Ten Foods
Posted: October 24, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: eat only ten foods 1 CommentWhen I was just out of college my parents moved to Washington DC. They lived in a one bedroom corporate apartment for the first few months while they renovated a house. The apartment was in Crystal city, which my father loving called the “Houston” of Washington due to its apparent lack of zoning. They had a tiny balcony that pointed toward Potomac, but they could not see the river, just the airplanes landing over it into what was then National Airport.
One Sunday I went to see them and I knew they needed to get out and meet some friends because I found them sitting on the balcony, watching the planes land, silently scribbling notes on paper, dressed in clothes that I am sure they did not wear out in public. This was the conversation I walked in on.
Mom: “If I pick beef do I get a whole cow including steaks and ground beef?
Dad: “No, you either get hamburger or steak. You have to pick each cut individually.”
Scribble, scribble, scribble…
Dad: “Does milk count as one of the ten, or did we decide drinks are free?”
Mom: “Drinks have to be free because I need both milk and wine.”
More writing and crossing out, as I silently stand by…
Mom: “Can we choose complete dishes like spaghetti and meat sauce?
Dad: “I can’t remember what we decided about that? I think if you chose creamed spinach that is OK, as long as you never get to separate the ingredients into spinach, cream, butter, etc.”
Mom: “Ed, you are making this too hard.”
After witnessing this conversation and having no idea what they were doing I announced my arrival to which I was shushed.
Dad: “Ok, here are my 10; steak, chicken, cheese, bread, eggs”
Mom: “Oh no, I forgot eggs. I need to redo my whole list.”
Dad: (with shock in his voice) “How could you have forgotten eggs?”
Mom: “I was still on the ‘A’ vegetables, avocado, asparagus and artichokes.”
I tried again.
Dana: “What are you doing?
Mom: “We are trying to figure out if we could only eat 10 foods for the rest of our lives, what would they be?”
Dana: (With more than a little bit of disbelief) “How long have you been doing this?”
Dad: “All weekend. It is really hard.”
I don’t know if they ever finished that exercise because I think they all of a sudden realized they had lives to live, but it was an interesting question.
So if you could only eat ten foods for the rest of your life, what would they be? Now please don’t ask me the rules to this game. That is a negotiation that requires Mother Teresa, Gandhi and George Mitchell to work out.
Did Colonial Children Complain About What Was For Dinner?
Posted: October 23, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: colnial children, new american, restaurants 3 CommentsThe answer to the eternal question ”What’s for dinner?” has so many more answers today than it did when I was a kid. Just the categories of food has more in number than I had as actual choices; Thai, Italian, Sushi, Mexican, Burgers, Chinese, Pizza, Indian, both Southern and Northern which are not to be confused with Persian, Southern, Barbeque, German, Steakhouse, American, New American (I’m sure that “new” just means more expensive that non-new), Seafood, Vegetarian, French, Japanese, Scandinavian, African…
Even with all these categories to choose from, whether we cook it at home or, throw the other choice in the pot I did not have as a kid, go out for dinner, it seems that someone is unhappy. How can that be? My family has almost unlimited options between my cooking and Durham’s culinary offerings.
When I was a kid, my menu was limited by the few raw ingredients my mother was likely to purchase. See I did a lot of the cooking, but since I could not drive, I did none of the shopping. We never ate out for dinner, so take that option off the table. That left us with ground beef or chicken and as far as categories it was American, since new American was still just a spark in some future chef’s eye, Italian and maybe Southern, since my parents were southerners. The complaining about “what’s for dinner?” existed then.
All this whining despite the giant choice got me thinking about kids even further back than my 1960-70’s era. What about kids in colonial time whose menu was limited to what they could grow or raise and how long it could keep in an underground root cellar. Did children in the dead of winter complain of another yam stew or were they thankful just to have food at all?
If you don’t have many choices does it make it better or worse? Has the explosion of worldwide culinary offerings spoiled us so much that we don’t enjoy what we have when we have it?
When I was in college, I spent one summer living in my college town renovating my off-campus house and working many different jobs. One of those jobs was working in the catering office of the food service department. We served all kinds of different groups who used the campus for various meetings and conferences.
Our food service was run by the college and not a big corporate contractor and thus was really good. Depending on what a group was willing to pay we could make a meal as nice as surf & turf or as down home as shepherds’ pie. I will never forget my favorite group who had a conference, The Farmer’s Wives of America. Eleven hundred women filled the dining hall as we served them our least expensive, but heaviest plated meal of opened faced hot roast beef sandwiches, mashed potatoes and gravy and cooked to death green beans with ham hocks.
When the servers went to clear the tables they were shocked to find that the women had scraped and stacked their plates at the end of each table and all were terribly complimentary of what a wonderful lunch it was. I remember being summoned out into the dining room over the PA system by the organizer of the meeting to be introduced to all 1,100 Farmer’s Wives so they could thank me for their lunch. Their gratitude for not our best meal was overwhelming. I wonder if it was just that they were just pleased to have a meal they did not have to cook, let alone grow or raise. They did not even get to have a choice in what they ate, but they appreciated it just the same.
I don’t have an answer to this complaining about “what’s for dinner?” just wondering if it is an age-old problem, or perhaps just New American.
God’s Gift
Posted: October 22, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: busy, dog Leave a comment
Everyone I know is busy. I was talking to my friend who has two girls out of college and both employed and one in college, and I was complaining that she had not been at Mah Jongg. She looked at me with a you-are-never-going-to-believe-this look in her eye and said, “I know, I am busier than ever. I want to play Mah Jongg, but I have so much going on.”
What is happening in the world that we all keep getting busier and busier, but yet the world is not really improving that much? I am no better, just today I had one phone interview, four meetings in various places around town, a blog, three letters of recommendations, one report and 42 e-mails to write, so far and a dog who lies next to me, head on my lap top wishing I were throwing her the ball. All of this and no one is paying me a cent to do any of it. Shouldn’t I throw the ball first because my dog gives me the best payback for my investment?
The only one I see in my world who is not busy is my dog, but she is the happiest being I know. I think that when she leans on the key board and inadvertently pushes the caps lock she is sending me a message to stop typing and give her a snuggle. She is yet to type out an actual request, perhaps for lamb and rice rather than chicken, but I would not be surprised if she had one she wanted to convey.
I am working on actually being productive and not just busy without the productive stuff being things like laundry or a clean house. But I not only want to be productive, but I want to have fun and bring joy to my world. In other words, I want to be more like my dog who is always happy to greet another being whether two of four legged, rejoices in an embrace and brings a smile to all who meet her.
My dog is not busy, yet she is productive if in no other way to make everyone in our house spend time outside and show affection everyday. It’s an old thought, but dog spelled backwards does spell god. I think of our dog as god’s gift to us and a reminder to slow down and play a little everyday.
Canned Food Longevity
Posted: October 21, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: canned food, pepperidge farm gazpacho 1 CommentI was looking in my pantry and noticed a can of soup from a brand I think went defunct a couple of years ago. I think it is time for that can to go. I was just glad my mother who was visiting this weekend did not see it. See, keeping canned food is practically a blood sport in my family.
My mother was raised in a time when people thought that once food was “tinized” it would last forever. Whether you were interested in ever eating it or not you still kept it. I am not such a believer. In trying to convince my mother that despite her very full pantry she really did not have much that was edible she challenged me to prove it.
I told her I could do one better than prove it, but that I could do it with my eyes closed. She took that challenge and I went to the pantry and she watched as I closed my eyes and opened the door. Without peeking I reached my hand in and pulled out a can. It was the first one I touched, not one in the back behind some two-year-old crackers. When I opened my eyes I knew I had hit pay dirt.
My father was witnessing this game and seemed to take cover as I squealed in delight at the can of Pepperidge Farm Gazpacho. First, the idea of gazpacho in a can is revolting, but I was not there to comment on the original quality of the product, just it’s age.
The can I held was so old that it did not have a bar code on it, but an old-fashioned price sticker. Granted there are still stores, like small bodegas, that do not have scanners so they put price stickers on items, but those items still have barcodes from the manufacturer. Just the mere absence of the barcode was proof that the can was at probably made before 1980, but the particular price sticker was an even greater clue to the exact age because it said the words “Stop & Shop” along with the .79¢ price.
My parents lived in Wilton, CT. at the time a Stop and Shop was open in Ridgefield, the next town over. I can remember my mother shopping there until the store closed on or around 1978. That was proof enough for my father who declared me the winner in this game.
Being the spoiled winner that I was I went on to point out that not only was this can decades old, but that my parents had moved it five times when they moved from Wilton to London, London back to Wilton, Wilton to Massachusetts Heights in Washington DC, Mass Heights to Georgetown, and Georgetown to Pawleys Island, SC. I consider that can better traveled than 99 % of all Americans.
My mother gave in and threw the can out. We were all too afraid to open it and recycle it, so please forgive us. So for today’s challenge, go to your pantry, find something that has been there at least since the last republican administration and either eat it or properly dispose of it.
Having a full pantry of things we are not going to eat is wasteful. If you find anything that is still good and you don’t want to eat it, donate it. There are lots of people who might need it, as long as you are sure it won’t kill anyone.
Listening is the Hard — Hearing is Even Harder
Posted: October 20, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: dog, neighbor Leave a commentRecently I had a friend ask me if I could talk to her husband about losing weight. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” was my response. “Do you want me to talk to him or does he want me to talk to him?”
My friend, who loves and adores her husband, is interested in his losing weight. She confessed that he does not see the same man in the mirror that she does. Jump back friend. I would never bring up the subject of losing weight to anyone else. I am happy to answer someone’s questions, but not initiate the conversation.
I know from personal experience that the only person who can make you want to lose weight is the person who is putting the food in your mouth. Losing weight is a brain exercise first; only when your brain is interested in doing it will it happen.
On the other side of things, if someone is telling you something you don’t want to hear stop and consider how hard it was for them to do it.
Many years ago when Russ and I were working in London and had terrible sleep schedules due to too many transatlantic flights we had a next-door neighbor who had a garage without a door, on the bedroom side of our house. These neighbors who were used to us not being home much had gotten a puppy and they kept him tied up in the garage at night.
When we were home we were kept awake by this poor lonely puppy howling and barking in the echo chamber that was my neighbors’ garage. At first I thought that it would be a short-lived problem and eventually the puppy would learn to sleep alone, but that did not happen.
One night as I lay there I thought surely these people know their dog barks all night, but no. When I finally could not take it anymore I got out of bed, put my trench coat on over my nightgown and in the pouring rain went over to my neighbor’s house.
When they came to the door I apologized for the late visit, although it was only 9:00 at night it was 3:00 in the morning to me, which was very late. I said I was sure they did not know that their puppy’s barking echoed so loudly into our bedroom and asked if they could bring the dog inside. I will never forget the wife’s response, “Our dog does not bark.” Now this couple was elderly, but I had never seen them with any hearing aids that could be removed at night to ignore a barking dog.
I was shocked that my practically apologetic request had been met with an accusation of my being a liar. In my jet lagged and not most polished state I responded, “Lady, why in the world would I come over here at this hour in my nightgown in the pouring rain and make up a story about your dog? How would I even know you had a dog? Your dog barks and by leaving in your open garage it amplifies his crying.”
Her husband apologized and brought the dog inside and never left him to sleep in the garage again. The wife has never spoken to me since despite my saying hello to her every time I see her.
What was in this for me if her dog did not really bark? Why would I risk bad neighborly relations if it were not true? If someone tells you something you don’t really like, stop and consider what it is it for them to tell you. Drop your defenses and try and listen to the truth.
I am not advocating that anyone runs out and tells your loved ones they need to lose weight or control their dog, but if someone gives you a signal, perhaps a lot more subtly than I told my neighbor, that you have a problem, think about it. They risk something in telling you, but if you can really hear it, maybe your brain can take one step closer to trying to solve it.
The Solution for America
Posted: October 19, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: fat baby sitters, screaming babies Leave a commentThere are many issues facing America I am told over and over again by the unending droning of political ads that are ruining TV watching. Two major issues that have gotten no airplay in North Carolina are the high cost of infant daycare and the difficulty that overweight people have in trying to lose weight.
