The Kitchen is Too Clean to Cook
Posted: November 20, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy Leave a commentI’m not one of those wives who hates to cook. I love to create mostly because I like to eat. I am also a clean as I cook type. I can’t stand to share a kitchen with someone who uses every pot and stacks the dirty ones in the sink to wash after all the cooking is done. I especially like to clean the counters as I go.
I am lucky enough to have a wonderful housekeeper, Blanca who cleans my kitchen once a week like I am going to preform surgery in it. She moves every item on all the counters and washes everything three times including the floor. Blanca has been coming to my house on Tuesdays for as long as I can remember.
Since her cleaning visits are like clock work and I do love a clean kitchen you would think I would do all my serious cooking on Sunday and Monday. If I was smart enough to do that we could just eat leftovers for a couple of days right after Blanca cleaned, thus preserving the kitchen’s pristine condition. But sadly, I am not that smart. I rarely plan meals very far in advance even though I always cook too much when I do cook.
It never fails that I run out of my staple item, pan sautéed boneless skinless chicken thighs the very moment Blanca has finished cleaning the kitchen. There is hardly a messier item that I cook regularly than chicken thighs, with whatever fat is still left on them spattering all over the stove, the floor and somehow getting airborne and depositing on all surfaces of the kitchen. Now before you email me about spatter guards and the like, they don’t help, I’ve tried.
So now the kitchen is too clean to cook in. That could go multiple ways. I could chose not to eat at all. Not much chance. I could get take out. Not too good for us. We could go out to eat, not much time with homework and the like. We could scrounge up whatever leftover are in my fridge. A good possibility , but everyone may have to eat different food. The real danger in not cooking is that I might be tempted to eat something more fattening than I should . If I preplan and prepare in advance when I am not already hungry I make better choices.
So to solve the I-want-to-preserve-the-really-clean-kitchen-as-long-as-possible dilemma I need to plan days in advance and cook on the weekends. Do you think it is too late to turn into someone who eats to live?
I’m Sick of Salad
Posted: November 19, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy 2 CommentsI forgot I write a blog today. I forgot I am still many pounds away from my goal. I remembered that I had to walk 10,000 steps and I still have four hundred to go, but I have to write my blog so I am sitting. When lunch time came around I could not face another salad. At dinner the same revolt happened in the salad column.
Sometimes you just need a break. But a break in healthy eating is a very slippery slope. I have been here before. Doing great one day and despite two years of good habits they can disappear in the blink of an eye.
I need a new gimmick. I am bored with the status quo and have no where better to go so if I am not careful I could go to the dark side. I need anyone who has a good idea or words of encouragement or a kick in the pants to give it to me now.
Send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be thin. Tomorrow I go and see my trainer, a good way to start the day, but it is not the morning I need help with. I need a new salad. I need to not learn not to love food. Ok that is never going to happen. I know I need something and that I am not giving up. I’m getting up now and getting my steps in. I promise tomorrow I will remember I write a blog and do a little better than I’ve done today.
Being Right is Not Always Nice
Posted: November 18, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy Leave a commentThis morning a service man came to my house to do some work. As happens to all visitors at my house Shay Shay was right there at the front door to greet him. As she did her poorly-trained dog routine of jumping up on him to say Hi the tech said, “no problem, I love dogs.”
That was no excuse for Shay, but the tech pet her and she calmed down enough. As he was petting her very soft coat he asked what kind of dog she was. I told him she was a labradoodle and he got very excited. “I thought so. Can I take a picture of her to show my fiancé?”
I agreed and he went to to tell me that he and his newly intended had just had a big fight the night before about all doodle dogs. She contended that any doodle was half standard poodle and thus all doodle dogs were big. Shay Shay a lean twenty pounder just comes up to you knee proving that something other than a standard poodle was in her genetic makeup
The tech was so excited to be right. “I’m going home for lunch with her right now and show her this picture.” I asked him how long they had been engaged and he told me two weeks. “It’s nice to be right, but be careful about how you say it,” I cautioned him.
After he left I got thinking about how when I was younger I reveled in being right. When I say younger I mean like last year and before. It has taken me a long time in life to learn that there are often many correct answers to the same question. Learning to see the gray areas and appreciate nuances is a skill I had to learn.
I think that being the oldest child of two oldest children makes me someone who was used to being more right than wrong. It was easy as a child to be right when competing with much younger siblings. Admitting I am not right comes easier to me now, but was a long time coming.
Sometimes it is great to be wrong, especially if you think the stock market might go down, but still hold on to your investments. Being proved wrong there is a happy thing. Or if you think a young person is stretching a long way to apply to a certain school and they get in. Hooray for being wrong.
But those examples do not involve one person being right and one person being wrong. Gloating over being right is an unattractive trait, especially if it is someone you love. Learning grace and humility are life long lessons. I wish this service tech well in his life with his new wife, if they get that far. Winning an argument over a dog may not be worth it, but then again if he learns the “it’s nice to be right, but it’s better to be nice” lesson on a dog story it might be the cheapest way to learn that lesson.
Procrastination Payoff
Posted: November 17, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: grandmother, Mima 3 Comments
I’m not usually a procrastinator. For things with a deadline I like to get them done early. The only problem is that not all tasks have a deadline and for those things I sometimes can turn a blind eye.
I am not a consummate list maker, but as I have gotten older I like to have a list just so I won’t forget to do the mundane things like send people a check a I owe them. When I was younger I could relive everyday of my life in my mind and never needed a list to prompt me on what I needed to do next. In high school I could tell you that the previous week on Monday I had to read pages 145 to 219 of Anna Karenina as homework that night. Having a good memory was something I really took for granted. But a good memory really saved me when it came to looking for something important that was somewhere in my house.
Since my memory is not what it used to be I realized that I needed to be more systematic in my filing. So at last this weekend I actually got to clean up my office. I hardly use my office anymore since I got a laptop computer some years back and I tend to travel the house working. I also used to do a lot of paper arts and scrapbooking that required a nice flat surface. Since I hardly ever print a photo these days I stopped playing with my paper crafts.
My office became the mail storage area for our house. Tax receipts, bank statements and “important” papers wound up in piles on my giant desk. Filing was just something I was never good at and with no need to use my desk it just became my giant file.
Today I worked through the piles, trying to only handle each piece of paper once, something I still have not mastered. As I got the desktop cleaned off I tackled the baskets and cute boxes that had things stuffed in them for safekeeping. Most of things in those baskets were thrown away, so much for even remembering why I was saving a receipt from a trip to Italy six years ago anyway.
Towards the end of the afternoon I picked up a basket that had been in my office as long as we lived here. It contained the charging base for my very first cell phone with a frayed electrical cord, a glue gun and a dozen lose glue sticks (I wonder if they go bad?) a hardcover novel I started and was so bored with I never got past the second chapter, and a big pile of Christmas Cards and other greeting cards from 1996.
I loved looking at the photo of my friends Janet and Frank with their baby Sofia who is now applying to college. I found cards from people who only wrote their first names and I had to rack my brain to figure out who they are. It was time to part with these things.
Then I opened a little bear shaped birthday card and was stopped in my tracks. There was the familiar tiny handwriting of my Grandmother Mima. She always wrote the sweetest letters that made me feel like the most loved person on earth. If it had somehow not made it’s way into this small basket that got squirreled away in my office it certainly would have been thrown away soon after I had received it. Finding it today brought back memories of years of wonderful letters my Mima used to write me. She passed away in 1999 and I miss getting her words of encouragement and love.
In 1996 I certainly was not thinking that I needed to save every card my grandmother sent because I always anticipated there would be more to come. I was wrong. But I was so happy that my laziness fourteen years ago brought back the love of my grandmother today. For once my procrastination paid off.
Toronto’s Mayoral Mistake
Posted: November 16, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Rob Ford, Toronto Leave a commentEverybody on earth has heard about Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford who was taped smoking crack. Now I am in no way condoning anyone, elected official, college educated or not, well employed or not, Canadian or not, doing drugs of any kind. That being said Rob Ford, who is a rather large man according to his pictures on TV missed a major opportunity to get out of this whole debacle.
How you might ask? He was allegedly was taped smoking the drugs, he admitted doing it and he added that he has also bought drugs in the recent past. His best-missed defense was he should have said that he was doing the drugs as a diet aid. Sure, illegal drugs are still against the law, but if only Robb Ford had gone on TV and said, “Yes I did the drugs as a way to help me lose weight. I am powerless against food and I was at my wits end to find something to help me stay away from food.”
Yes, it would have been a lie, but many people would have given him a pass because his obvious need to lose weight would have been a believable story. If only he had said that he might have gone on to actually lose some weight to help rehabilitate his reputation.
It’s too late now. He has been stripped of all power and is still fat. He certainly might get fatter as he seeks solace in beer and donuts, two things Canadians do well, just not together.
How a good PR person missed giving Rob Ford this simple advice is criminal. People are fairly forgiving and so many can empathize with the need to lose weight and even are supportive of someone actually seeking a solution even if it is an idiotic one. Too late.
Maybe not. If Ford goes on to lose weight now he can regain some respect by saying, “Doing the drugs and getting caught drove me to reexamine my life and get healthy. The crack might have saved my life by spurring me on to lose weight.” As I see it dieting is his only salvation.
The Giving Heart
Posted: November 15, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Food Bank, Philanthropy lunch, Wtvd abc11 4 Comments
With the ABC -11 winners, Angela Hampton, Steve Daniels, Monica Barnes, Me, Carolina Welsh and Peter Werbicki
When I was a kid I did not really understand what a philanthropist was. Yes, I heard the word but I associated it with only the uber rich, past robber barons who summered in Newport Rhode Island like the Mellons, Rockefellers and Carnegies. I certainly did not think I had ever met anyone who could be considered such a big word as a Philanthropist.
Fast forward to college and my sorority where as Pi Beta Phi’s we had some sort of Philanthropy requirement. For the life of me I can not remember what good works we actually did, but we must have done something because I am sure the VP of Moral advancement made sure of it.
When I was in my twenties in the Gordon Geko how much money can you make for yourself 80’s I did nothing philanthropic, despite living in Washington DC and having friends whose jobs were about doing good works. Philanthropy was still about rich people or people who worked in non-profit because they were not interested in earning money.
Honestly it was not until I stopped earning money myself and became a mother that I became more interested in helping other people. When I started volunteering places I considered myself just that, a volunteer. I did donate some money, but not what I considered to be in the “philanthropist” category.
Fast forward to today. I went to the National Philanthropy Day Luncheon where the Food Bank’s nominee, WTVD ABC-11 won as Outstanding Philanthropic Corporation. Their President, Caroline Welch talked about how all the employees volunteer and give back to the Food Bank and other community organizations they support. The award was not for the most money raised, but the years of service to our community.
Philanthropy is not just about rich people giving away money, although that is really nice, but it is about anyone who helps someone else in need in anyway they can, no matter how small. Most everyone I know is generous in multitudes of ways so you are all Philanthropists. So on this day set aside to recognize the heros around us, I want to recognize all of you who donate to the Food Bank, or pick up a hammer for Habitat or read with a child at your local school. I think Gordon Geko was dead wrong, greed is not good, generosity is.
No Actual Pumpkins Were Sacrificed
Posted: November 14, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Pumpkin pie spice, Starbucks latte 1 CommentIt’s that time of year when all flavors of Thanksgiving get their starring roles in menus around the country. It seems to me that the “flavor of the year” award should go to Pumpkin Pie Spice. Everywhere I turn I see another ad for some kind of Pumpkin Pie flavored drink, coffee creamer or donut.
