Food Meme of Sorts

I wrote about searching for a cranberry quickbread recipe a few days ago, bemoaning the fact that my improvised recipe hadn't turned out quite the way I intended.  The recipe I was trying to re-create was something that I knew I had made in Girl Scouts many years ago as a Christmas project.  I don't really remember why we made cranberry bread; maybe to give to a nursing home?  Or to earn a kitchen safety badge?  Skit samma, as we say på Svenska.  Doesn't really matter.

My mother reads my blog from time to time (hi Mom!) and she saw the post.  She has the recipe with her at their warm and sunny winter residence (as to that...we have snow on the ground and are forecast about 5 more inches of snow by tomorrow morning, so I say :ppppp) and she e-mailed the recipe to me.  I went wrong in not including butter, not using enough baking powder, and, of course, not using enough sugar.  I'm always trying to figure out ways to cut granulated white sugar out of things, and the resulting end product is usually a little....tart.  Duh.

As I recall, though, this cranberry bread wasn't tart, and was not usually what you'd expect from any recipe with fresh cranberries as an ingredient.

(Don't worry, I'll share the recipe at the end of the post.)

That's item #1 to make for the (count them) TWO Thanksgiving dinners I am going to.

Next I had to call my mother's sister, my Auntie B, to get her recipe for a potato casserole; when we were kids, we always called it "Cheesy Potatoes," and looked forward to it each holiday season.  I suspect that this is a recipe she got off of the back of a package of one of the ingredients, but I've never asked about the origins.  I've never made it myself, either, but it isn't hard.  That would be item #2 I'm making for Thanksgiving.

Finally, in a mostly vain attempt to banish that icky cranberry glop that comes out of a can from the Thanksgiving table, I'm going to make a cranberry relish.  I made that for the first Thanksgiving I shared with DH's family.  Unfortunately, I can't remember where I got the recipe, and I haven't had time to look for it yet.  That'd be item #3.

Thank the gentle goddess that *I'm* not making the entire dinner, because I'd really rather not.

So here's the meme part; what is an unexpected essential part of YOUR Thanksgiving dinner?  Not the traditional turkey, dressing, mashed 'taters, sweet potato, green bean casserole.  Post it & share the recipe.  

Grandma's Fancy Cranberry Bread

1 loaf 9X5  greased pan

 

Bake for 1 hour 10 min @ 350

 

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 t Baking pwd

1 t salt

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 cup of butter

1 egg beaten

1 t grated Orange peel

3/4 cup O juice

1 1/2 c yellow raisins

1 1/2 cup fresh cranberry chopped

 

Sift flour all dry ingredients cut butter into mix until crumbly; add egg, OJ, and orange peel.  Fold in raisins and cranberries.  DO NOT ADD NUTS (n.b., apparently, nut oils react badly chemically with one of the ingredients, and it ruins the bread.)

Pour into prepared loaf pan & bake.

On the evils of HFCS

I saw a commercial the other day, produced by a pro-farming lobby firm about high fructose corn syrup.  It features a guy and a girl, on a blanket, in a park, sharing a picnic.  The girl pulls out a Popsicle, and offers the guy a bite.  He declines.  She then offers him two bites, and he responds by saying, "I thought you loved me."  

"I do." she says.  

"Then why are you trying to give me something that is full of high fructose corn syrup?" he asks, all plaintive.  

"What's wrong with corn syrup?" she asks.  

He flounders around for an explanation, and she gives him a rapid fire litany of facts about HFCS, that it has the same number of calories as sugar or honey, it isn't bad for you, everything in moderation, blah blah.

If you hadn't known before that second that the commercial was produced by some corn conglomerate, you did at that point. *eye roll*  But they are kind enough to put the words on the screen at the bottom, at the end of the commercial.  

Sure, HFCS probably does have the same number of calories as honey or sugar.  And if HFCS was the ONLY sweetener in that Popsicle, it wouldn't be as bad.  But the problem is that there is sugar, HFCS, fructose, and sucrose in a whole lot of sweet treats.  You're getting sugar on top of sugar, and would you like more sugar with your sugar?  Plus, HFCS has been refined ad nauseum, and is a pretty far removed thing from the cornfields of Iowa and Oh-hia-ia.  

What is making us fat, America?  Soda, processed sugars, fast food, gargantuan portion sizes.  Guess what is in the average can of soda produced and bottled here in the US?  HFCS.  And sugar.  And at least one or two other sweeteners.  

Guess how I lost a whole lot of that 43 pounds?  I didn't eat anything that had HFCS in it.  I read labels, obsessively.  I put it back on the shelf in the supermarket if HFCS was in it, I asked for ingredient lists at my favorite restaurants, I searched foodie websites to see what has lots of corn syrup.

Granted, I did a whole lot of other things, too.  Worked my tail off (literally!) in the gym.  Controlled my portions.  Removed a lot of the processed, prepackaged stuff from my kitchen and my life.  Focused on fresh veggies and fruits, not fruit juices and canned gunk full of salt.  Avoided fast food as much as possible.  Denied myself desserts and didn't take every. single. opportunity. presented to indulge my sweet tooth.

Is HFCS dangerous?  I dunno.  I do know that as a conscious consumer, I can (and do) choose to not eat it.  But don't tell me that it is as good for you as honey is.  I know better.  You do, too.

Critters

I don't have a green thumb.

I reliably kill plants, be they house plants or herbs, ornamental flowers or practical veggies. Among the talents I possess, growing things just isn't enumerated with my sparkling wit and engaging personality.

That has never stopped me from trying to grow all sorts of things, from tomatoes to African Violets. Memorably, when I was writing for Well Fed a few summers ago, I attempted to grow tomatoes organically, and for my trouble, I was rewarded with two tomatoes (from 6 plants!) that were the size of half-dollar coins. Not exactly the results I was hoping for.

The sole exception to this rule has been bulbs that I purchased from Breck's, tulips, daffodils, and some cute daisy-esque flowers called Grecian Wildflowers. Bulbs couldn't be easier. Plant them in the fall, and come spring, they grow all by themselves. No watering. No weeding. No fertilizing.

When DH and I returned from Florida a few days ago, I was expecting to see the daffodils and tulips in full bloom, because when we left, they were just beginning to poke their heads above the ground. Hold that thought for a moment while we talk about planting some other things.

Last summer, I didn't even attempt hanging baskets, because the depression was too all-consuming, and I couldn't even think about trying to keep plants alive. By the time the meds started working for me and I was back to some semblance of humanity, the summer growing season in Oh-hia-ia was drawing to a close.

Part of the problem is that I always get started too late in the growing season. IF you want to grow your own tomatoes, peppers, herbs, what-have-you, from seeds here in the nawth, you need to start the seeds in trays in February or March in order to be able to harvest in August or September. During those dark days of winter, spring planting just isn't what I'm thinking about.

Predictably, this year is no different. I purchased a bundle of seeds this past weekend, flowers, tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers, even some assorted lettuces. I planted them this past weekend, too. I might be able to harvest the 'maters come October. Maybe.

After my seed-buying spree, I walked the yard around our house, thinking of where I want to plant things.

The sunflowers in a spot of wild overgrowth that the landscaper hacked unmercifully last fall, because it will not regain its former untamed beauty for several years, and sunflowers grow large enough to disguise that blighted spot.

The herbs will mostly go into an herb-box that has three levels and enough space to accommodate all of the herbage I find necessary for cooking: chives (which survived all by themselves despite me over the past three years) parsley, oregano (ditto on the survival of that) dill, cilantro, basil.

Violas, pansies, and dwarf viola at the front door. Daisies and Lavender, both perennials, in spots where color is needed desperately.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, and salad greens don't have a home just yet, but wherever they go, marigolds will go around them to discourage rabbits and raccoons and groundhogs and deer from eating MY food.

It was while looking around the yard that I discovered that the tulips I planted so carefully a few years back have been decimated by the local white-tailed deer population.

Did they eat the run-of-the-mill Apple Blossom Tulips, which range from pale pinks to fire-y reds, and while beautiful, are not costly?

No. No, they did not. Or at least they didn't eat ALL of the Apple Blossom Tulips.

They did, however, eat ALL of the Angelique Tulips, my most prized tulips that garner multiple compliments, and gave me much joy. Even our community's pro landscaper had asked me where they came from, and what they were, admiring them when I spoke to him last spring. As you can imagine, being complimented on growing something with my two not-green thumbs thrilled me.

I hollered and fussed a great deal when I discovered this crime of epic proportions, bitching about the deer to any and everyone that would listen. Saying I was upset about my Angeliques being eaten would be akin to saying that Mt. St. Helens was a small explosion. I hunted on Google for solutions to the cloven hoofed menaces that don't include pesticides or shotguns. (Although I'd LOVE to shoot one or two, or OK, ALL of the deer that ate my tulips, the season for the pests is over, and really, I can't see myself shooting Bambi anyway.)

