Pantry Clean-out

I went to my pantry and found one box of organic granola, with a couple of "unpronounceable", but natural ingredients. I found organic vanilla wafers, ditto on the ingredient list. And trail mix bars, ditto again on the ingredient list. Everything else is just food. Dried fruit, pasta, canned tomatoes, rice, oatmeal, etc. I have some condiments like Tabasco sauce and salsas. They're food, too.

My fridge is even better. I didn't find anything that wasn't food in there. I don't keep a stock of frozen dinners. I can make omelettes in less time than cooking a frozen dinner and we'd rather have that.

If I want to be strict about this, I will need to make granola and make my own granola bars. I have the ingredients and plan to make it tonight after dinner. I like a bit of it on top of yogurt and fruit. I use a teaspoon of jam instead of sugar to sweeten the yogurt and it's a really good snack. The brand of jam has to say "fruit spread" because there aren't any fake ingredients in it. Go figure!

I should make my own cookies, if I'm going to eat them. Normally I do that, but these were purchased for one of the recipes I got to test, but had my schedule change and didn't have time to make the recipe.

I guess I'm doing pretty well on the eat food front. I think I have recipes for a lot of the condiments and could make them myself, but I don't see the need, for the most part, because they pretty much are just food and the serving size is so small that I doubt it makes much difference. I like to make that stuff, but it's hard to find the time.

I found out that vegetable stock keeps almost indefinitely in the refrigerator if you boil it for 5 minutes every few days. You also can freeze it. I'm going to make a batch of roasted vegetable stock and a batch of mushroom stock. Some of the vegetable stock I'm giving to my mom so the friend who cooks a lot of her meals can use it. I don't add salt to the stock, so it's better for her salt-restricted diet. And it means that I won't have more in my house than I have space to store and use.

The thing about vegetable stock is that it's a good base for anything. If you need chicken, veal, or beef stock, you can put a little of the appropriate demi-glace in the vegetable stock to get the flavor you're looking for. Demi-glace is concentrated stock. It keeps in the fridge for a very long time. It seems expensive, but the cost per serving is actually pretty small because it's so super concentrated that you don't use very much at a time. It's a great way to boost the flavors of sauces and gravies, too. One thing to note is that you should add the demi-glace before you season the stock, sauce, or gravy. Then taste. Often there's enough salt in the demi-glace to season your dish without adding more.

You can make your own demi-glace. It's very time-consuming. You make a poultry, beef, or veal stock. Then simmer it for a day or two, until it's concentrated down. A woman I used to work with made some and I think 8 or 12 quarts of stock made something like 2-4 cups of demi-glace. And it took 2 or 3 days of simmering. I'm not super comfortable with simmering stock on my stove while I sleep, but I suspect you can simmer it all day, then cover it and store it in the refrigerator overnight. Repeat until you get the stock concentrated enough. But I doubt I'll be doing that any time soon. I need to make better use of my time, so I'm using the demi-glace I bought at Williams-Sonoma.

Ingredients & Michael Pollan

I've been really busy and frustrated by not being able to find time to make ingredients. We've been eating more in restaurants than I'd like to. But I'm doing extra cooking now because my mom needs super low-sodium meals and she can't cook for herself. So, I need to revisit this idea and time-shift more of my meal prep to times other than immediately before dinner. My new slow cooker really helps with that.

I made steel cut oatmeal in the slow cooker. Best oatmeal I've ever eaten. And that takes care of breakfast for a while. I know that's not an ingredient, but it gives me ideas for other things I can do.

An online friend made dulce de leche in her slow cooker. You put the can of condensed milk in water and cook it in the cooker on low. I wonder if you can put the finished dulce de leche in freezer containers and freeze it. I'll have to try it sometime when I'm looking for ingredients for dessert, not meals.

I think the first ingredient I want to use my slow-cooker for is beans. Cooked beans freeze really well in plastic bags. Plastic bags take up less space in the freezer than containers, so I prefer to use them whenever I can. Then I can use them instead of canned beans. Dried beans taste so much better and they're so simple that they're worth making and keeping around to use in recipes.

I have a reason for wanting to do dried beans first. Silicon Valley Reads 2010 is reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. We went to a free Q & A session with Michael Pollan, hosted by Mike Cassidy, a local newspaper columnist, which was the kickoff event in the 2010 Silicon Valley Reads. There's a video of that conversation on the web site.

The front cover of the book has a seven word phrase that sums up Michael's theme. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He has a new book, Food Rules, which consists of 64 rules that explain how to follow that seven-word theme. I read both books and he makes a lot of sense.

It occurred to me that if you adopt one rule a week, you could be following them all in a bit over a year. It would be an interesting experiment. I probably could do it in a year, since I already do some of them. It makes sense to start with rule number 64-Break the rules once in a while, so I don't go crazy trying to be perfect. Or maybe keep Rule 64 in mind as I add the other ones to my life.

He divides up the book into three parts. Part I is What should I eat? That seems to be the big question of our time. People avidly read nutrition studies looking for what constitutes a healthy diet. But the nutrition studies have one huge flaw-they pull out one nutrient at a time to study because it's easier to study one thing. But we don't eat that way. We eat foods in combination with other foods. And the nutrients get all mixed up in our system, so one may enhance another or cancel it out. That's one reason why it's so hard to figure out what to eat.

It seems like there's the "Nutrient of the Month". A study comes out and suddenly there's fiber being advertised in everything. Or probiotics. Or something else. Then another study comes out and that recedes into the background in favor of the next nutrient. It does get confusing.

Part 2 is Mostly plants. That seems self-explanatory, until you start to think about it. He came up with 21 rules on that subject. One question is which plants? Another is how much of your diet should be plants and how much everything else? This--mostly plants-is why I want to keep more precooked beans around. I see more vegetarian meals in my future. I've been eating less meat lately because of the expense, but I can see that we'll be cutting back a bit more and beans are a really good and easy base for fast vegetarian meals, especially if they're already cooked.

Part 3 is Not too much. There's a sticky one. How much is "not too much"? People really don't want to hear "eat less", but that's his message. And he talks about how to do that.

Anyway, I think it's less likely to hurt my health to follow Michael Pollan's rules than to continue to participate as a guinea pig in the food experiments perpetrated on Western society by the huge food processing companies. I don't eat much processed food anymore, so it's mainly a matter of refining my choices and figuring out how to make them work in the trenches of a busy life.

I think I want to alternate between each section of the book. It will keep a better balance. So, this week I'd start with Rule One. Next week will be Rule 22. The following week would be Rule 44. Then back to Rule 2. And so on. I'll try to post at least once a week on how it's going.

Rule One is Eat food. This rule is about choosing real food, not food created by food processing companies. My task for the week will be to get rid of any fake food that happens to be in my pantry and fridge. I suspect there won't be much, but I won't have time to do this until tomorrow or Saturday.

Pulled Pork & Mashed Potatoes

I thought since I've been writing about food a lot lately, it was time to post a recipe. This is the easiest pulled pork recipe.

Pulled Pork

Ingredients:
1 pork roast, about 2 pounds
1 T olive oil
3 medium onions, sliced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
4 cups barbeque sauce, approximately

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 400º. Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven. Brown the pork roast on all sides. Mix the onions and garlic. Take it out of the pan and spread the onion mixture evenly in the bottom of the pan. Put the pork roast on top of the onions. Pour 2 cups of the barbecue sauce over the roast. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for one hour. Turn the roast over and baste with the sauce, adding more if it's getting too dry. Bake for one hour longer. If the roast is small, it might be done at this point. It's done when it's tender enough all the way through to pull into shreds. If it's not done, turn the roast over and baste with the sauce, adding more if it's too dry. Bake a half hour longer and test for doneness. It takes between two and three hours. When it's done, use two forks and shred it right in the pan. Stir to mix back into the sauce. Serve.