Now pumpkin pie is reported to be an aphrodisiac, or maybe its the smell of pumpkin pie so it is no wonder that the commercial food world has jumped on that bandwagon. I heard a grown woman cry once at Starbucks when they told her they were out of pumpkin pie spice latte. Really lady, it’s just a coffee.
Actually, it’s not even a coffee, nor does it even have any pumpkin in it. It is just five spices blended together that make that oh-so-addictive and familiar pumpkin pie flavor; they are in order of amount, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cloves.
So if you are ordering a pumpkin pie spice drink and counting it as a vegetable you are one big idiot. If you are a big time pumpkin pie lover here is the real secret, pumpkin on it’s own does not have that much taste. What you really like are the spices that go in it. That being said you can put pumpkin pie spice on lots of other things and get that same yummy flavor and save yourself a ton of calories.
One favorite of mine is to roast carrots in the oven and when they are brown and caramelized I put a tiny amount of butter and a boatload of pumpkin pie spice. Ha,no sugar, no crust, no condensed milk, no pumpkin, but trust me your mouth will think it tastes pretty damn good, maybe even whoopee inducing.
If you have ever had a sweet potato pie and thought it was pumpkin it was because it had the same spice mix — all you are really tasting are the spices and the sugar.
So no crying when the pumpkin pie spice food season ends, just make your own. That combination of flavors is good on many things so don’t be shy about sprinkling it on and acorn or butternut squash or in a cookie recipe, just be forewarned and don’t depend on the rhythm method, if you know what I mean.
The Pants News Network
Posted: November 13, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Chip WIlson, lululemon, yoga pants 2 Comments
Today at a ladies who lunch type outing for my friend Hannah’s birthday the conversation took the turn to inevitable search for well fitting pants. My friends at lunch are all very trim, to use an old fashioned word and I would have thought that finding pants that fit correctly would not have been an issue for any of them. Apparently issues of fit happen to people of all body types.
Inevitably the conversation turned to the news-making pants story of the hour Lululemon yoga pants and their none to attractive in everyway founder Chip Wilson. If you don’t watch the “Pants News Network” here’s the background. A woman bought a pair of yoga pants at Lululemon and was unhappy that the legs of the pants pilled between the thighs. You know what pilling is… when little bits of fabric gather in tiny knot-like pieces and stand proud of the rest of the fabric. Pilling is something that cheep fabrics do more often than better materials. When the woman went to return the pants she was told that the pants were not defective but her thighs rubbing together caused the problem.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…break in the “Pants News Network” for my side bar conversation. Have any of you ever bought a pair of pants that had some disclaimer to a guarantee that read, “guaranteed only if you weigh under 100 pounds are 5 foot six or taller and have not eaten any pancakes in the last six years.”
Back to the “Pants News Network” — so a reporter was interviewing Chip Wilson about the “Pilling Issue” and he said “We are a technology company”, wait I thought he was a yoga wear company. Sure workout wear has taken a technological step forward, but a technology company, really?
Chip goes on to explain the pilling problem away by saying, “That some woman’s bodies don’t work.” The reporter, a woman, in a moment of disbelief, said, “So their bodies don’t work for pants?”
As far as I can tell my body has never worked for anything. Well, maybe my body would work for food, but for the most part I don’t think my body as a whole makes the decision about working, just my brain. Perhaps some pants don’t work on my body, but if you are a pants maker you better figure out how to make a product that you can stand behind for any type of body that can put it on. Oh yeah, we are talking about Lululemon, the same company that had to recall millions of pairs of pants because they were too sheer. I guess you would not want to stand behind those pants. Seems like the “technology” failed there.
The faithful fat-thigh-yoga-pants-wearing watchers of the pants channel got all up in Chip Wilson’s grill about the bodies not working comment. He, in his holier than thou way went back on the “Pants News Network” to not apologize, but say he was sad people got mad about his comments.
Here is the bottom line, buy your clothes from a company that thinks they are a clothing manufacturer and not a technology company. Don’t try and squeeze yourself into anything. Thank goodness we don’t have to wear 1970’s Levi’s with the waist size printed on the leather tag on your kidney. That being said, no one else will have any idea what size you are wearing so buy the size that fit’s right. If the product ends up being defective take it back and demand satisfaction. If they won’t stand behind their product call me because there is nothing I like better than a good retail fight, I’ll go back to the store with you. One caveat, make sure the store does not have any signs posted at the checkout saying there are no returns for people they don’t think are worthy of wearing their products in the first place. I think in Chip Wilson’s mind they have those signs in all his stores.
Is Multi-Tasking the Right Way to Go?
Posted: November 12, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Needlepoint, walking, Writing Leave a commentToday was a day of many meetings which meant mostly sitting or driving between sitting. Since I still don’t have a self peddle car even the driving meant more sitting. Because I started tracking my steps and trying to get at least 10,000 a day I have become keenly aware of how many things I like to do sitting down.
First on the list is eating and since eating while walking is not easy to do while having a salad I am going to have to continue sitting for that lest I chip a tooth with my fork. The second big sit-down is writing. In desperation I am writing on my I-Pad now while walking inside my house. This is very slow, but I am in need of both words and steps. I am not planning on doing this everyday.
My third favorite thing is needle pointing. Today I was almost finished with a cute squirrel ornament I was working on, but had run out of background color. I had a short window in my day between meetings so I dropped into my favorite local needlepoint store, Chapel Hill Needlepoint and a few of my regular stitching gang was sitting at the table working. Since they are regular blog followers they wanted to know how many step I had done today. It was pitiful to report that I was only up to 5,400 with a busy day still ahead of me.
I decided it was time to see if I could walk and needlepoint at the same time. I was only working on background which makes for easy work and the lighting is excellent in the store. So stitch, walk, visit, talk, tell stories and answer a question or two from customers who did not know me but thought I must work there otherwise why was I walking around the store so much, I did. My friend Annie captured me on my loop around the table.
Now I know my needlepoint was slower as was my walking, but I had less guilt and more fun. Unfortunately most of my needlepoint projects require a little more attention than I can give them while walking. I already needlepoint while playing Mah Jongg and I’m sure I’ve let a few winning hands go by because of it. So is it better to multi-task and be slightly slower or less adept at something or is it better to concentrate on one thing at a time? I think that since I am walking and writing at the same time right now I can not also add thinking about great philosophical questions to my multi-tasking.
Good Enough to Choke Over
Posted: November 11, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: choking, cranberries, fruit slaw Leave a commentAny regular reader of this blog might already know that I started craving turkey last week. I am happy to report that I did not roast a bird this weekend. When I really thought about what I was craving I determined it was not the meat or the gravy but the cranberry. There are lots of ways to satisfy a cranberry craving, but most of them involve a muffin or cake or some other more-fattening-than-a-turkey-sandwich item.
I thought a little longer and as can happen to someone who is very attuned to deciphering what my mouth and my brain are seeking I remembered a recipe I made up last year that was a raw fruit salad. of course I could not remember exactly what I named it, but I searched “cranberries” on the blog and found Raw Fruit Slaw. That was it! Exactly what my mouth was craving. It is made up of pineapple, fresh cranberries, green apples oranges and the secret ingredient of orange peels. To make it really thanksgiving like I throw in just 2 chopped pecans per cup.
I ran a batch up in the cuisinart and sure enough I had found nirvana. My brain thought “thanksgiving” and my waist said, “where have you been raw fruit slaw?” so for the last three days I have been enjoying a cup of crunchy, sweet, tangy wonderful as my afternoon snack.
Today, just now I was along in my sunroom having my slaw when just as a spoonful was deposited in my mouth I inhaled awkwardly. A tiny bit of fruit went in my lungs and for a moment I thought that I was going to be done in all alone by my own desire. Quickly I coughed up the offending tiny cranberry seed with perhaps a shred of pineapple and I was spared the embarrassment of an obituary that read, “she choked to death on her substitute for a turkey sandwich.”
I got to thinking about how often people who eat alone might choke to death. Other than Mama Cass, you know of the Mamas and the Papas fame, who reportedly choked to death on a sandwich, I don’t hear of many alone choking deaths. Am I the only mother who eats lunch at home alone on days I don’t have a lunch date? I know plenty of people who eat at their desks, do they never choke or are offices so full of people that there is always someone close by to do the Heimlich maneuver?
If eating alone were a greater death threat I think that dieting would be a thing of the past. For me I think I need to slow down and breath between bites and not get so excited that I came up with a healthy alternative to my bad for me craving. Despite the near fatal episode I can hardly wait until tomorrow when I can eat more of my fruit slaw.
Modern Day Panic
Posted: November 10, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: crap, modem, Time Warner Leave a commentDisaster is a strong word. It really should be held for things like the typhoon in the Philippines where some huge amount of people actually lost their lives. When I was a teenager I was often drawn to exaggeration and would declare the shrinking of a favorite sweater a true disaster. In my defense I am sure that at that point in life I had ever actually experienced any true disasters. Not until the ice storm on 1972 where we went without electricity for seven days had I ever even experienced discomfort.
With all that being said something happened at our house today that I will certainly not call a disaster, but it did cause close to panic. Our three month old crap replacement Time Warner modem went out. And add to that discomfort, much more importantly Russ’ computer would not boot up. Now these problems are not things I am terribly helpful with, but am accustomed to having connectivity to the outside world via computer.
Here is the shocking bit of information. Time Warner does not have a service center open anywhere near here and possibly anywhere on Sunday. So unlike the last time the modem gave up I was not able to drive to their store,wait in an hour long line and trade in my definitely broken machine for another used and possibly also just traded in and possibly broken machine. Russ spent a good two hours on the phone with some Rep who is certainly not paid enough to deal with angry customers because she is telling them that the earliest a tech can come to the house is Thursday.
Russ probably could have built a modem in that amount of time. Instead he ended up going to Best Buy and purchasing a new modem. The only problem now is that he has to make it work with all the many devices in our house that depend on it. A job I am definitely no help with.
With all the advancements in the world the person who invents household connectivity that just plugs in the wall and makes your whole house a big wifi hub and the TV’s get every station and your phones all have clear connections without any human programming will be my hero and certainly the richest person in the world. Come on twitter or nest inventors, make this for me and all the people who are over fifty and not interested in electrical engineering.
I know you would win whatever the biggest prize is in the world and you certainly will be the richest. I would even cook you dinner for a year if you,whoever you are, would make the need for a little box with eight little blinking lights and lots of wires running under my desk obsolete just so I could have the Internet.
Right now Russ is on a work call and the new modem is not yet working so the only good part about this is that I am going to take my IPad outside and walk around to get my steps in and look for some neighbor’s unlocked wifi I can steel so I can post this blog. Please Higher Being, I rarely ask for anything, but can you hurry along the person who is able to make this magic machine. I don’t need this kind of stress in our house.
My Hips Are Killing Me
Posted: November 9, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy 2 Comments
Since I got this FitBit to encourage me to walk more I certainly have added a lot more steps to each day. My goal has been to do 10,000 steps a day and I am happy to report I made 70,000 steps in my first week. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Walking is time consuming. Some nights I was walking around and around the dining room table late into the night checking my phone app to see the steps added up.
