Slowing Down, Speeding Up

It’s obvious I’m not posting here with the frequency I once did. Food blogging is a lot of work, and I have to hand it to the people who do it consistently and well. I’m a bit more slow and methodical than most when it comes to producing content, so what might take them 30 minutes to throw online takes perfectionist me two hours.

I’ve decided to focus my efforts on venues that are more about writing (which I have a talent for) rather than photography (which I don’t). I just don’t think recipes are so much fun to read without a photo alongside, but photos are what keep holding me up with most recipe posts.

I’m still writing about food, though! Not only will I find time to still put up the occasional post here, but I’m now posting to a new blog that has a broader focus. Pennies & Pounds focuses on nutritious eating, losing weight for better health, and managing a kitchen to minimize waste and stress while maintaining a budget. I’d love for anyone reading this to come check out my new articles there. As a bonus, I’ll even gradually be bringing over updated and otherwise revised versions of some of the more popular articles from this site. You’ll feel right at home.

Incidentally, if you happen to be an educator or parent reading this, I’d like to give a shout-out to the other web site project I run, Sharp Pencils. It’s an evolving site focused on encouraging kids to write and aiding their language-arts teachers.

Back to food . . . here’s links to a few of the latest posts over at my new site, Pennies & Pounds:

A Jackpot within Reach

I tried and tried. Oh, did I try!

I bought nothing but light mayonnaise, skim cottage cheese, low-fat this, reduced-calorie that. I stocked my car with 100-calorie snack packs to ward off post-work hunger. I switched to healthier, whole-wheat pasta and bread. I bought diet books and tried to follow my magazines’ eating plans. I even joined a gym!

It didn’t matter. My weight, which had been inching upwards all through college, shot up dramatically. I gained more than 20 pounds in less than two years!

Articles of Independence (Day)!

I’m polishing up the first couple of posts for the site still. Look for more soon on weigh-ins and fruity deliciousness! In the mean time, check out this week’s articles of interest:

New York Times – The Claim: Mayonnaise Can Increase Risk of Food Poisoning
I’m glad to see they’ve finally taken on this old saw, and just in time for July 4th picnics. I discovered mayo had been given a bad rap years ago on the wonderful Good Eats.

Fruitful Snacking

Afternoon rolls around, and lunch seems like it was an eternity ago. Stomach rumbling, you reach for a snack to quell your hunger. But what should you choose?

Pick fruit! It’s an easy, pleasurable, and nutritious way to aid your efforts to improve your health and lose weight.

Unlike most “snack foods,” fruit is good for you! It offers vitamins, antioxidants, fiber and other nutrients, in a tidy, plant-based package. That bit’s important: After all, we need more plant-based foods in our diets for not only health but environmental and budgetary reasons.

Weighty Matters

I’ve long had a minor obsession with weights and measures. As a kid, I loved fussing with the balances in science class. I also found the those manual scales in the doctor’s office fascinating. In fact, I thrilled inside when I finally got to take one for a spin at the gym years later. In the kitchen, I’ve fallen for the digital food scale. I weigh portions to match nutrition labels when I’m counting calories, and I park my work bowl on the thing for measuring ingredients when I’m baking — it saves on dishes!

It’s in the bathroom, though, that I have tucked away the most important scale in the house. Every morning, I step on it to see how I’m doing at losing or maintaining my weight. Why? A firm grasp of where the scale points is one of the best tools in your weight-loss arsenal. To keep that toolbox stocked, you must weigh yourself regularly.

More are coming soon! But you’ll have to visit the new site to see those. Hope to see you there!

Eating Less Meat

A new article from Mark Bittman at the New York Times just popped up in my newsreader. It continues a theme the Minimalist has been pushing a lot lately, that of eating less (but not no) meat.

The reasons to cut back on meat consumption are many and are covered in various past articles. Some important ones are improving health (as meat is generally high in saturated fat), cutting costs (because meat is more expensive than grains and produce, even with rising costs for grain — animals here are fed grain, after all), and reducing environmental impact (in several ways, including this weird yet true bit: Cattle flatulence is a source of air pollution).

We’ve cut down our meat consumption considerably while living overseas. Our egg sandwiches are baconless, and our burgers are often made out of beans. The ultimate reason for us is that we are on a tight budget, what with the currency having tanked this year. Subbing beans for beef is economical and healthy.

Still, I’ve also reduced meat portions in straight-up meat-and-potatoes meals. Now, we share one boneless, skinless chicken breast piece between the two of us rather than each having our own, for example. (I do pound them flat and cut them into cutlets first, though, so it looks like a normal size).