I am shocked that the binders of women have not come out and made the daycare issue more of a topic given that they stand to get some high-ranking jobs if anyone looking for some tokens is elected. Also, it is surprising that someone running for political office who is interested in everyone having healthcare has not tried to have all Americans slim down if for no other reason than obesity is a huge drain on medical resources.
Tonight while trying to enjoy dinner in a public place, I was seated next to a table with two brand new Grandparents, their daughter, son-in-law and their long awaited grandchild who could not have been more than three weeks old. That isn’t-my grandchild-precious new Grandmother was completely oblivious to the rest of the diners as she proudly held up a screaming baby for a good thirty minutes without the thought that perhaps she could leave the room and try and comfort her. No, that Grandmother was sure that the rest of us were all enjoying the sounds of a baby who clearly was too young to know how to go to sleep while we tried to enjoy our diner.
As the baby screamed louder and louder I was less and less interested in my meal. That was when it dawned on me how we can solve two giant issues causing ruin in our country with one solution. Infant daycare weight loss centers, a truly bipartisan solution to a universal problem.
People pay big money to lose weight and I guarantee that there is no better way to keep people from eating than to put them in a room full of screaming babies. Let’s put those babies to good use as appetite killers and help those fat people get skinny by making them be baby sitters.
If you hear about this in the next debate you can bet that some high-ranking advisor to a candidate has been reading my blog because this is surely a win-win for America.
Redneck Respect
Posted: October 18, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: PWT, rednecks, sweet potato Leave a comment
This morning on the news I caught the whiff of a segment on the growing number of reality TV shows about “Rednecks” such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Hill Billy Hand fishing. First I must confess that I have never actually seen any of these shows except for the moments shown on the news or on late night talk shows. There is a lot of interest in “Rednecks” these days but I am worried that Yankees and the uber educated are actually confused between Rednecks and PWT’s.
See I have great respect for actual Rednecks because the term is derived from people who work outside bent down, face to the soil growing food for us, thus getting a red neck from over sun exposure. Most of these reality TV shows are not about those hard working people.
The entertaining and often uneducated people who make great subjects for TV are PWT’s, which stands for “Poor White Trash.” Now there can be Rednecks who are at the same time also PWT’s, but not all PWT’s are Rednecks. Here is an example of the difference; a Redneck might be missing an important tooth or two because they did not have the money to go to the dentist, a PWT might be missing an important tooth because his cousin punched him after he found out he was sleeping with his wife and his mouth hit the bar as he fell over. I am sure this is a distinction that is lost on many who just see people without teeth, but I feel the need to defend hard working farmers.
I write this today because I harvested my sweet potato crop. I am using the word crop very liberally since I don’t think five plants make much of a harvest, especially in my case. This is the first time I have tried to grow sweet potatoes and I feel quite unsuccessful at it.
In the end my plants were lush and beautiful after having deer come and denude all the plants not just once, but twice, which probably did not help my potato production. After pulling the vines up and digging around I found just about 18 sweet potatoes ranging in size from four pounds down to a few ounces. A couple looked like they could even be sold in a store, but most were gnarly and pock marked and as ugly as I imagine Russ Limbaugh’s rear side to be. I have no idea how they taste yet and won’t for a while because I have to “cure” them by leaving them in a box in a warm spot for a week or two.
Next time you enjoy some sweet potato fries, take a moment and silently give thanks to the farmer who grew them. They may be missing some teeth but I would like to know what they know about bringing food out of the ground. It is harder than you think.
The Mother Tax
Posted: October 17, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: taxes Leave a commentWith all the political ads, debates and talking heads going blah, blah, blah about the economy the complicated world of taxes is in the air. If you have young children I have an easy way for you to teach them about taxes with something that is already happening in your house. It is called the “Mother Tax.”
Now the Mother Tax is not some penalty on mothers because they have to find childcare while working or that they fall behind in their fields while taking time off work to raise children. The Mother Tax was a phrase I coined to explain to my daughter Carter about the bite of her mac and cheese I was entitled to by virtue of being her mother while at the same time explaining the complicated concept of taxes.
Come on, I know you have done it. You buy your kid a gooey chocolate chip cookie at the bakery and don’t want a whole one for yourself so you take a bit out of your child’s. I can hear whining now from all those kids who selfishly don’t want to share even a bite with their mothers. My child was no different. Thus the Mother Tax was born.
In legal terms here is what it is: “A mother is entitled to a bite of her child’s food, the more yummy the food, the bigger the bite. There is no negotiating on this tax. It must be paid whether you like it or not.”
No matter how much Carter would complain about giving up a french fry, she quickly understood the concept of taxes. You don’t like them, but they must be paid. After a while she learned that when she was handed an ice cream cone she would just hold it up to me first and ask me if I wanted the Mother Tax. The offering of the tax first often was met with a tax amnesty, helping teach Carter at an early age that generosity can sometime pay off.
The Mother Tax has been in existence since the beginning of time, but without a name it was often fought by children. I have a vivid memory of being out to dinner with my family at the Silver Mine Tavern in Connecticut when I was twelve years old. Going out to dinner, especially somewhere as nice as Silver Mine was a rare occasion. Even rarer was my being allowed to order dessert. I studied the dessert menu and decided on the exotic coconut covered ice cream ball in caramel sauce, my sisters got cake, my father pie; my skinny mother seated directly across from me declined dessert.
The waiter brought our choices. I was disappointed to see that my pick was one ball the size of a walnut. My mother eyed the toasted coconut morsel and asked for a bite. I wailed that it was too small to share. Even my father suggested that my mother just order one for herself since it was barley a communion sized dessert. She said she just wanted one small taste. My protests continued. My mother had enough and in her rights as the Mother Tax assessor she stood up, spoon in hand and scooped up the whole ball of ice cream and popped the whole thing in her mouth. I learned then and there that you just don’t fool with the tax collector. Pay, pay early, pay happily for if you don’t the penalty will be great.
Enlisting Your Help, Please
Posted: October 15, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy, The Campaign | Tags: Ellen DeGeneres 3 CommentsAs if I have not asked you for enough, I am going to ask for your help once again. The best part about it is I am not going to ask you for any money, but you may help me get to my money goal.
I have 16 days left of my weight loss challenge. I am going to pass the pound goal I set for myself by a couple of pounds. “Yeah!” for me and my furniture that has to hold me up.
Right now I have 218 supporting units—now I’m not calling any of you a ‘Unit”, but sometimes a unit is one single person and some times it is a couple and maybe even it could be a whole family. So I’ve got what in the south would be called “a mess of” people who have pledged to give the Food Bank money when I am done this challenge. 218 units is some kind of incredible and I am thankful to each and every one of you.
After I started this challenge I came up with a secondary goal just to make myself a little crazier than I already was from giving up sugar. That challenge was to try and raise $50,000, which in Food Bank language would be $500,000 worth of food. Right now I am on track to raise something like $35,000. Now that is incredible and I am not really sad, but I really like to reach my goals and I don’t want to fall into some donut laden, cookie filled, cake impacted trough because I failed.
So here is the part where you come in. I think that Ellen DeGeneres is a pretty generous person it is practically her name. Maybe if she heard how close the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC was to getting $50,000 for this challenge she might announce it on her show to get people to pledge in the final hour to the “Less Dana, More Good” campaign.
If you get a minute, drop Ellen a line and ask her to shout out the blog and let’s see if we can get that last $15,000. I think you can click on the following link and fill in a form.
http://www.ellentv.com/be-on-the-show/10
She is looking for all kind of things that I don’t fit into, like bad paid for photos, or someone that needs a car, or bad Halloween costumes. None of those things apply here. But I think if she can hear from a few of you who have already made the commitment to help feed your hungry neighbors she might help us out.
It can’t hurt to ask and I have certainly asked you all for so much, let’s try and get some people who aren’t sick of me to help.
Pay Attention to the Signs
Posted: October 14, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: plumber, rv, underpants 3 CommentsToday while waiting around at the horse show for our daughters’ next events fellow barn Mom and friend Laura told me a story about the time her husband drove an RV. See those of us who don’t own RV’s or rent them for the fair, tend to covet them by the third day. After spending three days sitting in lawn chairs outside horse stalls sucking on hair and horse poop flying through the air we start to fanaticize about having a big-ass, tricked-out, climate-controlled, comfy RV to park ourselves in while we wait.
Not that we want to own an RV, just have one to sit in. After hearing Laura’s story its not that we want to drive an RV either. Her husband had to go pick up his invalid mother in Philly and rather than having a professional ambulance bring her to North Carolina he rented a giant RV and drove up to get her. According to Laura it could have had it’s own zip code and perhaps a famous band had once used it for touring it was so badass.
On the way up I-95 Laura’s husband noticed that people passing by were waving at him and flashing their lights. He just assumed they were admiring the deluxe apartment of the road he was piloting. It was not until a state trooper pulled him over and told him he had run over a bale of hay, which had lodged itself to the undercarriage of his vehicle and caught on fire.
To say he had missed the signals other drivers were giving him might be putting it mildly. But I should have realized that Laura’s story was just foreshadowing my missing a big sign today myself.
While walking the 400 yards from our stalls to the main arena for the fifth time today I felt a cooling breeze on my backside, but I just kept walking. A few hundred yards later a nice woman driving a golf cart passed me and said “hitcher’ up” as she glided by. Since we were at a horse affair I assumed she was talking about some horse thing. Another moment and another cool breeze. I put my hand behind me and realized that my jeans and my underpants had fallen to sub plumber levels.
Early on in this blog journey I wrote one titled “The problem with underpants” about how your underpants don’t get too tight early enough in the weight gaining process. Apparently 49 pounds is how much you have to lose to actually lose your underpants. I blame my two sizes too big jeans, which were only one size too big last week. If I had tight enough pants on they could have kept my underpants up.
So now I vow to not wear any pants, under or otherwise that are too big. I am paying attention to the signs before I scare anyone to death.
Spot Reduction is a Myth
Posted: October 13, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: boobs 1 CommentThe other day a woman I hardly know asked me if I had lost weight. I thanked her and said yes. She then said something unexpected, “Yeah, the boobs are the first thing to go.” Although she was right, I did not think I knew her well enough for that to be her public observation to me.
Why is it that we lose weight first in places we just assume keep and last in the hardest areas? Now I am not interested in being any Jessica Rabbit, but I would prefer to have my hips go before my boobs. No luck there. I seem to lose weight from the head down, like I am a candle melting.
I have over heard people at the gym ask their trainers if they could concentrate on one problem area over another and all the pros respond in the same way, “There is no way to reduce one area more than another.”
Now you certainly can build up muscles in one place, but if you have fat to rid yourself of it has to come off in its own way. Of course fat runs all through our bodies so I am sure it is better for me if it is coming out of my liver before my thighs. Since my liver is under my boobs maybe it is, but I wish that my boobs did not resemble two pancakes with one blueberry each.
I have a friend who has always been in good shape and even her petite self had her then four year old daughter ask her, “Mommy, when am I going to get long boobies like you?” So I guess if you have anything up top at all it is destine to fall.
You know, the myth that you could lose weight in all the right places should be debunked by the fact that you can’t gain weight in all the right places. A friend who laments her double A bra status has never changed cup size even when she has gained a few pounds. Now the band number may increase which is mostly due to everyone’s least favorite, back fat, but the actual cleavage creating cup does not until you gain such significant amount of weight which really defeats the look you were going for.
So we all might as well accept the body shape we have because regardless of your actual weight, your biggest place is going to still be your biggest place. I’m just looking forward to my biggest place being a little bit smaller.
Should I Be Insulted?
Posted: October 12, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: old and thin 2 CommentsThis morning I had to run into the dollar to store to get the last minute giant plastic containers I need to transport 700 pounds of food to the State Fair horse show. Why in the world would anyone need to bring food to the state fair you ask? Well the horse complex is far enough away from the actual ride goin’, animal pettin’, fried food eatin’, carnival game playin’, turkey shootin’, red neck watchin’ part of the fair for all the riding girls and their families to schlep over there just to eat.