My online searching led me to several kinds of products that are approved for organic gardening, but since the part of the country where I live isn't exactly the most ecologically enlightened part of the world, my inquiries to local garden centers about these various things resulted in comments from their staff along the lines of, "Lady, we don't carry any of that organic-hippy-tree-hugger crap."

Imagine my surprise, then, when I stopped to pick up seed trays at one garden center and discovered that in fact, they DO carry organic-hippy-tree-hugger crap, called Deer Stopper. Excited, I brought it home. When DH helped me unload the car, he laughed, telling me that I'd bought in to a snake-oil bonanza. I hope not! It was expensive, and I hope to be able to use it to discourage the deer from munching on everything else.

I sprayed some on the remaining Apple Blossom tulips, and then also on the new plantings, hoping to discourage the foraging pests from TOUCHING MY STUFF! Hilariously, it was while I was browsing the pest deterrent section, I found a plastic inflatable snake, very life-like, which is supposed to deter a laundry list of things. Unfortunately, we just don't have diamond-backed rattlesnakes (or any other venous snakes that I am aware of) in this part of the world, so I doubt that any of the pests would recognize the snake as a predator. Other suggested natural remedies, like wind chimes and bright light-reflecting gizzets, just won't work for me, being either a) too noisy for me to tolerate or b) too ugly to put up in my yard.

Also not enumerated among my talents is patience, a vital ingredient for any gardener. The seeds I planted, according to their packaging, will germinate and sprout in anywhere from 3 to 30 days. At that rate, I'll have plants actually in the ground by mid-May at the earliest, and early June at the latest.

On the upside, if I'm able to be patient and careful, I'll have dozens of yummy Brandywine and Hillbilly tomatoes, both heirloom varieties that grow exquisite huge tomatoes, worth waiting for.

Mise en Place

{French, for set in place. Used in American kitchens in reference to prep work for a recipe.}

I had a party the other night. I was doing prep for the things that could be done ahead of time, and thinking about taking pictures of all my little bowls set neatly in a row, but not in the proper order at all; dessert things next to the main course next to the aps. I was too busy to stop, find the camera, take the pictures, and scribble down a few notes as to what I wanted to say about each picture.

Part of my OCD manifestation is that I like organization. I like things set in rows, counted in even numbers, neatly laid out, color-coded if possible. While that is my preferred modus operandi, often in the lead-up to a party I don't have enough time to do this, or somehow the day of the event sneaks up on me without my awareness, and I'm left scrambling around willy-nilly at the last minute. Not this time; I had a menu set several days ahead of time, lists for everything. I laid out all of the things I needed, had notes.

A full dinner for 7, table set with my favorite dishes that are normally consigned to the 'look but don't touch' files. Wineglasses, silverware that is rarely used, wine bottles chilled in the fridge. I love all this stuff. I love pulling out all the stops, making things that are complicated, or full of unusual ingredients, things that wow my guests. I love cooking for people I like, having a houseful of friends.

We laughed so much that my face hurt.

Everyone left after 1 AM, and then the next day I hosted family for a big dinner. Yet again, a weekend ending with me needing major sleep.

Disguises

My M-I-L got me a cookbook for Christmas. My addiction to all literature of baking, cooking, entertaining etc is well-documented on this site. So I was thrilled. When I opened it, and noticed the subtitle (Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food) I raised an eyebrow; she quickly explained that she hadn't realized that it was aimed mostly at kid-friendly recipes.

"That's OK," I replied cheerfully. "Its a cookbook. I'll use it!"

"Told ya so!" DH exclaimed triumphantly from his corner. Apparently, they'd had a "discussion" (read that disagreement) over whether or not she ought take the book back.

I'd seen Jessica Seinfeld's book in bookstores during the holidays, but hadn't leafed through it after noticing that it was aimed at families with young children. Seeing as I don't have any and all.

There's some controversy and she's being sued over the book for supposedly taking the idea from someone else, but *shrug* I just don't really care about the hoopla.

I like the book. There are a few things that I don't like; she's hyper-focused on getting her kids to eat their vegetables, but there isn't much in there about organics or focusing on cutting down carbs, and too many places where she's using ingredients like margarine spreads that I think have no place in any kitchen, too many artificial ingredients. That's really me nit-picking, though...in this age of fast food for dinner all the time, the fact that she and Jerry actually cook a real dinner for their kids is commendable. And note the artificial flavoring (banana candy flavoring) I suggested that you use in my Banana Cake recently...I have all sorts of rationalizations for it (DH likes a stronger banana flavor, I spent a small fortune on the teeny-tiny bottle and might as well use it up, there's no sugar in the stuff...) so I've got no room to throw stones and I'm sure she's got her reasons for icky artificial margarine. No one said I had to use it.

So the premise of the book is this; rather than fight with your super-picky eater kids about "EAT YOUR VEGETABLES, DAMMIT!" hide the veggies in things they like to eat by using pureed veggies in things like spaghetti sauce, chicken nuggets, sloppy joes, mac & cheese, and even burgers. Not a bad idea, really. I kind of had a V-8 moment when I started reading it...why the hell didn't *I* think of that?

Another thing I'm not crazy about is her assumption that she needs to teach you to cook from square 1; it comes off as condescending, in my ever-so-humble. I'm probably a better cook than you are, Miss Hollywood Wife, so let's skip the "what is a steamer" section, mmkay? Not that I'm egotistical about my culinary abilities, not at allllllllllllll. Where'd ya get that idea?

I don't usually cook vegetables; I like a green salad better than cooked broccoli any day, and eating cooked spinach rates right up there with a root canal as far as I'm concerned. Unless we're talking about spinach and artichoke dip, or a spin/artichoke appetizer I make that also has sour cream and creme cheese in it, so not good for you. There are some vegetables that I'd like to prepare (squash, among other things) that DH just turns his nose right up over, and aren't worth my irritation when he won't eat it.

DH will tell you that he's not a picky eater. I disagree. I'm adventurous when it comes to food, I'll try just about anything once. I have firm opinions about what I do and don't like, but something new? Sure, I'll give it a shot. I discovered sushi and curry, both of which I like, by saying, "sure, I'll have a bite of that, what is it?" I have tried reindeer, (didn't agree with my tummy) lutefisk (ugh) and a whole bunch of other oddities. When in Rome and all that. DH, on the other hand, is sort of a meat-and-potatoes kinda guy. Nothing wrong with that. I just like a bit more variety.

I'm giving it a shot; I bought 2 bags of baby spinach, steamed them and pureed them, put them in 1/2 cup portions and tossed them in the freezer just like she suggests. I also steamed a whole head of cauliflower (add that to the list of things I'd rather eat raw) and roasted an entire butternut squash. The head of cauliflower yielded the most, a cup and a half of finished product.

The first thing I sneakily put veggies into was homemade mac & cheese, following MotherMe's recipe. (I did make a few changes; see below.) The book suggests cauliflower OR butternut squash for additions to mac & cheese. I had both purees, but since I was using Colby and cheddar with a hint of Monterey jack, the squash seemed more likely to blend in color-wise.


In the interest of the additional 23 pounds I still need to lose, I cut out the really yummy half & half and used skim instead of whole milk, along with a reduced-fat cheddar, after carefully reading the label to make sure there was nothing icky in it. I also added a whole onion, pureed and quickly browned in a skillet, with 2 cloves of garlic. Then for the protien additions; I added 12 strips of bacon, browned super-crisp and crumbled up, and two diced (pre-cooked) chicken breasts. I didn't need the additional liquid from the half & half, because the puree of squash was pretty liquid-y, and I popped it in the oven only long enough to brown the top.

The result? Good! It was a bit too sweet...I think using a sweet onion probably had a lot to do with that, and next time I'll use a regular old white onion. And the squash is kinda sweet too, so I'll give the cauliflower a shot the next time around. DH didn't love it; but he ate it without too much complaint. I didn't think it was necessary to inform him that there was both onion and butternut squash in his mac & cheese; he blamed the taste being "off" to him on a head cold he's suffering from. We had it again the next day for lunch, and in my ever-so-humble, it was better the next day.

There are a ton of things I can't wait to try in this book. She even manages to squeeze veggies into baked goods...it will be interesting to see how that works out. I could do without the parenting tips on every third page, too, but whatev.

O NO GMO

I was watching a bit of Headline News this morning, and adorable-as-hell Robin Meade did a tease for a story about cloned cattle being one step closer to being on your supermarket shelves.

WTF? No, wait, seriously. What the fuck?