But even though this is ostensibly “less,” I find it’s better this way. Growing up, we were never big meat eaters in our house. I don’t know why, but the habit of cutting up a portion of the meat dish into small pieces for the kids to take never left my mom. Thus, even as a teenager I was putting maybe six small cubes or a chunk smaller than a deck of cards on my (American-child-sized, European-adult-sized) plate and considering that a full portion. I never grew to like big meat portions much, always preferring the side dishes.

In a way, then, I feel like I’m getting back to normal rather than moving away from it.

Potato-Leek Soup

Tonight’s dinner:

A double batch of dilled potato-leek soup from Tasteofhome.com

SERVINGS: 3

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sliced leeks (white portion only)
• 1 celery rib, chopped
• 1-1/2 teaspoons butter
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1-1/2 cups cubed peeled Yukon Gold potatoes
• 1 large carrot, finely chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1-1/2 teaspoons snipped fresh dill or 1/2 teaspoon dill weed
• Herb potato chips and finely shredded leeks, optional

Directions:

In a large saucepan, saute leeks and celery in butter until tender. Stir in the broth, potatoes, carrot, thyme, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Cool slightly.

Transfer to a blender; cover and process until smooth. Return to the pan. Whisk a small amount of soup into buttermilk; return all to the pan, stirring constantly. Add dill; heat through (do not boil). Garnish if desired. Yield: 3-3/4 cups.

Taco salad (lettuce, diced tomatoes, diced cucumber, chopped onion, corn, kidney beans, chopped green olives, chili powder)

Bosniak bread with light butter

Verdict: Good. The potato masher made a decent substitute for a blender in this application. The soup wasn’t totally smooth like in the picture, but it was pretty pulverized. Sort of like that Campbell’s Vegetable Soup-at-Hand, if you’ve ever tried that. I did cut all the veggies very small though to aid in smoothness.

Slips!

I’ve definitely been stalled for the past few weeks, weight-loss wise. It’s not a surprise to run into a plateau, sure, but it is depressing. Oh, and my desire to eat has long been connected to my levels of stress and depression. It’s a vicious cycle.

I need to get out and about more for exercise to reduce the stress and depression, but I have little desire to go outside in the freezing weather. I’m none too keen on exercising with my videos, though, because it’s tough to move around and still seen what’s on my 13-inch laptop LCD. Well, and also because I feel like the time investment is too high when I have to add in the extra changing of clothes (ooh, and that irritates my sore shoulder, struggling to get on the tight support tops!), the setup, and the additional showering.

This kind of not seeing the forest for the trees is a problem with my food choices, too. It’s only upon long reflection that this root of a lot of my diet issues from the Vegas years dawned on me, and the past few days have shown that I still engage in this irrational behavior.

For example, I’ll start out the day great, choosing healthy breakfast and lunch foods. I’ll stick to low-cal but high-protein or high-fiber snacks if I need them in the afternoon. Dinners sometimes end up a little indulgent, but I plan them in advance to make sure the higher-cal item is more than balanced by an abundance of vegetables to fill out the plate. (I do subscribe to the notion that the plate should be 1/4 lean protein, 1/4 carb or starch, and 1/2 veggies.) But then comes the looooooong stretch between dinner and bed.

Many days I’m OK with nothing after dinner or with a small dessert like a 1/2 cup of ice cream or a couple of chocolates. Lately, however, I’ve had difficulty due to the emotional eating. I get all anxious and both want to eat to ease it and to not eat because I will get more anxious from the knowledge I’m destroying my diet for the day, you know?

Anyway, I force myself not to eat any of the healthy snacks for a while because I want to avoid calories, then totally crash and indulge in unhealthy foods to shut up the “I want to eat!” voice.

I did this all the time in Vegas. I spent a lot of time and money on finding and buying healthy foods, only to ruin it all by talking myself into believing I deserved the indulgence of a big fast-food meal and snack chips after a long, tiring, stressful work day.

I need help, honestly.

In other news, I have been looking over this list of healthy foods. It’s nice to see some of my favorite foods (white potatoes, romaine lettuce, onions, etc.) on there when I had figured they had little nutritional value. And I do cook the potatoes in healthy ways these days — usually steamed with ketchup for dipping or mashed with low-fat cheese and skim milk.

Steamed Potatoes

4 small russet potatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper

Toss everything in one of those big Ziploc steamer bags. Microwave for 14 minutes.

Alternatively, cook ‘em in a bowl loosely covered with plastic wrap. And the measures are totally approximate. I do it differently each time.

I love these with ketchup. It’s low in calories and the combo reminds me of fries without making me crave fries. However, if you’re feeling particularly Slovak, they’re also great with tartar sauce.

