Bring on the fat!

I have a sincere love of books, as most people who know me know. However, between the challenges of parenting, working and requiring sleep each night, my love of reading is one of the several things I have practically given up in recent years.

When I signed up for a class on Food and Drink in Cultural Context, I hoped I’d get to finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that I received as a Christmas present in 2008 and only made it through the first few pages before life got too hectic again when I put it down. Unfortunately, the rest of life – most notably separating from my husband of 6 years – has gotten in the way of concentrating on school work, although I’ve finally wrapped up my Digital Storytelling class. Now I get to work on finishing Food and Drink and am determined to plow through some enjoyable books in the process.

I’ve started in on In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan’s latest book. I have the large-print version from the library, but will soon be ordering my very own, as this one is now overdue after already being renewed once. (Note to libraries: don’t lend me books. I always bring them back late.)

What struck me this morning as I read while munching some granola and yoghurt for breakfast (that’s my favorite way to read, head stuck in a book, sitting at the table, eating – something you don’t get to do with kids around) was his diatribe on the fallacy of the argument against eating saturated fat as it causes heart disease. Turns out, it’s all a lie. And I knew it! Low-fat diets, also, don’t really help with weight loss.

He writes, “In a recent review of the relevant research called “Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review,” the author proceed to calmly remove, one by one, just about every strut supporting the theory that dietary fat causes heart disease.”

In the review’s second paragraph, it says, “It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has be based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.”

I remember, as a child, when my mum steered me away from the brick of butter in the fridge to the margarine – it was “healthier” for me as it didn’t have saturated fat. But it tasted funny. And it had trans fat. (My mum also tried to convince me that brown eggs were more nutritious than white ones and that there was some condensed nutrition in the crust of bread of some kind. I never have liked eating bread crust – and now can’t as I’m gluten-free. Darn.)

But back to Pollan and saturated fats not being the enemy. “The amount of saturated fat in the diet probably may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease, and evidence that increasing polyunsaturated fats in the diet will reduce risk is slim to nil.” Dietary cholesterol also doesn’t increase coronary heart disease.

So bring on the cheesy eggs, please.

In the paper’s conclusion, it reports that although low-fat diets are supposed to have the benefit of weight loss, there’s no medical evidence to actually support that. In contrast, there was some evidence that replacing fat with carbs leads to weight loss.

Haven’t I been saying this for ages? Is this why I magically lose weight when I eat ice cream? Hmmm…so perhaps self-deprivation and being hungry isn’t the way to go?

I have no intention of pigging out on ice cream every day – it’s not filling enough and has way too much sugar to keep my blood sugar levels stable. I’d probably feel a bit sick after that much fat. But it is satisfying. Like whole milk yogurt.

I’ve always felt a bit guilt for loving butter so much. Or the marbled fat in meat. (Local, hormone- and antibiotic-free, humanely raised meat, that is.) Now? No more. I reclaim my heritage passed down to me from my grandmother’s love of cream and all foods delicious. Fortunately, we also love fresh vegetables.

You can’t get any fresher than this

Wow, the garden has grown. Everything settled in really well and has just taken off.

While I really enjoy eating food from our CSA, the Saturday Market or Creswell Farmer’s Market (what can I say, I can’t resist a farmer’s market), there’s something special about eating food from our own garden.

The most prolific producer so far is kale. I wasn’t sure about planting it — it’s not something we tend to eat a lot of. But I know it’s good stuff and I like to put it in soups. And I figure in the fall and winter we’ll be eating a decent amount of soup. So in the ground they went. And have since gone insane.

I took this picture when I first harvested it. Tonight we ate some more. And yet you still can barely tell I’ve been cutting it. After dinner, Kevin and the kids decided to eat it straight from the growing plant. You can’t get any fresher than that.

The idea came about after I told Duncan the story of going grocery shopping with him and buying kale for soup. He wanted to hold the bunch of kale and then started munching on it while sitting in the cart. I initially balked (as it hadn’t been washed) but then let him go for it. He wasn’t sure about that story, but decided to try it out again.

Planting a garden brings a sense of being home

Now that we’re moved in, mostly unpacked and I’ve started work, I seem to have developed delayed moving adjustment *. Now that we’re establishing a routine and have figured out the basics of our new lives, there’s a part of me that’s realizing this is what my life is now and going Aaaaaaaaagggghh!

That’s not to say I have regrets about moving. Or working. Or having my mother live with us. But it is an adjustment. I don’t like knowing that I don’t have local friends, even though I didn’t often see my then-local friends in Rochester. They were still there. I knew where they lived.