The Washington Post has an old piece slanted in the pro direction; even though they quote a survey that says 63% of respondents were opposed to serving cloned milk and meat at their tables.

Then there's this vid from CNN itself that warns against the possible health risks.

Gentle Goddess, this is horrifying news.

The FDA isn't even going to label things as being cloned; the CNN bit quotes someone from the FDA as saying "Cloned products will be so similar that there will be no need for labels."

How about because you don't want to eat that shit, how's that for a reason? A damn good one, too, if you ask me.

I don't eat red meat; not because I'm vegetarian, but mostly because I really don't like it. A perfectly cooked steak holds absolutely no appeal for me. The reports are talking about cloned cows, and pigs, but not yet chicken. I'm sure that's next on the list.

Fortunately, I do know where to get both chicken and beef from local producers, folks who use organic methods and I can trust. It isn't convenient to buy from either of them, but I'll take the inconvenience over not knowing where the hell the food on my plate comes from.

What is next?

Y'know what...I don't really want an answer to that.


Speaking of being vegetarian, I baked a vegan cake the other day for DH's birthday. My nephew is allergic to eggs, so I'm always looking for recipes for baked goods that don't have eggs. The holiday cookies that I bake with the kids can't have eggs or nuts in them, which makes finding recipes tough. I thought DH's birthday cake would be a good place to experiment, because I had no butter, no eggs, no sour cream and no cream cheese in the house, so a cheesecake was out.

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking

Bouncing Banana Birthday Cake

Makes 1 8x8 square cake. For layers, or bundt cake, double the recipe.

Oven 350

Whisk together in a large bowl
1-1/2 c unbleached flour
1 c turbinado sugar (sold under the brand name Sugar in the Raw)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

In the food processor, combine
2 bananas
1 c water
1/3 c oil (or unsweetened applesauce, or a combination of the two)
1 tsp vinegar
1 tbsp vanilla
1-2 drops banana creme candy flavoring (completely optional)

and blend until smooth. Dump the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients, and mix well. Pour into a greased and floured 8x8 pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 30-35 minutes. Cool on rack in pan 10 minutes and remove from pan. Allow to cool completely before frosting or decorating.


I didn't bother to frost it either time I made it; once, in the square pan just for DH, and the second time in a bundt pan for his family's celebration of his birthday. I used all oil the first time and mostly applesauce the second time. It was definitely more dry the 2nd time around, which just means I've got to tinker with it to find the right mix of oil and applesauce to lower the fat but keep that cake texture. Another change that I made the 2nd time around was to use 1/2 Splenda instead of all turbinado sugar, for my diabetic M-I-L's sake.

I have to say, it turned out far better than I expected. It ages well, too, becoming more moist the 2nd day.

Candy is Dandy, but Liquor is Quicker

I picked up a piece of candy off of a table at an event, those little generic M&M sort of things, chocolate, candy shell, mint flavor. After I popped it in my mouth, I realized that it was sure to be full to bursting of the sorts of things I usually avoid. High fructose corn syrup. Refined sugar. Artificial flavors. Artificial colors.

Really, the sort of thing I don’t eat at all anymore, not the sort of thing that I just avoid.

And it tasted disgusting. Really bad. Either I had forgotten that I don’t like those, or my taste buds readjusted, or something. If I hadn’t been at a work event, I so would have spit it out. I didn’t eat anything else at the rest of the event. I’ve taken to completely ignoring whatever food is served at holiday events that are catered, because it just isn’t worth it to me to eat it.

I had a similar experience with a Milky Way bar, and a 3 Musketeers. (These episodes were all several weeks apart, I haven't been going around noshing on candy.) I used to eat a lot of candy, all the time. Chocolate, mostly, but anything with sugar was OK. I have recently started to realize something; I was seriously addicted.

When I say addicted, I really mean it. I was addicted not only to food but also to sugar. Food used to really be a problem. I can’t eat just one Oreo cookie. I can’t eat just one French fry, or just one potato chip or just one anything, frankly. I hate to compare it to something as serious as alcoholism, but I think that it is a little bit like that. An alcoholic cannot drink just one beer; I can’t eat just one cookie.

For many obese people, food is a comfort. I don’t know if that was the case for me, I’m sure somewhere that figures in, but I really can finally recognize how self destructive, incredibly self destructive, my relationship with food was.

I still like chocolate. But somehow, I don’t enjoy eating it unless it is chocolate that I can actually understand all of the ingredients on the label. A good case in point for that is the fudge that I made with my niece and nephew last weekend. We used Baker’s chocolate, and there are no mystery ingredients in that stuff. I will eat squares of the semi-sweet to satisfy a chocolate craving. The other ingredients in the fudge were vanilla, marshmallow fluff, sugar, and water. OMG, I had to give it away because I couldn’t leave the stuff alone.

Typical, though, that my taste for chocolate has evolved in to stuff that is more expensive. There's a whole 'nother post in that, about how expensive it is to eat healthy food. Move up the scale, to organic, fair trade produced stuff, and it ties back to what I was ranting about recently; the obesity epidemic. Sugar-filled soda and "juice drinks" are cheap. Oh, you want "not-from-concentrate really from apples" apple juice? That'll be $78.34, please. Alright, I'm exaggerating, but you see my point.

Champagne tastes and a beer budget, of course, that's me.

Terribly unfortunately, however, I haven't lost my taste for booze or wine with my changing taste buds.

Cheesecake Poppers

Sonic is a drive-up restaurant that advertises in my cable market. I'm not sure why; there isn't a Sonic within 50 miles of here. Their commercials are memorable, if nothing else. I'd categorize them as annoying, but maybe that's just me.

They've been showing ads for "cheesecake poppers" lately, which if you've escaped this phenomenon, are little bites of cheesecake, covered in a batter and deep-fried. Deep fried! Cheesecake is bad enough for you, but then deep frying it? Wow, holy calories, Batman. Probably just as bad for you as deep-frying Mac & Cheese. Sonic's website does not list the nutritional information for the cheesecake poppers, but I suspect that's because it is a new menu item and they haven't updated their website.

Then I saw a sign for the same thing at an Arby's.

No wonder America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Deep-fried everything, mega sized meals, sugar bonanza sodas. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I know that. I'm just astonished all over again at our wacky perception of portion size and what a reasonable daily caloric intake is.

On Tuesday, I was at a meeting held at a restaurant, a local family-owned sort of thing. Many restaurants of that stripe around here are Italian, but this one, I couldn't put a category to. Typical Yankee food, burgers, sandwiches, nutritionally worthless iceberg lettuce salads, a few grilled chicken/grilled fish things. I'd never been to this place before, and I ate prior to the meeting at home, where I can control what I'm getting and I know what is in everything I'm eating. (Control freak? Me?!? Surely, you jest.) I didn't know what I was walking in to there, so rather than take a chance, I just took out a little insurance that my tummy wouldn't be clamoring through the whole thing.

I ordered a cup, a CUP, mind you, of soup, so that I wasn't the only one without food in front of her, and they brought me a bowl that was perhaps six inches across and three inches deep, filled to the brim. If I had to guess, I'd estimate that there were two cups of food inside that bowl. That's their "cup" of soup. It was a vegetarian barley stew sort of thing, and delicious, and it set me to wondering if I could re-create it at home, but I ate perhaps a third of it. I shudder to think what a bowl of soup is to these people.

Being out in the community all day as I am for my new job, the temptations are myriad and near-devastating to my constant refrain of "do you need to eat that?" Fast food abounds, and sit-down restaurants take too long. I've discovered that if I drink coffee, I'm not as hungry and can wait for something to munch on until I get home. Decaf, of course, but I don't think it particularly wise to use that as a long-term plan. I haven't been smart enough yet to remember to put snacks in the car so I'm not ravenous.

I won' fall off the wagon; I'm far too OCD for that. I step on the scale a far more often than is healthy, checking constantly to make sure I haven't gained anything back from the bad eating habits that I have indulged in from time to time over the last month. The eating something crappy is only sporadic, but I worry about it regardless. I've worked too hard and too long to have it completely destroyed by our fast food nation.

The moral of the story? Read the labels, people.

Att banta

When I was learning to speak Swedish, various things confused me as a non-native speaker. It made me appreciate how incredibly difficult learning English must be. I can never remember which is which, but homophones, homographs...you know, words that sound alike but are spelled different, or are spelled the same but pronounced different...how confusing that must be for someone to try to figure out. Then there are words that mean the same or similar things, like red and crimson. I can't remember what those are called. Homonyms, maybe?

One of the things that I love about English is its richness of vocabulary, the fact that there are hundreds upon thousands of words, the many descriptors available for your use, for free!

Yes, I admit it. I'm a grammar geek. I love all this stuff. No apologies for it either.

