Fixin' Supper

I’m off on a quest to read a book a week in 2010. In classic overachiever mode here, I’m going to start with the book I read the week of Christmas 2009, In Defense of Food.

Some of you may be shocked I haven’t read this book already, since it ties in with a lot of what I believe about how we should eat. Honestly, when it came out, I read the reviews and thought, Yep, I agree, and didn’t feel the need to read it right away since I suspected Michael Pollan was just preaching to my choir.

But Ashby received the book for Christmas this year, and I quickly appropriated it.

I did enjoy it, and I highly recommend it to you if you are interested in the food-industrial complex or if you’re trying to eat healthy and local. Pollan does a nice job of de-myth-ifying lots of what we believe about food, showing us how conventional wisdom came to be — why we think eating low-fat is good, or why we think carbs are bad — and showing that many of these common assumptions are half-truths at best.

I found one thing frustrating about the book, though. While Pollan spends a lot of time debunking common food assumptions, he does not devote time to his own original research about food. And he’s up front about that, by the way — it’s not a hidden agenda. But I just found myself wanting the same rigor applied to what we ought to know about food, as he applies to that which we think we know, but don’t.

Ah, but part of his point is that we haven’t done the research, and/or don’t yet have the technology, to understand how food really works. At any rate, I found this book a nice companion to Marion Nestle’s What to Eat, long my bible for food-related questions.

So three weeks ago I started a fitness boot camp at The Body Shop. Julia Ledbetter gets you set up with a healthy eating program, pre-fitness evaluation and four weeks of solid workouts. I’m doing the mini boot camp, two days a week for four weeks. Thursday is the last day.

I have to say, I’ve done about as well with this as I might have hoped. I’ve definitely lost some weight, and I can see muscles in places that had forgotten how to make muscles. The eating is definitely the biggest change for me. While I splurge from time to time, I’m mostly a healthy eater, but I know I have had too much junk in my diet — mostly from little bits here and there. The past three weeks, I’ve been hyper-healthy and it’s really helped. I don’t know if I could keep up the no-white-flour, no-refined-sugar forever, but I feel better since I’ve eaten practically none of them the past few weeks.

I would love to do another boot camp, but with my crazy schedule, I had to miss 3 out of 8 of the classes I signed up for. Nonetheless, I learned a lot about fitness and how to work out, and I’m much more conscious of my eating habits. Totally worth the price.

  Up close and personal 

Note: I took some nice photos of my asparagus but I confused myself in an effort to have a camera cord at home and at work, and managed to leave them both at the office. Come back tomorrow for the photo!

When I was growing up, as I personally remember [I bet my mother will say different], I ate all vegetables except two: Spinach and asparagus. Well, OK, and not brussels sprouts. Or beets. Or sweet potatoes. But really, how often do you eat those?

While I love them all now, asparagus remains a delight every time I have it. And my new favorite way to prepare it is thusly:

• Snap the spears in half—really, I don’t like the bottom half at all. I’ve heard I should peel them, but that sounds like an awful lot of trouble, doesn’t it? So forget it. Asparagus is a delicacy and if I only want to eat half, so be it.
• Place in a baking dish and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper.
• Roast in the oven at around 450 til they’re done.

The tips of the spears will be crispy on a few when the length of the spears is tender.

While I enjoy steamed asparagus, roasting enhances and deepens the flavor. Tonight I offered some to the Hungry Toddler and he was not interested. Oh well, more for me.

All right, I’ve always been the one to pooh-pooh healthy food. I’m surrounded by South Beach and Atkins successes, but frankly, they always seemed faddish to me. Not that there aren’t good ideas in both–well, heck, just ask my friend Jimmy Moore or NYC sister [sorry, no link....I've tried but failed in convincing her what a great blogger she'd be] about the positive effects of these plans.

And I resisted.

Let me clarify: both of those plans are popularized as diets to lose weight. But I think I’m pretty safe in saying that both Jimmy and NYC sister view their diets as not simply weight-loss plans, but in fact, as lifestyle transformations.

And, this, too, I resisted.

I remember the exact moment when my attitude about being an actively healthy eater hardened. It was several years ago when they said barbecue caused cancer. Remember that?? I’m pretty sure it was pre-web, or at least not too far into the web, because I read this news in the paper. And right at that moment, I decided, I’d rather eat barbecue than live to be 100.

A little history:  I’m either in great stead by my genes, or totally screwed. I have several grandparents and great-grandparents who lived to 90 or nearly 100, and I have several who died far earlier than their time–heart trouble all around. Far as I can tell, they all lived about the same kind of life. Sure, some smoked in their time, but no one ate healthy, no one was a particular athlete by the time I knew them, though they were active folks.