I tried to cut down on the amount of time the walking took by adding some running to my day. I am not a runner so when I say adding some running I was doing things like running home while out with Shay Shay from three of four houses away. I am feeling all this walking with a splash of running in my hips. Previous to this exercise spurt I have been having trouble with my left arch so you would rarely see me anything but the most unattractive supportive shoes. Even with the best available footwear something is not right because my hips are killing me.
Now one would think that these same hips that have carried this body with more than a hundred and ten pounds on it for years without pain could take a little extra walking. I certainly must be doing something wrong.
I thought that maybe if I got all my steps in early in the day I might avoid night time hip pain so Russ and I took Shay Shay out to the Eno River Park to hike this morning. I got 9500 steps out on the trail with a little help being pulled along by our sweet dog who was in heaven. The early theory was proven wrong. My hips are still killing me.
I’ve tried stretching — crossing one knee over the other and pushing it away from me — A little relief, not much. A long hot shower, a little more relief, not enough. Two Aleve – not good enough yet.
Well, I know that eventually my body will adjust, but I’m tired of hurting. I did lose two pounds this week, but that seemed small based on my eating and exercise. At least if I’m going to hurt this much I should lose a little faster. I’m not throwing in the towel yet, but any tips for hip stretches are welcome.
Turkey Countdown
Posted: November 8, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Mrs. Dingle, Pawley's Island, thanksgiving, Tip Top Inn, turkey 1 Comment
Today Carter and I were shopping and as she was trying on shoes “White Christmas” came on over the store’s Muzak system. Carter went into full on revolt. “Why are they playing that already?” she demanded. “It isn’t even close to Thanksgiving yet.”
But it is. Less than three weeks to Thanksgiving and it is a late Turkey Holiday this year falling on the twenty-eighth.
I was less disturbed by the Christmas music since I am a major Christmas lover. I was much more confused by the follow-up song of “Afternoon Delight.” I wondered what drugs that music programmer was on since I don’t find shopping delightful and it was not even afternoon.
To help calm Carter’s mood over the obvious Christmas push put on by all things retail I asked her what foods she wanted to have for Thanksgiving while we were at lunch. Discussing future meals while enjoying a current one is a favorite topic in our family. It is one that drives my mother crazy.
Carter started to list all the fattening southern foods my father is famous for making on Thanksgiving; stuffing, mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, creamed onions. Carter then jumped to my pecan pie. I asked her if she wanted ice cream or whipped cream and she replied the only answer a Carter of any kind might give, “Both of course.”
My mouth was salivating thinking about the normally forbidden foods that show up at Thanksgiving. It is normally about this week of the year that I start to crave a really good turkey sandwich. Not that thin cut deli turkey, which my father hates because he says it’s slimy, but a slab of home roasted turkey with a big scoop of homemade cranberry sauce and mayonnaise on old fashioned southern white bread like Mrs. Dingle used to make at the Tip Top Inn on Pawley’s Island back in the seventies.
The worst part about craving turkey is that the real Thanksgiving bird has a hard time living up to the hype my mind has built up. I would be much better off if I would just go on and cook a turkey now and enjoy a little two weeks before the real deal so that I don’t create such huge expectations. Turkey, unto itself is a fairly healthy food, but not the accompanying items on the big day.
So now I’ve done it. Got my mouth in a turkey way with Salmon on the menu for dinner. Nothing is going to make me happy until I take care of this desire. I guess I know what tomorrows “afternoon delight” is going to be.
Small Plates are Only Good for Me in the Singular
Posted: November 7, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: small plates Leave a comment
The small plate movement in the restaurant and catering world sounds like it would be the perfect diet solution for a person like me. Instead of a giant plate of food being put down in front of me there are multiples of little tiny plates each with their perfect three bites.
In theory fewer bites would be better than more, but the reality is not the case. Small plate servings tend to be more fattening because there is little filler food, like plain vegetables or simple potatoes, which can be ignored. If a chef is only giving you three bites they want to make sure that they “Wow” you and in my experience, “Wow” almost always equals more calories.
I have never seen a small plate of just grilled zucchini. If zucchini were even the subject of a small plate then a rich sauce, perhaps a Romanesco would be included and them an obscene amount of oozing cream laden burrata—that’s the richer and more attractive cousin of mozzarella, a few toasted pistachios, a drizzling of the finest olive oil with one drop of perfect balsamic vinegar and a literal pinch of micro greens. Oh yeah, and the zucchini would not just be grilled instead it would be rolled in panko and Parmesan. That’s how you get zucchini in the small plate world.
Now that I have concluded that what is on the small plate is above my calorie grade let’s throw in the other issue – “It’s small, I can have more.” Followed by, “How many have I had?”
When I get a dinner on one plate I am able to access how much I should eat before I begin eating. “Is that piece of meat 4 or 8 ounces?” “Are the vegetables swimming in butter?” Based on my overall calculations I can determine if I need a take home box before I even begin eating. This is not an option in small plates. Have you ever seen anyone ask for a doggy bag for one bite? Ok, besides someone who is related to me and shall remain nameless since Christmas is coming.
It is much harder math if you have to keep adding up one plate after another. Well, the math is not hard, but I do get tired of doing it. I guess it becomes a math weakness issue.
I am all for smaller plates in general so my eyes think I am getting a full plate, but I need to get all my food at once and not drawn out over an extended period of time dribbled out a few fantastic bites at a time. Yeah the idea of savoring something perfect should make me happy, but in reality a few more less than perfect bites giving me higher quantity and filling me up is the way I need to go. I guess it is just too late to become one of those ladies who just picks at her food.
Stewed Tomatoes, Okra and Onions
Posted: November 6, 2013 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Okra, onions, tomaotes 1 Comment
Fresh Okra is still available but is not quite as tender as it is in the height of the summer. To make the most of the slightly tougher okra I like to cook it with canned stewed tomatoes and lots of onions. Frankly, anything cooked in lots of onions will taste better.
1 big yellow onion chopped
4 cloves of garlic minced
2 15 oz. cans of stewed tomatoes
1 T. grated fresh ginger root
½ t. ground cardamom
¾ of a pound of fresh okra cleaned and cut into thirds
Dash of sugar
Salt and pepper
Spray a pot with Pam and put on a medium high heat on the stove. Add the onions and cook for a few minutes until they get transparent, stirring to prevent sticking. Add the garlic and cook another minute. Add the cans of tomatoes, ginger and cardamom and cook for twenty minutes, stirring to prevent sticking. Add the okra and 1 cup of water and cook covered for another twenty minutes. Remove the lid and add the sugar and salt and pepper and cook uncovered until the stew gets thick, about five minutes.
The Reason I Never Become a Nurse
Posted: November 5, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: sick Leave a commentPoor Carter missed a day of school last week for surgery and then was sick this morning so she stayed home again. The reason I say poor Carter is not the fact that she missed two days of school or that she had these things happen to her, it’s that I am her mother. See, I am a very poor nurse. I think it runs in my family.
When I was a kid we lived in a giant rambling barn of a house. My parents slept on the top floor on one end of the house and I slept on the bottom floor on the other end. If I ever got sick in the night there was no crying out for help because certainly no adult would hear you and no sibling would care.
Here is how an illness would go… I would wake up and throw up; sometimes I made it to the bathroom. I would cry, actually wail, no one would come. So after what felt like a lifetime of being alone in the wilderness I would pull myself up the back barn stairs that had risers that were twelve inches tall, think climbing a ladder and still wailing, drag myself the length of the big living room which felt like Lawrence of Arabia crossing the Sahara.
Crawling on all fours I would open just the bottom half of my parent’s bedroom Dutch door where I would make my way to their bed. Clinging to my mother’s side, I would lift the down pillow that was covering her head to drown out the snoring coming from my father, “I threw up,” I would whine. No response. “I’m sick,” I would say louder. Nothing. The smell of sickness on my nightgown should have woken the dead, but nothing.
I eventually retreated to my father’s side of the bed and I would push his shoulder. “I’m not snoring,” he would say in automatic response to his shoulder being pushed in his sleep. “No, it’s Dana. I’m sick.” A voice finally responds, but I am still not sure which parent it was, “Go sleep in the guest room.”
That was the model of care I grew up with. That is the model I follow today. If you are sick, sleep it off. If you have surgery, go back to school the next day. If you are sick you still better get your homework done. If you are sick, please don’t make anyone else sick. If you aren’t well you are getting the worst possible food.
If you need care I’m not your girl. There are many things I will tell you I’m good at, many I have never even tried, but taking care of sick people, even my own sweet off spring is not my thing. So feel sorry for Carter, not because she is sick, but because I’m her mother.
Things I Can and Can’t Do While Walking
Posted: November 4, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: 000 steps, 10, walking 2 CommentsToday is day four in the 10,000-step commitment. It is harder than I thought to make sure that I get all those steps in. I find myself trying to do more and more things while standing up moving. Some things are successful like dancing back and forth holding my glass in the icemaker, or reading all my e-mail on my phone while walking around and around my dining room table. Some things are not successful, like needlepoint or writing my blog while walking.
Yesterday as I sat in church I thought that I could really get a lot of steps in if I were allowed to circle the perimeter of the pews while listening to the sermon, but being Presbyterian that would be highly frowned upon. Today I had my regular appointment with my trainer so I did a little running on the treadmill before she had me lifting weights and doing lunges. Yes, I got about 2,000 steps in before my workout but for the most part balancing on a bosu while holding dumbbells and then squatting got me no steps.
I also went back to Yoga class this morning. It is amazing how little I move in Yoga and how hard it is. So while I did an insane amount of exercise, especially for me, I still have only reached 7,125 steps by four this afternoon. Sure I have lots of hours left to get that last bit in but I don’t really want to be running up and down my front walkway at 8:00 tonight like I was last night, especially since I have hardly played any Words with Friends and done not one stitch of needlepoint today. Just thinking about getting my steps done is causing me anxiety, which I am sure, is not burning off any extra calories.
I wish I did not have so many things that require my use of a computer to do because I have tried to carry my laptop around with one arm while typing with one hand and I am a total failure at that. First I tend to run into things and second I forget where my train of thought was going and I end up typing pure gibberish. I tried writing on my phone but I do not text by the thumb method so I am very slow and the change in focus from looking through my reading glasses to just over them at the floor is giving me a big headache.
I have dragged my dog outside for more walks, but her need to stop and sniff and squat is frustrating to me. Yes, I do a little dance while she is doing her business so technically I am getting some steps, but I know that I look like I have some disorder or just ants in my pants. It’s not that I don’t want to get out and walk more, but how in the world am I going to get all my regular living done? I’m leaving the computer now and am going to go run around the block before it gets dark and I get hit by a car.
Sirloin Pork Roast with Apples and Mustard Gravy
Posted: November 3, 2013 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: apples, mustard, pork, sage Leave a comment
In the back to basics move I decided to make a roast for dinner. I realized while I was cooking that I needed a lot more steps to reach my 10,000 step goal today so I ran around the kitchen never stopping while I chopped, stirred and seasoned. I don’t recommend this strategy for most because you might lose a finger.
While the roast was resting I took Shay Shay out side to run off a few more steps. My neighbors the Andersons were driving away from home and stopped to ask how the tracking my steps was going. I kept dancing around their car as I answered them. Mary Eileen said she wished she had a blog so she could write what a nut I looked like. The things I will do to reach my goal.
Russ declared this dinner a big winner so give it a try.