Swedish has these little quirks too. The words for ugly and drunk are both ful, but I can barely hear the difference between the two. (Context...so important!) In order to avoid having to say ugly, I would use the word horrible, so that I didn't mispronounce it. Again. Then there are the words for ice cream, glass (like in a window) and glasses (for vision correction), which all sound like the English word glass, but they're spelled differently. I think. I can speak it much, much better than I can read and write it.

Words that had similar meanings threw me from time to time as well. To diet in Swedish is att diet; but then there's this other word, banta, that seems to mean the same thing. My host father explained it to me like this; diet was the word you would use for what you were doing when you were trying to lose weight, but to banta was to just hold back. As best I can figure, banta-ing is somewhere in between leaving something on the plate so you don't feel gorged and starving yourself. Kidding!! OK, so not starving yourself, but not eating all that you want to, either.

Recently, I've officially reached a big number in my weight loss quest. 40. I am 40 pounds lighter than I was a year ago at this time. I had been at a plateau with the losing weight since about May or June. It seems after the death of my Auntie H in October that the scale has been showing smaller numbers, finally, and very slowly. We're talking initial changes in ounces. I've finally invested in a decent scale at home instead of relying on the gym's. I have no earthly idea what to attribute this resumption of weight loss to; I haven't changed anything that I've been doing for the last year in the last few weeks. It is a huge relief to see those numbers going down again.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and yes, even atheist-leaning agnostics celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. My Auntie G cooks twice a year; Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is an event not to be missed. Her stuffing? To die for. Better than your granny's or your mother's, I promise. Since I only have the opportunity to eat it twice a year, I tend to overload my plate with it.

Thanksgiving is a carb festival, isn't it? At least, it is for my family. In addition to the stuffing, which is bread-based, there's mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls, corn...all starch-y, not good to overindulge in. Plus this is the Slovak side of the family, so noodles and butter with gravy are also on the table. Like haluski, without the cabbage. Don't ask why we do this, I couldn't explain it to you if my life depended on it. But trust me, it is good. Gooooood!

When people ask me how I've lost the weight, my answer is always the same: "The really, really hard way." Sweating my ass off (quite literally, hahahaha) at the gym, cutting my portion sizes, paying lots more attention to food labels, both for the nutritional value and for the actual ingredients, trying not to eat pre-packaged food, staying away from fried anything. Banta-ing, essentially.

I did not take the opportunity to overindulge yesterday. My attitude about food and relationship with food have changed so much in the past year. It isn't that I no longer derive pleasure from good food, it is that I don't need quite so much of it to be satisfied. One of my cousins, for hours after dinner, moaned about how overstuffed she felt, and I couldn't help but think to myself, "Why the hell did you eat that much, then? No one was forcing you to."

Did I eat the stuffing? You bet. Wouldn't miss it for the world. But there were more carrots from the veggie tray than there was stuffing on my plate. I even ate a little bit of the noodles. I passed on the mashed potatoes. If I eat those these days, it is going to be my own recipe that includes sour cream, cream cheese, garlic, and butter. But was my plate so full yesterday that I had to make a separate trip for a roll? Nope. Didn't eat one of those, either. The fat content and other icky preservatives that are in them aren't worth the taste to me anymore. (They were those rolls that come in the can, that you shape into little quarter-moons.)

Overall, I think my relationship with food and my attitude about it are so much more healthy now than they've ever been. Even when I was a size-0-wearing skinny little bit of a thing. I think about the word banta often. I ask myself all the time; Do you really need that much of that? I turn things over and check out the label, and if it has corn syrup (evil, evil, evil) or tHBQ (dude, two words...PETROLEUM DERIVATIVE!!!) in it, I put it back on the shelf. There's some magic number of fat grams that I won't go over on a single serving of anything. I don't really know exactly what that number is, but impulse buying of a candy bar isn't something that I do much these days. Not worth the calories and fat, and if I'm going to eat chocolate, it is going to be chocolate that has a list of ingredients that I can actually pronounce.

I don't suppose that I can go around answering the question "How'd ya lose the weight?" by saying "I banta-ed," and not just because the Swe-Eng nonsensical word won't make sense to people. I've changed my philosophy, my daily routine, my grocery-shopping habits, my cholesterol levels, my blood sugar, my number of asthma attacks, everything, to get where I am. Much easier to say 'the really, really hard way.' But my favorite upside of it all? Not the fact that I'm stronger and healthier, not the fact that my asthma is under control. Nope. As vain and shallow as it is, my favorite benefit is that in addition to the laundry list I've made of changes, I've changed my dress size, too.

Pie

Much like I think about the passage of time in the fall, I only bake pies in the fall. Apple, mostly, because the apple harvest has come in, but sometimes a pecan pie too. I'm not a big fan of cherries, so I don't make cherry pies in the summer, and I'd rather eat peaches whole or made into ice cream than in pies, so apple it is.

DH is a huge fan of apple pie or apple dumplings, which are actually a lot less trouble than a whole pie. But, y'see, I'll eat just one small slice of apple pie to see how it turned out; if I make apple dumplings, I'm going to eat at least 2 of them.

Surprisingly in someone so enamored of working in the kitchen, I've only rarely bothered to make pie crust from scratch. I have a weakness for Jiffy's pie crust mix left over from my childhood. My mother isn't a big fan of baking, so that's what she used. All you do is add water.

Lately, however, that hasn't been good enough for me. Last weekend I made two apple pies, one for a neighbor and one for us. When I tasted it, the crust was dry. Dull, lifeless, and dry. DH rarely complains about any of the baking I do, knowing as he does that I'll offer sweetly to let HIM bake next time. We'd wait for the next ice age before he would bake something, and since he likes his baked goods....well, he just doesn't complain. But when I asked for his honest assessment, he agreed with me that the apples were perfection, the filling was wonderful, but the crust was dry.

I collect cookbooks like other people collect art or knick-knacks. Of course I have a cookbook dedicated solely to pies. It was a gift from a friend, and while I've read it cover to cover, and been fascinated by the types of pies I've never heard of, I've yet to try my hand at any one of the sweet or savory pies that are on its pages. It has a whole section on pie crusts, so when I decided that I was going to make a pie crust from scratch, that was the first place I went for research.

Over the years, I have heard anecdotal evidence that suggests the best pie crusts are made with lard. Which, I've got to say, squicks me out to the nth degree. The book seemed to suggest this too, so I picked up lard at the grocery store, all the while thinking, 'ewwww' and 'I resolve to not eat one single piece of this pie. Bad for you. Bad. See this lard? See your thighs?'

I experimented with the pie crusts by using several different types of flour. Two kinds of whole wheat flour, pastry and regular, and one crust with the last of the all-purpose bleached enriched flour in my pantry. Never again, that stuff, now that I have discovered unbleached and unbromated flour.

The recipe that uses lard calls for vinegar, too. That bothered me a bit; who wants vinegar with their apple pie? But I stuck with it, adding all 4 teaspoons of vinegar that the recipe called for. Mistake. Not a big mistake, but in the finished pie, I could still taste the vinegar. I had hoped that the flavor of it would diminish with baking, because the smell of it was pretty pungent when I was working with the raw crust. It added something interesting to the taste of the crust, interesting as in 'what the heck is that,' not as in 'mmm, wonder what that is.' Next time, lots less vinegar. A teaspoon. Perhaps two. No more.

DH was not thrilled with the whole wheat crust. I've got to admit that I wasn't either. Its texture is tougher than the AP flour, the color of the finished product is lots less satisfying, and somehow, it seems wrong to have a pie crust made with lard (how much worse for you nutritionally can you get than LARD, ffs?) and trying to balance out the bad by using whole-grain flour.

There is no doubt at all that the lard crust was much more flaky, had better flavor, and was far richer than my old standby box pie crust mix. But I don't think I can ever bring myself to buy that stuff ever again. Icky. Really icky. When I was working with it, I tried to imagine that it was shortening, since it has a similar color and texture. I even turned the container of it around so that the side printed in Spanish was all I could see. Funny those little things you learn; Spanish for lard is manteca. Next time it will be butter. And better, too.

Five Fine Questions

A few months ago, a blogging friend had the most unusual meme posted on his blog. It was an interview of sorts, and it intrigued me a great deal. The way is works is you leave a comment on the interviewee's (in this case, my) blog, and they come up with five questions which you then answer. So instead of getting tagged with a meme that you may or may not want to do, you volunteer for this one.

I volunteered. But John has a life outside of the computer, unlike me, so some time went by before he was able to get the questions to me. And in the intervening week, I've actually had a life outside of the computer; among some personal drama, I also had.....drumroll, please....a JOB INTERVIEW! Since we don't talk about work or potential work on this blog, I'd feel more comfortable if we moved on, wouldn't you? Thought so.