If you have never been to a state fair horse show it is a hurry up and wait beauty pageant for horses, a nerve racking-fear-filled-terror-time for parents and a better than a trip to Disney World time for riders. The terror comes when you watch your child along with 50 other riders all in the same arena at the same time try and practice jumps with horse flying through the air in different directions and no real rules of the road.
Now I have gotten way off tangent here, so back to the trip to the Dollar Store. As I was searching for blue ice packs for coolers, which apparently are considered seasonal and not available now, I ran into a man I go to church with. I said hello to him and called him by name. He looked at me and called me the name of another woman we also go to church with. I corrected him and he said, “Oh sorry, you look different. Have you lost weight?” I said, “Yes” and told him to have a nice day as he left the store.
Now that encounter does not sound so bad until I tell you that the woman whom he mistook me for is at least 20 years older than I am, has grey hair, but is much thinner than I am. I am unsure if I am flattered that he considered me that thin or insulted that he thinks I look that old. She is an attractive woman, just not me.
So is it better to be old and thin or young and fat? And should I be insulted to be confused with someone who is old and thin?
Coriander & Tangerine Roast Carrots
Posted: October 11, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: carrots, coriander, tangerine Juice Leave a comment
It’s a crazy day, workout, haircut, Food Bank meeting in Raleigh, back to Durham with my friend Hayward making the drive with me, pick up at school, back to Raleigh for another Food Bank meeting and then a reception for my group of Non-profit Harvard attendees. That does not leave much time to write so I’m giving you this easy recipe I made two nights ago, perfect for the cold weather.
2 Pounds of Carrots – peeled, and cut into strips
1/3 cup of tangerine juice
1 t. ground coriander – toasted
Handful of cilantro
Preheat oven to 400º. Spray baking dish with Pam and place carrots in, no more than 2 carrot layer high. Mix the juice and the ground coriander together and pour over the carrots. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in oven for 30 minutes or until starting to get soft.
Chop cilantro and sprinkle on top. Good served cold or hot.
Catering Flashback
Posted: October 10, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: a la carter, catering, state fair horse show 2 CommentsWhen I was in college I started a catering business that I kept running for ten years after college. My late college roommate Lauren Roberts, who went on to Coke as the first woman VP of advertising, brilliantly named my business “á La Carter,” the play on the word cater since my last name was Carter. Catering was my side business to my main gig of hawking mail opening and extracting machines.
My friends used to ask me why I did not quit my real job and just do catering since they clearly thought it was a more glamorous job and they liked the leftovers. I had two reasons. The money in the mail opening business was too easy to give up and catering was physically exhausting.
Today, twenty years after I gave up catering, my body had flashbacks of my catering days. My daughter Carter is riding in the State Fair Horse Show this weekend and somehow I was given the task of providing all the meals for the riders and their families for the three-day events.
It is a crazy week so I only had this afternoon to prepare three main dishes for 30 plus people for lunch and dinner each day. The real kicker is that the meals have to be fully cooked so that I can reheat them in a brigade of Crock-pots in a horse stall turned food service area.
I chopped 15 pounds of onions, five heads of garlic, 5 pounds of carrots, 10 peppers from my garden and 20 pounds of chicken. I browned ground meat, opened endless cans of beans, and stirred giant pots boiling away on the stove. After 6 hours I had enough Ham and Black Bean soup, Chicken Chili and Spaghetti Casserole to keep the giant brigade of horse crazy girls, their bored brothers and exhausted parents fed all weekend.
Beside the pain my in back the most familiar catering feeling was one of lack of hunger from cooking such large amounts of food. I had forgotten how cooking so much in such a short period of time completely made me lose my appetite. My thought now is that if my back could hold out I should go back to catering just until I reach an ideal weight.
If you are crazy enough to visit the North Carolina State Fair this weekend and tire of looking at the ride operators who are missing their important teeth or eating deep fried butter, stop on by the Jim Graham building and watch the horse show. They have chairs where you can sit a spell and if you find me I might have a nice bowl of soup for you.
It’s Cold Out Mushroom Soup
Posted: October 9, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: mushroom, onions 2 Comments
I know it’s cold outside because our sweet labradoodle Shay-Shay just wants to snuggle up next to me. All this snuggling makes me crave soup. If you have never created a homemade soup it is one of the easiest things ever. This one took me literally less than 15 minutes and is the perfect supper with a snuggling puppy next to you.
1 Large yellow onion – chopped
3 cloves of garlic – minced
12 oz. of mushrooms- sliced
A handful of fresh thyme- tied together with a string- or ½ t. dried thyme
1 T. Flour
1 can fat free condensed milk
Salt and Pepper
Pinch of Nutmeg
Spray Pam in a soup pot and put on high heat. Put onions and garlic in the pan and cook stirring often for 4 minutes. Add the mushrooms and continue cooking for another 5 minutes. The mushrooms will let off a bunch of liquid. Sprinkle the flour in the pot and stir cooking it for a minute. Add the thyme, salt and pepper and condensed milk. Continue cooking for another 3 minutes. Sprinkle nutmeg and adjust for salt and pepper.
Feels Like Fall Today
Posted: October 8, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cold, comfort food, weather 2 CommentsToday is our first really cold and dreary day of fall here in Durham. According to the Weather Bug on my phone it is 47 degrees, but “feels like 43”. I don’t know who invented the “Feels Like” rating. The “feels like” number always makes it worse, you know when it is 98 degrees out the “feels like” number is 104 and when it is 35 degrees the “feels like” is 29. I hate the “feels like,” it is like having your most pessimistic old relative around telling you “think it’s bad now, it is actually more miserable than you thought.”
I digress. To top off this cold a rainy day Carter has no school today because it is fall break. Her friend and “sister” Ellis is staying with us while her parents are away burying her grandfather. So dreariness abounds.
For lunch we all had soup, albeit three different soups, but the day just seemed to call for that. I currently have a pot roast in the oven for the girls and Russ to have for dinner and for Ellis’ parents when they finally get back to Durham late tonight. I will have to brave the cold and go out and cut lettuce from the garden and have a cold day unsatisfying salad for dinner.
What is it about cold weather than makes us crave comfort food? Of course there are plenty of healthy comfort foods like stewed tomatoes or chicken soup, but come on, the best ones are much closer to Mac and cheese than boiled cabbage.
Humans are not bears. We do not need to bulk up for a long winters nap. But maybe the ancient cycle of food availability comes into play here. Before our stable food supply the winter months could be a lean time in the larder. Perhaps the cold weather triggers some need in our bodies to take advantage of the fall harvest bounty.
Carter and Ellis definitely have the cold weather food craving, coming to me begging to bake a chocolate cake. I settled on them making a chocolate cake in a mug, which would ensure a no leftovers to tempt me. I, on the other hand, had some cantaloupe, which was just not as satisfying at “Feels Like 43” as it was when it felt like 104.
I promise to start to experiment with some skinny comfort foods and share them with you. I hate for the sweater weather to necessitate the hiding the weight gain sweater wearing.
Buffalo Chicken Salad
Posted: October 7, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: blue cheese, buffalo chicken, franks hot sauce 1 Comment
Russ woke up this morning and told me he was craving Buffalo chicken wings. That was an almost cruel thing for him to say because then he got me craving them too. It turned out not to be such a mean thing because I made this yummy Buffalo Chicken Thighs with Frank’s ZERO calorie Buffalo hot sauce. I figured I could have a little blue cheese then and I was one happy camper and so was Russ. Marital strife adverted.
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs cut into strips
¼ cup Frank’s Buffalo Hot Sauce
Large red onion
1/3 cup of crumbled Blue Cheese
Lots of lettuce
Heat a nonstick fry pan on high on the stove and add the chicken strips with salt and pepper. Cover and cook for five minutes, until the chicken is brown on one side. Flip all the chicken over and cook another 3 minutes on the other side with the lid on. Remove the chicken from the pan with tongs or a slotted spoon and put in a bowl with the hot sauce and mix it all up together. I like to cover it and let the hot sauce soak in the chicken.
Using the same fry pan without wiping it out, fry up the onions. Even thought the chicken was skinless there was still fat in the thighs, which rendered out in the pan. Not so much to kill you, but enough to make the onions really tasty.
Put a pile of lettuce on a plate and arrange the onions, chicken and sprinkle of blue cheese on top. I like to drizzle a little balsamic vinegar on top for a little more tang, but you don’t really need it.
The satisfaction of the wings with none of the guilt.
Less Automation Would Do Us Good
Posted: October 6, 2012 Filed under: Diet- comedy 2 CommentsToday I was out in my driveway shoveling the newly delivered gravel to spread it evenly and a neighbor walked by and asked if there was a more automated way I could do that. My response was, “It is my exercise for the day.” Which we both agreed was a good workout.
His comment got me thinking about how we have automated so much in our lives that it is no wonder people are over weight. We no longer do so many of the things we used to that burned up calories. Here is a very short list:
When was the last time you got up to turn on or off the TV, change the channel or raise the volume? Think of the number of squats a remote control removed from your daily activity.
If you have a lawn do you cut it yourself? If so, do you ride on a lawnmower to do it? If you walk give yourself a hand, but is your mower self-propelled? I can bet not one person reading this cuts their own lawn under their own steam.
Such little things as hanging the laundry out to dry was exercise. Holding soaking towels above eyelevel and clipping them to a line with a clothespin has got to equal lifting three-pound weights.
I saw a beautiful British ex-model turned TV chef on the cooking channel this morning making French bread. She demonstrated making it by manually kneading the dough for ten minutes straight. She said you could use a machine, but that it was a better workout by hand. I would say so. No wonder she had beautiful arms and was also able to actually eat the bread without guilt when it was finished.
When was the last time you had to get up from a chair to answer the phone? Most of us have a phone in our pocket all the time. For those people who still have a land line many just the voice mail take the message and then later when they are near the phone they might listen to it. More squats are needed to make up for that automation.
Even power steering on cars cuts out expending some energy. We have a car now that will parallel park it self, although I refuse to try it. Really turning my power steering wheel is just not that hard.
Everything from leaf blowers to that machine that automatically squirts a 360-degree spray of foam cleaner in your shower that just runs the dirt and scum down the drain has caused us to expend fewer calories just to survive.
Now I am not looking for a washboard and tub to clean my clothes, but I do think a little more gravel shoveling and getting up and down out of my chair to answer the phone would do me good.
The Real News Story
Posted: October 5, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: good morning America, the last 10 pounds Leave a commentThis week on Good Morning America I saw a segment on people who have lost 100 pounds or more. I think they are doing stories all week on people like that, but I only saw today’s. The woman they featured had lost more like 150 pounds, but she had done it over five years, which was realistic. She had not gone to a weight loss center so she was not pushing anyone’s product so that alone was totally refreshing.
It is inspiring to see people who have worked hard and changed their lives, but that is a story that is told over and over again on TV. I would love to see a story on people who were able to lose those fifteen pounds they have been carrying around for the last seventeen years.
As someone who has lost and gained extraordinary amounts of weight it is not the first hundred that is hard, it is the last ten. The weight that has been with you the longest are those pounds that say, ”I really like you and I want to stay with you.”
Of course it is easier if you are young because you have not lived enough years for those last ten pounds to become semi-permanent. It is like they are petrified onto your thighs. The last bit of fat has been adopted by your bones and thinks it is absolutely necessary for your survival.
I write this as a complete novice in the area of getting the last ten off. I know that I have never even gotten to the last twenty and I am fine with that. But I think the news should do a story on someone who, after years of trying, was able to get to his or her ideal body weight. That would be an inspiring news story.
Of course the follow-up mini-series would be how they were able to maintain that ideal body weight. That is a true miracle. It is one thing to work out like a serious dancing with the stars contender and eat only the healthiest food to get those final few pounds off, but it is another thing to live your normal life and maintain it.