1 four pound Sirloin Pork Roast
1 big onion – chopped
2 apples – peeled and chopped
1 can of chicken broth
10 big fresh sage leaves minced or 1 T. of ground sage
Salt and pepper
1 ½ T. butter
2 T. flour
3 T. Dijon mustard
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a Dutch oven with Pam and put it on the stove on high heat. Pat the pork roast dry with paper towels and sprinkle lots of salt and pepper all over it. Brown the meat in the Dutch oven, turning it on all sides. This will take about ten minutes.
When you have turned the meat onto the last side to be browned add the sage, and onions. After the meat is browned on all sides add the apples and the chicken broth and keep the pan on the stove until the liquid just starts to bubble. Then put a lid on the pan and place it in the oven.
Bake for about 30 minutes until the meat reaches 160 degrees using a meat thermometer. Take the meat out of the pan and spoon the apples and onions over it, leaving the liquid in the pan to use for gravy. Tent with foil to keep it warm.
To make the gravy melt the butter in a frying pan on medium heat, add the flour and stir it into the melted butter cooking it for a minute. Add the pan juices from the roast to the butter and flour roux stirring with a whisk. Add the mustard and continue cooking until the gravy is the desired thickness, it should only take a few minutes.
I served mine with roast Brussels Spouts and sweet Potato Oven Fries.
And Yet Another Diet Trick
Posted: November 2, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: fit bit 1 Comment
There is a reason so many people write baking blogs and I found out yesterday when I posted the obscenely bad for you Halloween candy peanut butter pie recipe; people love sweets. I got so many messages about that pie. When I was out walking today I ran into my friend Cliff who has lost a boat-load of weight in the last two years and he said that he was so tempted by my recipe that he actually contemplated buying four bags of Kit Kats at the grocery today so he could make that pie and put it in the freezer.
Now the point of that recipe was to repurpose Halloween candy so that it was not just hanging around to get nibbled on here and there. Thankfully Cliff did not fall prey to the Kit Kats. I promise not to post something like that again, even if it does get me tons of readers. It goes against the point of this blog as a diet comedy.
Halloween is the beginning of the eating season. Not that there is ever a non-eating season for me. I spent last weekend eating what I wanted at Jon and Alli’s wedding and that is not something that worked out for me.
Knowing that this is the dangerous time of year and that I have been less than vigilant in the last month I was searching for what my next “Trick” for dieting was going to be. It was exactly one year ago on November first that my weight-loss challenge for the Food Bank ended. Yes I did raise $53,000 and loose 53 pounds, which worked great for the Food Bank, and me but I can’t keep asking people to pay me to lose weight and I would like to go on and lose the last of it.
I know in my heart and my brain what all the basics are to losing weight. They don’t change and I have memorized them all. I also know there are no magic pills so I never bother to listen to those infomercials on the latest herb or extract guaranteed to help you drop those unwanted pounds. But I still like a gadget or two that will keep me focused on the fundamentals.
My friend Jan is an early adaptor and likes to try out the new and shinny so I was ripe to listen to her talk about her Fit Bit this week. Fit Bit is a tiny device you wear to track steps and activity. It is one of many of these devices to help us sedentary yet completive types get up and move around more. This was the “Trick” I treated myself to post Halloween. So now I have a bracelet on tracking my every move.
Moving more and tracking it is good, but logging every bite of food I eat is better. As wonderful as exercise is, eating right is the only way I really can lose weight. To my luck Fit Bit can be tied into the Losing It App I already have on my phone, but have not used in a while as my logging system for everything I put in my mouth. I don’t bite it until I write it.
I will keep you posted as to the progress of these back to basics tricks I am trying. If you are also a Fit Bit user friend me or invite me or whatever it is called so we can track each other. I am always better if I have people keeping an eye on me and a little competition never hurts.
Using Up Halloween Chocolate Candy Peanut Butter Pie
Posted: November 1, 2013 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: halloween candy, peanut butter 3 Comments
I rarely post anything so fattening on this blog, but I was bound and determined to use up this Halloween candy. I made it into a peanut butter pie with a pretzel crust that I will freeze and give away.
1 ½ Cups of crushed pretzels
¼ cup of brown sugar
4T. of melted butter
Mix together and press into a pie pan. Bake in 350-degree oven for ten minutes and remove from oven and let cool.
10 mini or fun size chocolate candy bars chopped up- I used snickers, heath bars, twix, Rollo and kit kats. Sprinkle on the crust.
1 pkg of cream cheese
¼ cup of sour cream
½ cup of peanut butter
1 egg
Beat all these ingredients together and spoon over the candy. Bake in 325-degree oven for 35 minutes. Chill and cover the pie with whipped cream when you serve it.
Cut pieces for everyone else and run out of the house before taking one bite your self.
Halloween Overload
Posted: October 31, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: candy, halloween Leave a comment
Hallmark is always getting a bad rap for promoting Mother’s day since it sells cards but no one seems to jump all over the Mars or Hershey companies for selling America giant bags of candy for Halloween. I don’t think Halloween was such a big deal when my parents were little. Sometime in the 1950’s the costume thing caught on and then the trick or treating, but I don’t think it was until M&M’s came in fun size bags that the candy-begging thing got so big.
I feel like running from house to house and grabbing as much candy as you can hit a peak in the late seventies when parents still felt safe letting their children run amok in their own neighborhoods. Then people started busing carloads of kids into neighborhoods they deemed to be more generous. Sometime after that parents got pulled into to escort their kids and to look their neighbors’ in the eye as if to say, “You know us so please give our children some free candy.”
Now the yard ornament decorating companies have really come into their own with some people creating whole front lawn grave yards with fog and fake spider webs. Halloween is the only night grown-ups are legally allowed to traumatize children as long as you give them a mini snickers after you have done it.
The thing I hate is that we buy candy in case one of our neighbor kids comes by looking for a treat, but for the most part we have the lights off so Carter and her friends can watch a scary movie. Hardly any child is going to waste valuable candy gathering time on a dark house so by 8:00 at night I am assured to have a bowl of leftover candy; something none of us needs.
I am sure candy companies have banked on this happening. Stock prices of all things chocolate depend on people like me buying candy just in case. For the most part America does not need all this candy. I would rather have kids come to the door and let me give them a quarter, at least I would have something to do with the leftover money when all the handing out had finished. I’m sure I would be considered some kind of Grinch for not handing out candy and that is stepping on the foot of another holiday.
Alive and Well
Posted: October 30, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Meniscus surgery 3 Comments
All the worry is passed now that I have Carter home safe and sound from her Meniscus surgery today. Poor thing was not allowed to eat anything form midnight on last night and she was not wheeled into the operating room until 3:00. We had hoped that her Doctor would be able to sew the tendon, but when he got into her knee he found it was a feathery mess so he was only able to trim it. The good news to that scenario is that she won’t have a brace for four weeks.
Carter was a very happy drunk on the anesthesia. It made her sweet and generous offering to share all that she had in recovery, which was a cup of water. On the way home she asked me if I was a happy drunk back in the day when I drank. I told her I was a funny drunk and she said the nicest thing. “Mom how is it possible for you to be any funnier?”
I want to freezer her like this because I fear that as soon as the anesthesia wears off and the pain from the operation is realized she is not going to be as cheerful. But for the moment I am just happy she is home with me.
Thanks to all who sent us good wishes and said prayers for us. It was not a life threatening operation, but why take chances, I’ll take all the help from a higher power I can get. That and the ice chilling machine from Donnabeth, the dinner from Christy, the magazines from Lynn and Ellis and the visit from Taylor before the operation. I’m going back to enjoy Carter before the happy wears off.
Another Set of Crutches
Posted: October 29, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: crutches, surgery 5 Comments
Carter is a crutches salesman’s dream. She needs them often and she keeps growing taller so she needs new one. Tomorrow she is having meniscus surgery and she got fitted for yet a new pair of crutches today. I optimistically brought her last set up to Triangle Ortho to see if they would still suffice, but no, they were already at their most extended setting and were considered too short.
Poor Carter has been living with this knee pain since her volleyball team beach trip in the beginning of August. As soon as she made the team she got injured. No one had any clue that the damage was as bad as it was, not that the adults around her paid any attention. Having to have surgery is bad enough, but the worst part for Carter is missing playing basketball, which is all she was living for.
As a parent I would do anything to take this pain from her and keep her from suffering, but that was not an option on the extensive forms I had to sign today as her legal guardian. Being a helpless observer is not something I do well. I am doing my best to try and alleviate Carter’s fears about the procedure. I think that it would be considered really bad parenting to tell her how much fun anesthesia is going to be.
For me I am going to have to try and not deal with anxiety by eating. Double whammy, worry about Carter and not eat sugar. I know that eating does not help anything, but it sure makes stress more fun, if just for a minute or two.
Hopefully the complex tear will be in a place that can get sewn up and Carter will have a brighter knee future. We won’t know that until after the Dr. has gone in. Please pray for Carter and Dr. Silver who is doing the operation. At least I am a well-seasoned mother of a child on crutches and know all the best parking places.
When Did Pants Become an Accessory?
Posted: October 28, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: pants to big on young men 1 Comment
Today I was driving over to Target and I passed two young men out on the street who were the height of fashion in their crowd for sure. One was wearing a red necklace made up of beads about the size of ping-pong balls that clearly could have come from his great grandmother’s costume jewelry case. The other had a fashionable fedora in a jaunty placement on his head and a fringed leather vest. From the waist up these twenty somethings looked like they might have walked off the pages of GQ except for one thing, they both had hold of the waistbands of their jeans lest they fall to the ground while walking on the sidewalk.
Why do young men who obvious care what they look like, even if it is like a lady who lunched in 1940, insist on wearing pants that are so much too big that they can’t stay on by themselves? Clothes that can’t stay on are more like an accessory than an actual item of clothing.
I blame the “No Shirt, No Shoe, No Service” push of the 1970’s when young men had to be told that shopping was not a clothing optional experience. Owners of 7/11’s mistakenly assumed that everyone would at the least be wearing pants so they did not see the need to include bottoms in the saying. Of course for alliteration purposes it would be so easy to say, “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Slacks, No Service.” If we did it now young people still might not get it since they don’t know what slacks are.
I think the way to solve this your-pants-are-too-low-son-and-I-don’t-want-to-look-at-your-boxers craze is for middle-aged white women to adopt this way of dressing. I assure you the second all too-cool-for-school types see women old enough to be their grandmas dressing like them they will run for the store to buy something different, like a belt, or a pair of jeans that hug their waist, not their thighs.
So let’s bring back pants as a non-optional clothing item. I declare November 1 as the day we give them a taste of their own medicine, but make sure to wear a pair of cotton granny panties so they can really be cured of wanting to look like us. Middle-aged women go to your husband’s closet and put on his biggest pants and go to the mall, McDonalds, the car wash, and every bar in your town. One day ought to solve this problem.
Now to the young man wearing the necklace, I might have some other costume jewelry you might look good in. How do you feel about a nice brooch?
Ninety Minutes ’til Married
Posted: October 26, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Jon and Allie, St john's Leave a commentToday is Cousin Jon’s big day. We had a great rehearsal dinner last night out side under the trees and the stars. It gave the Lange side a chance to really get to know Allie’s family. In the small world of a Lange man marrying an OPEX sales woman, that being a rare thing in its own right, we told lots of stories about OPEX. Based on Russ and my twenty one years of marital bliss we are predicting much happiness for Jon and Allie.
Since the wedding is at five tonight we took advantage of being just a ferry ride away from St. John’s. Russ and I dragged Carter out of our room early this morning to go to the clearly more beautiful island. Once we docked we decided to take an open air tour of the island with Smittie, a lovey older man from Domenica who has lived on St. John for a good part of his life.