Notes:

1. The amount of garlic will depend on how big the cloves are,how much you like garlic, and how much, if any, garlic the sauce has in it.


2. If your pot doesn't have a really tight lid, it's important that you seal the top with foil or it dries out too much and can burn.


3. If it starts to dry out or the sauce thickens too much, add liquid. You can add broth, water, or more barbeque sauce, depending on what flavor you want to end up with.


4. You can use a larger roast. Just add more time, turning and basting every half hour after the first two hours. You will probably need more liquid.


5. I served this with the roasted garlic mashed potatoes. You can put in on a sandwich roll to make pulled pork sandwiches. You can serve it over pasta or rice, too. It's pretty versatile.


6. It's simple to change the flavors, too, since you can use whatever sauce you want.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
A lot of healthy cookbooks and magazines recommend using broth instead of milk or cream in mashed potatoes. The problem with it is the potatoes don't get that creaminess that make mashed potatoes so good. Using mostly broth, and adding a little cream, gives the creaminess without adding a lot of calories or fat.

Ingredients:
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into about 6 pieces
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon roasted garlic, or to taste.
1/2-1 cup vegetable stock, warmed
2-4 tablespoons cream, warmed

Instructions:
Boil potatoes until tender. Pour into a colander and drain. Put back into the pan and cook briefly over low heat, shaking the pan or stirring the potatoes until dry. Put the garlic and potatoes through a ricer or mash with a masher. Add enough stock to make the potatoes almost as moist as you want them. Then add cream, one tablespoon at a time, until the potatoes are creamy. Add salt and pepper, to taste.

Notes:

1. It's more important that the potato pieces be approximately the same size than how many pieces you cut them into. Smaller pieces take less time to cook and should be checked for doneness sooner than larger ones.


2. The type of potato makes a difference, too. Yukon Golds take less time to cook than russets. I don't use any other types for mashing.


3. The amount of broth and cream depend on how many potatoes you use. Add the broth a little at a time and mix it well before adding more. Stop when the potatoes are still a bit dry. The cream will take care of the dryness.


4. I didn't add butter, but you could add a little. I had some whipping cream I needed to use and decided that it was enough. If I'd used milk instead, I might have wanted a tablespoon of butter and less milk.

Boeuf Bourguinon a lá Weight Watchers

I'm reading the current issue of Weight Watchers magazine. I turn the page to find an article titled Just Like Julia. The hyperbole at the top of the article states, "If you liked the movie, you'll love our recipes." Ummm...no. Liking the movie has nothing to do with liking their recipes. The next sentence tells the real story. "We've updated the beloved chef's timeless classics, keeping the French flavor, but trimming the fat." The idea was to make Julia's recipes low in points, fitting in with their weight-loss program better than the original one does. But does it really?

I turned to the recipe pages. Their changes were much bigger than the statement in the article implies. I don't have a problem with them making similar recipes that fit the Weight Watchers plan. My problem is with them saying they're "Just Like Julia's", especially considering the technique changes would kill the intense, deep layers of flavor in the original recipes.

Take the Boeuf Bourguinon recipe as an example. They decreased the calories, simplified the techniques, and shortened the cooking time. When you oversimplify the techniques and reduce the cooking time, along with reducing the calories, you end up with less flavor, which doesn't inspire me to want to substitute it for the original.

Here's an analysis of what I see as being the biggest problems with their dish:

• They omitted the bacon completely. But the bacon added one of the flavors that made it her dish.


• They reduced the wine to one cup. A cup and a half would be the amount to use if you also reduce the beef from three pounds to two, as they did in their recipe, because it keeps the ratio of ingredients the same.


• They cut the beef into smaller pieces and toss them with flour before it's browned. The original breaks this into a two-step process of browning the meat, tossing with flour and browning the floured meat in the oven. I'd never tried that technique before this recipe and it's the first time the sauce actually thickened the way it's supposed to.


• They add the mushrooms, onion, and garlic raw with the liquid, herbs, and seasoning. The original browns the carrots and a yellow onion in the pan after the beef is browned. The mushrooms and pearl onions are cooked separately and added after the meat is cooked.


• They cooked it on top of the stove for a mere hour, added the raw carrots, and cooked another 30 minutes. The original called for a three to four hour simmer in the oven.

As you can see, there are a lot of steps in the original that the Weight Watchers recipe condenses or skips altogether. The original does have a lot of steps, as is usually the case with classic French cuisine. You wouldn't cook this as a quick weeknight supper. But those steps are necessary to build the flavor layers that gave classic French cuisine its status as one of the finest in the world. And the beauty of it is that if you enjoy cooking, you can take a day when you're at home and make it in advance. It's better after sitting in the fridge overnight, anyway.

I haven't tested the following changes, but here's what I'd do if I wanted to reduce the calories, but retain the flavors of the original:

• First, I'd decrease the serving size, making the recipe serve eight.


• Since a half pound of meat is twice as much as anyone needs at one meal, I'd use two pounds of meat for my eight servings, cutting it into the large cubes called for in the original.


• I'd use four slices of bacon, rather than the six ounces called for. That's two ounces and usually is plenty to give the flavor I'm looking for.


• I'd reduce the wine to 1-1/2 cups, which maintains the proper ratio for the flavor I want.


• I'd follow Julia's original techniques for browning the meat, onions, and carrots. She only uses 1 tablespoon of olive oil, which is the same amount in the Weight Watchers recipe. She also pours out the leftover fat after everything's browned.


• I'd make two small changes to Julia's original recipe--about a minute before the carrots and onions are done browning, I'd toss in the garlic and sauté it to release the oils. Then I'd add the tomato paste and mix it well, cooking until it's a more rusty-red color. It's called the Maillard reaction and it adds to the browning, intensifying the flavor, in the dish.


• I'd follow the original for cooking the dish.


• At the end, she strains the sauce and skims off the fat. Skimming fat is a pain and nowadays there's the handy fat separator. I strained the sauce into mine and poured the defatted sauce back into the dish.


• I'd follow the original recipes for cooking the pearl onions and the mushrooms, reducing the oil/butter for browning them by using olive oil spray in a nonstick pan and a half-teaspoon of butter for flavor.


• I'd do what I did on New Year's--cook the whole thing in advance and reheat it for serving.

Back to my original question: Does their version really fit better into their plan than the original version? Well, since Julia's recipe has several steps devoted to ridding the dish of excess fat, there must be something else causing it to be 17 points per serving. I keep coming back to the portion size. Weight Watchers calculated the points in Julia's recipe using the number of servings in the cookbook, which is six. But Julia's portion isn't the same size as Weight Watchers portions. I decided to recalculate the points of Julia's basing it on serving the same size portion as Weight Watchers uses in their recipe.

Using the portion size of the meat as a guideline, 1 serving of Julia's recipe contains 8 ounces of meat and 1/6 of everything else. The Weight Watchers version contains 3-ounce portions of meat and 1/6 of everything else. If I increase the number of servings in the original so each serving has 3 ounces of meat and a proportionally smaller serving of the remaining ingredients, it's 16 servings. I did the math and it's 6 points per serving. The Weight Watchers version is 8 points per serving. Hmmm....It looks like Julia's recipe is more of a weight loss winner than Weight Watchers, when you compare the same size serving side-by-side. I guess I can toss my list of calorie-reducing ideas and just make Julia's.

Fast Food

One of the things I've noticed about people's reaction to my comments that I cook from scratch is that they think they don't have the time or expertise to cook that way. Many people rely on packaged foods, complete meals frozen by food processing companies, and fast food or restaurant food because they think cooking from scratch is too time-consuming or too hard. But neither is true.

Last fall I had a juxtaposition of things that got me to one of those aha! moments. I read two books that used the idea of preprepping ingredients. They were Tom Colicchio's Think Like a Chef and The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. Judith Jones was Julia Child's editor and Tom Colicchio is one of the judges on Bravo's series, Top Chef. Both of these books are about creating food and using it in multiple ways. They're about making ingredients to be used in the recipe, but having extra to use in another recipe.