Pizza Ruminations

I didn’t like pizza for a long time as a kid. I refused to touch it. I made myself a problem at almost every friend’s birthday party. Of course, I didn’t see it that way — I couldn’t understand why pizza was such a frequent guest when there were plenty of better foods.

And though I like pizza now, I still think it’s silly how much pizza is used to up the joy factor for children. American kids are taught that pizza is like the holy grail of foods, the one they should adore above all others.

It’s so true! Not only is pizza considered a highlight of birthday parties, it’s way overused in school. Kids demand pizza parties as classroom rewards more often than even ice cream parties, and (truly nasty in all forms) pizza made twice-weekly appearances in the school cafeteria where I worked. In high school, many clubs would raise funds by selling pizza from local chains for Friday lunch.

Enough already. It’s not like any of the pizza consumed in any of these situations is every any good. Even putting aside the weird Lunchables-style pizzas and the frozen slop in the school cafeteria, typical American pizzas are uniformly bland and greasy. We’ve been taught that pizza should follow the model used by the chains: a nearly flavorless, sometimes oily, pillowy crust; minimal sauce (it makes the cheese slip!), assuming you can call the tomato paste mixed with dried seasonings they use “sauce,” gobs of cheap, extremely mild processed mozzarella/provolone; and toppings that usually taste more like fat than spice (assuming you haven’t opted for the undercooked veggie toppings).

It should say something that it’s grown so popular to dip pizza in garlic sauce or ranch dressing. The fact that all that chain pizza I ordered during my two years in Vegas absolutely needed to be drenched in ranch to be complete in my mind should have been a signal to me that maybe I just didn’t care for the flavorless pizza in the first place.

Even now, I find it’s difficult not to long for American pizza, even knowing that I wouldn’t really like it without some sort of sauce or seasoning powder on top to make it taste like something. I guess I just crave the greasy feeling in my mouth.

I have to conclude, having had the time apart from the stuff to really consider it, that it’s not the bland pepperoni this place uses, or the industrial crust that place employs, or the ovens clearly not utilized enough by that Pizza Hut in Vegas that kept sending me soggy pies that’s the problem. It’s the pizza style as a whole.

Now, I didn’t have a whole lot of pizza in Italy. Some of the pizza I saw there even didn’t look great. But the pizzas I did try were delicious and made me conclude that for the most part, we’ve got it all wrong when it comes to pizza.

A good pizza is simple stuff. The crust style isn’t so important — I had thick, foccacia-like pizza and thin pizza — but it should taste like good bread on its own. The topping should have a big focus on tomatoes. They slather on straight-up crushed tomatoes, maybe with some herbs added in on particular pizzas, such as the ones that come with no cheese at all. And as for the ones with cheese, they come with a mere sprinkling of a high-quality variety, such as fresh mozzarella pressed and pulled into small pieces scattered over a sea of tomato.

The pizzas don’t generally come loaded with toppings, either. I did see salami pizza, which might be the closest analog to our pepperoni, but the salami slices were huge (sandwich-sized), thick, and well-spiced.

I’m hopeful that I’ll eventually be able to talk myself into making homemade Italian-style pizza more often than I order takeout pizza that I don’t like much anyway, but even I know it’ll be tough to beat tradition and convenience. Still, I think I am definitely going to swear off the ranch dressing habit so that if I do order delivery, I must subject myself to how it really tastes.

Quick Tricks for Healthier Eating

From the folks at Health magazine and CNN come “Sneaky Little Slim-Down Tricks.”

The Most Reliable:

Start smart
Begin lunch and dinner with a veggie-rich salad or broth-based soup, says Pennsylvania State University satiety expert Barbara Rolls, author of “The Volumetrics Eating Plan.” “That lets you fill up first on a big volume of low-calorie food and ends up displacing some of the foods you’ll eat next — the choices that are usually higher in calories.”

Here’s a good salad recipe: Mix 1½ cups of salad greens with ¾ cup of raw veggies like onions, bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, or cucumbers; drizzle with 2 tablespoons of low-cal bottled dressing.

I keep trying to follow this one, but it does conflict with my desire to pare down the grocery budget and with the small size of my fridge. Scott’s great when it comes to this strategy — he always eats his salad first to try to fill up before the main course, even if it makes me worry that his entrée will get unappealingly cold in the meantime.

It would be nice if I could let things stay warm in the oven perhaps while we enjoy a separate salad course upfront to blunt our appetites. Something to consider for when we get back.