He took us up into the National Park which had mainly been Lawrence Rockerfeller’s property until he “donated” it to the government in the fifties. I imagine the IRS played a significant role in that transaction. None the less it is great that two thirds of the 19 square mile island is preserved.
After the indigenous people had been conquered by the Danish and slaves were brought in to work the sugar cane farms the island was prosperous for the sugar and Rum by product. In the middle of the 1800’s the bottom fell out of sugar. Funny how much sugar has to do with bottoms. Eventually the Danish sold four island’s, st. John’s, St. Thomas, St. Croix and one other little one to the US for 25 million dollars during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
Since Smittie was able to drive us through the national park with out going through any entry gates I asked him what happened the two weeks the government was closed. he said people could still go in the rain forest part of the park since there was no way to keep them out, but the park service closed the beaches by blocking up the parking lots and walk ways out to the sand.
He said that the governor in St. Thomas through a hissy fit saying that all the tourist who had made good money to come on vacation to go to the beach needed them open so after two days they were reopened. That was something that didn’t make the news on the mainland. I can only imagine how all those tourists in Washington DC who paid good money to go to see the monuments might have felt about that.
We had a little lunch on St. John, jumped the ferry came back for a refreshing swim and now are changing for the reason we came here, the wedding. As I think about how the vows they are about to take will profoundly change their life I wonder if they have had much time during all the celebration to think about it. It is only with 21 years of married life behind me do I appreciate what a big day this is for them. Having someone by your side to travel through life with is a true joy, as long as it is the right person. So I am trying not to get too teary already, but I hope that Jon and Allie have as happy a life as Russ and I have had. I guess it’s not 90 minutes ’til married, but 90 minutes until happily ever after.
The Problem With Island Food For Russ
Posted: October 25, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Vacation Leave a commentThe Problem With Island Food For Russ
Vacations hold some promise of paradise. Not all places have paradise potential, but the hope with any place you get away to is that it will be something different from home. I no longer think that going away is going to better than home. It is hard to beat my own bed, my own quiet room and my own pillows. But vacations are supposed to be a break from the normal frenzy of daily life.
With the proliferation of wifi the world over there is almost no such thing as a vacation for Russ. He really planned on taking the long weekend off. Then on Wednesday more work popped up. “I promise I will not work during the days,” he told me. We planned to go to St. John today, but then calls and meetings gave us reason to postpone that until tomorrow. At least Russ got out to the beach by 1:00 and at three we went into town for lunch.
A colleague had given Russ a recommendation for a place to eat that I happen to have heard of too. We wandered the alley’s and finally found it. The place was famous for their hot sauce, a favorite taste profile for Russ. We ordered the local specials. Caribbean lobster salad for me and curried goat for Russ. Whmile waiting for our meals they brought Russ bread so he could taste each of the hot sauce varieties. “Too watered down,” he said, “you can make better,” he finished looking at me.
Our meals came. They were fine, nothing great. “I like your cooking better,” Russ declared. It’s not just island food, but any food that I did not make that Russ dismisses. Even if he is eating something I would never cook for any variety of reasons like, I don’t have access to the ingredients, or it is too fattening or I have just plain never heard of a certain dish.
Now don’t get me wrong. Once in a while we find a restaurant that has something so devine that Russ asks to come back and have it again, but hardly ever on vacation. That is a testament to the great restaurants we have in Durham as well as the cook he has at home. But vacations hold out the promise of something more and that expectation is hardly ever met.
So now we have to adjust our expectations. We are here to celebrate the wedding of Jon and Allie. We are enjoying the company of family we rarely see except at weddings. It does not matter what we eat or if I can get a good cup of decaf coffee in the afternoon, or if Russ will ever stop working. I know my paradise is the people with me. Russ will have to wait a few days until I can get back to the kitchen for his paradise.
Is This 1988?
Posted: October 24, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Jon Lange, OPEX, St. Thomas, wedding 1 CommentIt’s 88 degrees, but it feels like 99. The music blares to a late eighties gay bar beat and it’s three in the afternoon. The ocean pounds the white shore next to us. I need a nap.
Since it is the first real cold day in Durham you might think I am dreaming, but I am sitting at a bar in St. Thomas waiting for our room. Russ and I woke up at 3:55 just because we were fearful of over sleeping the only flight between RDU and here today. Russ’ cousin Jon is getting married this weekend and we are here to represent Russ’ side of the family.
Jon is a popular relative in our family. He’s a NYC ad guy which means all things cool to Carter. One of his accounts is “Got Milk?” and he often sends Carter autographed pictures of the teen stars who wear the milk mustache. Because of Carter’s adoration she was also invited to the wedding.
Proof that the world is a really small place is the fact that Jon is marrying me junior. His wife to be Aly’s first job was my very same first job out of college. Not just the same job, but the same company, the same territory, the same customers, the same boss just twenty years apart. Suffice it to say we think that Lange men do well marrying ex-Opex women so this is sure to be a happy union.
Tonight we are meeting up with other Lange cousins for dinner. I am hoping that we get in our room soon so I can nap and shower. It’s weird to come to hot weather when I was just beginning to crave some crisp fall air. I am really hoping our room is not too close to this bar because listening to the pulsing beat of the music day and night will make me feel like I’m back to selling OPEX mail opening and extracting machines by day and dancing at Rehobeth beach with my friends at night. I’m too old for both of those things.
Halloween Nightmares
Posted: October 23, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: halloween candy Leave a comment
Today Carter convinced me that we needed a Halloween costume for Shay Shay this year. Since Carter will have just had her knee operated on and certainly won’t be dressing up I thought it was the least I could do to celebrate the season.
Amazingly enough while we were at Pet Smart buying food we found the 75% off Halloween costumes and it is a whole week before the holiday. We considered a ladybug, but it required Shay to wear a hat and she was not happy with that plan. Then we saw a shark fin. Cute, but it had the great possibility of sliding down and looking like a giant grey appendage more fitting for a boy dog than our princess Shay.
Then we spotted the perfect outfit for both Carter and Shay. A jockey and saddle turning Shay into the horse he is riding on. At first wearing Shay kept looking behind her to see what monkey was on her back, but then she settled into her role as steed. We think she is going to wait until our backs are turned and then grab that little man off her back and rip him to shreds looking for his squeaker. That will be no problem since the whole outfit only cost $2.97.
Halloween is not my holiday. When Carter was little I did get into making her costumes, which were more like works of art. My favorite was the year I made her into a garden. Another year when she was really into reading The Magic Tree House books I make her a book. I framed it after Halloween and it hangs by the bathroom now.
Today I went to Spooky Mah Jongg at my friend De’s house. Now there is a woman who is really into Halloween. There were hundreds of pumpkins, skulls, mummies skeletons and all things gross like rats and bloody arms all around the outside and inside of her house. When De lived in Atlanta she used to put on a full blown haunted house. She says what we saw today was just a portion of what she used to put out.
Not only does she have all the decorations but also bowls of candy are everywhere.
This is why I can’t have anything to do with Halloween. One tiny Heath bar leads to a fun size Butterfinger, to three full size Reese’s peanut butter cups and forty-eight candy corns. Candy cannot even be a treat for me because it tricks me into eating more of it. And then begins the slide into holiday eating hell.
This year I am vowing not to have one bite of Halloween candy. I’ve already eaten more than my quota with the chocolate covered cranberries. So don’t offer me a small bag of M&M’s or a Sugar Daddy. I need to Pope-like and abstain.
Rip It Out, Even Twice
Posted: October 22, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Needlepoint, trial and error 1 Comment
Since the deadline for completing needlepoint Christmas ornaments is ten and a half months away I have slowed down the speed of my production from hyper-fast to just impressive. Without the self-imposed pressure to get just one more canvas done I veered off into creativity mode on this week’s ornament. It is a little bird house with flowers and rather than just do the standard basket weave stitch I decided to do this one like a sampler and do a different decorative stitches on each flower and the bird.
Decorative stitches are a growing thing in needlepoint and most people I know who do them have a stitch guide showing them what stitches go in which places. Since I was winging this I just used trial and error. I must confess to more error than trial.
Since this was a painted canvas not specifically intended for decorative stitches some parts were an epic failure. I completed one whole flower and looked at it and thought it was horrible so I ripped it out. I tried a different stitch and it was worse than the first one. I sat and looked at it for a day while I completed a different area of the canvas. It was still horrible. I ripped it out again.
I started over completely ignoring what was painted on the canvas and made up my own flower and my own stitch. Better, not perfect, but better. I used twenty-one different patterns in the little four by six inch ornament. I learned I don’t like so many different patterns. It was a good lesson.
The real learning came in idea that it was all right to rip something out even twice. I am much happier with the product than I would have been if I had left the offending needle worked section. Completing a job does not always mean it is done. Sometimes you just on the way to figuring out when done means finished.
It is kind of like painting your house. Just because you buy a big can of paint and cover all the surfaces with it does it mean it is right. If it turns out to have been not exactly the color you imagined it to be or the light makes it look unappealing, repaint it right away. Living with the mistake will be way more annoying than spending the time and maybe the money to get it right.
I am in no way espousing perfectionism. That is a different mental illness and one I am far from, but not settling when you know something is wrong is the right thing to do in the long run. It is better to lose one day’s worth of work and have something I like than have something I dislike which equals losing a weeks worth of work, plus the money I put in it. Do I like ripping out completed work, for goodness sake no, but will I remember that pain when I look at the finished product years later, probably not.
Fair Fun Continues
Posted: October 21, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: commissioner Steve Troxler, food lion, hunger relief day, nc state fair Leave a comment
Without stepping foot on one ride or eating one bite of anything fried my life continued to revolve around the NC State Fair today. This morning I spoke at the Food Bank’s Press Conference to introduce Hunger Relief Day at the Fair with Agriculture Commission Steve Troxler.
This Thursday is the big day when anyone who wants to go to the Fair can bring FIVE cans of Food Lion brand products to the admission gate and get in for that donation. It’s a deal. Regular adult admission is $9 and you know you can get some cheep cans of beans or peas at Food Lion and save some big bucks.
We are trying to raise 325,000 pounds of food at the fair on Thursday. It’s a goal we should be able to meet if more people who come to the fair that day bring cans. Typically only half the people who show up at the fair that day bring food and just end up paying admission. Don’t do it people, save your money for the food at the fair.
Hunger Relief Day does not mean that you have to go hungry. I saw on facebook where one friend had tried an Oreo cookie wrapped in Red velvet cake and deep-fried. She said it was mighty fine. It sounds like it is something you can only get at the fair.
Commission Troxler is a great guy. He comes from a little town called Brown’s Summit that is not too far from my family’s farm. Thanks to him farming is well supported in North Carolina and we all know that without farms there is no food. Troxler issued a matching challenge that he will donate $5,000 to the Food Bank if Hunger Relief day brings in the 325,000 pounds of food. If we get 300,000 pounds he will donate $2,500 or 275,000 pounds a $1,000.
Come on out to the fair, bring cans and not only will you help feed your hungry neighbors, get into the fair for less than half price, but you can get us the $5,000. That is a win-win.
Fairly Exhausted
Posted: October 20, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: state fair horse show 2 Comments
The annual State Fair Horse Show weekend has come and gone, Thank God. It is Carter’s big weekend and one that Russ and I barely endure. Yes, we love watching our daughter do the thing she loves so much, but no we hate the standing around waiting, the late nights, the judging and the packing up when it is over.