So I am looking for inspiration from any of you who have struggled and won the final ten to fifteen pound fight especially if you are a middle-aged woman. I am a year from that fight, but I think I am going to have to start preparing my mind to what is ahead for me and I do love to plan.
I think that the real unsung heroes are the people who are able to deal with a weight gain before it guts the clothes available in their closets. It may not make a big splash on the morning news, but I think it is an issue that the majority of people would like those tough investigative journalists to take on.
Still Time to Grow
Posted: October 4, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Arugula, lettuce 2 Comments
Today my friend Stephanie came over for lunch so we could work on a project together. I’ve been a little busy and have not been to the grocery and at noon it dawned on me that I needed to find something for lunch. I often have bits and pieces of leftover meals, which are not enough to serve two.
After searching the fridge I came up with some roasted butternut squash chunks, roasted pear slices, grilled onions, roast tomatoes from my summer garden and a small wedge of blue cheese. I also had containers of chicken salad and pimento cheese, which would be great for Stephanie since she is not on a weight reduction plan, but not so good for me.
Based on what I had on hand I did not really have a meal for me and my guest would surely like something a little healthier than what I found. The answer to my problem was just outside my door, my fall garden full of lettuce and arugula.
With my kitchen shears and basket in-hand I went out and cut the beautiful tender leaves of butter lettuce, red leaf, romaine and a couple others volunteers as well as my favorite spicy arugula. A couple of rinses and spins in the salad basket and I had a most delicious base for a fabulous salad.
Growing these lettuces could not be easier. I literally threw the seeds of arugula in the dirt and sprayed water on them. I bought a couple of lettuce plants at the local Southern States and for $1.29 I have gotten at least $10 worth of lettuce. I have not done anything else to help these plants along. No fertilizing, weeding or watering.
It is not just the cost savings that is wonderful, but the flavor and freshness of the just picked vegetable can’t be rivaled. To me the convenience of having the food right outside my door is also a huge bonus. I only pick it if I am going to eat it for that meal. Not like some food I buy and put in the fridge and forget about it until it has turned into an inedible liquid.
I have a much greater appreciation for farmers who toil over the food we buy in the store. Lack of rain, too many caterpillars or even cute furry bunnies that think this food is grown just for them are just some of the problems they have to deal with. There is nothing more fun than bringing a small child to my garden and letting them taste a cherry tomato right off the plant. They think it is magic.
If you have a sunny spot, even if it is just a pot, try growing some lettuce. It is fast and easy which is a good description for a vegetable, not your son’s girl friend. You only need a few weeks of non-frosty nights. If it gets too cool try it in the spring, no green thumb necessary.
Not Such a Bad Mother
Posted: October 3, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 CommentsMonday I went to visit my parents and brought a couple of friends to shop for my mother’s art. Between looking at art and going to lunch we sat on the front porch of my parent’s farmhouse, and as us southerners say, visited a while. One friend who came up was my friend Hannah who had recently started selling Doncaster, just as my mother did when I was a kid. As she and my mother discussed the “business” my mother told us all a story I had never heard.
When I was about ten and my sister Margaret was seven and our baby sister Janet was a new born my father came home and told my mother that a great store named Talbots was going to open a branch in the town next to us and that she should get a job there. My mother always loved clothes and this seemed like a great fit for her.
As my mother told it, she had the first interview to be the store manager and was asked to come back for a second interview. She had that one and was told that they needed to interview her one more time because it was between her and another woman.
The day of the third interview she dropped Margaret and me off at our club for swim team and tennis and all the things we did every summer day between 7:30 in the morning and 7:30 in the evening. After my mother got home she got a call from the girl who was going to sit for Janet that she could not make it. With not enough time to go back to the club and get me to sit, my mother put Janet in a wicker bassinet in the back of our forest green Chevrolet Impala station wagon and went to the interview leaving Janet in the unattended car with the windows open for air of course.
My mother said that the person interviewing her told her that if she got the job she would need to sell our house because as the manager of Talbots, it would become her home. It was only then that it dawned on her that she had three unattended children, one in the car and that there was no way she could do this job. She got up and left right then. The next year my mother started selling Doncaster in our home where at least the unattended children had rooms to go play in.
Things certainly are different now. Not only do mothers go to jail for leaving babies in cars alone (actually not a bad thing) but even seven and ten year olds do not spend their days unsupervised at clubs or else where. But perhaps mothers of today have gone too far the other way. Our children are driven everywhere on earth, parents watch every game and cheer for kids who barely can kick the ball.
My mother was good at taking care of herself. She was always is great shape. She took a rest almost every afternoon when she put her feet up and we were not allowed to come up to her room and bother her. It is a lesson I should have learned long ago, to take care of myself first.
I look back and think that all three of us Carter girls turned out to be capable of lots of different things, from each of us starting our own businesses to being able to travel the world alone and not just places like Paris, but India, Indonesia and Africa.
It will take a generation before we know if we have screwed up our kids by doing too much for them. I can’t wait to hear the stories my daughter will tell about her childhood and what kind of mother I turned out to be.
Happy Birthday Russ!
Posted: October 2, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Birthday, Russ Lange 1 CommentToday is my husband’s birthday. So if you know him and see him somewhere wish him a happy birthday. Now I can’t promise that he will know you, at least he might not know your name although he is getting fairly good at pretending he knows your face.
Once he came home from the grocery store and was quite excited to tell me that he had seen my friend Jean at the Harris Teeter and told me he said “Hi” to her. I was so proud of him, not only because he recognized Jean who had just had us to her lake house, but also because he actually spoke to her. My pride bubble was quickly burst when the phone rang two minutes later and my friend Carol said, “I just saw Russ at the grocery store and he called me Jean.”
Please don’t be offended that I did not invite you to a big birthday party for Russ. His idea of a great birthday is to have two other guys come over to our house, each with their own reading material. They go into separate rooms and read for a while and at some point gather in the kitchen to get a drink, tell each other something interesting that they read and go back to their own rooms.
We are not even celebrating that way this year since Russ has a work meeting and dinner tonight. At least he will have a meal he enjoys without any guilt that I cannot share in the same fattening goodies. For his home celebration Carter is making him his favorite apple pie and I will have some baked apples in solidarity.
So I would like to raise a virtual glass to my wonderful husband who makes everyday with him a joy. His constant support and promotion of me is unmatched. I wish that I were half as good a wife as he is a husband and father. Happy Birthday Russ Lange, you are the best!
Reporting Time
Posted: October 1, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: october weigh in 2 CommentsIt’s the first of the month so it is time for my true confession time. Last month I think I made you read all the way to the end of the blog before I told you how much weight I lost that month. It was such a good month I wanted to build up the suspense. This month was not quite as good, but still right on track for my predicted total weight loss. I did hit a big plateau, which I was experienced in. True to form, as soon as I wrote about it the plateau ended and I finished the month strong.
I won’t keep you reading a moment longer. My total weight loss since the start of the campaign on May 8th is 45 pounds. I lost five pounds in September. I was hoping to do more, but I realized that the program I have created is one I can actually live with.
I have one more month to try and reach the 50-pound and maybe a little more mark. I think I can do it. People have started asking me what I plan on eating on November first. The answer is simple. Exactly what I have been eating all along.
I certainly will not be at an ideal weight for my age and height on November 1. It was just an arbitrary date I picked to try and raise money for the Food Bank. I am still going to have to keep at the exact same program to get to my ultimate goal. I am going to keep eating the same way and blogging all about it.
I just used you all as the jump-start I needed to create a new way of eating and stick to it long enough to change my habits. So thank you for being my inspiration. As I have said before, I am not good at doing this for myself, but doing it for other people seems to help motivate me.
The real trick is to maintain weight loss. You see, losing weight is exciting, maintaining weight is dull. As long as I have stories to tell and readers who laugh along the way with me I am going to keep writing about this journey because it makes it much less mundane for me.
So, happy October to you, thanks for enduring the summer with me. I hope I can slide into November with a big strong finish, laughing all the way.
How Do It Do That?
Posted: September 30, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: c-max, new car Leave a comment
We bought a new car today, which is quite an event in our household when you consider the average age of all our other cars is 19 years old. This new car is bringing the average age down to fifteen years old. More importantly we bought a car that get’s 47 miles to the gallon and can carry 4 tall people and a little bit of stuff.
I am anti-stuff and related to a couple of really tall people so it is just perfect.
But you know the part I like the best is the 47 miles per gallon. Today we drove it out to Apex and when we got in the car it told me that we could go 330 miles on the amount of gas we had. We drove about 50 miles and when we got home the car told me we could go 358 miles on the amount of gas we had. I swear to the good lord above we did not stop and put a drop of gas in it. Apparently driving it charged it up and not only got us there and back on nothing, but gave us some more energy.
Will wonders never cease? I think about my paternal grandfather who kept a number of spiral bound notebooks as logs to track how much life he got out of everything he owned that had a battery. When I was a teenager I would peruse these logs on his desk while I used the phone. “Tractor log, Sunday 8/15/76- 14 minutes. Monday 8/16/76 – 1 hour 23 minutes… Flash Light log, Wednesday 8/12/76 3 minutes…” What in the world, I would think.
This car would really throw my grandfather off; then again it is already acting as it’s own log. I could see him now, driving around even if he did not need to just so he could make more energy.
I think that there are some foods that are like this for our bodies. Take celery. Apparently it is so low in calories and takes so many calories to digest it that, by eating it you are losing weight.
I would love it if all the engineers who have figured out how to make car power from pressing on the brake (Don’t ask me, it is too complicated to explain.) would turn their attention to creating more foods that use up more calories by being eaten than are in them to begin with.
I’m keeping my own log to see if I can get more than 47 miles to the gallon. I figure if I weigh a little less it will be easier for the car to carry me around, but given this whole newfangled world I could be wrong. I don’t know how it does it, but I’m glad it does.
My Diet History
Posted: September 29, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Opitfast, Weight Watchers 2 CommentsI was a kid when I got hooked on Sweet ‘n Low in my iced tea. It has to be because I thought I needed to lose weight and not because I really loved that chemical taste. At boarding school I tried any number of crazy ways to lose weight. I can remember laughing with my friends over the book Dieter’s Guide to Weight Loss During Sex, which was perfectly safe for us since we were at an all-girls school. We lamented that if only there were boys we could use up a lot more calories based on the books predictions.
In my twenties I went to Dr. Greene in Washington DC who had invented a liquid protein diet. I got my skinniest drinking three foul tasting shakes a day and a cup of chicken broth at the same time as Oprah was doing Optifast. When she came out on TV in her skinny Calvin Klein Jeans pulling that wagon of fat everyone asked me if that was what I had done.
Both Oprah and I had similar spectacular results and the same rebounding weight gain as soon as we both ate regular food again. Dramatically limiting my caloric intake for five months really made my metabolism learn how to live efficiently on practically nothing. As soon as I introduced pasta back in my life, even with just straight tomatoes as sauce my body reacted like it had entered nirvana and was never going to leave. It grabbed weight back on as fast as possible fearing that I might enter that famine period again.
About ten years ago I became a Weight Watchers professional. I lost the most weight I ever have before, basically because I was the fattest I had ever been. I learned every point value of every food and could really maximize the system so I could eat as much as possible for the fewest points. The one thing about Weight Watchers is that as a company they make money on selling you pre-packaged, processed food and in the end that was not very satisfying to my body.
So here I am again. The good news is that I decided to lose weight well before I passed my previous high. I still have all the Weight Watcher’s knowledge, as well as every other plan I have tried, so I have synthesized it together and found my new way is the easiest way to live.
I cut out almost all sugar and most flour. I eat primarily fruits, vegetable, meats, eggs, cheese, milk and a little whole grain. I don’t count, measure or weigh anything, but I try and use small plates and bowls and only have one serving. I am mindful of my eating, but I don’t write down anything I eat unless I am writing a recipe. I don’t eat after 8:00 most days. I drink a lot of tea and water. I go to my trainer to work out twice a week. Most importantly I write for just 20 minutes everyday on the blog and I try and laugh a lot.