Although that seems like a fancy term for "leftovers", they're not like the how to use leftover articles I see in women's magazines after Thanksgiving. Those recipes don't have the creativity I see in the above mentioned books. That creativity is one reason I think of them as ingredients, not leftovers. Another reason is that you can make the food without making the original recipe and just use it in other dishes. That's an ingredient, not a leftover.

The second aspect of the things that got juxtaposed in my mind was when a weekend came up and I had some rare free time. I wasn't using the recipes or cookbooks I mentioned. I don't think I had them yet. I was just trying to be more efficient. So, I cooked granola, oatmeal, rice, beans, baked some potatoes and browned some ground turkey. I don't remember what else I made, maybe some salsa? The next week I was able to prepare meals from scratch in about the same time as if I'd used packaged ingredients from the store. I realized that by time-shifting as much prep work as I can, I can work the odd hours and run the weird schedule I have without sacrificing fresh meals.

Those two things came together in my mind and I realized that cooking from scratch when you don't have hours to spend before dinner making dinner is mainly a matter of planning and having preprepped ingredients, along with a pantry stocked with staples, you can use to create meals.

I've always enjoyed pulling things out of the pantry and fridge and just cooking whatever comes to mind. What's a new concept for me is the idea that I don't have to cook everything at the last minute. Nor do I have to cook entire meals in advance or an extra casserole to freeze for later. I don't like to do that because there are only two of us and we end up eating the same thing for days if the whole meal or main course is completely prepped in advance.

But most people, including me, weren't taught how to break recipes down into prep steps and how to figure out which of those can be done in advance. If people manage to do that, there's the problem of how to prep the ingredients so you can store them without losing flavor and nutrition or having them spoil before you make the dish. That's why it seems hard.

I've learned a lot from professional chefs, experimentation, and research about how to do this. I think I need to practice what I already know and continue to study how to use that knowledge because becoming proficient in planning, making and using preprepped ingredients is the best way I can think of to achieve my personal goal of eating at home and reserving restaurant meals for special occasions. I'd much rather eat out less often, but eat at really good, which usually means more expensive, restaurants.

Sometimes it's not the time to make dinner that makes people go out. It's the added time to clean up the mess from cooking that makes eating in seem like too much work after a long day. Foods like one-skillet dishes from a box or microwaved meals from the freezer or take-out pizza guarantee fast, easy clean up. Planning and prepping ingredients in advance also gives you easy, fast cleanup on the busy nights because most of the cooking mess is from prepping, not cooking the meal.

So, one of my goals for this year is to streamline the planning process, which will allow me more time to do the actual cooking, and use the knowledge gained from my aha! moment to allow me to get meals on the table at a reasonable hour even if I get home from work late.

2010 & Lots of Changes

My last post was in November. I'd just started my second job at the Steinway Society. I had already made commitments that made December a super busy month. Adding a second job ensured that I was not going to find time to write anything, including this blog, in December. Now it's January and one of the things I'm doing is writing more.

Last month's concerts went really well. I enjoyed every one, whether I was attending or participating. I had the opportunity to hear a local pianist, Sandra Wright Shen, presented by the Steinway Society as part of this season's concert series. She's awesome. The other concert I attended was the San Jose Chamber Orchestra's joint concert with The Choral Project called Winter's Gifts: Hope. Daniel Hughes wrote an awesome Alleluia that I'd love to sing someday.

I sang in three concerts, plus the Christmas Eve service at church. STOCtet sang our annual concert in the lobby at the opening of Ballet San Jose's Nutcracker. That was fun and some people came up to the mezzanine and listened to the whole thing. We sang the same program for our holiday concert. Prince of Peace Sanctuary Choir did Sing Noel, a piece arranged in a similar way to a lessons and carols service. It has readings intermingled with music.

We went to a bunch of holiday parties. Caroling parties, work parties, post-concert parties. We gave a party on New Year's, at which I cooked Julia Child's Beef Bourguinon. I can see why that recipe sold the book to Judith Jones, who became Julia's editor. It was "superb", to quote one of my guests. We attended the Nutcracker,which is a delightful production. We had a great time throughout the season.

Despite the busyness and rushing from one thing to another, I only gained a pound and a half over the holidays. My last weigh in was 2 pounds down, so I lost that plus a half pound more. So my strategy to eat normal days and holiday days worked pretty well. It was the last week of the year where I had problems sticking with my plan. That makes sense because that was when I had the least control over my schedule, my food, my exercise.

I hope to be at least 50 pounds closer to my goal by the end of 2010. But I realize I have no control over that, so my goals are to continue to exercise regularly; to keep track of everything; to continue to eat a healthy diet and see how it goes.

The first concert of 2010, the San Jose Chamber Orchestra and the Cypress String Quartet, is tomorrow. We're almost sold out, so I'm off downtown to work today.

More Lessons from the Weight Loss Front & a Bit of NaNo

NaNoWriMo

I'm not going to come close to making 50K, especially since I haven't been writing for at least a week. I talked a bit about why in my last post. This story wasn't thought out enough. I lost interest because it didn't have enough depth for my taste. And then I ran out of time. Next year maybe I'll give it another go and do something else. We'll see. Between now and then, I'm scheduling writing time. The main thing I learned from this year's NaNo is how much I miss writing and even if it's just a little bit every day, I need to write.

Weight Loss Lessons

Lesson one: I was sitting in the booth at The Cheesecake Factory perusing their menu, and their nutrition information. California now requires chains with a certain number of locations, I believe it's 20, to make available certain nutrition information. The Cheesecake Factory puts the calories and saturated fat and the amount of carbs, but not the total fat content or the grams of fiber, both of which you need to calculate points for Weight Watchers. What I do is take the average calories per point, which is 50, and divide it into the total calories to get the points. Most of their stuff is in the "this is a whole day's worth of calories" category. So I was feeling really discouraged at trying to choose well. I flirted with just ordering anything and writing the meal off. I really didn't want to do that. So, I decided to eat no more than 1/3 of whatever I ordered. I ended up with a reasonable number of points for the day.

While I was trying to decide how to manage the situation, I thought about how far I'd come and what the consequences of writing the meal off would be. First, it could start a pattern of writing off difficult situations. That's the way back to my previous weight and I don't want to go there. So, that idea was totally out.

Second, I thought about the consequences of what I decided to do. I could give up, probably gain weight, and start the gradual climb back up. Or, I could do my best and at least stay where I am. And, by making the best choices I can in every situation I'm confronted with, I can keep moving toward my goal because I'm maintaining the good habits.

The AHA! moment was when I started thinking about how we as a culture think about weight loss. Because we gain weight so easily, we think that if we're not losing, we must be gaining. We think in that dichotomy--weight loss or weight gain--and ignore the third option--maintaining our weight. I wonder if that mind set isn't part of what gets us when we reach our goal. We don't want to lose any more, so we assume that gaining is what will happen--and it does. We get tired of doing the things that got us to our goal and gradually relax the vigilance and the weight does creep back on. But if we can change our thinking so that we think loss or maintain, maybe we can more easily get to goal because we're being consistent in our choices and by building that pattern of consistency, we'll be more likely to stay at our goal.

That reminds me of a related issue--perfectionism. We often think that if we don't follow our preferred program perfectly, we won't lose weight. Not only that, we'll automatically gain weight. That's another attitude that doesn't work. If we're faced with situations where our choices for healthy, low-calorie food are limited, we can make the best choices we can and not stuff ourselves. The worst that will happen may be that we don't lose weight that week. Or if we do gain, it won't be very much. Remembering that it's not one meal that causes weight gain helps. It's when we decide that meal makes us a total failure and we top it off with more meals that aren't the best choices that we usually see a gain.