Carter had a fairly successful weekend. Her best class was Hunter Seat Equitation where she was being judged on how she was as a rider and not how her horse was. She came in third in a class of fourteen in Equitation. On the under saddle classes we were happy when she ribboned since she does not own a horse and is at the mercy of a horse she is lucky enough to get to ride.
Ridding is a money sport, the more money you pay the better you will do and we are not a money family, especially when it comes to horses. So good for you Carter, for doing well without your parents buying it for you. There is a lot of character building that goes on at horse shows.
I consider this my state fair diet weekend. I ate nothing there. I waited until I was home each day for any meals. Yesterday that was not a big deal because the showing ended early, but tonight we were not home until 8:30. Besides not consuming any frozen cheesecake covered in chocolate or a fried candy bar I got plenty of exercise. I counted my trips between the barn and the arena at 37, just today. That had to be at least six miles of walking. Add to that the trips to the car in loading today and that was worth two more miles of walking, with the extra exercise of carrying stuff.
So no more state fair diet for at least another year. I am happy to stay home and walk my dog and carry stuff around my own house. At least it does not smell like horse poop and my teeth don’t feel gritty from dust flying around.
A Peck of Unpickled Peppers
Posted: October 19, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: peppers, pickling Leave a comment
When I was a kid I knew the nursery rhyme about Peter picking a peck of pickled peppers long before I knew what a peck, pickling or a pepper was. It seemed like a very mysterious thing that Peter was doing. The part that was most confusing was that he could pick something that was pickled already.
My summer garden is all picked as of today and I think I must have at least a peck of peppers and now I need to pickle them or at least do some kind of preserving. Of course with Carter showing at the state fair horse show this weekend I don’t have a ton of time to pickle or make pepper jelly. I hope that the peppers will keep another few days so I can at least chop some up and put them in vinegar with a little sugar and salt. Russ likes to eat those hot peppers that way and I have less guilt that we are using the bounty of our harvest.
I did make a quick pot of ratatouille with the last of my eggplant and a few of the sweeter peppers and the end of my basil. At least Russ and I will have a healthier meal at home than we would have if we were still at the fair with our RV living horse riding child.
For all my Durham friends if you want a few peppers send me a message and I can leave you a little package at my front door. You will have to take them in the raw form and pickle them, or sauté, fry, roast or cook them yourself. The good news is they hardly have any calories and they produce a ton of flavor.
I Should Have Gone With Jell-O Wrestling
Posted: October 18, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Jell-O Wrestling, trivia 2 Comments
Today could be misconstrued to be my family white trash day. What with Carter spending the night in an RV at the State Fair like a Carney and me being challenged to a play off in Jell-O wrestling, but that does not really paint the whole picture.
See Carter is showing in the state fair horse show and was lucky enough to have one barn mother offer to let her stay in their rented RV so that we did not have to get up and drive Carter over to the horse complex at five in the morning each day. As much fun as it sounded to Carter it is really a bigger gift to us parents. Carter has a knee problem so she is not jumping her horse so her father and I don’t even have to spend our whole weekend at the fair. Woo Hoo!
So while Carter is in horse girl heaven over in Raleigh, Russ and I went to Trivia night at the club. We had a team made up of the Prebbles who are in their thirties, the Barnes in their forties, and us, one in our fifties and the other somewhat younger. We thought it was the perfect make-up for trivia, covering a large expanse of time.
Our strategy was good. Our team won two of the four rounds, and lost a third in a tight tiebreak. But when the four rounds were totaled we were in a tie for big winner and had to play a tiebreak round against the strong team of the Everetts, Sprat/Tendlers and Peruns. Both teams correctly guessed the first two questions keeping us deadlocked. That was when the tiebreak of Jell-O wrestling was suggested.
Knowing I had a good forty pounds on any of the other team’s women I challenged Stephanie Perun to the Jell-O and she accepted. I had more than forty pounds on her — this was my chance. The room erupted, but unfortunately Hope Valley had just recently dismantled their Jell-O Wrestling ring so we had to go back to answering trivia questions.
To our great dismay the final question was what year did 80’s hair band Poison release their debut album? Well the other team with ex-mullet wearing team member Roman Perun had the distinct advantage since he could have been mistaken for a Poison member. So down our team went in the final moment. I knew I should have demanded the club to start boiling water and stirring up the lime Jell-O.
Not an Honest Mistake
Posted: October 17, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cheat, Dark Chocolate 1 Comment
Sometime in September a guest to a party at my house brought me a container of dark chocolate covered cranberries. This oh-so-polite person did not know me and did what all well brought up guests might do and showed up with a hostess gift. How sweet, how kind, how bad for me. I think I need to have a guard at my door at my next party to intercept all gifts that are just plain dangerous for me. That means any candy, cookies, baked goods, sugared nuts, breads or otherwise forbidden foods.
For a month those chocolate cranberries sat in my cupboard untouched. No one else in my house is interested in those. If they had been nachos the rest of the house would have sucked them down before the party was over.
I thought I could use those tasty treats in a recipe I might make for someone else so I stowed them in the not often opened platter cabinet. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind for me. But then last week I needed a platter. There they were, dark chocolate calling to me just as my body was at it’s monthly weakest. I shut the door; no I slammed the door and left the house, as if I had just encountered a poltergeist.
The next day there they were. I made the fatal mistake of actually opening the box, and having a few. Once that seal was broken the devil was hold of me. Over the week I would pop a couple of the tangy treats in my mouth each day. Not too many, just a few and before I knew it the whole container was gone. Only then did I actually look at the calorie count and calculate that I had eaten at least a pounds worth of calories.
In reality my body reacts very badly to sugar calories so even though it was only one pounds worth of calories I am sure that it reacted more like two pounds to me. And the scales are unhappy with me. The unfortunate truth is that for me eating even a small amount of bad for me food leads me to eat other forbidden items. I work hard not to have a throw-in-the-towel mentality for a day when I eat something bad early on, but somehow it still happens.
I should have blogged about my cheat the first day it happened and then I could have invited all my skinny friends to run by my house and eat up the chocolate. Lesson learned! Yes mistakes happen, but making the same mistake over and over is not acceptable. What’s the point of having a blog to keep me honest if I’m not using it for that?
Texting Language
Posted: October 16, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: text language 2 Comments
Today my friend Mary Eileen, who happens to be younger than I am, sent me a sort of dictionary for text language for seniors. At first I thought she was talking about seniors in High School since we have children at the same school, but it quickly became apparent that she meant old folks.
I have still not learned teen text language. The other day someone wrote me IMHO, which apparently EVERYONE knows means, “In my humble opinion” to teens. I got a big laugh out of that since I have never actually heard a young person say “In my humble opinion.” Mary Eileen’s Text code for really old people went something like this:
ATD –At the Doctor’s
BFF- Best Friend’s Funeral
BTW – Bring the Wheelchair
BYOT- Bring your own teeth
FWIW Forgot where I was
LMDO-Laughing my dentures out
LOL- Living on Lipitor
ROTFL…CGU- Rolling on the floor laughing…Can’t get up
TTYL- Talk to you louder
I feel like I am somewhere in between kids’ text language and this one. Since almost everyone I hang with seems to be watching their weight or thinking about watching their weight it might be helpful if we came up with our own text language.
Here are just a few I am considering using:
WCCN- Warning cupcake nearby
HMPIT-How many points is that?
ICAICGP-I cheated and I can’t get up
PDMFC-Please distract me from chocolate
BFD-Big F$*#ing dessert
LSP-Lost some pounds
SIL-Scale is lying
TOD-Tired of dieting
CWAGTTNTAF-Come walk and gossip to not think about food
My problem is that once I make up a textism I won’t be able to remember what it means so I might as well just write out the actual words.
Maybe Not a Happy Columbus Day
Posted: October 14, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Columbus Day Leave a comment
No mail today, its Columbus Day. Not all states or governments recognize Columbus Day as a holiday. I loved that they said on the news this morning that there would not be any negotiations in Washington today since it was a federal holiday. I thought that it was rich for the Congress to take a holiday from governing since they have basically been taking a holiday for the last two weeks.
Columbus Day is to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ “Discovery” of America in 1492. Ha! He basically bumped into the Continent while looking for someplace else and now he gets a day named after him. What about Leif Erickson? I think the Native people’s of America actually deserve a day, or nobody gets a day. In Hawaii they call to day Discoverers’ Day in celebration of the Polynesians’ discovery of Hawaii.
The Italian American’s had the strongest lobby in the early 1900’s and that is how Christopher Columbus got this day. You know the Norwegian Lobby did not stand a chance to get the Leif Erickson day since he supposedly landed in Canada which we all know does not count when America is handing out holidays. I think we can solve this whole big problem by changing the name of the holiday to Great Explorer’s Day.
Great Explorers does nothing to discount the people who were already here and let’s everyone chose whomever they want to celebrate. I know it sounds terribly PC, something I am rarely accused of being, but why squabble about getting a day off work?
While we are on the subject of federal holidays, I have another suggestion. I think we can combine MLK’s birthday and President’s day into one winter holiday and call it Great Leaders Day. This will solve all future fights about someone needing recognition by letting everyone off work. When I was a kid we had both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthday off and then they got merged into one Presidential holiday.
I do believe that MLK is worthy of national recognition, but why does he get one whole day to himself and Washington and Lincoln each get what works out to half a day? I’m just thinking ahead that we might one day want to throw another leader into the “let’s have another Monday Holiday” pot. It seems like that gives our elected officials a chance to appear like they are legislating while they discuss the need for a holiday rather than doing real work like passing a budget or approving the debt ceiling limit.
What I would really like is a “let’s get all our elected officials back to work 220 specified days a year” just like the non-elected working population. No more holidays for anyone specific!
Fighting Words
Posted: October 13, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: what's for dinner? 1 Comment
At three o’clock I got a text from my child I had not seen all day asking me the eternal question, “What’s for dinner?” Thank goodness her father and I had just settled that question as he was heading out the door to the store. Lord knows there might had been a fight over that innocent issue if I was required to go back to a store today.
What I don’t know is if Carter is asking the question to judge whether she should eat something she likes better where she is now or if she should accept an invitation to go out to dinner or if she is just hungry. Whatever the reason I know that the “What’s for dinner” question has probably caused more disagreements in more households throughout the world for all time.
I remember thirty years ago my friend Gussy saying to her then husband David in response to that same question, “What are you trying to do start a fight?” Granted they eventually did part ways and I’m sure it was not over what was for dinner since Gussy is a great cook.
I am so tired of thinking about what is for dinner even though over 500 cookbooks, endless cooking websites and multiple TV channels dedicated to food surround me. Why with all these resources and the availability of almost any ingredient within five miles of my house is the dilemma about making dinner so prevalent?
I know it is harder for me since I am trying to keep it healthy, but even that is no excuse.
I know people who hate to, or are just not good cooks who make the same meals on the same nights of the week; meatloaf Monday, tuna noodle casserole Tuesday, wicked ham Wednesday (yeah I could not think of a W food), turkey tetrazzini Thursday, fish fry Friday, you got the picture. I cannot imagine making the same thing over and over again, even just one over. I know my child would probably love anyone of those weekday meals so I hope she does not read this blog since they are all way to fattening for us.
Those people who have a limited repertoire have cut way back on the stress about the “What’s for dinner” question. If you serve the same things every week people stop asking. I wonder if they complain more about the repetitiveness or less because it is a fait accompli?