Here are John's five questions and and my answers.

1. You are a self-described hemorrhaging heart liberal. I am a hand-over-my-heart conservative. Why should people like us "waste time" talking to each other?

Because you can't shake hands with a clenched fist. We may never convince one another to change our personal point of view, even though we passionately hope to, but we can't fix a single problem by shouting at one another. Sane, respectful, rational, polite dialog never hurt anyone that I've ever heard of. And there's a lot to fix; we're agreed on that. Healthcare, Education, Poverty, the HIV crisis, the gaping holes in the deficit and the ozone layer...methodology and philosophy may differ, even be vehemently opposed to one another, but you have to start somewhere. A conversation is a good place to begin.

2. You have been convicted of a crime (hypothetically, of course!) and your judge passes the following sentence on you for your crime..."You can only eat one meal, watch one movie, read one book, and listen to one album for the rest of your life." What are your choices and why?

Ouch! Depriving me of musical and reading choices is like taking my oxygen away. Alright, begin at the beginning; one meal.

Pasta, with a tomato-basil-garlic sauce, and a glass of Syrah or Shiraz. I'd gain a ton from the carbs, but I could eat pasta 7 days a week and not get tired of it.

One movie; The Shawshank Redemption. Morgan Freeman's monologue at the end makes me weep every time I watch it. It is about hope.

One book; as I type this, I'm looking over the edge of my loft at my library below and the hundreds of books shelved there. Pick one? ONE? I think I could sooner choose one limb to lose. I'm sure most people pick something serious, some weighty tome, scholarly and pedantic in tone; I don't think I could. Although I'm tempted to say an unabridged dictionary, for the love of learning new words. The questions I'm struggling with here are: something I've read already and know and love, or something I haven't read and want to? Fiction or non-fiction? In English or Swedish or German? Argh! Much too difficult to answer for someone who has loved to read since her earliest memories!

Steven King's The Stand because it is very long and being a horror novel would take me a long, long, long time to read with my overactive imagination.

One album; again, very, very difficult. I have over 1200 songs stored in iTunes, and that isn't all of my music collection by a long shot. I listen to everything from opera to hip-hop, alt country to jazz standards. There isn't much music that I don't like. I think I'd choose Miles Davis's, Kind of Blue, because it was my first exposure to jazz, a memory I hold dear, and because every time I listen to it, I hear something new.

3. You spent some time in Sweden as an exchange student. What are the lingering life-lessons you carry from this experience?

Funny you should ask, I was also asked this question in that job interview.

The biggest lesson was that I can do anything. I forget that lesson from time to time, but I figured out at 16 years old that if I could learn a completely new language in 3 months then there probably wasn't much I couldn't do, if I was determined enough. Another lesson was that families, the world over, are far more similar than they are different. Our similarities have the potential to bring us closer together, to solve conflict. That's what the exchange program is about, really, is fostering peace. I learned that I could get up in front of an audience of any size and not die of terror on the spot; I've used that a lot over the years. Many people fear public speaking. I not only love it, I'm good at it. I learned to treasure time alone and solitude; some of my meditation practice takes me back to sitting on the shore of Lake Malaren in my hometown in Sweden, watching the waves, listening to and feeling the wind. The link shows a map of my Swedish hometown; look at the right side of town and a spot on the lake that says Skillingeud; that's where I went when I wanted some solitary time. I would also be freezing my rear end off most of the time, frankly! Which brings me to my last two life lessons....how to dress in layers to keep warm and that saunas are a woooonderful thing.

4. Name 5 simple things that bring joy to your day.
Every day or any day? I'm going with any day.
1. Sunshine, because we see so little of it here in Oh-hia-ia.
2. Laughing with my sisters so much that my abs hurt. The three of us need to be together for that one, but it is a joy.
3. My DH snoring loud enough to shake the roof. No, really. If he's snoring, that means that he's here, with me, and if the noise bothers me, I use earplugs. I'm lucky to have him , and even when the snoring bugs me, it reminds me that he's always there, solid, dependable, a source of strength for me that has never run out.
4. Deep breaths of crisp, cool air. I don't know if anyone who does not have asthma can appreciate this in the same way that an asthmatic can. Usually a sharp inhalation of cold air brings on an attack, so when it doesn't, that's a great thing.
5. My friends and family, without whom I would not be the imperfect person I am.

And now I've got John Denver singing "Sunshine on my shoulders" stuck in my head.

5. You enjoy cooking. My Beloved and I are coming over. What's for supper? (Spare no details. Make our mouths water.)

And what an interesting dinner that would be!

The true question here is do I start with dessert and work my way backwards or begin with the traditional first course and work my way forward? I had to look up the proper courses per Emily Post; but since I think a entree and roast course are both redundant and far too much food, I've trimmed it down to fewer courses than a formal dinner. Working (mostly) within my abilities, here we go!

1. Hors d’oeuvre~small rounds of fresh French bread, soaked with olive oil and covered with a blend of feta cheese, garlic, and spices, (oregano, salt, pepper, parsley) broiled in the oven until the bread is crispy and the feta is soft. Very messy to eat, as the olive oil runs all over everywhere, but worth the mess.

2. Soup~my host mother's soup, for which I have no English name. She calls it juha, but that's a phonetic spelling of a Croatian word that I know is just 'soup.' It is a clear broth, made from soup bones in a pressure cooker, and is simplicity itself. Seasoned only with salt and a very small amount of pepper. Tiny, tiny, tiny pasta is added for some bulk. Although I said I was working within my own abilities, I have yet to be able to re-create the exact flavor of her soup here in the States. I suspect this is due to the difference in the way cattle and chicken are raised (more organically) there.

3. Entrée~an Emeril Lagasse recipe that I've stolen and adapted over the years; beer-brined chicken. A whole chicken is submerged for 24 hours in a brine made of lots of salt, a little bit of water, and a whole lot of Guinness. Other beers or ales also work, but the Guinness just adds something unquantifiable to it. Plus some other secret seasonings. When it comes out of the brine, the cavity of the chicken gets a stick of butter and a whole head of garlic stuffed inside, and it is roasted. The most moist and flavorful thing you've ever had. Served with small new potatoes every color of the spectrum (purple ones from Prince Edward Island are pretty) and fresh green beans that have been steamed just until they're hot, still crisp.

4. Fish~Basa, a Vietnamese fish, steamed in packets made of parchment paper, seasoned with sesame oil, dill, salt, pepper, a hint of lemon juice and lemon zest. Served with crisp edamame.

5. Salad~one of my Kitchen Sink salads. Called so because everything but the kitchen sink is in it! Baby greens, all sorts of wonderful lettuces as the base. Sweet and spicy, things like arugula, endive, Boston lettuce, you get the idea. To that I add shredded carrots, diced celery, English cucumbers that have been halved, seeded, and chopped in to chunks, toasted almond slivers, dried cherries, golden raisins, small grape tomatoes. The salad is served naked, with no dressing on it to allow each diner to add the amount of dressing that they like. I make a vinegarette from scratch, using fresh squeezed lemon juice, lemon zest, fresh cilantro, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, sesame oil and olive oil.

6. Dessert & Coffee~knowing that you are a coffee lover, I would have to serve coffee that my parents brought back from Nicaragua when they visited several years ago. I have no idea what it was called, where it was grown, or how the beans were roasted, but it was the best coffee I've ever tasted. Or a true Hawaiian Kona, not the 'Kona Blend' you find in the stores.
Dessert would have to depend on the season; in the depths of winter, a decadent chocolate delight, rich moist chocolate cake layers with dark chocolate ganache between the layers, frosted with chocolate mousse and garnished with sliced strawberries and white chocolate shavings. I think I gained ten pounds typing that sentence!! In the spring, a lighter cake, butter cake, which isn't chocolate, with raspberry filling, and a honey buttercream frosting, decorated with vines piped in a buttercream tinted green. In the summer, a chocolate angel food cake, lighter than air, with the addition of a swirl of chocolate sauce to grace each plate. Fresh strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries served on the side with whipped creme. In the fall, apple dumplings made from Honeycrisp apples, which ErinCee will tell you are the best, most wonderful fall apples. Apple dumplings, for those not in the know, are made rather simply; a pate sucre (sweet dough) is wrapped around a peeled and cored apple. Just before sealing the square of pastry around the apple, a bit of cinnamon, a tiny bit of nutmeg, and a dab of butter is placed inside. They're then baked in a glass dish containing a simple syrup (sugar and water, boiled together) to which cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter has been added. Apple dumplings are traditionally served with ice cream; I like mine without, but for those who like the al a mode version (including my DH) a homemade vanilla gelato, far richer than any ordinary ice cream. Gelato has many, many eggs in it, is a colossal pain in the ass to make, and worth every second of the effort. I'd make it with whole vanilla beans so that the tiny specks of vanilla seeds could be seen.