Lesson two: I'm facing a Thanksgiving holiday that is not my first choice, not even close. I'm not cooking. If you've read very much of this blog, you know that's unheard of. But the last two weeks have been full of other obligations and I haven't had time to make a menu or grocery shop. My family wants to celebrate on Friday at a favorite restaurant. With all that happening, my husband and I made reservations at LB Steakhouse at Santana Row for Thanksgiving day.

I started thinking about the "holiday season". We start at Halloween now and go through New Year's and think of it as all one long "season" with lots of good food and parties and so on. That can lead to disaster for people who are trying to lose weight, or even to maintain their weight. I realized it's an attitude problem. Lumping it all together makes every day seem like a holiday. If every day is a holiday, we tend to overeat because we're celebrating the holiday or even if we don't eat too much, we may make less healthy or higher calorie choices.

It occurred to me that when we're thinking about food, exercise, etc. and this time of year, we might be better off to think of it as "holiday days" inserted in between "normal days". It's thinking of the whole season from Halloween to New Year's as "difficult" or "challenging" or a "time when we struggle" that makes it harder than it needs to be. Instead, we could look at each day separately. On the normal days, we would do our normal routine. And on the holiday days, we choose what we want to do to celebrate the occasion.

That's not to say this time period isn't more challenging than the rest of the year. We often do have more restaurant meals and meals out with friends and family. We have more parties and holiday concerts, pageants, etc. to attend, usually with a sweet-treat laden reception afterward. A strategy that works if we're not thinking of every day between Halloween and New Year's as a holiday is to ask ourselves if this is a substitute for a regular meal at home and eat the way we would if we were at home. Bringing food along and getting a beverage at a coffee place is another alternative to high-calorie restaurant eating I've used when I knew in advance I wasn't going to be home. If it's a celebration, then we can use whatever our celebration meal strategies are, including saying no to treats that aren't worth the calories. Just because it's a party or occasion doesn't mean we have to eat something.

Other Stuff

Since I now have two jobs, I'm not going to survive until New Year's without a good solid plan. So, that's my goal for the weekend. I have from Thursday through Sunday off. I'm spending part of that time with my calendar putting everything on it that needs to be done. If I don't, I'm going to go nuts because I'll be trying to do too much in a day and not leave enough time for recharging the batteries. I have to consider Christmas in there, too. I haven't thought beyond Thanksgiving. My budget will be small, but at least I'll have one this year. It's nice to have both of us working and we can celebrate. I love holiday celebrations and it's always hard when your income doesn't go beyond the basic necessities. I'm grateful for having those, but I also like to have a bit extra to get gifts and make a special meal and so on. Since I couldn't cook at Thanksgiving, I'm going to plan something extra special for Christmas.

NaNoWriMo and Other Stuff

I was planning to work on my NaNo novel while I had a hot cup of coffee at Peet's. The one thing about losing weight is that once I lose 30 pounds or more, I start to be cold a lot, thus the desire for hot coffee. I digress. I've written more than 10K on the story, but my flash drive only has 9K. Apparently, I saved my afternoon session, but not last night's work. So, the novel is on my other computer. That means I have some time to write a blog post.

I'm having fun writing this bizarre, but fun, story. No one will ever be allowed to read it. The writing stinks and I don't think the story is worth revising. It's just a fun bit of fluff.

But it's showing me some things about being a pantser, a writer who doesn't use an outline, that make me want to learn how to make at least a loose outline. A lot of what I've written is stuff that would be cut, if I were going to try to revise this into a decent story. It's stuff that's in there because the writer is looking for the story I know is in there, not actually writing the story itself. That means there's a lot of repetitive, meandering, and totally boring stuff in between the good parts, the parts that are actually the story I'm trying to write. For NaNo, that's wonderful because it's lots of added words, but if I were actually writing a story with the intent of publishing it, it's a very inefficient way to write. I can handle inefficient because it doesn't bother me to cut words. It's the boring and repetitive stuff that's the problem for me.

I'm ready to move past that way of working and on to something else. So, after NaNo, I'm going to focus more on Holly Lisle's Think Sideways class. If I can spend the same time I'm spending on NaNo, I'll make progress, but slowly. I've been working at it more on a hit and miss basis because my life has been so chaotic lately. I've had a hard time focusing on creative pursuits, particularly on writing.

I'm testing an oven-fried chicken recipe tonight. It looks really good. I'm looking forward to this one. I haven't figured out the points, but the ingredients are not super high-calorie. The only added fat is cooking spray. I don't use cooking spray, but I have my Mistos. I have one for regular olive oil. I'll fill one with peanut oil, which is what I prefer for recipes like this one. And the other one is for the oils I don't use as often.

Also, on the cooking front, I've been thinking about flavor and ingredients. I want to write a post or two about those things, but it may have to wait until after NaNo.

I lost three more pounds last week. Paul's been losing weight, too. He said yesterday that he lost another three pounds. He jokes that when I go on a diet, he loses weight. I don't put food in serving dishes. I serve it onto the plates because in my house, everyone prefers not to wash any more dishes than necessary. So, I pretty much give him what I'm eating and if he's still hungry, he can always have more. He rarely does, which is one reason why he's been losing weight.

His blood pressure's been going down pretty fast, with this new medication. He has an appointment next week to have it checked, but he's been checking it in the morning. The one thing I wish he'd do is make getting some exercise in every day a priority. That's the piece that's missing in his efforts to stay healthy. It would be lovely if he'd challenge himself to get his medicine down to the lowest possible dose. Maybe even get rid of it altogether, but at his age and with his family history of high blood pressure, that may not be possible.

I hate that medical stuff is starting to be our conversation topic. But, there comes a time when that becomes more of an issue in your life. So, I'm dealing with it.

I've made progress with my boxes. I think I have 4 or 5 left. I need to put lids on them and stack them with the others in the bedroom hallway. Then I can move on to the next step, which is sorting the things that are already unpacked and giving stuff we don't use to charity, throwing away any junk, and figuring out how to best use the storage I have. I need to pare down our stuff because our apartment is so small. I really don't want to have boxes in my hallway. When that's done, it's back to the boxes and figuring out where to put that stuff when I unpack it. When you live in an apartment without a garage or attic or basement, the hardest stuff to deal with is stuff like holiday decorations that you need to keep, but don't use every day.

It's amazing how fast the process went when I spread out the boxes I was sorting into. I could take 5 minutes and go through one box. That's a lot more doable than taking 10 minutes to spread out the boxes, 5 minutes sorting one, and 10 more minutes putting the boxes back in stacks. Once I convinced Paul not to stack them back up, I made real progress.

But I need to find a day sometime when I can recharge my batteries without feeling like I'm neglecting important things in order to do it. I need one of those mental health days. I had a difficult day yesterday and realized that was the problem. I need to schedule regular time to recharge. If I don't, then any writing or other creative pursuits suffer. Creative work operates at a different pace and in a different way from the type of work I get paid to do. Or from household chores and similar types of work. When I forget that, my life gets out of balance and I get depressed.

A Mishucalanza of a Post

I've been trying to write a new post for several days, but I can't seem to focus on one topic. So, here's a bunch of topics.

First, NaNoWriMo. I started a novel for NaNo. I was right on track on November 1. The second day, thanks to the time change, (I'll skip the rant and just say I hate that they do this twice a year.) I was way too tired and only got about half the words. November 3 Paul was sick, so I didn't write. Today, though, I stopped at Peet's after work and got in about a half hour. I'll write more later tonight.

The story is going well. It's turning out to be a very bizarre story. I'm writing it in the first person, which I usually don't do. But this one seemed to want to be written that way. I trust my instincts about a story, so I'm writing in the first person. I'm having a lot of fun and hope to catch up the words as the month goes on.