Other than the writing the blog, I don’t think about eating as much as I ever did on or off a diet. I am so much more concerned about what I am going to write than what I am going to eat that I spend my day listening to and watching people waiting to find some inspiration for the blog.
Don’t get me wrong, Food is still important to me. I got up early on this Saturday morning and went to my church kitchen to cook for the lunch we will serve tomorrow. I still want to make yummy things that make people happy. I am just as happy to make them for others and not for myself.
Maybe it took me all my 51 years of trying every kind of diet to finally invent one for myself that could just be my way of eating and not a diet. Only time will tell.
Let’s Change the Situation
Posted: September 28, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chef's Academy, chips, Jayson Boyers Leave a commentOne day when my daughter Carter was three, my husband had this conversation with our daughter.
“Carter, what would you like for breakfast?”
“Chips,” Carter replied.
Her daddy looked at her and in that I-want-a-different-answer parent voice said, “Carter, Chips are for lunch.”
Not picking up on his cue, Carter responds, “Well, I’ll have lunch then.”
Sometimes you just have to change the situation to fit the answer you want.
Last night I went to a wonderful event thrown by the Chef’s Academy to benefit the Food Bank. It was a restaurant chef competition where four chef’s each made a dish and people paid for votes.
Jayson Boyers, the regional president of the Chef’s Academy and fellow Food Bank board member had a goal of raising enough money at the event to donate 100,000 meals to the Food Bank.
After hundreds of people enjoyed lots of good food, none of it being chips, and voted for their favorite dish, the money was totaled. Jayson was not happy. He was $5,000 away from his goal. So what did Jayson do but change the situation.
As he came to the podium with a glum look on his face he apologized for the delay in announcing the winning chef. Jayson told the giant crowd that he needed $5,000 more to reach his goal and that he himself would donate another $1,000 if he could get anyone else to contribute the remaining $4,000.
Quickly a number of people raised their hands and called out, “I’ll give you a thousand.” “Me too.” “I’ll give $2,000.” The goal was reached — 100,000 meals for hungry neighbors.
Sometimes the answer is so simple even a three year old knows how to do it, when you want something you ask for it. When you don’t get what you want on the first asking you ask for it a different way, but just keep asking.
So I will ask one more time. I am trying to get pledges to the Food Bank of $1,000 for every pound I can lose by November 1. Today I am at $627.75. My goal is to try and raise $50,000. If only I could lose 100 pounds I would exceed my goal, but right now I am on track to lose 50.
I could change my situation, but I think that no one would pay for me to cut off my arm in order to lose more weight. I know so many of you have made generous pledges and thank you. If you have not pledged please consider doing so, not for me, but for your hungry neighbors. If you think you have pledged check the supporters tab and look for your name. If you want to be included among the angels listed there click on the pledge tab.
I am changing my situation my losing weight, you can change the situation of many people by pledging today.
Roast Brussels Sprouts, Butternut Squash and Pecans
Posted: September 27, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Brussels Spouts, butternut squash, pecans 2 Comments
Exactly as advertised. Nothing but these three ingredients and my ever-present Pam. So good and fallish.
1 butternut squash – peeled, seeded and cubed
2 pints Brussels sprouts cut in half
1/3 cup pecans
Pam
Salt and Pepper
Pre heat the oven to 400º-convection — If you don’t have a convection oven heat oven to 425º. Cover a cookie with foil and spray with Pam.
Spread out butternut squash out on foil in one layer and place in oven for about 25-30 mins. The squash should start to get a little brown and will be fork tender.
Cover another cookie sheet with foil and spray with Pam and lay out the Brussels sprout halves on it. Place in oven and roast about 20 minutes until the cut sides get a little brown.
Toast pecans in a fry pan on stove for 2 minutes, stirring. Once toasted chop them in half.
Mix everything together once cooked and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
When you Eat, Move as Little as Possible
Posted: September 26, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cars, drive thrus, trains Leave a commentMy first job out of college was selling mail opening and extracting machines. Since it was not an item that the average person wanted I had a rather large territory, Delaware to North Carolina to cover, selling to major companies and banks. This all meant I spent a lot of time in my car. I think I knew every exit of I-95 and where all the pay phones were to give you a time period reference.
Spending so much time trying to get between one customer is Washington DC and another in Wilmington Delaware on the same day meant that I ended up eating a lot of meals in my car. You really can’t call eating something from a drive through while going 65 miles per hour between two big trucks a meal.
Years later when I was a consultant for BT in the UK I was often on the train traveling from London to Bristol, or Manchester, Doncaster or Warrenton or any of the other lovely British cities I frequented, eating my breakfast in the restaurant car, which was still a car. Although I was not doing the driving, I was usually working while I ate, especially if I was traveling alone.
All that mindless eating in cars was no way to be healthy. First the food available to drivers should be limited to football playing fourteen-year-old boys who just can’t seem to consume enough calories no matter what. The rest of us, and that really is most of the world, should just skip anything that is available to be passed out of a window.
The second thing is driving an actual car should take most of the brainpower we have. Not that driving itself is so difficult, but watching for out for idiot drivers is a full time job. If you are trying to dip some fries into a small container of ketchup while going 35 miles per hour in a 25 you quickly become one of those idiots you are supposed to be on the look out for.
The third thing about eating in your car is you are sure to spill something on yourself. I know that the invention of straws has helped keep liquids in your cup or in your mouth, but I personally don’t drink hot drinks with straws, something about scalding the roof of my mouth I shy away from. The telltale sign that someone was eating in their car is they have a stain on the upper thigh of their pants. Women who have a stain on their breast area might not have spilled in the car, but it is a possibility.
Add all these things to the fact that eating as your secondary activity does not seem to register in your brain and thus your hunger department never gets the memo you have eaten, I made a rule for myself that I will not eat in the car. I made this “rule” about nine years ago and for the most part have tried to follow it. Granted I no longer have a traveling job and don’t commute anywhere, but I do feel like I became more conscious of my food when it really became a meal.
Now if I could just give up watching TV while I eat. My worry is that if I stop in the middle of a show I really love I will just eat more quickly so I can find out who is not getting a rose. None-the-less, I think sitting still is the best way to eat.
My Least Favorite Word
Posted: September 25, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bad words 4 CommentsMany people have words they do not like. I know many mothers who forbid their children to use the word “stupid.” “Shut up” is another popular non-favorite with the pre-school crowd. “Suck” probably tops the list for middle school mothers.
My least favorite words is “Plateau” as in “a state of little or no change following a period of activity of progress.” Yeah, plateaus really suck.
I am in a stupid plateau and have been for the last three weeks. It is normal for me to lose weight at a fairly good clip and then just skid to a halt. I know this to be my normal, but come-on, shut up; I would like to reap some benefits from my hard work.
I am trying hard not to use all the bad words when I get on the scale in the morning and it is basically the same thing everyday. I know this too shall change and that I have to keep at it. I know that my body has caught on to the fact that I am not giving it as many calories to live on and it has said, “Whoa. We are going to go into that caveman, non-starvation mode and learn to live on what you are eating so as not to die.”
See I am one of those humans who should have been alive 500 years ago when the food supply was not so constant. My body is brilliant at holding onto fat for just that time of year when food was scarce. You naturally skinny people who need to eat constantly just to keep going, you would have never made it through one drought season, let alone a little old famine.
So if I seem a little more grouchy than usual it must mean that I am still stuck on this darn plateau. But I know from experience that eventually I will walk off a cliff and drop a few more pounds. If it doesn’t happen soon you might have to bleep out my whole blog.
What We Need is a Hormonal Traffic Signal
Posted: September 24, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: hormones 1 CommentOne night when my daughter was about night years old I heard her crying in her bed. I quickly opened her bedroom door to see what was wrong and there I found her sitting up in bed sobbing uncontrollably. “I don’t know whats wrong. I just can’t stop crying,” she squeaked out.
Unfortunately I knew it was the beginning of the girl up and downs. I looked her square in the face and said, “Oh honey, its just hormones.”
With the wisdom of a much older woman she asked between sobs, “Why do hormones always win?” It was one of the greatest truths ever uttered and it came from a child who was yet to really understand how powerful those hormones really are.
I am in no way as astute when it comes to hormonal cycles as either my daughter, or my husband. One of my husband’s best traits is being able to track with NASA quality preciseness when a hormonal swing is about to take place. When I am beginning to act insane somehow even after all these decades of having hormones I do not immediately know the cause for my insanity, but my husband does.
It would be so helpful to me if he would just go ahead and erect a hormonal signal that would clue me in. Green would mean all clear, Yellow would mean insanity was on it’s way and Red would give me a warning that my full on B%tch is here.
My daughter is still better than I am at reading the signals. One day I got a tragic text from her about something that had gone terribly wrong at school that morning. That triggered my hormonal reaction and worry. By the time I got to school for afternoon pick-up I was a mess waiting for her. As she got in the car I asked her if everything was all right and she said without a care in the world, “Oh yeah Mom, no problem. It was just hormones.” Disaster adverted, but just for her, my maternal hormonal reaction had yet to clear.
Not only do I want a traffic signal, but maybe even an indicator light right in the middle of every woman’s forehead, that way I would know if it was a good time to ask someone a huge favor, or perhaps I should just give her a piece of chocolate and wait for a green light day.
For me I would like the light system so when I want to eat something more than my “I’m being really good food” I could weigh whether I was really hungry or just hormonal. Currently I figure out the hormonal part only after I have eaten something forbidden, which is just too late.
For now, I just feel sorry for my husband who lives with two women on opposite ends of the hormonal teeter-totter. I don’t know how he does it, but thank God he does because otherwise I might never know what is going on with me.
Can I Lick the Yolk Off My Plate
Posted: September 23, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Belcher's, new Canaan, The village Market, Wilton 1 CommentWhen I was a kid my mother was “off duty” on Saturday mornings and my father, who us kids did not see much on the weekdays due to his long work commute, was in charge of us. Back in the “olden days” of the 60’s and 70’s Saturdays were not the day parents drove their kids to various sports or arts activities, for me and my sisters it was the day that my Dad made us breakfast before we got in the car and went to do his errands with him before we were conscripted into child labor.
The breakfast was almost always the same thing. A fried egg on toast cut into a tic-tac-toe board pattern. It is still one of my favorite things to eat. The little toast squares soaking up the runny yellow yolk, paired with one perfect bite of not crispy fried egg. Today since I don’t eat toast often I am wishing that it were lady like to pick up my fried egg plate and lick the yolk, which lays languishing on it. I have tried using a sliced tomato as my toast replacement and although it is a tasty is does not have the same absorbent qualities and plenty of delicious yolk goes to waste
The errands were almost always the same thing. First we had to go to the liquor store to cash a check and sometimes buy liquor. See, it was the days before ATM’s and 24 hour banking. We almost always went to New Canaan Liquors for this chore since our town of Wilton was dry and New Canaan had more liquor stores per person than any other town. Just for the record, New Canaan also had Silver Hill a really fancy dry-out place that movie stars used to come to when they had visited one too many of New Canaan’s 142 liquor stores.
The big woman who owned New Canaan liquors was a good marketer. She always gave any kids that came in the store lollypops so we would beg our father to go back there to cash his check. Liquor store loyalty started early in our family.
Once we were at the liquor store it was only steps to my father’s second most popular errand, a visit to Belcher’s the lawn mower and chain saw store. Belcher’s was fine with us kids too, because they also sold bikes so we always got to sit on the newest Schwinn bikes as my father discussed the sharpening of one blade or another.
After Belcher’s we drove through the car wash and then back to Wilton to one of the two hardware stores in our town. Hardware stores back then were like a cross between a small Home Depot and a down market William Sonoma because they sold everything from replacement screen to lobster pots. There was always something fun to play with there while my father bought the needed supplies for us to work on the house as our afternoon activity.
The errands ended with a visit to the Village Market, Wilton’s grocery store that was way ahead of Whole Foods in the “If we prepare it, you will pay through the nose, but you will love it” way of selling food.