Anyone who left the table hungry would have to do the dishes.


If you would like to be interviewed follow the instructions below!

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2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

In The Weave

Often, when I am looking at a knitting pattern, because I am geek enough to read knitting patterns, I will build a color chart for the pattern in my mind's eye, trying to see if other colors would work better than the original pattern. Sometimes these experiments have worked; other times, not so much.

I have a multicolored 'novelty' yarn that changes from orange to blue to brown to green, which sounds like it ought to work up in to the most awful melange you could imagine, but it works, even when you're working with more than one skein of it. As you pull the yarn from the center of the skeins, opposing colors seem to fight on the needles for control of the blanket or scarf, but once knitted together, form a more harmonious pattern than I would have ever thought possible.

I think of my writing on this blog in much the same fashion; ideas that seem to have nothing in common, but worked properly and patiently together form a coherent thought. Perhaps I'm fooling myself, and perhaps I write rambling nonsense more often than a cohesive whole. Either way, I enjoy the process.

What I'm thinking about today is dirt, honest to goodness get-into-the-ground dirt, and food production. The genesis of this post was a few completely unconnected things. A friend's blog about her two adorable daughters playing in a sandbox, at a farmer's market that also boasts a playhouse and a lake and ducks to feed. The girls got, gasp, dirty in the sandbox. (I direct you to read the whole post here.) Then a spider spotted inside the grocery store (horrors!) and my thought that we're so far disconnected from where our food is actually produced. Or most of us are, anyway.

I loathe spiders. Loathe them. The story for why is for another time and place, but even the smallest spider has me, unfortunately, reacting 'like a girl'. I often say that I'm not a fan of anything with more legs than me, but spiders in particular...ugh. I think it is something about the way they move that creeps me out.

The spider that I saw in the grocery store was no bigger than a nickel, if I'm going to be honest. I could tell you that it was huuuuuge, but truth is that it wasn't. It was very black, and called attention to itself by being on a white linoleum floor. It had attached a strand of its web to a large cart being pulled by one of the store's employees, a flatbed cart with rails on either end to prevent the boxes of produce that she was carting to the floor from falling off. The spider trailed along at the end of its strand, sometimes being drug by the motion of the cart, other times struggling gamely to clamber back up the line which connected it to the cart.

Another employee stopped the cart puller and called her attention to the spider. I moved in another direction, away from the spider, and did not see them stomp on it, but I heard it. Because goddess forbid that there should be a single insect or any dirt anywhere near the food.

Most of the grocery stores in my area are controlled by a particular chain, and within probably a ten-mile radius of my home are at least five of their enormous brightly lit stores. I worked for them in college, and have no love for the chain, but my choices are fairly limited by the near-monopoly that they have in the area.

Every time I walk inside any of them, I think about Alton Brown and his television show Good Eats. He often shoots short segments of the show inside a grocery store, which he refers to as 'the average American mega-mart.' And mega indeed is appropriate. So much food housed in a single grocery store. So many choices, a bounty of overabundance. No wonder more than half of the country's population is overweight, and our collective consciousness pairs the word obesity with the word epidemic.

But at what point did we learn as a culture that food should come from these gleaming warehouses, not only evidence of bounty but of fantastic waste as well? The gleaming rows of produce without a speck of dirt (heaven forbid) or an imperfection to be seen. How far has that food traveled to get to your mega-mart? When, exactly, did we become so disconnected from the way our food is produced?

I don't use pre-packaged foods, like Rice-a-Roni, or box dinners at all, because they contain too much high fructose corn syrup (otherwise known as HFCS) and everything that I've read the labels on lately also seems to have tHBQ, which is a petroleum derivative ffs, added to it. All of that pre-packaged convenience food only separates us further from the dirt and actual production of food.

"Sure," you say, "but Luce, honey, you're at home full-time these days and can spend as much time in the kitchen as you like to prepare a meal, not to mention time to chase down the ingredients to make such things." And I say to you with my best imitation of a Brooklyn accent, "True dat!"But what is also true is this: we should all be concerned about where our food comes from, and how much or how little connection is has to its beginnings.

I have no neat, elegant solution. No way to fix the problem, tie it up with a pretty bow and present it to you. I solve it for myself by reading labels, buying organic AND perhaps more importantly locally produced stuff when I can, and leave the immense worry of the bigger problem of how much fuel we consume and how much waste we produce getting the gleaming veggies in the grocery store to minds much smarter than mine. Perhaps yours.

Bloo-berries

I've always said that if I wasn't working full-time, I'd bake and bake and bake, and end up being 300 pounds. I'm not 300 pounds, but I did spend the day baking. After my usual workout, of course, so I'm not too worried about gaining more than 100 pounds in a few days.

It is blueberry season in Oh-hi-ia. I don't like many, many things about living here, but one thing I do like is the availability in the summer time of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. A friend and I visited a farm market last week, and I bought far more blueberries than I actually needed. I'd eat blueberries morning, noon, and night if they were available all the time. So they were about to be past their prime in my fridge, and today I decided to use them up.

I have an old, old recipe for blueberry muffins, from the matriarch of a big clan that my family has been friends with for a very long time. She was 90 the first time I met her, when I was 12. She lived to be over 100, and was a wise woman. The recipe was taped inside the kitchen cupboard of the cottage we used to visit, and one year, I remembered to copy it down before we left for the summer. Over the years, I've not been satisfied with the results, because the blueberries sink to the bottom. I'd like my blueberries evenly distributed through my muffins, thank-you-very-much. They taste great, but presentation is important to me, and so I've tinkered with the recipe, but until today, have not been able to get the berries to co-operate. A friend suggested sprinkling the berries on top after the muffins were in the oven for a few minutes, and I couldn't resist trying just one more time to get it to work properly.

As I said, this is a very old recipe, and so the format is a bit odd. My alterations to the original recipe appear in italics. But bear with me, it is well worth the trouble. Use a stand mixer, if you have one.

Whole-Wheat Blueberry Banana Muffins

Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Beat 2 eggs until foamy (I beat the eggs until they doubled in volume, which takes about 5-6 minutes at top speed on a stand mixer. It would take for-freaking-ever by hand.)
Add 1 cup sugar, and combine well.
Add one heaping tablespoon shortening, mixing until distributed evenly. (I think softened butter would work well here, but didn't have any to try.)
Add 4 mashed bananas
Mix in 2 cups flour, (whole wheat) alternating between folding in 1 cup milk (skim) with the flour. Finish by adding 3 teaspoons of baking powder.

At this point, if you're using a stand mixer, remove the bowl from the machine and mix by hand. Fold in 1 cup four-dusted blueberries, scraping the bowl down to ensure even mixing. Fill 12 regular sized greased muffin tins 3/4 full. Sprinkle an additional 1/2 cup blueberries (NOT flour-dusted, they'll look moldy) over the filled muffin tins.

Avoid over-mixing because the finished product could be tough if you do. The muffins will need about 20 minutes in the oven and will get huge, because of the amount of baking powder. I checked mine every five minutes after they'd been in the oven for 10 minutes, my oven runs far too hot and does not heat evenly, so constant vigilance is required. I had over 4 cups of blueberries, so I tripled the recipe, and made some regular size and some mini muffins. They're yummy. The banana addition was because I have about 6 pounds of over-ripe bananas in my freezer. I buy them, I eat a few, and before I know it, the rest are nearly black, so in the freezer they go, with plans to use them for banana bread or....something...but they end up staying in the freezer until inspiration like this strikes.

Whole-wheat flour is tricky, sometimes not working at all as I plan for it to. If you don't like it, at least use unbleached, un-bromated flour. I might also try turbinado sugar, because I don't really care for processed white sugar, but I was out.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I've read all of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which in case you live under a rock was released on Saturday. I plan to write about it tomorrow.

The Full-Fat Version

My sisters being home means many things, not least of which is the chance for the three of us to catch up and be very silly together. We'll all be at my parent's place, with its lake and pool, plus all the water toys you could ever want. There's enough room for the whole fam there, and we have a great time. But it also means that there's lots and lots of good food around this weekend.

I made chocolate chip cookies on Wednesday night, not the usual hearty cookies that I'll make for DH and I with whole-wheat flour and all kinds of other things tossed in that make them more like trail mix. No, I made the two-sticks-of-butter that go straight to your thighs chocolate chip cookies. Not good for you. I can't resist the dough, but I'm better at resisting the baked cookies. Usually.