Second, Paul's headache thing came back, but not quite as bad as a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to the COBRA thing where you don't have to pay the whole premium, we still have good health coverage, so he's back on medication for his blood pressure. He goes back in on Friday to get it checked after having been on the medication for several days. We need to pin the doctor down about the headaches, though. I don't think they're caused by the blood pressure problem because he started getting them back when his blood pressure was normal.

Third, weight loss. I've lost a total of 25 pounds, as of last Friday. I've noticed some changes in my approach this time around that are making it a lot easier. I changed a lot of eating habits over the years. The kinds of changes seem to make it easier to make choices that allow the weight to come off without me being hungry.

(I suppose I'm repeating myself a lot in my weight loss posts, but that helps me to cement it in my brain. I apologize if anyone is actually reading this blog and gets bored when I do repeat myself.)

One thing that's making a huge difference is that I'm paying attention more to flavor, texture, color, etc. If it looks pretty, has a variety of textures, and really good flavor, it's satisfying, even if it's not a large amount of food. I get full on smaller amounts of food these days. But that's pretty common when you start losing weight. Regular exercise also decreases my appetite a bit.

Another thing that's making a huge difference is paying attention to how full I am. It's hard for me to do that without paying a lot of attention. It's not an automatic process for me to know when I'm full. So, I use a couple of tricks. I start the meal with soup or salad. Sometimes both. That starts to fill me up and takes some time to eat. Then, when I get to the higher-calorie main course, I'm able to eat appropriate portions and feel satisfied. If I have dessert, I tend to eat only a few bites, which is why when we're out, we usually share.

Fourth, music. This is a big time of year for music. I'm so glad STOCtet chose early December for their concert. Prince of Peace is the week after that. It will make for a much calmer holiday season. While I love doing music, I'm glad we gave up a couple of the choirs. Juggling the rehearsals and concerts for four groups was too much.

Fifth, I still need to figure out a better way to manage my kitchen and food and my weird schedule. I'm discovering that it helps a lot to keep prepped ingredients on hand to make dinner from during the week. But I need to plan the ingredient-making sessions so they're spread out over time, not crammed into a couple of days. I just don't have that much time.

Sixth, that whole organizing thing. A while back I joined the Fly Lady web site. I've been getting the emails, but only doing a little bit. I realized that I have to do the same thing with organizing my life as I did with weight loss--make very gradual changes. I'm starting very small with adding a few new habits. I'm picking the things that bug me the most as the place to start. And the biggie right now is finishing the boxes in the living room. I need to sort, put labels and lids on them and restack them in the bedroom hallway. Then I can deal with all the storage issues one at a time, in those 15-minute spurts Fly Lady talks about.

Seventh, I enjoy Farmville and Cafe World on Facebook. I discovered that if you use your time properly, you can time the crops to ripen and the food to cook at a time when you can play. A few minutes and you can go off and do other things while stuff grows and cooks. The thing is, I'm making myself let myself have fun with them. I was raised that adults don't "play". It's another area in my life where I have to fight my upbringing and allow myself to be myself. I need to play. It sparks my creativity and if I don't play, I can't write stories. Besides, the things I was taught adults do for fun aren't fun for me. The thing that makes me sad is how long it took me to realize that it's OK to be myself. And that realization is one of the reasons I'm able to successfully lose weight now.

Recipe Review--Classic Bread Pudding

I started this post a coulpe of weeks ago, and didn't have time to finish and post it. So, here it is.

The latest recipe I'm testing is a bread pudding with an optional bourbon sauce. Unfortunately, the older bottle of heavy cream I had in the fridge was too old, so I ended up substituting 1/2 cup milk for part of the cream in the bread pudding and skipping the bourbon sauce. It's in the oven and I'm not sure it will be done before the deadline, which is today, but they're on Eastern Daylight Time, so if they have a midnight deadline, I'll miss it. I tried to do it on time, but the timing was awful. I got the recipe right before the concert last week, so time was an issue for me.

This is NOT a "point-friendly" recipe. But it's supposed to be an indulgence. I'm not eating a whole portion of it. Just a bite or two. A whole portion, even if I cut it into the smaller size they suggest, is 13 points and that's with the whole milk substituting for 1/2 cup of the cream. Whew!! If I like the recipe, I may play with it and see if I can make a lower-point version that's worth eating.

I finished the recipe and it was very rich, but very bland. The texture was good and they met their goal with the recipe. But it wasn't worth the calories, as is. The other people who tried it had the same reaction. It's a good base, but it needed more. Spices, raisins, something. I warmed it up and put fresh raspberries on it and it was wonderful. My son topped it with whipped cream and loved it that way. However, I suspect more fat isn't what I'd top this rich dish with.

BTW-I can't post the recipes I test because the people who run the magazine ask us not to share recipes that haven't been published.

Pasta Pomodoro & Cocola

We went to Pasta Pomodoro at Santana Row last night. It had been a while since we ate there. We enjoyed it the last time and were in the mood for Italian. Unfortunately, like a lot of chain restaurants, the quality of the food has diminished over the past couple of years. We were totally disappointed.

My husband had a Caesar salad and frutti de mare. I had minestrone soup, mista salad, and butternut squash ravioli. I had the dressing on the side and an appetizer portion of the ravioli. We both had their bread with pesto/olive oil dip. For the most part, the food was mediocre, at best.

The bread had good texture for dipping, but not a lot of flavor on its own. The pesto dip was mostly olive oil. They mixed pesto with olive oil, apparently substituting the pesto for balsamic vinegar in the traditional bread dipping sauce. Pesto is mainly olive oil, so adding more oil just made it all taste like oil, with little basil flavor. Traditional basil pesto has parmesan and pine nuts, although I've seen it made with walnuts, too. If there was any cheese, I couldn't see or taste it. It was too smooth to have nuts in it.

Our starters were pretty ordinary. The vegetables were fresh, which was nice. But the flavors in the dressing were nothing special. I could get the same flavors in bottles from a local grocery store. The minestrone was beans, zucchini, broth, & croutons. They garnished it with the same pesto they used in the bread dip. It was good, but not great.

Our main courses were the biggest disappointment. Paul said his dish had no flavor. But I tasted it and it was just fishy. Not that good, fresh fish flavor, but that bitter fishy taste of fish that's not spoiled, but not entirely fresh, either. It probably was previously frozen, thawed fish. And it was overcooked, with that rubbery texture it gets.

My ravioli was good, at first. I liked the ravioli, sage leaves, cheese, and browned butter. But then they did something really weird--they crushed amaretti on top. I know orange veggies can be sweet, but pairing amaretti--ameretto-flavored cookies--with Parmesan cheese and sage just didn't work for me. That sugary flavor, laced with cinnamon, clashed with the rest of the dish. I probably wouldn't have ordered it, had I read the menu more carefully and noticed the amaretti in the listing of ingredients.

The last thing that was an issue for me is one of my pet peeves. I really, really hate it when they either ask me to keep my salad fork or, even worse, take it off the plate when they clear it and put it on the table for me to use for the main course. Is it really that much trouble to bring a fresh fork? The best service in recent memory for me was when we went to Julia's Kitchen at Copia, which, unfortunately, is no longer open. Not only did they bring fresh silverware for each course, they looked at what you ordered and brought the appropriate silverware.

We declined dessert, opting to head for Cocola, where we'd enjoyed their desserts and pastries. They still have the same good food. We had the Pumpkin and Milk Chocolate Mousse, a new seasonal dessert. My first bites were good. But I think overall, that dessert needs to be rethought. The pumpkin mousse was wonderful. I liked the milk chocolate mousse and the chocolate cake on the bottom. But, there was also a raspberry gel on the top and a hazelnut filling in the middle of the pumpkin mousse. These additions caused the dessert to have too many flavors competing for your attention. I would use a flavorless, and colorless gel on the top. The red didn't really make the pumpkin orange, which seemed to be its purpose, and I'd rather keep the pumpkin pie brown and skip the sweet, fruity flavor of the raspberry gel. I'd also omit the hazlenut filling. Hazelnuts are too strong a flavor to pair with pumpkin mousse.