After the fun of errand time we knew we would have to pay by doing the chores my father had on his list for the afternoon. Our most constant task was mowing and raking the grass as well as raking the leaves, but scraping paint off the 200 year old clapboards or crawling up on the roof to clean out the gutters was often included in the child labor department. Although we did complain we never seemed to opt out of those Saturdays.
As mundane as those days sound it was what we lived for as kids. Time with my Dad, the same food, the same errands, the same chores, but lots of time for him to tell us stories about his childhood and tell us the exciting things that were happening at work. Oh how I miss mundane.
Nantucket Inspired Crab Cocktail
Posted: September 22, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: cocktail sauce, crab, Nantucket Leave a comment
I’ve spent the last two weekends going to too many fun events while out of town. That means too little lack of control over what I was eating, but lots of yummy ideas for new food.
I had lunch in Nantucket on the wharf with friends Susan and Jane and had a crab cocktail that was so good. I don’t know what they put in theirs but here is my rendition of it.
For one serving
Lettuce cut into strips
2 T. Non-fat cream cheese
Couple of drops of milk
2t. Horseradish- divided in half
2 T. chili sauce
Couple of drops of limejuice
3 T. crabmeat
Mix the cream cheese, milk and half the horseradish together. In a separate container mix the chili sauce, remaining horseradish and limejuice together (you could use pre-made cocktail sauce if you have it.)
In a ramekin or small jar, place all the lettuce, the cream cheese mixture, the cocktail sauce and top with the crabmeat.
To really guild the lily add some avocado cubes between the cream cheese and cocktail sauce layers.
Visit First, Text Last
Posted: September 21, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: email, facebook, text, tweet, visit 4 CommentsLast night I had an acquaintance tell me that she loved reading my blog and that now she feels like she knows me as well as she does a very close friend. She told me this as a cautionary tale because she said that someday she might be diagnosed with some horrible disease and she is going to call me up and tell me to get right over to her house to care for her children while she leaves home for treatment.
She is not the first person to tell me this. Another acquaintance said she felt somewhat like a voyeur reading the blog since she really did not know me that well.
You people need to stop worrying. If I write it and post it, you are allowed to read it. People who know me will attest to the fact that I will talk to almost anyone about anything. The fact that I am writing about losing weight, a subject almost no one wants to broach should be proof enough.
I am not an expert in much, but I do have a passion for making community, and I don’t mean community coffee. I love meeting new people, finding common links, learning new things from them, introducing them to others, blah, blah, blah.
But in our Tweet first, Facebook second, text third, email fourth, call on the phone fifth, actually go see a person face-to-face last world it is harder and harder to actually become a community. All this isolation communication has got to be contributing to our unhealthy lifestyles.
This is all rich coming from someone who is communicating to you through a blog. I would greatly prefer you all to come and sit in my kitchen and let me talk to you and tell you stories there. But since this community of readers is spread far and wide it makes it more impossible.
What these acquaintances that have some sort of guilt about reading my personal musings do not see is that, all you people who read the 500 words I write everyday, are acting as my collective therapist. I don’t need to pay someone $250 an hour for me to tell him how screwed up I am. I have you. And if you recognize any hint of yourself in what I write maybe it helps you too.
Most of what I write is too true to make up. It is my real life, crazy as it is. Once in a while I do fabricate an example person so that I don’t out some actual horrible person. My friend Mary Eileen and her family read the posting “It’s great not to get recognized” where I described a woman who always said, “Nice to meet you” even though we had met many times. Mary Eileen said they sat around the dinner table saying they knew exactly who she was. When she asked me I said, “OMG, is there really someone matching that terrible description? I made her up.”
So if you are that person I described, I don’t know who you are. If you recognize yourself in my postings you are not alone, you are just human. It is OK if you feel like you know me; I have posted 136 blogs about my struggles and myself for the last 136 days. Please know that you are my community. If you want to come and sit in my kitchen you are welcome to do that. I may blog, but in my world I go to visit someone first, call them on the phone second, e-mail them third, text fourth, Facebook fifth and almost never tweet.
Not the Smartest Person in the Room
Posted: September 20, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Dr. Gerald Bell, goals, Leadership, Smart 1 CommentLast night I attended a Trustee retreat where we had Dr. Gerald Bell, a leadership specialist as our guest speaker. The organization I was there for is undergoing a long planned search for a new head and our speaker was there to help us prepare for our eventual change in leadership. The group of about 25 people who attended last night is made up of people who are all much more brilliant than I am. None-the-less the exercises we were put through appeared to be both eye opening and informative for almost everyone in the room.
Dr. Bell told us that when we were setting goals for our eventual new head we should use the S.M.A.R.T. system, An acronym not all of us knew.
SMART in goal setting stands for making goals that are
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Resources
T – Timely
As I thought about my own goal setting I realized that once in a while I was using the SMART system, this weight loss challenge being a good example of that. I have a specific goal of losing 50 pounds. I can clearly measure it, as I get on the scale everyday. It is attainable because it is a 25-week timeline and it is realistic to lose an average of two pounds a week. I have the resources to do it because I actually use fewer resources by eating less. It is timely because there is no better time to get healthy.
Since I was not the smartest person in the room I would misspell it and call it SMAART. Personally, publicly announcing my intention to try and reach a goal is by far the best motivator for succeeding, therefore my newly added “A” would stand for Accountable.
It is amazing the amount of support I get from people because they know I am working on losing weight. People are not afraid to talk with me about it because I write about it everyday. My being out there gives people permission to talk about a subject that is often taboo. No one is embarrassed to say, “You look like you’ve lost weight” because they know I am trying and not that I have some terrible illness which is causing me to get thinner.
At the end of program Dr. Bell challenged us to come up with 15 goals we wanted to personally attain in the next year. He said that you needed to think of 15 because the best ones come at the end of your brainstorming after you have already written down all the easy ones. Once we had thought of 15 we should pick 10.
I am going to do this and share them with my husband so I can be accountable to him. If I don’t share them it would be very easy for that exercise to be just that, an exercise. I’m sure you have goals, lists and wishes of things you would like to accomplish. So join me in adding an extra “A” to being SMAART and be bold in your accountability. You might find that extra push to finish what you started and even if you don’t, it is so much more fun to have others share in your journey.
My Failed One Bite Rule
Posted: September 19, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: cravings, one bite, sweets 3 CommentsSome years ago I lost a huge amount of weight, actually twice before this I have lost lots of weight, so this is my third time. You naturally thin people often wonder why in the world I gain weight back after working so hard to lose it the first time. Trust me, I ask myself the same thing. Just as I am a self-taught expert on losing weight now, I am a self inflicted pro at gaining weight too.
My friend Maricella brought me an article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal titled, “How to Fend Off a Food Craving.” Google it to read the whole thing, but there was one paragraph I want to share with you and give you my learned opinion of…
“What is the best way to fight food cravings? Many studies have shown the more subjects try to restrict food, the more they may crave it. So some experts suggest embracing and controlling the urge instead.”
I am here to attest that as a food addict this is not a technique that has ever worked for me. In fact I have done a multi year study and proven the opposite.
I love sweets and the longer I go without sweets the easier it is for me to not crave them. After four months of being off sugar I can be around cupcakes, smell brownies, even have a box of chocolate turtles on my counter that I have not looked at or craved.
The last time I lost a significant amount of weight I created what I thought was a brilliant way to deal with unhealthy foods. I called it “the one bite rule.” If I really wanted pasta I gave myself one-bite of it, the same with coconut cake, pizza etc. But then the size of my “one bites” got a little larger, until I practically was using a serving spoon to gouge out my one bite of cheesecake. Before I knew it, one bite gave way to three to right back to eating the amounts and the types of foods that my body clearly does not need.
So I would like to refute Mr. Murdoch’s crown jewel the Wall Street Journal and say don’t give into cravings, fight them. The article does go on to say delaying, distracting yourself and exercise are all other ways of dealing with a craving. Those are techniques I endorse. In fact the article says smelling a strong smell such as “Jasmine helps occupy the same aroma receptors that are a key part of food cravings.”
Now I have a new scheme to start growing jasmine and selling whiffs of it as a food alternative, for a premium price. If it works I may be opening a jasmine smelling truck right near the next Food Truck Rodeo.
What to Make for a Church Luncheon?
Posted: September 18, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: church supper, covered dish 6 CommentsNot that long ago I saw a news piece that said Protestants in America were the heaviest group when dividing America up by religion. It is not really that important statistics because Americans in general are overweight and more American’s are Protestant than any other one group, so no news there.
The reporter went on to say that perhaps it was all the covered dish suppers that Church goers went to which were full of macaroni and cheese and hash brown casserole that was the reason Christians were so fat. If you go to a place of worship are you having a meal there everyday? Not at my church. We may eat at church a couple times a year max.
My friend Sara and I are charged with providing an all-church lunch in 12 days. We did this last year and served a top-your-own baked potato bar. It satisfied many different constituents. For Vegetarians we had broccoli and cheese, for vegans we had just broccoli, for meat lovers we had ham and for folks that don’t like much we had sour cream and butter. What we did not have was any main course for dieters, just a green salad, not really a meal. For the frugal the meal only cost about two dollars a person to make and that included a giant sheet cake from Sam’s. Maybe there is something to that obesity tie to Church.
This year I want to make something that even I can eat, that will be easy to make, cheep to pay for and satisfy all they various eating groups. So I am reaching out to you, the world of church and non-church goers for ideas for a lunch for about 200 people.
It is not that I can’t come up with a menu, but I figure that each of you might have attended a big event and thought, Wow, that was a good menu. Tell me, tell me now.
One more thing, I don’t have much time to actually cook it. Both Sara and I are busier than Santa’s elves two days before Christmas so we need to be able to shop and cook the whole thing on Saturday and serve it Sunday at noon. So no whole pig ideas, ain’t got the time.
If we can come up with a healthy church meal perhaps we can stem the fat tide believers are riding. Now that would be a Jesus worthy miracle.
No Grinding Please
Posted: September 17, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ground meat, Meat, steak Leave a commentI am no scientist, but my weight loss program is a study that is worthy of two Johns Hopkins researchers and one Richard Simmons. I eat a fairly steady diet everyday and about the same amount of exercise every week. I have cut out all real sugar, because sweets are my drug of choice and I hardly ever eat flour of any kind.
So in my vegetable, fruit and protein diet I have stumbled upon what I consider to be a major medical break through. Before I reveal my ironclad findings to you I must report that I have scoured the Internet and have not found any medical or anecdotal information that even mentions the discovery I have made. There can be many reasons for that. First, this food interaction may only effect me or other WASPs with my identical genetic make up, or secondly, this finding can be completely false.
I know by now you are dying to know what this break through discovery is in weight loss and I will not keep you in suspense any longer. I lose more weight if I eat a solid piece of meat as opposed to eating the exact same amount of ground meat.
Now before you say that I must be eating ground meat with more fat than say a solid piece of pork tenderloin let me give you some information on the controls I have used in my testing. First I have ground meat myself and eaten one dinner of ground beef and the next of a whole steak cut from the same larger piece of meat. I have also tried this with chicken, pork and beef.
If you are a scientist and know why my body processes the same basic food in different ways please let me and the rest of the world know. Some of my hypothesis are that by grinding meat we must turn it into a more soluble form so that more stays with me when I eat it. Perhaps I am a very poor chewer and I am swallowing such large chunks of meat that my body can’t break it down before it leaves me. Maybe meat is like corn on the cob and just goes in for the ride. Who knows.
After all my years of Weight Watchers lectures, diet doctor visits and Atkins books read I do no recall anyone ever saying don’t have the burger, but instead have the steak. So let me be the first to tell you. Like the whole grain craze that started some years ago I am going to be the whole meat guru. And when I say meat I mean meat, fish and poultry in their closest to life size you can get it.
I do not lose weight on days I eat only fruits and veg. So sorry all you vegans, I have no help for you. I am not advocating an Atkins/South Beach diet, just that when you do have a meal eat mostly veggies and some protein that is not ground, mashed, shredded or pulverized. Give your body something to do once you’ve swallowed and report your results back to me. If it works for more people than just me we are going to have to come up with a catchy name for this diet too. Suggestions are welcome.