I also made lasagna. And when I tell you that I made lasagna, I mean all day in the kitchen and everything from scratch. I learned the recipe from a wise woman in Europe, and it is well worth the effort. Instead of using the ricotta cheese that you usually find in lasagna, this variation, probably northern-Italian influenced, uses a white sauce not unlike an Alfredo sauce for pasta. You can make this white sauce with skim milk and reduced fat cheese and margarine, but since I make it so rarely, why the heck would I do that? No, this was the hefty version.

It starts with a stick of butter, and a half cup of flour. You make a basic blonde roux, and then in a very long process, you add whole milk and cream, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, asiago cheese, Romano cheese, and fresh mozzarella cheese. This takes nearly an hour, and must be stirred constantly. Burn something in the bottom of the pan and you've got to start over, because you'll never get rid of that burnt taste, no matter how much doctoring you attempt. Add the cheese when the sauce is the wrong temperature and you're left with a stringy mess. Been there, done that, more than once.

It is, of course, a labor of love, I pull out the lasagna only for special occasions because of its pain-in-the-ass factor. But I won't eat more than a few bites of it myself, because it is much too high in fat to indulge in more than a wee bit.

Then there's the bratwurst that will be boiled in dark beer with sweet onions and garlic and whole black peppercorns, then tossed on the grill to sizzle. They're eaten with those onions removed from the beer bath and fried in butter. I can't resist one of those, some of the very very little red meat that I will eat.

Not to mention the potato chips that are not in MY house, ever, the scratch-made guacamole for the tortilla chips, the apple wood smoked bacon (um, bliss, I promise) and you've got a recipe for completely destroying the healthy eating that I've been doing for the past six months.

Fortunately, reason prevailed a tiny bit, and there are vegetable and fruit trays, I made my quinoa salad, which is really good for you. I brought boneless skinless chicken breasts to toss on the grill that are already in a tasty but not bad for you marinade, and I insisted on two cases of water to combat the temptation to drink soda and beer.

I don't know anything that will stop me from drinking mojitos, those will be around as well. And sangria. But we do usually wait until at least late afternoon....yeah, nothing I say here is going to help the impression you're getting right now, that we're all full-blown alkies. We're not, I promise.

I can work out at my parent's place, the community where they live has a nice exercise room. I'm not sure I'll take advantage of it, but I'm pretty sure that the potato chips I ate today while listening to babysis tell our dad stories of island life will end up coming back to haunt me unless I get on the elliptical and do my usual routine.

Middlesis gets here on Friday, and it looks like the three of us will have lots of time entirely to ourselves without anyone else around, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that.

Listening to: Incubus, Light Grenades

Perhaps baking as a form of therapy.

I was channel surfing yesterday and caught a few minutes of "Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee" on Food TV. I wasn't fully focused on the telly, having the laptop in my lap and reading fan's accounts of Jensen's new movie Ten Inch Hero from the Newport Beach Film Festival. Lucky, lucky, lucky fangirls who attended the screening!!!! Part of the cast, including Jensen, was there. So since I was more engrossed in reading about how one fan got to take his picture and hear his voice in person, ('scuse me while I swoon!) I missed exactly how Sandra Lee made the cookies that I thought looked good.

I don't like most of what she does, because I vastly prefer to make my own stuff instead of doctoring box mixes or using some of the other shortcuts that she uses. Yes, she makes homemade cooking more accessible to folks who think the kitchen is a scary place, but for the rest of us who really enjoy the process, the chemistry, the end result, her recipes are usually a "pass". Besides, pre-packaged mixes are always full of the worst things for you, bleached flour, white sugar, tons of salt, high fructose corn syrup, even tBHQ. If you are trying to avoid those things, as I am, you've got to read the label on positively EVERYTHING you pick up in the grocery store, because you never know what you're going to get in that box of Hamburger Helper, or sugar cookie mix.

I've been so weighted down by the depression which I've been trying to work my way through that I haven't made anything from scratch, or created a new recipe, or even fussed much in the kitchen over about the last two months. Y'know things are not good when the food writer isn't working in the kitchen, doesn't want to eat, and can't focus enough to make dinner, right? Something about these macadamia nut cookies made me want to get in there and bake something, though, so today I went rooting through the cupboards and discovered that yes, I did have an unopened container of macadamia nuts. I'll take the spark of inspiration wherever it comes from, I'm not picky.

I next went to my cookbook shelf, which takes up an entire section of my library's built-in bookcases. I was looking for a sugar cookie recipe that didn't require rolling out on the countertop (more mess than I could currently handle having to clean) or chilling in the refrigerator (I want COOKIES and I want them NOW).

Much like collecting shoes is an issue for me, collecting cookbooks is a habit that I can't break. I will actually sit down and READ a cookbook, just like I'll read a novel, learning new techniques or getting an idea for a concoction of my own. I own somewhere around 70 cookbooks, at last count. Go ahead, point at me and say, "Lucy, you're a complete geek." Yes, I know that and am OK with it. I have, at a minimum guess, about 10 cookbooks that are strictly cookies, and several of the old standby all-purpose cookbooks, like the red and white checked gingham covered Better Homes and Gardens, the Joy of Cooking. I couldn't find a recipe that I wanted to use, and even leafing through the huge three-ring binder full of things I've clipped out of magazines, printed from the web and photocopied out of library cookbooks didn't bring any inspiration. Dejected, I put the books all back on the shelf and went to lie down for a bit.

Christ, how ridiculous is it that something like that will put me into a tailspin? The anti-depressant seems to be helping a bit, but not enough, yet, to bring me out of that horrible funk. In my defense, I did only sleep about 3 hours last night, from around 3 am until about 6:30, so perhaps a short nap was just what I needed.

After napping for about a half hour, I thought about the bag of chocolate chips that I'd seen while hunting for macadamia nuts, and I decided that instead of a kind of sugar cookie with macadamia nuts in them, I'd make macadamia nut chocolate chip cookies. There are any number of good chocolate chip cookie recipes out there; I'm fond of the original Tollhouse recipe, with a few small modifications such as using all brown sugar instead of white, and the addition of a little bit of milk, but in about the last two years whenever I've made chocolate chip cookies, I've used Alton Brown's recipe for "The Chewy" which seem to stay soft after baking. I don't like rock-hard chocolate chip cookies. It is very much a personal preference.

A quick second of OT gushing...I heart Alton Brown's show Good Eats. Love how he explains the chemistry of cooking and baking, love his insistence that the only tool in your kitchen that only does one thing should be a fire extinguisher, love how he shows unique ways to accomplish complicated kitchen tasks with things that you already own.

When I'd finished mixing the dough, I looked at the lump of it sitting in the bowl, and was overwhelmed at the idea of scooping out four dozen cookies. (I make them much smaller than Alton recommends.) Just more than I could handle, I guess. So instead I put the whole thing into a round 9-inch cake pan and baked it for 30 minutes, and now cooling on the countertop is what looks like a cookie pizza.

I certainly don't NEED these cookies in the house. One of the problems that I have with food is that I can't eat just one cookie, I want a dozen. I don't want just the recommended serving size of potato chips, I want the whole bag of them. So I don't normally have things like that in my house to avoid temptation. I know this and can plan for it so it doesn't become a problem. When I am testing recipes, or working on a foodie article, I will give whatever it is away after reserving a small portion for myself.

This cookie pizza is cute, though, and I won't cut into it until DH gets home so that he can see what it looks like. And then it will go with me to work tomorrow, so my staff can eat it instead of me. They love it when I'm testing recipes.

Progress, however, in that I was able to get the house cleaned up today, I made something in the kitchen, did some laundry and I'm on the computer looking for story ideas for posts next week. The sun's out, birds are singing, distantly I hear lawnmowers chugging along as people cut the grass for the first time. My house smells like cookies and clean laundry, good, homey things that are sure-fire spirit lifters.


If only baking wonderful things was the answer. Wouldn't it be nice?

Slim Goodbody

Remember the public television show of the late 70s/early 80s? With the guy dressed in a spandex suit printed with the organs of the human body? I remember how much it grossed me out.

Now, however, I am amazed, astonished, and also considerably annoyed by the miracle that is the human body. Yesterday was a rough day for my fitness regimen. I had terrible, awful, painful cramps. Of the womanly variety. I know, I know, way TMI, but if I just said cramps, you might think I meant simple muscle cramps.

Any-way, moving on. I was on the treadmill and hurting. That's been a bit of a theme recently, hasn't it? Instead of the "we were so drunk AND..." stories of my youth, now it is "I was on the treadmill and my (whatever) hurt and...." Getting old is a bitch, y'all. I stopped the treadmill when I got to a mile and a half, which is about half or three quarters the amount of distance I usually do every day. I hurt so badly that instead of doing my usual stretches and then the requisite charting that I do to keep track of my progress, I left and went home for a hot, hot, hot shower. Which didn't help much. Neither did the three ibuprofens I took.

