.  In fact, a peanut butter sandwich is preferable to McDonald's - if you're not allergic to peanuts.  Stonyfield plain yogurt with granola or Kashi is preferable to Pop-Tarts and takes about 2 seconds longer.  Not everything we eat has to take a long time to prepare.  Think about what you can eat that requires minimal effort.  

Try, if you can to block some time on the weekends to cook for the weekend.  It doesn't have to be gourmet:  plain baked chicken or turkey, sweet potatoes and broccoli.   All told these dishes will take about 1 hour to prepare and you've got lunch for a week.  

Please don't misunderstand.  I recognize we're all super busy.  My time-constraints are far less than most people's and I appreciate that.  I also think that busy or not, with some planning and taking advantage of nature's own fast foods (fruits, nuts and veggies), we can eat healthfully.

.

Yummy Real-Food, Waist Friendly Hot Chocolate

Have you read the ingredient list on the packet of Swiss Miss Sugar-Free Hot Chocolate? It's scary - there's very little I can pronounce. I love hot chocolate and I love the convenience of the packets provided at work. But, I hate the way the chemicals make me feel.

My BF makes hot chocolate from scratch - whole milk, melted chocolate and a tiny bit of sugar. To die for. Maybe literally as well as figuratively if one drinks too much of this wonderful concoction. But, this traditional recipe is not practical for work. I needed something easier and went on a search.

Recipe after recipe called for non-dairy creamer. WHAT? Do you know what's in that stuff? Scary. Then I found it - the perfect recipe that calls for nothing but real ingredients:

1 cup dried non-fat milk
1/4 cup cocoa powder (Dutch processed is best)
1/2 cup sugar.
pinch of salt

That's a lot of sugar so I deviated from my real food campaign in lieu of health. I substituted Splenda granular for the sugar

Mix all the ingredients very well. For a serving of hot chocolate, mix 3 TBSP with about 6 oz of hot water. Stir well. Enjoy. 

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 serving

Amount Per Serving
Calories 56

Total Fat 0.5g
Saturated Fat 0.3g
Cholesterol 2mg
Sodium 63mg
Carbohydrate 9.9g
Dietary Fiber 1.2g
Sugars 8.1g
Protein 4.7g

Vitamin A 5% Vitamin C 1%
Calcium 15% Iron 3%

Look for Ideas

I think many of us get stuck in the same old thinking rut and tell ourselves 

"I don't have time."

"It will take too long"

"It's too expensive"

I just ran across another NY Times article by Mark Bittman that give some great inexpensive ways to incorporate REAL FOOD into your daily lives without adding a great deal of time or expense.  Fresh Start for a New Year? Let’s Begin in the Kitchen

I'm sending this article to my partner - the savoy cabbage with sherry vinegar sounds great!

Seven Powerful Words

Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants

                                                          - Michael Pollan

In my last post, I waxed inelegantly about eating real food and how it is worth the effort and expense to eliminate, as much as possible, processed foods from your diet.   I have to admit it wasn't until I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma that I began to understand just how perverted food has become in this country. Not only has food become perverted, so has our thinking about it.  And the more perverted our thinking becomes - the more money big agri-business stands to make.  But that's not really the point of this post.  If you want to know more about that - go get The Omnivore's Dilemma from your public library.  It's worth the read.  Plus, Michael Pollan is a great writer.  

I just stumbled across this NY Times blog entry: An Omnivore Defends Real Food  and started thinking a bit more about my rant about real food.  I also thought about a huge debate I tried to have with my partner's nephew's fiance.   We live in GA.  Tomatoes are not in season in January in GA.  My partner and I don't buy fresh tomatoes in January because 1) they taste horrible and 2) the carbon foot print it took to bring them here is quite huge.  We will buy tomatoes starting in June.  And hopefully, my garden will produce some this year.  Anyways, the debate was not possible - Jane (name changed to protect everyone's privacy) didn't get it.  My partner and I tried and tried to the point of being almost rude, but her stock answer was "I like tomatoes and what can one person do anyway?"

I think what saddened me is that Jane didn't seem to get it that her body deserves more than inferior tomatoes shipped in from Chile.   What saddens me more is that most of the population doesn't get it either.  And until we do, we're stuck with sorry tomatoes in January.

Wait.  Aren't tomatoes good for you?  Of course.  But fresh tomatoes in January (in GA) can not be locally grown.  They have to go travel half way across the country at best, but the more likely scenario is that they traveled half-way across the globe.  Picked well before they were ripe so they could survive the trip.  Why?  Because we've become greedy.  We like fresh tomatoes so we are entitled to have them in January.  Nope.  I don't buy it.   The costs - fiscal, environmental and social - are too great.