All in all, it made me wish I'd had time to go home and cook--or that we'd chosen one of the other restaurants in Santana Row. And chosen a different dessert at Cocola. They have so many wonderful ones. This was the only one I've ever eaten that I didn't like.

On other fronts:

Friday is my weigh in day. I lost 1.5 pounds this week. It's 10% of my total body weight and .5 pounds away from the first goal I set myself. Go me!

I'm testing another recipe for one of the magazines today. I'll write another post about it when I'm done.

A Week-and-a-half Later...

I've been so busy this past week and a half. I look at my blog and think--I need to write a post, and then I don't have time. Today I do.

Paul got a job. YAY!! We don't have to move. I may be able to resurrect my cooking project--or come up with a better one. It's not as much money, though, so I may not have much budget to play with.

I'm 2 pounds from reaching the first weight goal I set. I don't expect to reach it this week, though. I'm at a point where the weight loss is slower, which is fine with me.

Today I'm going to test another recipe. This one is for a bread pudding with a bourbon sauce. I'm going to have to find someone to give some of it to because it makes way too much for Paul and I to eat by ourselves.

I'm considering signing up for NaNo again. I sign up, get started, and then life gets busy and I don't finish. But I miss writing, which is why I keep signing up for NaNo--to give me a goal and a reason to write. If I do, I won't start any specific cooking projects, or other new projects, until January. The holiday season is way too swamped for a choir singer and I won't have time for new projects.

I guess my blog is back to being a mishucalanza, what with writing about weight loss, cooking, and writing.

More Lessons from the Weight Loss Front

I started this post on Oct. 11 and finally got it edited today.

So, my week of eating almost exclusively Filling Foods is over and I've been doing points again. That's been going well. However, the contrast pointed up a lesson learned.

I was reading that people tend to eat the same volume of food regardless of their calorie level. So, as an example made up by me, if you normally eat 10 cups of food every day and try to lose weight by cutting back to 7 cups, you might lose weight, but you will feel hungry. However, if you substitute 10 cups of food that totals fewer calories than the 10 cups you normally eat, you will lose weight and you won't be hungry. That's the problem with just eating less of what you usually eat. You miss the volume and feel hungry and deprived. But if you eat high-volume, lower calorie foods, like those on the Filling Foods list, you'll lose weight without feeling hungry.

The problem with that is that food habits are among the most difficult habits to change. Mine have changed drastically over the years, but change has come very slowly. I didn't think I really got the baby step concept because I was always falling short of my goals. But I see that over time, I've made changes that are baby steps and those baby steps have helped make following the program easier.

I eat produce at both lunch and dinner. When I don't, I tend to feel less satisfied and overeat. I love veggie soups and salads. I prefer to eat both, but one or the other works.

I've discovered that if I have fresh fruit at every meal, I don't crave desserts as much. That makes it easier to be super picky about what desserts I eat and in what quantity. My current favorite is one Godiva chocolate gem. They come in truffles or caramel and they're one point. Although they're small enough to eat in one bite, I take several small ones and really taste what I'm eating. And it's enough.

I choose whole grains whenever I can. When I bake, I use whole grain flours as much as I can. Not all recipes will work with only whole grain flours, but I've discovered that I can substitute up to half of the flour with whole grains in most recipes. I experiment with various amounts until I find the maximum I can use without losing the flavor and texture.

I eat vegetarian more often. I eat less red meat than I used to. I eat a lot more beans and oatmeal. The next thing I'm adding is cooked polenta and cooked rice to the precooked foods in my freezer. I also plan to make yogurt cheese mixed with roasted garlic and herbs or salsa or whatever I feel like putting in it to use as a dip for raw vegetables. Yogurt and yogurt cheese can also be used to stretch the mayonnaise in a creamy salad dressing.

I've read books where the author talks about changing their diet to eliminate processed and junk foods. They often claim that just changing to more healthy food like that will cause you to lose weight. But it doesn't, not all by itself. I tried that idea and it didn't work for me. You still have to watch portion sizes and choose the higher-calorie foods less often and in smaller portions. The Weight Watcher point system helps me with that aspect of my weight loss efforts.

Lost .5 This Week

I lost another half pound this week. I went back to counting points, but I've eaten mostly from the filling foods list. What's made the difference today is that satiety factor. I've used 1 point, that I didn't use last week, for a 1/2 tablespoon of maple syrup in my oatmeal and 1 tablespoon of shredded cheese on my huevos rancheros. Those flavors make a huge difference in how the food feels, whether it's satisfying or not. So, I think this is a good plan.

I don't want this blog to become a weight loss blog, even though that's been my focus for the past couple of weeks. I have a new recipe to test. This one is for a traditional bread pudding--and it's NOT diet friendly. However, I'll make it, taste and analyze it. Do the survey. And give the rest away. Or freeze it in small portions to have as a treat, now and then. I need to figure out the points before I do that, so I can decide what's a good serving size and freeze it in that size portion.

I think my next thing will be to go for a walk. I need to get out of here for a while and I have an errand that I can do. It's a beautiful day out there, too. A perfect fall day to be outside--not too hot and sunny.

Almost the End of Week 1

I had a couple more thoughts about the Filling Foods thing today. I didn't have many points left. I only had a couple of activity points, so I was really working hard to figure out what to eat that wouldn't require that I count points. And, I made extra sure to get in some activity.

It wasn't really difficult to find no point foods. I did eat one corn tortilla, but I had activity points to cover it. The big thing was that it took quite a while to put it together. I'd drained some yogurt. I mixed that with garlic I'd roasted and fresh basil and a little salt and pepper. I spread that on celery sticks. That's a keeper for a snack, whether I'm doing Filling Foods or not. I made what amounts to vegan huevos rancheros--black beans, eggs, no-fat salsa and the corn tortilla. It all was very filling. I couldn't finish it. But I was hungry a couple of hours later, so I ate the rest then.

So now I have to figure out what to do about dinner. I think I can easily fit it into the remaining activity points. So, this was a good program for me. I may keep it as a backup or as a way to break a plateau. We'll see how weighing tomorrow goes.

Thoughts About Week 1--So Far

Tomorrow is the last day of my first week following the Simply Filling Foods plan. It's been an interesting week. I won't know if I lost weight until Friday, but there are other things to write about besides the number on the scale.

When WW says the food is filling, they're not kidding. I did an experiment and calculated what the points would have been had I been tracking. If you don't count the Weekly Points, I've averaged 15 points per day for 5 days. When you include the Weekly Points, I've averaged 22 points per day for 5 days. Since my point level is 26, not counting weekly or activity points, if I were tracking points, I'd be under daily points by an average of 4 per day for 5 days, and not using any weekly or activity points. So, hunger is not one of the problems I'm having with this plan.

However, satiety, feeling satisfied, as opposed to simply not being hungry, is a problem for me with this plan. I really like the food on the list. I can see basing my food plan around them. But this week as I worked out the plan, I discovered that it's super low fat unless you use points. That wasn't really a problem. I don't eat a lot of added fats.

It also ended up being super low carb for me. You can't eat bread without counting points, and I guess that's a huge problem for me, since I keep talking about it. Rice, whole wheat pasta, and potatoes are all once a day foods. I'm not clear whether you can eat them more often if you count the points for the other meals. That question isn't addressed in the printed materials or online. Other grains and starchy vegetables are filling foods and can be used to up the carb count. I don't feel well when I eat very low anything. I feel better if I balance the various food types, although I do go overboard with the vegetables sometimes. I love vegetables!!

The way to make that work would be to plan meals more fully than I do now. I often take a look in the pantry and see what there is. Bread, pasta, rice and potatoes are staples that can become the basis for a meal. Soup and sandwiches are a favorite. Stuffed baked potatoes are another. If I keep the filling foods around, I can still do those kind of meals. I just have to have some things cooked in advance or ready to go. That works fine with this plan, until you head to a restaurant--any restaurant.