When I finally managed to drag myself into work, I took two Aleve, which eventually, about 3 hours later, eased the pain a bit. I hadn't been able to do the amount of running on the treadmill that I'm trying to do every day either. Which left me feeling a bit like the workout had been not exactly a failure, but inadequate. That's frustrating.

I've been staying off of the scale, knowing that it will only piss me off. I can tell that I'm in better shape than I have been in years and years and years, by the way that the workouts don't make me all winded. The fact that I can now run for longer periods of time before I feel that I'm-so-exhausted-I-can't-do-this-for-one-more-second feeling is another positive sign. I'm pushing myself further and further, every single day. But the results are just not what I'm looking for.

I want to be super-skinny, like I was at 17. That's such an unrealistic goal that I'm dooming myself to failure before I even get halfway there. I have curves these days that I never had at 17. I also happen to be taller, I continued to grow until about 19, an unusual phenomenon that seems to occur on my dad's side of the family. At 17, I was about 5'1". Today I am about 5'4". Not a huge difference, but at 17, I really and truly weighed about 98 pounds. Friends have told me that they thought I was anorexic. I wasn't, and when they told me that story when we were 26 or 27, I laughingly reminded them of the boxes of Fudge Rounds I used to eat, the fried chicken we used to get at the mall on Saturdays, the huge amounts of junk food that were present at every single sleep-over we had. What I wouldn't give to have that metabolism back!

In stark contrast from yesterday's workout, though, today's was excellent. I felt fantastic leaving the gym. When I first started trying to run weeks ago, I'd amp up the speed on the treadmill and watch the clock, thinking, I'll run for one minute. Then back to walking. Periodically, I'd try to increase the amount of time I was running, and eventually, I was able to get where I am now, which is about 10 minutes of the 35 that I'm on the treadmill. The eventual goal is to run the entire program, with the exception of the 5 minute cool down.

My body has adapted well to this, and I'm amazed at what I've been able to accomplish. I watch my heart rate closely, mostly because I'm a geek obsessed with stats, but also because I want to see if my resting heart rate will go down, as it should, when I'm in 'good' shape. I've got great definition on my leg muscles. You should see my calves, and my shin muscles are a beautiful thing. I am thinner than when I started working out 6 days a week back in October. But I'm not satisfied at all with the pace of the weight loss. I'm also very annoyed that I don't yet have a six-pack, and that I think my arms are as flabby as ever. They're not, and I know that because I can fit into jackets and shirts that I haven't worn in a long time, but my perception is that I've made very little progress. My thighs aren't any smaller, either. Dammit.

It is astonishing to me that one day I can barely do what I need to and the next I feel like a million bucks. If one day I had eaten a bunch of junk food, or had lots to drink, I could understand. I went out drinking with some friends last Friday, and Saturday's early morning Yoga class was a real bitch. But the major difference between yesterday and today? I have no idea.

I'm eating right, not snacking on the junk food that ABOUNDS at my office, severely limiting my caffeine intake, I'm drinking a ton of water, trying desperately to get enough sleep, and none of it seems to be making a difference. I've given up coffee, and don't drink soda unless I'm drinking which I don't do often. You would never seem me running around with a diet Coke in my hand. I don't eat red meat, I don't eat pork, I am eating two hateful bananas every day to keep my potassium levels elevated for the running, and what? Nothing. No results. Honesty compels me to revise that. Not no results but perhaps less result than I was expecting.

"Hateful bananas" because I really don't like them. Ugh. I choke them down, though, because I firmly believe that we should get most of our nutrients from real food, not from supplements. I was having trouble with muscle cramping about two months ago, and when I explained to the trainer what was happening, she told me that it was clear to her that my potassium levels were low, and the best way to fix that was to eat two bananas a day. Yuck!

There must be something missing. Some missing link. Something that I've overlooked, something that will turn the key and make everything work. I know that the only way to truly do weight loss is to put in the hard work and the time. That's why I'm not 'dieting', but watching what I eat very closely. I could never stick to Adkins or South Beach or any of the other myriad promised quick fixes out there. Been there, done that. Bought the t-shirt. Long term weight loss and overall health only comes from doing it the right way, watching calories and exercising. I'm doing all that. What's missing?

Alterations and Altercations

There will actually not be any disagreements in this post, I just liked the alliteration.

MotherMe posted a muffin recipe the other day, and upon reading it, my first thought was YUM! And my second thought was a wistful, (sigh), I haven't baked anything in forever, due to my self-imposed weight loss program. I love to bake. But cookies, muffins, cakes and quick breads are not the stuff that weight-loss dreams are made of, so I've been abstaining from doing much in the kitchen besides making dinner. Dinner is usually boneless, skinless chicken, or grilled fish. And yes, that can be rather dull, but the idea of becoming a Type 2 diabetic is terrifying enough that I've been highly motivated to stick to the program of gym, every single day, and eating right, making big changes that must be lifelong changes if I am to avoid the traps that my genes have set for me of obesity, diabetes, knee replacement, heart disease and osteoporosis.

Yet again, however, I'm wandering off topic. Boy, I'm good at that.

Back to the muffins. These appealed to me because they have both carrots and zucchini in them, and I have a tough time getting all of the servings of veggies that I need each day.

Here's the recipe as MotherMe posted it.

• 2 cups unbleached, unbromated white all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 T ground cinnamon
• 2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 20-oz can crushed pineapple, drained well
• 2 cups grated carrot (approx 6 medium)
• 1 smallish zucchini, grated (approx 1/2 to 1 cup)
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup canola or vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla

Butter or grease 18 muffin cups, or line with paper liners. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly together in a large bowl. Add pineapple, vegetables, raisins, and nuts and stir well. It will look a lot more like a pasta salad than a muffin mix, but trust me on this.

In another bowl, beat the eggs well and stir in the oil and vanilla. Add to the vegetables and fruit and mix well. Forget that stuff about mixing muffins until “just combined”. It doesn’t apply when you’re making muffins out of cole slaw.

Spoon the slaw batter into the muffin tins or papers. They won’t rise a whole lot, so fill them fairly full.

Bake approximately 30-35 minutes until a knife or toothpick poked into the center comes out without any goo on it. Let the muffins cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before eating. Pineapple chunks will be very hot.

Here are the changes that I made....

• 1 cup unbleached, unbromated flour
• 1-1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup turbinado sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce and 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup zucchini
• golden raisins (because regular raisins are icky.)
• I omitted the salt. I almost always do in baking recipes. You get enough salt from other sources...ahem. Let me get off my soapbox.
  
• I omitted the vanilla. Not because I intended to, but because I forgot about it until filling the muffin tins.

Now since I haven't tasted MotherMe's version, I don't know if my alterations made a significant difference in the texture of the finished product, but I'm guessing that it might make the muffins a bit more coarse-textured with more whole wheat flour. But it gives them a higher whole grain content, too, which means fewer simple carbs.

Turbinado sugar is just a fancy way of referring to what is sold commercially as "Sugar in the Raw" and I have a bunch of it from the health food store, so I used it instead of white sugar. It is less 'processed' than white sugar. Again, this may make a slight difference in the final texture, but the benefits, IMO, outweigh those minor consequences.

My prep time was reduced as well, because I purchased matchstick carrots instead of grating my own. I'm pressed for time in general this weekend, so while I the grocery store I took the opportunity to purchase chopped nuts and shredded carrots, making this one of the easiest quick bread recipes I've ever thrown together.

The taste? Delicious. I couldn't resist them straight out of the oven, being wildly curious about how cole slaw turns into yummy muffins, so yes, I ignored the caution that the pineapple chunks are hot and burned my lip. Worth it, though. They're good cold, too, I've been munching a second one as I've written this post. The cinnamon is a nice touch, the nuts an unexpected crunch here and there, and the carrots are not so cooked as to be mushy and gross. (I despise cooked carrots.) These are nearly ideal breakfast food if you ask me, a nice veggie addition to my usual 2 hard-cooked eggs-and-a-banana breakfast.

Further experimentation will probably be in reducing the amount of sugar, as that's important to me. I also might try adding a scoop of soy protein or wheat germ to see what happens.

I'm pressed for time this weekend because somehow, the family gathering for Easter dinner is at my house. I'm not sure how the only pagan heathen in the family ended up hosting the most important Christian celebration on the calendar, but that's life for you sometimes. So I've been busy cleaning and cooking, and will probably not have a second to spare to be on the computer tomorrow at all. Let's not talk about how traumatic I think the withdrawal will be, OK?

Listening to: The washing machine. As it spins endlessly, sounding like a small jet is going to take off from my kitchen.