I really don’t mind making dinner and yesterday we established I don’t like to shop for ingredients, but sometimes I would just like a few suggestions that fit both my dietary restrictions and time available. Yes, we all can agree that beef wellington is yummy, but don’t ask for it on a Tuesday. Some days I would be really happy just having Special K for dinner, any takers?
I Should Have Stayed Home
Posted: October 12, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: selfish, shoppers 2 CommentsAs someone with a flexible schedule I enjoy the luxury of not having to shop when the majority of nine-to fivers have to. Not that I like to shop at anytime, but I really hate going into any store when they are busy. All this being said I sometimes have to venture out into the world in the height of shopping frenzy period. Take today. Carter and her friend had a trip to the mall to look for dresses, see a movie and go to dinner planned. Hooray to have a child old enough to do these things on her own, except for getting there.
I almost had to look at the calendar as we neared the mall to see if I had perhaps slept for two months and woke up at Christmas time. The traffic was insane with cars lined up to make a left turn into the already full parking lot. Thank goodness the two girls in my car were flexible about where I was going to drop them off.
On my way home from my drive through moments at the mall I had to stop at Harris Teeter. Now I normally would never venture into the grocery on Saturday afternoon, but Russ had found two recipes in the New York Times he wanted for dinner and it had been a few days since I had actually cooked him any food. So into the store for spring onions and fresh ginger I went.
I think that parents of young children now use the Harris Teeter near the mall as a substitute for Chuky Cheese. There must have been at least a dozen toddlers running free in the store, screaming and crying some in laughter but most in need of a nap. One mother who was pushing one of those extra long carts that looks more like a car with two steering wheels in the kid basket part was holding up all aisle traffic because her not so darling two year old child was holding the front of the basket and walking backwards. Well she really wasn’t walking, more like she was standing there as her mother spoke in her I-must-be-on-medication-sing-songy-I-want-you-to-like-me-voice hardly attempting to get her child to keep moving as dozens of shopper’s cart ground to a halt around her.
You can imagine that in my head I was screaming, “Put Your GD kid that damn car/shopping cart and push her around like the rest of the universe.” But no, I stood patiently as she coaxed the child to take each small step even though at any moment she could have run her over.
Once I broke free of that gridlock I went to the checkout. I purposely picked a line without children. The young couple in front of me had a full basket with lots of beer and I was sure they would hurry along so they could get home to pop one of those cold ones open. WRONG! Two perfectly capable twenty somethings stood and watched the checkout clerk ring every item up and then watched as the clerk packed their bags. Only after he had refilled their cart with their grocery’s now in bags, and not reusable ones, did they think to pull out their credit card and finish the transaction, which they could have at least done while he was bagging. What I really wanted to scream is, “You both have two perfectly good GD arms. At least help pack your own groceries. They don’t get more valuable if someone else does the work.” But no, I stood there making mental note of what these people look like so I can never get behind them in line again.
I know my blood pressure went up and it is all my fault. I know perfectly well to stay locked in my own little quiet home on weekends when all the world is out doing their business, but really, full parking lots and crowded stores are one thing, but laziness in minding your kids and packing your groceries is a first world problem that can be solved!
Board Governance Is No Laughing Matter
Posted: October 11, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: board governance Leave a comment
It is a good thing I don’t work in corporate life anymore because my butt is not trained for it. I spent all day, like more than all day from 7:30 this morning to 5:30 tonight sitting in a hotel meeting room at the National Association of Corporate Boards – day of non profit board training. It was really good information, presented in a mainly good format. With the exception of one joke told by the host Chuck as a way of stretching an introduction so that grown ups could figure out how to make the technology work, my day lacked comedy and exercise.
I have forgotten how uncomfortable those ballroom chairs are and those skinny conference tables have legs that prevent me from crossing mine. I was fairly well behaved, for me at least. I hardly ever spoke out of turn and only during one presentation did I call the presenters out for anything. The real sizzler was ending with two accountants talking to us about the form 990 and new IRS regulations. Can you say glaze over?
The best and worst part about the conference is that now I have a list two arms long of things I need to do on the boards I am on. Well, I can do them on the one I chair and suggest them on my other one. Nobody is going to be happy with me. That is unless we face a crisis that we are actually prepared for because of checking off an item written on my arm, like crisis management, succession planning or foundation creation.
So now I need to go write up all my lessons learned so I can get my board cohorts excited about the work that lies ahead. It’s sad that board governance has become such a big passion of mine. Long gone are the glib days of planning parties and writing manuscripts with my college friend Hugh for a book called “Excuses, excuses.”
Now I’m all about long-range vision and strategic plans. At least I still run meetings with their fair share of jokes and witty remarks. I wonder how those will read back in minutes? Now that I have learned from the accountants about the importance of board minutes documenting CEO compensation rational discussions I’m not sure the IRS would appreciate my sense of humor. I just hope to follow all the rules. Orange may be the new black, but I don’t want to pay for my volunteer non-profit board work in jail.
Happy 15th Anniversary CMG Partners
Posted: October 10, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
When I was a kid my Dad commuted everyday from Wilton, Connecticut to New York City on the train. Many times I went to work with my Dad having to stand in the bar car at six o’clock in the morning where he would spread his paperwork out on the unused bar and work on the trip into the city. We rode the same bar car on the way home, now full of Mad Men of the 1960’s and 70’s drinking and smoking.
One of my Dad’s best “train” friends was Dick Beatty, an Ad guy with Ogilvy and Mather. Train friends turned into family friends and Dick’s wife Mimi and son Rich would come for Christmas dinner and Sunday lunches after church. Rich was a year younger than me and we grew up together until the Beatty’s moved away to Lake Forest, Illinois when Rich and I were in high school.
Our parents had remained good friends through the years and fast forward to our first years out of college and Rich and I both ended up in Washington DC. We picked up the sibling like friendship we had started at ages five and four. Rich married his wife Susan, who to this day says I was not so nice to her at first meeting. I was just used to the girls Rich would bring around not lasting long enough for me to invest my time in them, but Susan was different. They had two wonderful sons, George and Burke.
I married Russ Lange and he too became great friends with the Beatty’s. Rich, Russ and I all worked together in London on the BT project for Carter Marketing Group. When we finished up that job I decided to retire since I was pregnant with Carter, but Rich and Russ joined forces and started a new company, CMG Partners as a spin off from Carter Marketing Group. That was fifteen years ago.
Russ and Rich, whose names were often confused, would jokingly be known as Ralph, just one Ralph for the two of them, started out as partners adding people and locations throughout the years as client work grew. Their strategic marketing consulting services have expanded to cover multiple industries and they continue to be experts on the CMO Agenda.
I am proud of what they have built but mostly I am overjoyed for the friendship that has bloomed through the years. A business partner is a second spouse with all that the relationship brings. So I want to say thanks to both Russ and Rich for fifteen great years and I look forward to many more productive and successful years together. Happy anniversary CMG Partners and congratulations Russ and Rich.
The Corset Diet
Posted: October 9, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: corset, Dor NE Corset Shop 1 Comment
This morning on Good Morning America they reported on a new trend of women wearing corsets as way to reshape their bodies. The reporter acted like wearing a corset five hours a day could somehow permanently reduce your waist when you were not wearing it.
I am not sure how tight these woman who are trying this are wearing these contraptions but it seems highly unlikely that you could squeeze fat from one area of your body to another and have it stay there. And it sounds as if the fat is still on you somewhere, just not in the middle, what is the point of that?
Now I am all for some good shape ware. I had my first real experience in my early twenties when I was a bridesmaid at one of the seventeen weddings I played a supporting role in. Back in the eighties bridesmaids dresses often were missing parts like straps, backs or sleeves making women who had any endowment up front go running to the Dor Ne Corset shop in downtown Washington DC. I can’t remember whose wedding it was that required me to get the X1100 waist cincher and strapless bra. I can’t even recall what the dress looked like, but I do remember the under garments.
This two part, fully bones black lace number was both backless and strapless and not only could hold the girls in place but created the smallest waist on me I have ever had. Mae West had nothing on me in the X1100. I found every excuse to wear it long after that wedding had taken place.
The X1100 must have had 30 hooks on just the bottom piece of apparatus. It was some feat just to get the thing on. It made me look great, but I never would want to try and take it off in front of another human because that was none to attractive. As much as I wore it I must say it never did any permanent reconfiguring of my body. Yes, my waist was smaller and smother in it but only while it was on.
Sad to say I think the Dor Ne is gone. Buy a corset if you really need one for a certain dress, but if you want to lose weight you are going to have to do it the old fashioned way and not eat as much. I think squeezing is not going to make a big difference.
I Need Daylight Saving Time
Posted: October 8, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: day light saving time Leave a comment
This morning I had a hard time waking up. It was dark and it was cold and I had a snuggly little Shay in bed with me who has been under the weather so she too was not wanting to get up. Carter was going out to breakfast before school with our friend Taylor and commented on the eerie dark blue sky, “Where is the sun?” Now it was seven in the morning, but it felt so much earlier.
I am a morning person, but I like the morning to begin when the sun comes up. The shortening days with the dark mornings are bad for my waistline. I don’t know what the connection is to darkness and eating comfort foods, but somewhere in my brain they are coupled. I am fine with afternoon darkness because late night snacking is not my issue. But starting a day in darkness somehow makes me want to eat more.
We are not going to be setting our clocks back until the Sunday after Halloween. This date was chosen so that kids trick-or-treating could have more light time in order to go out and scoop up free candy. I like for kids to be safe while trick-or-treating so I understand the rational behind this chosen date, even though it is one week after all or Europe goes on Daylight Saving Time, but I wish we could go on and move the clocks back now. Not only do I have to rally myself up in the darkness, but also I am going to soon have Halloween candy in my house, which is always a dangerous thing.
The need for a little caffeine jolt in the mid-afternoon on a cold and dark day calls me to the kitchen. If only there was nothing but a little espresso there I might be safe, but then there is some chocolate and I guess I need a guard to restrain me from my naughty thoughts and potential behaviors.
I blame this all on the lack of vitamin D from the waning sunlight that fall has stolen from me. Maybe if I put up one of those full spectrum lamps right in the middle of the kitchen I could burn the autumn cravings right out of me. If I could hire one of those movie spot lights and have it set to shine in my bedroom window about 5:30 every morning I could trick my body into thinking it is still summer. I know a lot of friends who say that dieting is easier in the summer because the heat takes their appetite away or that the summer fruits and vegetables are more appealing. I think that with air conditioning and year round produce availability I can prove those are not the reasons why dieting is easier in the summer. Clearly it is the sunlight.
Fall is my favorite time of year, but I am going to have to work twice as hard to make it the healthiest time of year. Damn all the candy and impending holiday foods, just bring me the morning sunlight.
Failure is an Option
Posted: October 7, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: learning 2 Comments
I spent the better part of today at Carter’s school where the parents came for a wellness activity. Most of it is confidential so I don’t want to reveal too much, but one theme that came from some of the ninth grade kids is the stress they feel about getting into college. One child was worried that a bad grade on a quiz first semester freshman year is a death sentence.
What have we done to kids? First, we have taught them math well enough that they understand averages and how hard it is to average out a very bad grade. Good on the math front, bad on the psyche. We all need to fail every once in a while.