One restaurant meal can easily add 10 or more points to the total, even when you choose filling foods like salads, with dressing on the side; grilled meats; steamed vegetables and brown rice. A lot of restaurants are putting their nutrition information in the menu, online, or in brochures on the tables. I use them, whenever possible, to help make the best choices or, if I'm splurging, to figure out as accurately as I can, what the point count is. One restaurant meal can eat up enough of your weekly points that the built-in restrictions of this plan can make me feel like this is a diet, not a lifestyle.

I think that after this week, I'm probably going to go back to the regular point plan. But, I'm going to use what worked for me. I want to base my food plan around the filling food list, but count the points so I can include the variety of foods I'm used to eating, especially my homemade whole grain breads.

At the beginning of the week, I feared I'd overeat, since I could eat as much of the filling foods as I wanted. I started using the hunger scale and discovered that 1/2-1 portion of anything is plenty. I'm going to continue using the hunger scale. I think that, more than changing the food plan, is what made a difference this week. I'm going to continue to stop eating, as I did with the filling foods, when I'm full--even if I don't hit all the points for the day, with the caveat that if for some weird reason I'm below the minimum anyone should eat, I'll eat more. I don't think that's going to happen. If that were a likely possibility, I wouldn't need to lose nearly a hundred pounds.

I'm also not worried about nutrition, since I love the healthy food we're supposed to eat. My weight problem is mainly due to not knowing when I've had enough of those healthy foods. That's where the hunger scale comes it. If I know I'm going to be recording it, I pay more attention to when I'm hungry and when I'm full. I think that's a better way for me to use the program effectively.

Simply Filling Foods

Weight Watchers has a food plan where you don't have to count points for everything you eat. You eat from the Filling Foods list, follow a few rules, and only count points if you eat foods that aren't on the list. Sounds easy, but the key to having that plan work is to stop eating when you've had enough. Well, knowing how much is "enough" is my biggest problem. However, I'm planning to try it, anyway.

My reasoning is that following that plan will force me to be more aware of how hungry I am and when I'm done eating. I can't just rely on the point count to tell me when to stop eating. And I won't end up eating more than I want "because I have to eat all of my points". Plus, I'd rather not have to calculate the points for everything I eat.

It seems restrictive because of the rules. I don't like food restrictions, except that when I look at what I eat, most of what I eat is from the Filling Foods list. I'm already choosing to eat mostly from that list because it's mostly whole foods. There are some foods that I'll have to count points for, mainly bread and full-fat dairy. I really don't like nonfat dairy products. They're not very satisfying.

One thing that could be a problem is the way they handle starchy foods. No breads, not even whole grain breads, are considered to be a Filling Food. Baking bread is my specialty. So, I'll do what I do now and use my weekly point allowance to cover my homemade bread. Most days I only eat one slice with breakfast, anyway. Whole wheat pasta or potatoes or brown rice can only be eaten once a day, although you can have other types of grains, like polenta or quinoa, at other meals. It makes it kind of hard when you eat out or at pot lucks and so on, since so many pot luck main dishes are based around pasta or potatoes. I'll have to plan in advance for those times.

It will be really interesting creating recipes using this food plan. I can see that there will be some challenges, but I also see that it will be easier in some ways. A lot of my favorite recipes will fit right in. Others will need a bit of tweaking, but it will be fun to figure out how to make them work.

Tomorrow I'm cooking some meals for a friend who's pregnant. She can't stand the smells of cooking, but when it's prepared for her, she can eat a lot more types of foods without getting nauseous. So we worked out some things and she or her husband will be picking them up tomorrow evening. And I have to bake bread. My sourdough starter needs refreshing and we're almost out of the bread I baked a couple of weeks ago.

20# Gone

My total weight loss is 20# since last June. That's an average of about 5 pounds per month. That's a nice, steady pace.

I think quick weight loss is an awful goal for many reasons. If you're losing weight to improve your overall health, then trying to lose weight in a unhealthy way seems counterproductive. Then there's all the research that says if you lose it too fast, first it's excess water. Then instead of burning fat, you lose your own muscle tissue. That's also counterproductive to good health.

But that's not why I prefer to lose slowly. I prefer to lose slowly because it gives me time to build (or rebuild) habits that will help me keep it off. Some of what I do is based on things that worked in the past. But a lot of what I'm doing now is in response to living in a culture that promotes weight gain.

It's easier to lose weight if you stay home and make your own food. But that's not a realistic lifestyle for the average person. Although we're not eating out these days, I discovered a couple of new strategies for dealing with restaurant food before Paul was laid off. The problems with restaurant food are mainly the amount of fat they use and the enormous portions they serve. I deal with the fat by eating small amounts of the higher calorie items and getting all dressings, sauces, etc. on the side. Then I get to pick how much of them I eat.

I deal with the portion sizes by getting a separate, small plate. Then I take about a third of what's on the serving-size plate they've given me. I eat that. Usually, it's plenty of food, especially if I've eaten a salad or soup to start with. The rest goes home and I get two or three more meals from it. The other strategy for dealing with portion sizes is to share. Even with sharing, we usually have food to take home.

Another strategy is to use my overall food philosophy--go for the veggies. I always order a salad or vegetable soup. It fills me up and makes it easier to eat smaller portions of the main course. Sometimes I substitute veggies for French fries, depending on what's available. There's no point if the vegetable dishes are all drenched in a butter sauce.

The traditional advice is to order plain steamed vegetables. But they usually aren't cooked properly and are unappetizing. They make me feel like I'm "on a diet". That "on a diet" feeling is hard for me because it makes me feel like I'm being punished for having a body that tends toward fatness. That's a killer for me, psychologically. It makes me want to pig out on high-calorie foods. So, I lose weight better if I eat reasonable-sized portions of foods I like (which includes properly-cooked steamed vegetables).

I'm learning to eat differently if I want dessert, too. If I'm just wanting a taste, a bite or two, I don't worry about it. But if I want a reasonable serving, I don't order a high-calorie main course. I'll have soup and salad and eat lightly the rest of the day (or the next day, if the meal out wasn't planned in advance.)

What's interesting about all of the above is that so much of it is traditional advice I never could figure out how to follow before. I don't want to eat so differently from the people around me that I'm advertising, "I'm trying to lose weight". It's that "punishment feeling" again. I much prefer that it appear that I'm eating the same as everyone else and I stopped eating because I got full.

That's probably why the current Weight Watcher program works so well for me, as well as so many other people. If you plan carefully and make good choices, you can eat like everyone else, just not as much food as the big people. I'm an average height woman with a medium build. I don't need as much food as a woman who's 6' tall and big boned. The problem is learning how much food is the amount my particular body needs. I'm working on it and feel like I finally have some good guidelines.

So Much for the Cooking Project

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to give up on doing anything like my Cute Cooking or Cooking in Miniature idea for now. Or any other project that's just playing because I can't afford to experiment. My cooking project will have to be eating fresh food on a super tight budget.

So, today's cooking will be to do something with the food I bought before I fell this past week and bruised my ribs. One of the biggest issues with cooking for two people is that there is a lot of food that doesn't come in packages sized for two people. The cheapest stuff is usually sized in huge quantities, which was great when I had growing boys living with me. Planning carefully helps because I can make multiple recipes that use the same ingredients.

That dilemma kind of inspired my cute cooking idea. The biggest problem I have is lack of freezer space. If I can buy ingredients for two servings and cook that much, I don't have leftovers to take up space in my freezer. I can then cook and freeze things like rice and beans blanch produce that comes in bunches and oatmeal and bread and stock--ingredients or meals that can be thawed and used when I have less time to cook a whole meal from scratch. That was the theory, anyway.