So, how to combat this adjustment uneasy feeling, other than just going through the motions until more parts of our lives fall into place? I’ll check out a Unity Church on Sunday–at least having somewhere to meditate and focus on my inner life will give me balance and strength to adjust to my new “outer” life. And I’m sure new friends will come in time. I want to make an effort to find kid-friendly groups that enjoy nature–think mushroom hunting, going for short hikes, discovering kids playgrounds–and hope to meet some other parents.

I have one other plan to feel more grounded and connected to this new place we call home. And it’s already underway. Planting a garden. There’s a small patch of flower bed that our landlord tried growing vegetables in this summer. He cleared it before he moved out. And we added compost and peat and dug it up and planted kale, broccoli and pea plants I found at the local farmer’s market. Then the kids and I planted lettuce, arugula, mesclun mix, beets, carrots and radish seeds–most of which are already sprouting!

Watering my little veggie patch in the evening after work and checking to see which new seeds have sprouted makes me happy. It brings me relief–from stress, from the unknown, from the strangeness of moving. It’s a simple thing I spend a few minutes a day doing, but it makes me happy.

* I am making this condition up. Perhaps there’s a name for it, perhaps not. But when you move, you get into the groove of what has to be done, what needs to get packed or unpacked, disconnected or installed, and you just get on with it. It’s not until the blur of activity settles down that you can look around in your new life and consider what it means.

Growing in the garden

When I planted the veggie garden this year, I didn’t know if we’d be in the house through the summer or already moved before the first tomato ripened. As it’s turned out, we’re moving in less than 4 weeks. The plane tickets are booked for Aug. 1. (Oh, boy, I have a lot of packing to do still.)

Which means we really won’t be eating those tomatoes I carefully selected at the nursery. Roma, an heirloom Brandywine, and two others whose names I can’t recall. I am enjoying the herbs, radishes, snow peas, rhubarb and asparagus, though. So it was definitely worth planting this year.

And while I may not get to reap the bounty of my hard work, I find the act of growing things relaxing and pleasing. We ate snow peas for dinner last night – snow peas that my kids helped me plant, poking the seeds and their little fingers into the holes I made for them.

Now that our time in this house is coming to a close, I’m getting a bit misty eyed at the idea of leaving. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. It took me a long time to get used to living in this house and I wonder how I’ll feel when it comes time to choose another one? It’ll be OK – it’s all part of the adventure. And there’s no point in holding on to something you’ve outgrown just because of the uncertainty of what else might be out there.

All things grow – snow peas, tomatoes, children, even me.

Lunch from the garden (well, sort of)

Pan-seared salmon salad with organic beets and asparagus from the garden

I ate my first asparagus of the season today. There it is on my plate (or in my bowl, rather). Joining it was a sliced beet that Duncan dug up earlier this week while playing in my garden beds. Who knew that it was hiding there all winter?
Before you get too impressed by my incredible lunch, I feel I should explain. It’s true, other than the salmon it was all organic — from the mixed baby field greens to the mostly-ripe roma tomato. And the beets and asparagus, of course. But, I know, I know, farm-raised salmon! What am I thinking? Plus it was leftover from what the kids and Kevin didn’t eat at dinner last night.

People close to me know that I don’t ordinarily care for salad. However, I have recently had 3 salad revelations:

1. Baby salad greens make it so much easier. Sure, they seem expensive in the store at $5.99/lb for the organic variety. But the bag I buy that lasts me multiple salads a week weighs only about a 1/2 lb. And it means I actually take salad greens out of the bag and put them into a bowl and eat them, rather than letting a head of lettuce rot in the fridge because somehow, pulling it apart into little pieces fit to eat seems “too difficult.” I realize I should probably be washing it, but, hey, it’s organic e-coli, right?

2. Warm weather = shorts (as in pants). Mine don’t fit. This is a problem. I’m not buying more pants. And I can’t ride my bike in a dress. Therefore: salad for lunch.

3. It’s a great gluten-free meal. And when I add fish (or chicken or lobster or egg or king crab legs) it has protein, too. (Just kidding on the yummy sea food. I can only wish!)

Plus, it’s an easy way to throw in whatever happens to be ready to eat from the garden. I’m so glad I got my first stalk of asparagus. I’d been prowling around the bed for days.

Eating what’s good for you: pasture-raised chicken

I’m working on the website for Honeyhill Farm, a small organic farm in the Fingerlakes region of upstate New York. Fred (the farmer) and I have been working on adding new content to the website, with more information about the farm’s products (garlic, chicken, beef, heirloom tomatoes and other vegetables) as well as new recipes and photos of the farm.

This morning I’m working on the chickens page. They raise organic, pastured chickens. While doing some research on this farming method, I came across this page on the Weathertop Farm website which explains what happens to conventionally grown chickens. I knew some of this — the de-beaking, the cramped quarters, the use of hormones and antibiotics, etc. I prefer not to think about the chicken I eat living in chicken poop, but Berry still poops in diapers and we wipe her off and still think her little bottom is cute, so I can deal with it.