I’m a reasonably healthy person. Heck, I can’t eat junk all the time; I’ve got kids watching me. You want to eat better, find a couple of kids to copy your every move and see if you don’t shape up. I actually exercise, and I’m sure I’ll do that even more when I’m not always toting a baby on my hip.

But there’s a part of me that has long said, if I’m not having fun while I’m here, what’s the point?

I guess what I’ve finally decided is that eating lots of cream cheese isn’t the kind of fun I need to have to justify my existence around here. Here was the tipping point: this month’s National Geographic cover story. WAIT!! Don’t click that link unless you are prepared for the possibility that this article will both scare the fool out of you and make you realize that you can, in fact, make a difference in your own health.

Now, if you went over and read that article, you’re now thinking, umm, Laura, that article talked almost exclusively about genetic markers for heart disease. What’s your point?

It’s the cardiologists they talked to. Those guys eat nothing but healthy food, and not much of it. And, they were all on statins.

I do NOT need another medication….trust me, I’m over my lifetime quotient….but I can certainly eat better.

I don’t say all this to announce any sort of format change around here. Because, I still think I would rather eat barbecue than live to be 100. But I am changing my daily routine, to make sure I’m eating a lot more vegetables, fruit and whole grains. And less of everything else.

UPDATE: I previously provided an incorrect link for my friend Jimmy’s site. Visit him here.

About a lifetime ago when I first got married, my then-husband tried to convince me of the benefits of healthy cooking. He loved a local vegetarian restaurant [no longer in existance; before its time I suppose] and even while we were still dating, I had dismissed it as more of the granola that went along with his Birkenstocks. Suffice to say, I ended up wearing Birks myself and coming late to the healthy cooking party.

One of the many things I can still thank him for is the Moosewood Cookbook. Please, if you do not have this — or any of Mollie Katzen‘s cookbooks; I have several and love them all — get it today.

While Moosewood itself is full of cheese and does not purport to be, say, heart healthy, the meatless principle is sound and you’ll find a wealth of fabulous, delicious cooking inside. One recipe I immediately adopted was the lasagna. I grew up hating lasagna and not knowing why. Once I tasted Katzen’s, I immediately knew the problem; most lasagna is heavy and overly packed with meat, past the point of hearty and well into overwhelming.

Katzen’s homemade tomato sauce — quick, easy, and delicious — and her accompanying lasagna are a wonderful addition to anyone’s repetoire.

So, I volunteered to host my church’s book club tonight. I have been a book club "member" for about a year now without actually managing to attend a single meeting. When our regular hostess had a conflict this week, I jumped in, figuring it was time to commit. :)

I decided to make a lasagna. No worries, this is one of those things you always have the ingredients for on hand — perhaps not the cheeses — but I picked those up at the store over the weekend. So last night, I started to put things together in prep for tonight. First step, tomato sauce.

I got out the onions. The spices. Even the noodles, just to be ready. And of course the tomatoes came next. Twenty-eight ounces of diced tomatoes — in summer you can use fresh, but in January canned is always better than what’s in the store.

Aside: A thing about having a toddler with an early bedtime:
You would not rouse this child unless the house was afire or Lisa Patton said the tornado was headed down your street. [You are not stupid; you know you'd be up all night.] So when you discover that for the first time ever, you’re out of canned tomatoes, going to the store at 8 p.m. is out of the question.

This is really not a problem; I would just have to come home at lunch today and make the lasagna. Except, I had planned lunch with one of my oldest, bestest friends, whom I just don’t see enough. One of those people you don’t even have to talk to; you already agree and can roll your eyes in sync. You don’t want to miss those days.

I was terribly sad about missing lunch, and I about slapped myself when I remembered this morning: I had store-bought sauce at home.

I actually have to thank Lindsay for this. I didn’t regularly keep store-bought sauce until she pointed out this fall? last summer? how it can rescue dinner in a pinch. Now, I’m not without marinara and alfredo sauce. With small children on hand, it really is helpful. And today, it meant I could have lunch with my friend. I got the lasagna in the fridge and made it to work just a tad late. Thank you, Muir Glen tomatoes, Lindsay and me for remembering at all.

It wasn’t the same as Katzen’s recipe, but it got plenty of compliments and it was certainly a good dinner, especially with the salad, bread, wine and chocolate the rest of the club brought.

While you’re stocking up on cookbooks, be sure to get some storebought sauce too, just in case.

They’re looking into the green onions at Taco Bell. Those of you with long memories, or like me, especially paranoid about food-borne illness, will recall that green onions have been the culprit before. [In the Hepatitis A case, the onions were contaminated during their growth cycle before leaving Mexico. No final word yet on whether the green onions are guilty at Taco Bells in the mid-Atlantic states, and if so, why.]