Experimenting with recipes and food will have to be put off for a time when I have the budget. It's disappointing because I was getting excited about having some fun in my kitchen. I'd been putting a lot of things off that I wanted to try because I wasn't sure about Paul's employment situation. Then he got his benefits and everything was set up for the long haul and I was thinking about doing fun stuff. But with yet another layoff, that's not happening. Time to move back into super frugal budget mode. We're being way more frugal at this point because whether he gets unemployment is really iffy and we may need to have as much as possible to move somewhere else. Who knows where? Our options are pretty limited at this point, but we're always open to workable ideas.

Weight Loss Lessons

Background

I've lost about 20 pounds since I started taking the train to work. I first lost a few pounds from just walking to and from the train. When I exercise, even a moderate amount, my appetite goes down. This happened back a few years ago when Paul and I started walking the track near my mom's house. I lost between 20 and 30 pounds. Then I stayed the same until we moved. I had to stop walking because there was nowhere except sidewalk and I was getting muscle cramps on the fronts of my legs. I gained most of the weight back.

So, when I started losing again, I decided to do more than just adding exercise to my life. I rejoined Weight Watchers, using their online tools. I get my support from online groups and friends and family. I don't find the meetings help me, personally, very much. I tend to tune it all out because I've been there, done that.

Also, I get tired of people's games to make the scale as low as possible each week. People wear special clothes. Take off their shoes. Even make sure they use the toilet right before they weigh in. Some people don't eat before a meeting. It's crazy!! I don't want to get sucked into compulsive, crazy behavior. If that's what it takes, I'd rather stay fat.

Plus, I get frustrated with recipes and food advice because that's another kind of game. You win the game by getting the most food for the fewest points regardless of the nutritional value of your meal. The fact is that what people are really trying to do is to lose weight without making any real changes. The diet food industry is rife with fake foods that mimic the foods people don't want to give up in order to lose weight.

Weight Watchers sell food that's not as high in nutritional value as the fresh food they promote as being healthier. Yet, despite their healthy eating advice, they don't really want you to eat only fresh food because they make a lot of money from selling you their food products. The last time I attended meethings, part of the meeting time was spent promoting Weight Watchers products and I'd prefer to skip that. I ignore the ads when I'm online.

Lessons Learned So Far

The main thing I've learned is that a lot of the advice the professionals give you is true, but until you experience it for yourself, you don't really believe it. And I learned that a lot of research needs to be done into the effect of female hormones on weight.

Details

1. When I was growing up, my mom decided how much food went on the plate and we were expected to eat it all. If there were leftovers, but not enough to save or the leftovers would tempt her too much, she'd beg everyone else to eat them whether we were hungry or not. Consequently, I have no idea how to know when I'm full. I'm used to eating to overfull.

I decided to try an experiment and not put a bite in my mouth until I've swallowed the previous bite. I still forget. Old habits die hard. But I'm getting more consistent with this. The result: I feel full and more satisfied on less food because I'm eating more slowly. This is especially beneficial when eating higher-calorie foods because they require eating super small portions. A side benefit is that I'm more aware of the flavors in my food and that helps me become a better cook.

2. When I grew up and discovered that canned vegetables were not the only way to get vegetables, I discovered that I love vegetables. So, now I go for the fruits and veggies. I'm starting to base my meals more around the veggies and fruits, adding whole grains, protein, and some fat to them. I'm not a vegetarian, but when I make a meat-based main dish, I keep the portion small so I can have a lot of vegetable dishes, too. This strategy allows me to eat a reasonable volume of food and still lose weight. However, I'm discovering that the total volume of food I'm eating is a lot less. I get full faster when I eat this way, especially when I use whole grains.

3. Whole grains are amazing. When I put one serving of white rice or regular pasta or white bread on my plate and eat it, I feel neither full nor satisfied. I need two or three portions for that. But, when I put one serving of whole grain bread, whole grain rice, or whole wheat pasta on my plate, not only am I both full and satisfied, sometimes I can't finish it because it's too much food.

I think one of the main problems people have with whole grains is unfamiliarity with them combined with the poor quality of a lot of the whole grain products, particularly breads, in the markets. You have to keep trying different types and brands to find what you like. When I first tried whole wheat pastas, they were horrible. But now I prefer them because the quality has improved since then. I solve the whole grain bread issue by making my own. Baking bread is one of the pleasures in my life, so that's a no-brainer for me.

4. Beans are one of my favorite foods. I've always liked them and I've been trying out new varieties lately. They really fill you up. I love to add them to pureed vegetable soups because they also thicken the soup. What I've discovered is that when you buy beans at Whole Foods or any store that has a lot of vegetarian customers, they're fresher and take less time to cook. When I eat beans several times a week, I tend to lose more weight than when I don't. I'm not saying that beans cause weight loss, but they probably keep the total calories lower because they're so filling.

5. I'm eating a lot more vegetarian meals these days because it's cheaper. This will be an especially crucial issue as Paul and I deal with yet one more time he's been laid off. I don't want this to derail my weight loss efforts, so I'm going to have to plan meals carefully, keeping the budget in mind.

Time magazine had a disturbing article recently called Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food. They were talking about how difficult it is to eat a standard American diet and not gain weight. And how the agriculture and industry's subsidies allow them to make cheap, but unhealthy food. I haven't figured out how I'm going to continue to eat high-quality, healthful food on my now super-limited budget, but I'm not giving up on it, at least not while I still have a kitchen of my own to cook in.

6. The food thing is really all about portion control and balancing high-calorie and low-calorie foods. Weight Watchers says that you don't have to give up foods you love in order to lose weight. But when people talk about the program, they talk about OP foods. OP stands for On Program. That implies that there are foods that are off program. They usually mean the foods that have been pounded into our brain as being bad. But Weight Watchers is right. You can eat whatever you want, but you have to be willing to change the portion size and what you eat with it. You have to balance your food over time and you have to learn what balance works best for you.

An example: You can eat real macaroni and cheese, just not a huge bowl full. If you make it with whole wheat pasta, which is how I like it, and add some vegetables, you can eat a nice-sized portion. If you just want the comfort food, without adding veggies to the dish itself, you eat a smaller serving. Then, fill the meal out with a vegetable soup or a vegetable side dish and a salad. That's plenty of food.

The problem is that we don't think of macaroni and cheese as the main course. We eat it with high-calorie hot dogs or hamburgers and buns. If I want a hot dog or hamburger and bun, I pair it with grilled corn and watermelon, plus a salad. And I've discovered that one slider-sized hamburger is plenty, especially if I make the buns myself.

My point is that I've been rethinking what constitutes a healthy, satisfying menu and coming up with a very different combination of foods from what I grew up with. It more closely resembles the types of foods recommended by professional nutritionists, with one major exception--I eat mostly whole fat dairy products. I don't like low-fat dairy. I don't substitute cup for cup, though. When I eat whole milk yogurt, I eat a quarter of a cup with fruit and granola. I couldn't eat a whole cup of it. It's too filling.

7. As for the hormone thing, before I stopped having the monthly hormone swings, I lost about 50 pounds, twice. But then I got stuck gaining and losing the same 5 pounds every month. I gave up and gradually regained some of that weight back. I never got back up to my highest weight ever. I managed to permanently keep off about 20-25 pounds. Back then it was all or nothing. You were a failure if you didn't get to the goal they set, and those goals were unrealistically low. Now, you're encouraged to set more reasonable goals and you don't feel like a failure if you've lost a significant amount of weight, but not every pound the experts say someone of your height and gender ought to lose.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the hormone thing--now that I don't have those monthly food cravings, anxiety, etc., my weight loss has been steady, as has my ability to adhere to the program. If I were a researcher working in the field of obesity, that's an area I'd love to examine. One of the things everyone knows about weight loss is that it's harder after menopause. I'm not so sure that's true for everyone. Thus far, it's not been true for me.