However, then I got to this description:

According to Joel Salatin, the original pastured poultry guru who spent time as an investigative journalist, about 9 percent of the weight on most chickens bought in the grocery store is fecal material or “soup” soaked up from the chill tank where chickens are stored after processing. To deal with this health hazard, the carcasses are given up to 40 chlorine baths as well as treatments such as irradiation.

(Excuse me while I hurl.) Two things: chickens soaking in fecal material soup and chlorine baths. Really? I’m not sure which disgusts me more — the poop soup or the chlorine to get rid of it. We’re a chlorine-free household here. No extra dioxins for us, thanks. I even stopped buying baby carrots after I read they get dipped in chlorine. (Confession: I’m not great at buying non-chlorine-bleached paper products, Kevin is very specific about the thickness of his toilet paper.)

I think I’m done buying conventionally-raised chicken at Wegmans. Which sucks because we like to eat chicken breast and all the locally-grown organic chickens I’ve found all come whole (and often frozen). I’m not a huge fan of playing with raw chicken meat, but I do know how to cut up a bird — which is an option if I can find it fresh, chop it up and freeze it myself.

I have another confession, though, and I feel guilty saying this: it’s going to take some getting used to. I’ve eaten healthy, pasture-raised chicken from Honeyhill Farm and Heiden Valley Farms and it really does taste different than conventionally-raised chicken. And I don’t know if there’s something wrong with my texture-sensor and tastebuds or if I’m just used to eating poop soup marinated chicken, but I kinda like the icky stuff better.

Oh well, I managed to eat all the leeks from the CSA this winter so clearly I can manage to adjust.

Going gluten free

I have something of a love/hate relationship with modern medicine. I think we reach for antibiotics too readily, for example. And I would have prefered to have my babies at home or in a birthing center rather than the hospital. However, I’m also thankful that, in the event of a life-threatening emergency–or the need for hip surgery–it’s there to save the day.

So I’m not a huge fan of going to the doctor. While I have fibromyalgia, every possible test they run comes back in the normal range (OK, except for my Vitamin D level). And there’s no real medicine for fibromyalgia, no pill to pop for a magical cure. Sure, there’s Lyrica–but I have my misgivings about something that’s probably going to make me drowsy, sleepy and gain weight. I can do that without prescription meds!

At my last visit, much to my horror, my doctor suggested I try a gluten-free diet. I’ve done that before. A couple of times. And now I’m doing it again. And you know what? I do feel better. I guess I’ve got a love/hate relationship with gluten now, too. So long chewy, delicious comfort food. Oh, how I’ll miss you.

However, as with just about anything I do, I’m going gung-ho on gluten-free-ness. I’m currently working on a new website that will feature information on celiac disease (which I fortunately do not have), gluten intolerance and sensitivity (which I do have), recipes and reviews of books, good and restaurants. It’ll be up soon.

At least being gluten-free this time is a little easier than before (my last stint was in 2000-2001). There’s a lot more selection at the supermarket now. And thank God for Bob’s Red Mill, with their line of gluten-free flours and mixes. Plus, they just posted a recipe for gf brownies using almond meal flour (which I bought for making Christmas cookies and am not sure what to do with it now — it’s just been sitting in the freezer). It’s Berry’s birthday party on Saturday and while she’ll have a lovely gluten-full Elmo birthday cake to eat, I need something chocalatey to enjoy as well!

Cookies, crumble and Christmas pudding

I’m not much of a cookie maker. I can’t ever seem to get oatmeal raisin or chocolate chip cookies to melt onto the cookie tray without being flat and achieve the perfect balance of crispy and chewy.

Plus, a batch of three dozen cookies isn’t exactly in my daily eating plans (because you have to eat them after you bake them!) Kevin doesn’t like them and I can only let the kids eat so many and retain a good conscience.

However, at Christmas, well…for a couple of days, the whole grain goodness of my diet tends to get a bit lax. It’s OK. And if it’s going to slip a bit, it might as well be into these Strawberry Thumbprint Cookies made with Bob’s Red Mill almond meal. I only hope they have the almond meal at my grocery story when I go shopping next week. I’ll substitute butter for dairy-free margarine so Kevin and his mom can eat them.

In the vein of Christmas food, I haven’t finalized my Christmas dinner menu yet. I know there’ll be turkey. That’s in the freezer already, courtesy of my father-in-law. There will also be yorkshire pudding, of course, a staple at any English feast, along with roast potatoes and parsnips. I’m still debating the merits of brussels sprouts. Last year, I grew them in my garden, then sauteed them in garlic and olive oil (after steaming for a while first). Yum! A few people ate them. Maybe Kevin even tried some.