The Most Intriguing (It’s New to Me):

Sneak a snack
“Ten minutes before each meal, eat some healthy fat (around 70 calories or fewer): a handful of nuts, a few slices of avocado, or a spoonful of peanut butter, for example. That helps activate ghrelin, a hormone that lets you know you’re full,” says Michael Roizin, MD, co-author with Mehmet Oz, MD, of “You on a Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management.”

I’ve heard about that fullness hormone before, but always in the context of eating your meals slowly so that you have time for body to tell you it’s satisfied before your belt busts open. This bit of advice sounds pretty good if you’re the sort of person who does most overeating at meals (hmm . . . see the next part for more on that). It’s not going to help you much if you sabotage yourself through unhealthy food choices or caving to those never-hunger-based junk-food cravings.

Maybe this advice could be combined with the Volumetrics idea through getting that healthy fat via some oil, olives, or nuts on the salad?

The Most Disturbing:

Choose your pals
Studies show that most of us base how much we eat on what others around us eat, says University of Toronto psychologist Peter Herman, PhD. So steer clear of the big eaters in your social circle, at least when food is around. Sashay over and make small talk at parties with the folks who aren’t hovering near the food table.

“Marching to your own caloric drummer requires some independent thought and calculation,” Herman says.

Hand in hand with this goes a chronic obstacle to almost any wife’s diet plan. Unless you are significantly taller and far more athletic, your caloric needs are way less than your husband’s! Women pack on the pounds after marriage not only because they ditch the pre-wedding diet but also because they start portioning out the same amount of dinner to themselves that their husbands do.

It’s tough to sit at the same table and watch Scott put away more food (especially when it’s something tasty), but if I ate the same number of calories per meal that he does to lose weight, I would balloon. He’s eight inches taller than me and more muscular, and thus he can consume more calories without gaining weight than I can. It’s just the way it is.

You may not have noticed a change in the amount you consume, but that’s likely because you were brought up comparing portions with someone closer to you in size, such as a sibling. Even my brothers ate small portions at meals in my house growing up because they spread their eating out over the whole day. You ate the same size portion at others at the table then, so it doesn’t seem different to eat the same size portion as your husband, but odds are the portion size has grown in absolute terms.

I have to remind myself at every meal to eat only half or two-thirds as much as Scott, depending on the entrée. I also take time while preparing a meal to think out correct portions for each of us, such as setting out two slices of graham-flour bread for him and one for me. It’s all about planning, right?

Foods to Keep You Full

Assuming you can resist those cravings — though I suppose the point of many of these foods is to keep those cravings from cropping up in the first place.

15 Foods to Help You Lose – Goodhousekeeping.com:

Thirty billion a year — that’s about how much Americans spend on slim-down products, many of which don’t even work. A better way to get real weight-loss results? Go grocery shopping. New research points to more than a dozen foods, from beans to beef, that can help you fight hunger, kick your candy addiction, boost your metabolism — and ultimately shed pounds. And some of these superfoods deliver health bonuses too.

Basically, all of the foods on the list are the sort of nutritious foods you should be eating anyway as part of a healthy diet, with a few appetite-suppressing seasonings thrown in for good measure. Nutritional science can be hit or miss, but a lot of the foods listed on Good Housekeeping’s list (including beans and fruit) have definite nutritional benefits beyond any weight-loss claims.

Given that, it’s possible that the studies are right about how foods affect your blood sugar and digestion. Those foods might make you crave simple carbs less and keep you feeling full longer, so that you don’t binge and you thus don’t take in excess calories. And like I said, plenty of protein and fiber is just plain healthy!
Still, I don’t give much credence to any claims about foods that “boost the metabolism” or whatever, though, as I haven’t seen much non-anecdotal evidence that metabolism is really a factor in how much weight we carry. Plenty of people manage to stay fit as they age because they exercise (far more than I do, that’s for sure).

As we get older, we just get better at staying still and thus not burning calories. It’s easier for jumping-bean kids and constantly walking students to stay thin than for sedentary office workers. Add in the sleeplessness that makes so many adults drag themselves through the day and you get “fading metabolism.”

I certainly felt that last one as a teacher. Even though I should have gotten a good deal of exercise walking the classroom all day, I took every opportunity I could to sit very still and have kids do any grunt work as I was so exhausted. Another contributor to my 25 extra pounds!

So maybe it’s the jitters from the caffeine in tea that gets people losing weight rather than any special chemicals. Of course, we can’t all jump on the Starbucks Diet to take advantage — certainly all the cream and sugar in their drinks would counteract any benefit!

Good News from My Favorite Grocer

Hurray for Wegmans, taking a stand against tobacco!