A Cautionary Tale
Posted: September 16, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: clerks, Shopping 1 CommentIt is no wonder that the Internet has made huge inroads in the fashion business because stores could hardly do a worse job of having great employees and creating spaces that make it easy, comfortable and attractive to try on clothes.
I hate to shop in stores. This is not a new thing. That is unless the store is run by the owner who has a vested interest in actually helping me, sells enough that the store is profitable so it does not have merchandise all crammed together and has beautiful dressing rooms, with someplace to sit down and most importantly great lighting.
One of the only bad things about dieting is that you have to buy some clothes to wear while going down, but you don’t want to buy many because the hope is you will shrink out of them. When changing sizes you really need to visit a store to see what fits so it makes Internet shopping out of the question. You see, the only thing I hate more than visiting a clothing store is having to go to my local post office to mail a package of wrong sized clothes back to the seller.
I am sure this hatred of shopping is genetic on my paternal side. My father told me of his childhood horror of going to Montaldo’s, the nicest woman’s store in Winston-Salem with his mother when he was five. He says he would go immediately to the circular ladies night gown rack and hide in the middle because my Grandmother would run out of patience about ten minutes into her visit and stamp her foot and in a loud, smoked-too-much, scratchy voice say, “Who is going to wait on me?”
As much as father claims it scared him, he too wants to be helped at stores, just as I do. I am almost worst than my Grandmother, which my relatives all know is a really high bar to hurdle.
One December years ago I was in a Gap-like store trying to buy Christmas presents. There was one main check-out desk manned by the only person who apparently could run the cash register. There were three other “sweater folders” working in the store who did not ever proactively interact with the customers. Their sole purpose was to fold and refold clothes so the store always looked perfect, not so they actually helped sell something.
I had single handedly found four items to buy as presents and went up to the desk to pay. I was third in a line of six people all trying to keep our Christmas cheer while waiting an endless amount of time to give these people our money for the over-priced items and get the hell out of there.
Even though there appeared to be three cash registers and four employees, only the one who passed fifth grade math was allowed to use it. As I became the next customer to be checked-out the phone rang. Right in the middle of scanning my items the clerk helping me stopped, answered the phone, talked for at least a minute to the person on the phone and then, laying the receiver on the counter walked away from the register and me, money in hand.
“Wait,” I called out, the genetic twin of my Grandmother, “Can’t one of the sweater folders help the person on the phone and you keep ringing me out?”. The bored clerk, who was making the same amount of money whether they had any customers or not replied, “No.”
Quickly realizing I was about to be left I said, “The person on the phone is only inquiring about possibly spending money in your store. I am actually trying to spend money here. Please finish with me first.”
As the clerk slowly sauntered off to the back of the store she said, “The phone takes priority.”
This is when I am glad I do not carry a weapon, instead I carry a big mouth and a short temper. I did the only thing I could do at that moment. Turning to the other, much too patient, customers who were waiting behind me I said, “This store is not interested in us or our business, I suggest you leave with me now.”
I felt very empowered as two of the three other customers dumped their items on the front desk in a heap for the sweater folders to restock and walked out into the mall with me.
It was a real pain-in-the-ass because I had to do more shopping to find replacement gifts for the ones I did not buy there, but I was damned if I would patronize such an idiotic store again.
So this post is a cautionary warning that if you see me out about town and I’m naked, I have not lost my mind, I just did not have any clothes that fit and I could not bring myself to enter another store.
Nantucket Memories
Posted: September 15, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Nantucket, restaurants, Wauwinet 3 CommentsI am writing today from a deck chair on the porch of a house in Nantucket that my friends Rich and Susan have rented for the week. Rich is my oldest friend, having known each other since he was four and I was five as well as being my husband’s business partner. Rich is kind of like my brother as well as my husband’s work spouse.
They know each other so well that they often show up for events dressed in matching outfits.
This morning Russ and I went into town before Rich and Susan. Russ bought himself a pair of Nantucket Red shorts and decided to wear them out of the store. Rich had been wearing his Nantucket Reds when we left the house, but when they joined us in town he had changed into khaki’s and a blue shirt. I noted that for once they were not matching. Rich’s response was he knew that Russ would not only buy the shorts, but that he would wear them so he changed so they would not match. Now that is a friend who knows you well.
We are all in Nantucket together for a business meeting that starts tomorrow evening, but until then we are enjoying a little vacation. Since we have been here many times before, my first time as a teenager with Rich’s family and again as the first vacation Russ and I took Carter on when she was just five months old, we are spending time reminiscing between either planning where and what to eat or actually eating.
We went to the Wauwinet Inn for lunch and ran into CBS Sunday Morning corespondent Bill Geist and his wife Jody whom I had flown in from Boston with. Jody and I had sat with each other on the tiny plane and talked the whole time so she was happy to meet Russ. She remembered his name since it is the same name as her daughter’s new son. They were here for a wedding and encouraged us to crash it or any of the other 43 weddings Bill said were on the island this weekend. We said we had a good dinner reservation so we would have to crash during the dancing.
I don’t know how people went on vacation before the Internet. I sit here listening to Russ and Rich discuss the ratings and menu’s of various restaurants and try and balance out the offerings versus what they have planned for the next day’s meals. If we go to Galley Beach do they have enough meat when we are going to seafood tonight, or if we go to Langedoc is it too fancy? So many decisions to be made.
This is not a new travel activity. I can remember being on vacation as a child with my parents and having my mother get furious with my father because he wanted to discuss lunch and dinner while eating breakfast. As Rich said earlier we just need to find things to do between meals since they are the big highlight of the day.
And there you have it. What to do when not eating and how do you make food less important when you are on vacation? I have decided that the best thing to do is try and eat at regular times, never waiting too long between meals so that I am not so hungry that I make bad decisions and that, when possible, I split dishes with anyone who will do that with me, even if it the diner at the next table.
One of the joys of travel is learning about and enjoying local cuisine but that does not mean sampling island fudge or giant slabs of coffee cake, but raw oysters and steamed lobster is just the thing to splurge on, if only with money and not with calories.
In the moments I have written this the sun has dipped below the tops of the scrub trees, bringing on the cool air that I have not felt for months. The setting sun must indicate that soon it will be time to prepare for dinner and another meal with great friends and new memories to add to our lifetime of Nantucket times together.
Being At Other People’s Mercy
Posted: September 14, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: airline, fax, Phone, restaurant 2 CommentsI hate being at other people’s mercy. I like to be the driver, the planner, the get-it-done-myselfer and in the words of someone I never quote, the decider. It is not necessarily an attractive quality and one that I try and mask to the outside world very unsuccessfully.
This week all my masking skills failed me when in the space of two days I was tested over and over again.
The first situation came at 10:00 the night before a surprise birthday party I was throwing with some friends. I was in charge of the restaurant and menu. Coconut cake was featured in the invitation and was expected. I had gone to the restaurant weeks in advance and reserved the space and the cake.
The manager told me to email him the exact menu a week ahead, which of course I did. I called him the next day to confirm his receipt of my detailed instructions. He was not in so I requested he call me back. The next day no call back. I phoned him, not in, no call back. And again. Then I went away for the weekend.
Upon my return home I had to cook for the clothing show at my house, reconnect with my 13 year old daughter who almost did not realize that her father and I had been away for three days and do all the laundry from our hot weekend where we changed our clothes four times a day.
As I fell into bed dead tired after the clothing show and started thinking about the next day’s party it dawned on me that I had never heard from the restaurant manager. In a panic I picked up the phone and called them and asked for him by name. I felt as if I was going to throw up when I was told that he was not in and would not be in until Friday, two days after my party.
The poor man who answered the phone. I went into full on bitch and asked who was in charge at that very moment. Another manager came to the phone and I begged him to tell me that he knew all about the party, the email for the menu and more importantly the coconut cake. NO. He knew nothing about it. We worked out the menu, and he thought he might have enough staff, but the cake was going to be a problem. He only had half as much as I needed!
It eventually worked out, but not until I completely micromanaged the staff, bussed plates, poured drinks and cut the cake slices myself, serving the skinniest of servings. In the end the birthday girl was completely surprised, celebrated and happy.
My second pain-in-the-ass event this week was my call with a national phone company I won’t out here. We have way too many phone lines for a family of three. Three months ago I gave up long distance service on one of the six lines, I told you it was too many. Somehow I inadvertently kept paying on the account of the line I gave up and not on one of the lines I still had.
I was receiving automated calls from this rotten phone company saying that I needed to call them about my phone line. Since I had been sending them more than enough money I assumed they wanted me to call them so they could sell me something, so I never called them back.
It was not until I received a letter saying they were going to cut off my long distance that I realized there was a problem. It took 15 phone calls to figure out that they had my money in one department, but would not transfer it to the correct department until I sent them a FAX, and even then it would take two weeks.
What century is this company in, a FAX! When I asked the poor customer service rep why in the world they had not alerted me that I was sending them money for an account which had been closed months ago he was silent for a whole minute. When I said, “Well?” His response was, honest to god, “I’m trying to think of a good excuse.”
Even after that admittance of guilt he could not transfer my credit, nor could he refund me without a fax. When I asked if I could send an email, the answer was no. “We can’t take your word over the phone that you are who you say you are and we need a paper trail.”
I could just as easily impersonate myself by fax as by phone and since when was email not a paper trail? I just imagine that fax I sent falling on the floor and rolling under the fax table because it is still printed on slick continuous fax paper of 1988.
I write this as I sit at the airport at the mercy of an airline, no surprise there. My 11:45 flight is not taking off until 1:15 now it is yet to be seen if I will make my connection on a tiny 12 seat prop plane. I would love to know what my normally low blood pressure is now.
The good news is that I did not turn to eating as the way to deal with my frustrations, instead I turn to ranting via blog. Blogging now an official diet tool for me. So thank you to all you unknown readers I imagine I am complaining to. I know I am still at the mercy of others, but at least I hope you have gotten a chuckle out of my frustrations and you have a stress free weekend.
Roasted Pears – Master Recipe
Posted: September 13, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: blue cheese, pizza dough, roasted pears Leave a comment
Roasted pears can be used for good, like in a fall salad with grilled chicken and a little blue cheese, or used for evil like in this pizza I made for Russ.
I like to buy a bunch of pears and roast them to keep in the fridge. Once roasted, they will last a couple weeks in an airtight container.
Pears
Pam
Preheat oven to 425º.
Cover a cookie sheet with foil and spray with Pam. This is very important because the pears will stick without the foil.
Slice the pears into ¼ inch slices and lay them flat on the cookie sheet. They can touch, but not overlap. Spray the pears with Pam and place in the oven. Cook for about 30 minutes and turn the oven off and leave them in another 15 minutes.
For those of you who can afford to eat the pizza here is how I made it. I just bought pizza dough at the store and stretched it out and pre-cooked it on the grill by heating the grill up to very hot and lay to dough directly on the metal grill closing the lid and cooking it for 3 minutes and flipping it over and cooking for a minute and a half on the other.
I lay the following on top of the cooked crust- roasted pears, caramelized onions, a little mozzarella and blue cheese. Then put in a 400º oven until the cheese melts. The pizza is great served with a little arugula salad on top.
Measuring Methods
Posted: September 12, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: meauring, scale Leave a comment
There are lots of ways that I measure my progress in the weight loss journey; the scale is the obvious one, but the more obscure ways are so much more fun. In descending order of obvious ways here are some measurement tools that I have come across.
Following a very close second to the scale are clothes. How do my clothes fit and how many smaller sizes am I able to wear. Almost more importantly how many clothes should I not be wearing because they are just too big? There is nothing more comfortable than a pair of jeans that feel like pajamas because you swim in them. But having your clothes feel that great usually means they are too big to be worn outside of your house.
The worst thing for me is when losing weight I find an old beloved pair of pants in my closet that I have not been able to fit into for a while and put them on only to discover that I have missed my opportunity to wear them because I am smaller than those pants now. OK, that is not the worst thing, but with limited clothing choices I wish I had found those pants earlier.