Yikes - I still haven't gotten to the Seven Powerful words.   If you can't tell, I get a bit passionate about this.  Let me try to get back on topic here.  Many people spend tons of time looking for the perfect diet.  Weight Watchers.  Jenny Craig.  South Beach, Atkins, etc. etc.  The perfect diet is summed up in seven powerful words: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.

Michael Pollan is not an diet expert.  But he's spent quite a bit of time researching the quality of our food and has seen correlations between eating food-like substances and obesity.  I know that I am far more satisfied with one piece of superb dark chocolate than I am an entire Snickers bar. Why?  Snickers has too many food like substances in its ingredient list.  But Pollan isn't advocating a chocoalte diet. Or  butter diet.  But a diet of real food where plants take center stage.  Not vegetarian, but more plants than animals.   And if you think about it - if you do that, your caloric intake should naturally reduce.  

It's not onerous.  Just takes a bit of discipline and planning.  And maybe a spirit of adventure to give fresh veggies a chance.

Real Food is ALWAYS the best option

**** Another Rant follows ****

I am lucky that my partner has been with me every step of the way in my weight management journey.   He's got some food issues - but most of them are good.  He prefers to eat real food instead of most of what is being hawked to the general public as 'food.'   As a result, we don't have margarine in the house.  We have butter.  And we use it.  Probably a bit too much.  We don't have 'light' anything in the house except my Laughing Cow cheese wedges.  We don't have any rice  mixes.  Or frozen dinners.  The only frozen vegetables we keep are english peas, butter beans and brussel sprouts.  We don't keep that much meat in the freezer either.  AND we eat a home-cooked meal every night.

Last night's meal:  leftover collard greens, black eyed peas (started from dried peas, not a can), ham steak and corn bread. The original meal took about 4 hours to prepare.  Last night's dinner took about 15 minutes.  And it was wonderful.  Maybe a bit too much sodium in the ham, but I was careful and made sure (by weighing) that I did not get more than 1 4oz portion.  

Tonight's meal:  some kind of chicken (either slow roasted whole chicken or stir-fried chicken breast) and steamed broccoli.  Maybe some rice.  Maybe some mashed potatoes.  Not sure what starch.  He has to have a starch.  But it's real.  This meal will take about 1 hour to prepare, but not all at one time.  I'll work out, he'll start dinner.  After I shower, we'll sit down for 'cocktail hour' and I'll enjoy a cup a tea while I try to beat him at a hand of gin.  If we have roast chicken, it will be in the oven making the house smell yummy.   If we have stir-fry - all the veggies and chicken will be ready to go in the wok.  

What's the common thread here?  We don't take shortcuts with our food.  We do our best to follow Michael Pollan's guidelines for determining what is real food:  Would our grandmothers recognize it?  Can we pronounce all the ingredients?  Are there more than 5 ingredients?  And for the most part I have no cravings when we eat this way.

This way of eating takes time and effort.  And when I think back to when I started having serious issues with my weight, it's when I moved away from this type of eating.  I grew up eating fresh veggies from our garden in the summer. Frozen or canned veggies from the same garden in the winter.  Meats were simple - or prepared with other vegetables in 1-dish suppers.  We always had vegetables.  But no bread on the table unless it was "Sandwich Saturday" or a winter meal and we made corn bread.   We didn't look at fat grams.  We didn't look at calories.  We ate normal portions and didn't gorge ourselves.  And except for my father, we were all healthy.

My father, though, was an exception.  He was on his way to developing Type II diabetes.  It runs in the family and we thought we were doing enough by substituting saccharine (shows my age) for half the sugar in our sweet tea.  We drank a lot of sweet tea.  It wasn't enough - but I'm happy to say he has his diabetes under control.  And for the most part - he eats real food.  Sweets, though, are prepared at home with Splenda.

When there are medical reasons to avoid a food that is basic to one's diet, (and sugar was very basic to my father's diet - that man has a sweet tooth that rivals mine) I can see limited use of artificial substitutes.  But when we start replacing fat with more sugar, salt and high fructose corn syrup, we are robbing our bodies of essential nutrition and filling it with chemicals we don't need.  Many of those chemicals create cravings to have more of that food - and we overeat.  

Yesterday for my afternoon snack, I ate 1/2 of a baby butternut squash, lightly sweetened with Splenda (I'm cutting my sugar consumption to avoid developing diabetes)  and seasoned with cinnamon.  It was like eating a yummy pudding and I was incredibly satisfied.   In my obese days, when I did eat processed foods and take all kinds of food shortcuts, I would have started with 1 sugar-free pudding.  And then had an other and another because it was 'diet' food and the chemicals making it 'diet' were not providing me with REAL nutrition and I craved more.

Read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma.   If you still want to eat at McDonald's or have one of those Fiber1 bars, I'll be surprised.