Democrat & Chronicle: Local News:

Wegmans snuffs tobacco

“We believe there are few of us who would introduce our children to smoking,” stated a letter to employees from Wegmans CEO Danny Wegman and his daughter, Colleen, the company’s president.

Wegmans doesn’t expect massive numbers of customers to quit smoking, Natale said. “But we employ 37,000 people. Many of them are young people under 21. If this sends the right message to them, we will have accomplished something.”

As for anyone upset over Wegmans stripping them of their right to choose to destroy their lungs with the store’s assistance, I will point out that no other stores selling tobacco, from other supermarket chains to convenience stores and tobacco shops, have announced they are giving up the smoke.

Wegmans is something of a trendsetter among grocery stores, though. It’s long been ahead of other mainstream chains in areas such as offering natural and organic foods and promoting the use of high-quality but convenient ingredients in home cooking (it’s the only place I’ve ever found pre-washed and cut leeks in the produce department, and they provide a free monthly recipe magazine to customers).

Getting rid of tobacco products won’t eliminate all the health risks available for sale in any supermarket, but it’s a start. Businesses have just as much right to refuse to sell certain legal products as consumers do to buy them at stores where they are available (look at Wal-Mart’s CD selection sometime), but let’s hope this move by Wegmans does encourage some people to make a better choice when it comes to tobacco, which is so strongly linked to cancer and other disfiguring and painful diseases.

(via Slashfood)

Bound to Shake One’s Resolution

If it’s anything like eating frozen dinners all day, every day, that is.

Prepared Diet Food: The Good, the Bad, and the Unhealthy at Epicurious.com

Losing weight is hard enough, but then factor in counting calories, watching portions, and making the food, and it’s no wonder that more than half of us in the U.S. are overweight. That’s why millions turn to diet-delivery services, which promise tasty, hopefully healthy food in slimming portions, delivered right to your door. The Epicurious editorial team evaluated five of the biggest plans to discover which is the best, both in taste and nutrition. The winner?

I won’t spoil the surprise for you. Visit the site to read about Epicurious’ evaluations of meal services, including big shots such as NutriSystem, Jenny Craig, and ZoneChefs. True, the meals were tested back in March of aught-seven, but I doubt they’ve changed much in the subsequent months if you’re considering signing up for one as part of that New Year’s resolution.

If you’re interested in these plans more for the convenience than the additional services or financially imposed food-choice discipline, Good Housekeeping magazine has several alternative diet plans that revolve around prepared foods. Check out the Fast-Food Diet and other plans.

Another option is to hit up that frozen meal aisle. Stick with the Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Lean Gourmet, Weight Watchers Smart Ones, South Beach, and almost anything from the healthy/organic/vegetarian section (where they keep the Amy’s foods and the veggie burgers), and you’ll be getting a generally balanced meal that is already calorie controlled. That Epicurious article linked above reviews some. Most of the meals do tend to be on the small side, so be prepared to fill out your dinner entreé platter with either a salad (minus the cheese, croutons, and full-fat dressings) or a generous scoop from a bag of frozen veggies.

Keep in mind that any prepared foods-based diet is going to pack in whopping amounts of sodium. In fact, most of the sodium in our diets comes from processed foods, not from our salt shakers. If your resolution is less about dropping pounds and more about eating healthfully in order to reduce cardiovascular risks, you should pass on all these plans and invest some time in stocking your freezer with homemade batch cooking instead.

Watch Out, Texas . . .

. . . because Oklahoma’s dropping pounds.

Mayor to town: Lose 1 million pounds – CNN.com:

As part of the initiative, residents can sign up and track their weight loss on a new Web site, www.thiscityisgoingonadiet.com. More than 2,600 people had registered by Thursday. They’ve lost more than 300 pounds. . . .
The mayor timed the start of the weight-loss program to the beginning of the new year, when many people begin exercise programs after holiday feasts.

Oklahoma City ranked 15th in a 2007 survey of America’s fattest cities conducted by Men’s Fitness magazine. The survey examined lifestyle factors in each city, including fast-food restaurants per capita and availability of city parks, gyms and bike paths.

It sounds cheesy, yet I also am intrigued by this whole idea. It could become the next major feel-good feature story if by the end of the year Oklahoma City has met its goal. The mayor or his staff have come up with some innovative ideas here for motivating a community and building support for city improvements.

I think it’s great for leaders to actually try to bring communities together to achieve a positive common goal. People can meet huge goals together with sufficient motivation and leadership. It’d be nice if more projects like this were undertaken to address the nation’s obesity crisis.

Of course, we’d have to see that this experiment actually works first. Still, I’m so charmed by the idea that I can’t help but be hopeful.