I will say this: our nationwide food distribution system is making me rethink how supposedly dangerous it is to eat raw produce abroad. I’m thinking it’s dangerous to eat raw produce here. Obviously I’m exaggerating a bit — of all the millions of people eating raw produce every day, very few are getting sick. But food-borne illness is much more common than you think. And our current distribution system makes us very vulnerable there.

If you’re not scrupulously washing your fruits and vegetables, you’re asking for it. And think very carefully about what you eat raw — and especially what you let your children eat raw.

That’s all from the paranoia department for today.

After all this junk-food talk, thank goodness I have something healthy to report.

My high-school friend Jimmy Moore emailed this evening to report the coolest news ever: His blog, Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb, was selected by Fox News’ Dr. Manny Alvarez as one of the top 10 health blogs of 2006. Congratulations!

As I’ve mentioned here before, Jimmy has spent the past several years helping others do what he has already done: lose weight on a low-carb diet! In 2004 Jimmy lost 180 pounds on the Atkins diet, and he’s devoted his free time ever since to helping others lead healthier lives.

I had to read all the way to the end of this NYT ultra-glowing coffee rave before they let me off the hook:

"I wouldn’t advise people to increase their consumption of coffee in order to lower their risk of disease…."
–Rob van Dam, Harvard researcher

Thank goodness. Because I really didn’t want to have to start drinking coffee to feel better about myself.

My 1yo will be baptized this weekend at East End United Methodist. What a marvelous occasion. And we are so blessed that many friends and family are coming to join us for the weekend to help celebrate. What started out as a one-hour church service, of course, has morphed into a four-day extravaganza/hysteria.

• There are the children to entertain/prevent from having tantrums, of course.
• There are the relatives to feed/nuture their psychological issues.
• There’s me to enjoy the festivities/try not to have a breakdown in the midst of the chaos/family fun.

Actually we are all looking forward to the time together. With relatives flung across the Eastern United States, it takes a major holiday or an event like this to bring us together. And I have an Excel spreadsheet that outlines where 30 people are going to be on Sunday and where my family is eating and sleeping the end of this week. I may not be a "planner," at least according to my sisters and mother, but I was raised by one. (Mom, this is where I’d link to your blog, if you had one.)

And I am excited about all of that. I have been thinking for several days about what to serve for different meals. You have to know this one thing about me. If company’s coming, I’m not making something I’ve ever made before. It’s like a sickness I have. (I say that about a lot of things, don’t I?) But really, it’s true. It’s not even like I think about it consciously anymore. When I started thinking about what to make for this coming Friday night’s dinner, I just naturally pulled out a cookbook I’ve never cracked before. That was automatically the right one. And I think I’ve found something that my father (really, it’s better with meat in it), NYC sister (no red meat, no white grains, healthy fare only please), Nashvegas sister (must have meat!) will all enjoy. I don’t have to plan around my mother or the kids. (7yo eats yogurt and chicken; how can you plan around that?….1yo eats everything, bless him.)

Saturday night for some reason had me screwed up from the start. My 7yo wanted to grill out. Fine. Yesterday my mom said, "Your dad and I will bring steaks." I thought that was a great idea. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that was only half the entree. We had a vegetarian joining us. And some kids probably wouldn’t eat steak. So add hot dogs and veggie burgers. Then NYC sister calls. And I realized the other problem. NYC sister hasn’t eaten red meat or hot dogs in years. Years, people. I said, "You can eat a veggie burger, right?"

NYC sister: "Well…"

I then proceeded to lose it. This did not fit on the spreadsheet. This is why spreadsheets and planning are bad. This is why I do not plan. Plans don’t work out. It’s better to see who’s at your house at 5 p.m. and see what’s in the freezer. It’s worked for me up til now.

I think NYC sister is still speaking to me.

Today, I told Nashvegas sister about our conversation and explained the good news: The vegetarian is not coming. (It’s not really good news, party wise. I am sad about that family’s not coming. But it was simplifying dinner.) And about how I had been getting fairly irrational over the grill issues with NYC sister.

Here’s the best news: Nashvegas sister left me a voice mail tonight. She and my mother have appointed themselves in charge of dinner Saturday night. Hmmm. What else can I have a panic attack about?

:) Thanks, y’all!!

Just ran across a study from the Economic and Social Research Council in England, saying that when women work longer hours, their health suffers because they don’t eat as well and exercise less. My hand is up on this one, how about yours? The interesting thing is, according to the article, men don’t have the same issue, at least not nearly so much.

What they don’t tell us, at least not on the press release, is whether this is a social difference between men and women or a physical one. I’m wondering, do men have an easier time here because there are women helping them to manage the stress — providing dinner or a home-packed lunch, a la June Cleaver, even after working long hours themselves — or is this truly a physical difference, where men’s and women’s bodies react to stress in different ways? That seems to be an important thing to know, so you can continue to improve your own response, whether you’re a man or a woman.

My guess: it’s some of both.