When I had my first job out of college selling mail opening and extracting machines we used to do a group exercise reviewing all losses. Yes, it was painful to discuss with all your peers and your boss why you did not close a particular sale, but we all learned way more from those reviews of failure than we ever did from the accounts we won.
One reason is you had to analyze every step in the loss and really come to Jesus about your own performance. Did I do everything I could have done to sell that company our mail opening machines? Did I create the right relationship, communicate well, overcome objections, show value, and prove to be a partner they trusted? Obviously not or else I would have made the sale. Doctors in hospitals do the same thing with patients they lose. More learning happens when you dig deep to discover how you would do something differently next time.
Do kids in high schools and college today ever feel like they can try something and fail? And if they do fail, do they have a review to learn from that defeat? I know in sports there are lots of opportunities to learn, especially if a coach is good and cares about developing people and not just winning, but what about out side of sports?
I want to live in a world that encourages experimentation and creativity not just success. It is a long life and if we just keep limiting ourselves to doing the things we already know we are good at it is going to get fairly boring. No matter your age, you should try to learn how to do something new every year or so. Some things you will not be good at, others you might be fine at, but just don’t like that much, but I think you will find many more things that you are good at and that you love more than you thought. Trying, learning, failing and trying again is the best example you can be for your children. They don’t need to think that you are perfect; they need to know that we are human.
Words With Friends Diet
Posted: October 6, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: words with friends Leave a comment
This title is misleading. I don’t need a diet from Words With Friends, but I would like to turn my love of Words With Friends into a diet. Right now I have eighteen different games going. It sounds like a lot but considering that most of my opponents only play once or twice a day there is not too much action in my game life. I try and play twice a day checking to see if it is my turn first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed.
My favorite part of the game is that I can try and make up crazy words that give me a high score and there is no penalty if they are not really words, I just am old to try again. I wish that were the case in dieting. I would love to be able to experiment with different food combinations or amounts to see if they reacted positively with my metabolic make-up with no penalty for trying something.
I know I could try that in real life, but there are so many variables; how much exercise did I get, what time of the month is it, what else did I eat, exactly what amounts did I eat, that it is hard to experiment and really know if something is working or not.
I have written in the past about my theory they eating ground meat is more fattening than eating solid pieces of meat. I have no scientific evidence for it, just a few dozen tests that are about imperfect as a scientific method could be. If only there was a “Words with Friends” like test where I could put in the data on the food and my phone could tell me, yes that will help you lose weight or no, try again, just like it does when I make up crazy words.
Perhaps I could use my love of Words with Friends as an exercise plan. What if I am only allowed to play while walking? I would say something more strenuous, but I think it would be hard to read the screen if I were bouncing around a lot. I can’t read a magazine while I am on the elliptical so I am worried about moving tiles around while so much of me is moving around.
I am open to any other suggestions that tie Words with Friends to a way to drop some pounds. If you want to play with me I am Danaclange. I have no idea how many more games I can have at once, but I welcome new opponents who don’t expect me to know what all the words I play mean.
Driving Lessons
Posted: October 5, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: driver's ed, Tommy Hurdman, Wilton riding Club 2 Comments
The time has come when my child is going to start her practicing driving section of drivers Ed. The thought causes both anxiety and excitement deep inside me all at the same time. Certainly Carter is ready to drive. She has been adult size for years. When she was about seven we started letting her drive at the farm and she has been giving her friends lessons on driving the gator and the Kubota bus for years. But driving on your own property with no other cars coming at you is easy; facing traffic and real time decision-making is another story.
Learning to drive is so different for kids today than it was for me. Since I went to boarding school and I have a May birthday my parents paid a private driving school to give me the required class and practice driving time. I never went to any classroom, but was given the Connecticut DMV book with all 125 questions and answers of which 25 would be on the test. I was told to memorize the whole thing. Then a man who certainly was unemployable in any other profession came to my house with a very old sedan and we spent a few hours driving around the rambling Wilton, Connecticut roads.
I had learned to drive from spending my life sitting in the front seat watching my parents and driving our tractor to cut the grass. It was just not that complicated. Cars only had a few buttons, dials or levers. No phones, navigation or back-up cameras to distract us. Traffic was not much of an issue.
My first summer I had my license I did back my parents ship-like Chevy station wagon into the top of the Hurdman’s spit rail fence and broke the wood. Tommy Hurdman and I went by the Wilton Riding Club and picked up a spare piece of split rail that was sitting along the entrance driveway and brought it home to his house.
It only took us about twenty minutes with a hand saw to get that rail to fit into his mother’s fence and no one was the wiser.
Since we did not have this yearlong practice time that North Carolina requires today I don’t remember spending much time driving my parents around while I learned to drive. I think that I memorized the book, drove four hours with the could-be pedophile and went on down to the DMV and got my license. I know the night I got it I went to the movies in Westport with Tommy Hurdman and no one thought twice about me being a ‘new” driver. Boy, have things changed.
As Beautiful As You Feel
Posted: October 4, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: manicure, nails Leave a comment
On my way home from my errands today I stopped at a local nail salon to get a quick manicure. I have the world’s worst fingernails so I just get some nude polish so as not to draw attention to my nails. I never expect any miracles from something as quick and cheep as a manicure, but perhaps I have missed the magic that some people feel from a shaping and polish.
I usually don’t get my nails done on Fridays because it is the busiest day at the salons, or so I’ve been told by one of the nail techs. That wisdom held true today because the place I went to was packed. As I was sitting at my assigned little manicure table another woman came and sat at the station next to me. Since we were sitting facing a big wall of mirrors I could get a good look at her without having to turn my head. When I say this young lady sitting next to me was the most beautiful human I have ever seen, live or in pictures, including every movie star in retouched photographs, I am not lying.
I stared at the reflection of the young woman with her wheat colored blond hair in a lose pony tail, cornflower blue eyes the size of quarters and lashes like giraffes and skin that was a warm glowing color, but was so smooth the sun had never aged it. If you don’t already hate her she was wearing black Capri yoga pants and a pink skin tight yoga top that reveled a body that appeared curvy but devoid of body fat all at the same time. How can this be?
She was so stunning I had to turn and stare right at her and I hope that my mouth was not hanging open in disbelief. As we sat side-by-side having our tandem manicures I heard her say to the nice Asian woman painting her nails, “I feel so much more beautiful when I get my nails done.”
The first thought that came into my mind was, “Has this woman never looked in the mirror. How much more beautiful could she get? But then I thought about it. She did not say, “I am more beautiful, but that she felt more beautiful.” Since most of us don’t go around looking in a mirror all day we really don’t see what we look like all the time, except for our hands. We look at our own hands inadvertently as we do our daily chores, like cooking, driving or typing.
Now to a regular person looking at this stunning specimen of a woman the difference between what she looked like with a manicure or without probably was a less than one percent change in her beauty, but to her it made a big difference. I won’t go so far as to say getting a manicure makes me feel even close to beautiful, but it does make me feel not so bad about my short pitiful nails and wrinkly hands. And if something that costs $13 can do that then it is a good thing even for the goddess next to me.
Does This Bag Make Me Look Thinner?
Posted: October 3, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: handbag, purse, tote Leave a comment
I need a new fall handbag. I realized today when I was out with my big brightly colored stripped tote that it was actually October 3 and although it was 85 degrees it is time to tone down the pink. For some reason I have dozens of spring and summer bags probably because I am naturally attracted to happy colors, but time for my French ice cream flavor bag has passed.
I bought my current bag at the Farnsworth Museum shop in Maine this summer and I have loved having a giant lightweight tote so I can carry my needlepoint everywhere without having it stick in an unsightly way out of my purse. In the past I have shied away from big bags because I had the notion that the bigger the bag the more sh#t I would carry around in it and the heavier it would get. This tote has proven to me that I can be minimalist in my purse contents. Even though I could probably use it to pack a week’s worth of groceries in, I don’t.
Normally shopping for a new purse is not such a horrible job. No sizes are required and for the most part sales clerks don’t lie to you about how the purse makes you look, as they could when you are trying on a pair of skin tight red jeans. But since I don’t see a moment’s free time in my calendar to go purse shopping I looked online just to narrow down the search.
What was I thinking? Online I can’t feel the weight of a bag or judge if it is actually worth whatever crazy amount they want to charge me for it. My favorite feature of one website is the silhouette of the woman in grey pictured carrying the bag you are looking at so you can judge how big it is on a human. The only problem with this feature is I am fairly certain that the grey woman model is not my actual size. Are her arms as fat as mine? Hell, for all I know she could be a Kristin Chenoweth’s twin and the place the purse hits on her is not anything like the place it will hit on me.
As far as I’m concerned the most important requirement of any accessory I buy is does it make me look thinner? Yes, I want a purse that is beautiful, can stand on it’s own when I set it down and has useful pockets and compartments, but if it is not flattering when I “wear” it then it is a non-starter. Because I will “wear” that purse everyday until I realize the season has changed and I need to change it again. I guess I might actually spend less time at the mall than I could looking online because I am actually good at scanning a large area filled with purses and ruling most of them out. I only need one and if the store has got one of those trick mirrors that make you look thinner I’ll buy the first one I like.
October Second – The Day God Made Me Smile
Posted: October 2, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Birthday, Russ Lange Leave a comment
Little did I know that on this day forty-nine years ago a baby boy was born who would grow up to make me happy everyday. Yeah, I was only three so I did not know much. It took me a few years to recognize Russ Lange as the quality human he is, but once I did I knew I had to spend my life with him.
I owe Russ’ parents a big thank you for raising such a genuine, kind, brilliant, hard working, loving man. I owe Russ a lifetime of devotion because he makes all things good for Carter and me. Really devotion is not a strong enough word to describe my love and affection for my husband. But the word does not exist in English to convey how much I cherish him.
So on his birthday, a day he would act is like any normal day, I want to send out to the universe this message, “Russ Lange rocks!” October second is not just a regular day; it is the day that God made me smile. Like me, you might not notice his super powers at first because of his quiet steadfast demeanor. Perhaps that is because he lives in an air space above most of our heads. But if you are ever lucky enough to be invited to visit the place Russ exists in you will discover new possibilities about the world and yourself. Not everyone gets that invitation. I’m just glad that I did and I did not miss the big party that became my life living with him.
Creamed Spinach Stuffed Mushrooms
Posted: October 1, 2013 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: mushrooms, spinach Leave a comment
This recipe marries are two yummy steak house staples, Creamed spinach and sautéed mushrooms. In their restaurant version they are much more fattening than this rendition.
1 pound of fresh baby spinach or one 10 oz. package of frozen spinach
1 small onion minced
2 T. cream cheese
¼ C. milk
1 t. butter
1 T. flour
Dash of nutmeg
Salt and pepper
1 pound of big mushroom caps- stemmed
3 T. Parmesan cheese
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a skillet, sprayed with Pam, sauté the minced onions. Remove from the pan and set aside in a bowl. If using fresh Spinach add it to the pan and cook on medium high heat turning it often until wilted, about one minute. If using frozen cook according to package and squeeze dry.
In a small saucepan melt the butter and add the flour and cook on medium heat stirring for one minute. Add the milk, keep stirring and cook for one minute. Add the cream cheese, nutmeg, the cooked onions and spinach. Remove from heat, salt and pepper to taste.
Spoon a small spoonful of creamed spinach into each mushroom cap. Place on a jellyroll pan. Place in hot oven and bake for 20 minutes. Pull the pan out of the oven and sprinkle each mushroom with Parmesan cheese and place back in the oven for five more minutes.
Less Dana, More Good 