Another staple at Christmas and Thanksgiving is my sweet potato casserole. I’ll post the recipe for that sometime. It’s dessert with the main course.

Now, for dessert, I’m just not sure. I fancy making some Christmas pudding, but haven’t made it since I was 5 or 6 years old as a class project. I like Christmas pudding. And you can just buy them in Wegmans. But I’ll also be feeding a couple of semi-vegetarians that may not appreciate being served grated suet (they’ll eat the turkey, just not a cow). This Apple and Carrot Christmas Pudding from allrecipes.com looks plausible. I may even have all the ingredients already. It’s that, or the old standby — apple crumble.

Back on the Weight Watchers track

I knew this time was coming. Pants becoming progressively tighter aren’t very subtle. And, even though I avoided stepping on the scale for as long as I could, one day I did it. It wasn’t pretty. And why did we ever teach Duncan to read letters and numbers, anyway?

I still don’t know what caused it. I was staying pretty stable at my body’s set-point (which is, of course, at least 10 lbs more than I’d like it to be). I don’t think I got less active. I don’t think that’s possible. I conserve as much energy as possible, all of the time. Did I manage to conseve even more somehow without realizing it? Probably not.

But, for some reason, things started shifting upward (my weight — on my body it shifted outward). Maybe it was reducing Duncan’s nursing before his 3rd birthday with that valiant aim of weaning him come late July. The boy likes his milk. He was probably drinking a lot.

In any case, no matter what caused it, it happened. And now I have to deal with it. I’ve been waiting for “the right time” when things aren’t too stressful. That time will never come. But, school is well underway for both Duncan and me and our recent lead hazard reduction home makeover efforts are (almost) over. So I figured it’s time.

Last Sunday, weighing in at 170.8 lbs, I signed up for Weight Watchers online. I weighed myself mid-week — and to my horror, I’d gained weight. Apparently, I may still be nursing, but not enough to warrant an extra 10 points in my daily food allowance. Once I realized that, I altered things a bit and ended up weighing 2.2 lbs less this morning.

I also switched to the CORE plan this week (as opposed to the FLEX plan where every food is given a point value). On the core plan, there are certain foods you can eat as much as you want of. They’re mostly vegetables, fruit and fat-free, sugar-free stuff. Since I don’t eat artificial sweetner, that limits my options.

Just to complicate things, you get some FLEX points to use each day/week and you also earn activity (or nursing) points. I use those to “buy” sugar. Seriously, I can’t live totally sugar-free. My sugar choices aren’t that bad, either — honey, maple syrup and raw brown sugar. No corn syrup here.

So we’ll see how it goes. I dream of dieting without feeling hungry — the only time that happened was when I did high-fiber, high-protein (ala Atkins), but that was such a pain in its own way. This way, presumably, I can eat all the fat-free cottage cheese I want — should I want to, of course.

My garden helpers

It’s not easy to find time to tend the garden with two little ones. Or do any singular activity, for that matter. They like to be involved.

Our backyard, tiny as it is, is now strewn with kids toys. The turtle sand box, basketball hoop, water table, little slide and see-saw. I love it, honestly. It makes me happy to look out the back window and see all those things for them to play with. We can’t fit a swing set back there, so we do what we can with what we have.

Even with the toys, the lure of What Mummy’s Doing is too strong. Inevitably, I get interrupted with “help,” often in the form of digging in inappropriate places — such as where things are growing. Duncan, at least, has learned the boundaries of the vegetable garden and walks along the pavers, but not in the soil. Berry caught on quickly this year, but occasionally manages to somehow fall into my garden beds and took out a pepper plant earlier this summer.

One form of “help” we’ve found that they both enthusiastically get into is watering the garden. We collect rainwater from our garage roof in plastic tubs. Kevin has grand ideas about building a water barrel, but so far we’re just using totes with lids and it’s working well.

The kids love filling up watering cans (or at least pretending to in Berry’s case) and watering the vegetables. Duncan likes watering one particular square foot of the garden which quickly turns into a mud puddle. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell him it’s had enough water already, sooner or later he returns to that spot and sploshes some more on.

Explaining that the garden doesn’t need watering when it’s just rained – and everything is clearly still wet – also falls on deaf ears. It’s just too much fun. Why wouldn’t the plants want another drink? It tickles them, after all. I love him.

So here’s some shots (with my cell phone) of the two of them helping out. I will say that their participation is helpful when getting them to eat veggies at dinner. By watering them, Duncan has buy in. I mean, they’re HIS veggies. Why not eat them. I even got him to eat a raw green bean the other day – and he liked it!