Chairs with arms are another great barometer of skinny success. The other day I sat down in a chair and was unable to have both my elbows on the arms of the chair comfortably because they were too far apart. I found I had to put my purse in the seat next to me to rest my arm on. I can’t remember the last time I sat next to my purse in a chair.
Another pair of arms I use for measurement are those of my husband. It is wonderful to dance with him and have him be able to wrap his arms around me and dip me. Now if we could do something about rhythm.
Our king size bed is looking much larger these days. As I lie on my side writing this blog I can no longer reach out and pet our dog sleeping on the opposite corner.
My favorite new measurement marker is that I got in my car the other day and I could not really reach the steering wheel. I had to move the seat forward because I must have lost enough off the backside of me thus falling further away from the wheel.
I have to keep all these measuring apparatus in mind in case I start to go the other way. If I find I have to move the seat back there are no excuses that the washer shrunk my car. What goes down can go back up; even though that is not exactly the law of nature it certainly is the law of weight management.
Great Closet Advice
Posted: September 11, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: black pants, closets, clothing 5 CommentsToday my friend Hannah and her business partner Suzanne had their Doncaster show at my house and are donating 10% of all their sales to the Food Bank. Thanks to all the wonderful ladies who came out, stripped down and decided they had to have a new skirt, sweater or suit.
I heard lots of funny and useful information about people’s clothing and closets while they pondered between the lilac and the olive sweaters. One friend, Kathi, found a couple of pieces of clothing that looked great on her, which was no surprise because everything looks great on her. She said that she could not buy them right there and then because first she had to go home and see if she already had anything like them and find an equal number of things to weed out of her closet before she added anything new.
WOW! What a concept. She says she only needs so much and this way everything she keeps is up-to-date and in great condition. “How many black shoes does a person need?” she said.
I don’t know about you, but most women tend to buy the same thing over and over again, because that is what they are drawn to at the store. I have friends who only wear one color, say black, or taupe, you know who you are, which is great because that is what they look good in. But if you are only going to buy one color, how many multiples of the same items do you need?
I remember when a friend built a new house, she was showing us her closet and she said, “Here is the dress hanging section and the shirt hanging section and the shoe section and the black pants section.”
Kathi’s plan of only having one of anything works for her because she has remained the same size for her whole adult life. Kudos to her for that hard job, but it does make closet management easier.
Another friend Lucy asked us if we had ever seen the “Home Improvement” episode where Tim Allen built his wife her dream closet. She described what was needed in a dream closet, “A place for thin clothes, fat clothes and the just five fewer pounds clothes.” Tim then holds up a tiny slinky dress and asks his wife, “What section would this go in? The In-Your-Dreams-Section?”
I remember once my mother, who hates to ever part with any of her clothes, tried to do a weeding out. I happened to come to visit her after she had spent three days removing every item of clothing and trying it on and deciding if it should go in the keep, donate or throw pile. I walked in the door and was horrified to see she was wearing a 30 year old L.L. Bean wrap around skirt that did not quite meet the wrapping minimum, paired with a thread bare Shetland sweater which had been my sister Janet’s in boarding school that was at least three inches too short for my mother. As she tugged on the front of the too short sweater she said with a big grin, “Look at these great clothes I found.” Great has a different meaning for my mother and me.
When I asked if that was representative of the things she was keeping what in the world was she throwing away or donating. That was when she pointed to three ratty t-shirts on the dining room table that I had thought were dust rags and said, “I’m giving those away.”
I am going to try and break any genetic connection I have to my mother when it comes to my closet and somehow become adopted by Kathi. I am embracing the nothing-new-in-the-closet-until-something-old-comes-out rule and I will make sure that I am not purchasing a duplicate item unless I have worn out or ruined the first one. Now, if I could just do something about the In-Your-Dreams-Section.
Doncaster Flash Backs
Posted: September 10, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Doncaster 2 CommentsWhen I was a kid both my Grandmother and my mother sold Doncaster clothes. In fact, my grandmother was the East Tennessee Regional manager for 35 years and when she retired at the age of 80 someone else had the opportunity to be the oldest employee, a title she had held for at least ten years.
I was about ten or eleven when my mother started selling. Four times a year I would come home from school and there would be half naked women trying on clothes in our playroom. I always loved playing store with my sister when the clothes were at our house.
Well some things never change. My good friend Hannah and her partner Suzanne are selling Doncaster now and they brought the clothes to my house this evening so that all out Durham friends could come and shop here. They have some really gorgeous stuff that I am coveting.
Hannah made a great deal with me, if I would have the show one day, 10% of anything she sold here would be donated to the “Less Dana, More Good” campaign. Don’t tell her I would have done it for free.
So I have cooked a bunch of yummy things for all you hungry shoppers who want to stop by anytime tomorrow. Frittata, zucchini bread and pineapple in the morning. Smoked salmon pizza, pimento cheese, corn and tomato salad and gazpacho in the afternoon. I’m sure I’ll need to bake something after lunch.
No appointment necessary. Breakfast will be served at 8:00 AM. The best news is that I have plenty of private places you can try clothes on just in case you don’t want to run around my house half naked.
Wedding Hangover
Posted: September 9, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: michelle, richard, wedding 4 CommentsI am hung over. I’m not talking about the way one feels from enjoying too much bubbly or one too many Bloody Marys, just the bone weary way I feel from packing as much fun as possible into a wedding weekend.
My Georgia native friend Michelle wed her great British love Richard is what was hands down the most spectacular, sweet, surprise filled wedding ever. Ninety friends and family came from all over the world to eat, drink and be merry as if they were representing their countries in some wedding Olympics.
Not to be outdone I did my fair share of competitive bocce playing, sunset marsh boat riding, low-country-boil eating, new friend making, Cajun dance doing’, getting-to-and-fro bike riding, muscle torture massage getting, “Oh-Happy-Day” gospel choir listening, teenage-son-giving-his-mother-away sobbing, groom kissing the bride watching, great old friend enjoying, cocktail reception hors d’oeuvre eating, lasting memories photo taking, torrential downpours umbrella carrying, luxurious dinner conversating, one bite of wedding cake tasting, surprise fireworks gazing, Sleeping Booty boogying, dessert bar by-passing, dead tired room returning feet-drag walking, farewell brunch partaking, long goodbye hugging, six hour home driving.
After all that you might understand my excitement when we passed a hand painted sign on the side of the road near Bennettsville, South Carolina that read, “Used Body Parts Ahead.”
For more than a moment I thought that I could trade-in my dog-tired feet for a fresher, even if used, pair. Kind of like buying a retread. It took me more than a minute to realize the sign was for auto body parts. They should have said that. Please tell me I’m not the only one who ever made that mistake.
Whatever damage I did to my diet from eating or body from dancing it was all worth it to witness the joining together and celebrating the love of two fabulous people.
Growing Up and Liking It
Posted: September 8, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: growing up. bike riding, inn at palmetto bluff, wedding 4 CommentsAs if Russ and I have not had enough great travel already this year, today we are enjoying the best place we have been in a long time, the Inn at Palmetto Bluff. As I write this I am sitting in an Adirondack chair under the shade of a three hundred year old live oak tree draped in Spanish moss, overlooking the wide expanse of the May river and it’s tidal marsh.
We are here as guests of our great friends Michelle and Richard who are getting married tonight in the darling waterside chapel, an occasion of great celebration. After yesterday afternoon’s croquet and bocce tournaments and Cajun dance dinner party complete with moan inducing oysters it is hard to imagine how it can get any better, but I am sure it will exceed my wildest imagination for the perfect wedding.
Breakfast this morning was at a place called Buffalo’s where you had your choice of the biscuit bar or other even more fattening items made to order. When one of the categories of offerings is “Sticky” you know I had a hard time finding something low calorie to eat. Russ had the best grits on earth, which I can verify because I had a one orgasmic bite.
Between breakfast and my upcoming massage Russ, my friend Hannah and I rode our cottage assigned one-speed bikes through a good portion of the 20,000-acre property. Thank goodness for this exercise to help counteract the intake portions of the day.
As we peddled the winding paths through the forest, me in my white linen shirt, hiked-up so as not to catch in the chain, I had a strong flash back to a movie I saw in fourth grade called “Growing Up and Liking it.”
One day, late in the school year the boys were taken from our classroom and sent to another room while the girls remained in our classroom with all the blinds drawn. Our teacher, Miss Stoelting, turned on the projector to a movie that opened with a girl, much older than our 9 year-old selves, maybe she was 12, riding a one-speed bike in the dappled sunlight wearing a cute white culottes.
The music played and the male announcer started talking about how girls grow up and change… the movie, made by the Kotex company, was all about getting your period. As fourth graders, we were horrified. It was all news to us. We were a test class to see if fourth graders needed to know this information. We did not.
A soon as the movie was over we all ran to the girl’s room, filling every stall. I remember pulling my underpants down to see if I was bleeding and calling out to my friends to see if theirs had started, sure that it was eminent because that was why they had showed us the movie.
When we returned to the classroom our upstanding teacher told us to lie to the boys and tell them we had seen a movie about dolls. Upon their return the boys told us they had seen a movie about cars and we told them our grown-up sanctioned lie.
I so badly wanted to know if the boys really saw a movie about cars, but never had the nerve to ask them. If you happen to be one of those boys please call and let me know.
Once the shock about the growing-up part subsided my big take away from that movie was that you could still ride your bike when you have your period. I still laugh about the 1960’s propaganda title, and the fact that the narrator was a man.
During those adolescent years there was no liking growing up. You just wanted to be grown up. But man, today enjoying another great rite-of-passage, a wedding, I am so glad that I am a grown up and can still ride a bike whenever I want.
“You Must Feel So Much Better”
Posted: September 7, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentMany fat and thin friends alike say the same thing to me about losing weight. “You must feel so much better.”
The answer is actually, “No.” See, I did not feel badly before. My knees are good, thanks to not much overuse since childhood. My big bones are strong and have been highly developed from having to carry my body around all these years. My hips are fine, not a click or hitch in any of my giddy-up.
My internal numbers are good too. I have unbelievably low cholesterol and blood pressure. My only bad number was the one on the scale.
When you feel good to start and lose about 2 pounds a week you don’t really notice the change. Now if I strapped a forty-pound bag of flour on me and had to run around I am sure I would say it was harder, but I know I could still do it. I lift much more than 40 pounds at the gym.
I am sure it makes people feel better to look at me, but the view and feel from the inside of me is the same. I am not discounting the fact that eventually something would give way on my body and I would feel worse, but as of right now I feel the same lighter as I did heavier.
Perhaps if something did hurt I might have not gotten in this position. All this is to say, even if you feel great it is better for you to be closer to an ideal weight. You don’t have to wait until you feel bad to lose weight. That day might not come in time to do anything about it.
Appliance Love
Posted: September 6, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: appliances, green stamps, stick blenders, washers 5 CommentsI have always loved appliances. When I was an adolescent I started asking my parents to give them to me for Christmas. My thinking was I no longer wanted toys and I was going to need all those appliances someday, why not start collecting them now when my parents were paying.
I think I was eleven when I got a tiny Sony black and white TV. I never had to leave my room again. My father learned his lesson from the TV and gave me a sewing machine the next year and on Christmas afternoon brought me four pairs of pants he needed mended.
When I was in college the Weis Market in Carlisle, PA gave out green stamps. I started saving freshman year, volunteering to do the shopping when my Pi Phi pledge class was having a function. Eventually I moved off campus and shopped weekly with my roommates pasting the stamps in the little books after every trip to the store.
After three years I had amassed enough green stamps, 62 books, to get the second most expensive thing in the catalogue, a Cuisineart. Only a canoe took more books. When I went to the redemption center to turn in my hard licked stamp books the other patrons clapped for me. The clerk told me I was the first Cuisineart she had ever awarded. That appliance served me well through 10 years of catering and hundreds of dinner parties. It was 25 years old before I retired it.
This appliance love might be somewhat genetic because my daughter, Carter likes appliances too. When she was about six years old the two of us were leaving the mall late in the evening. I asked her if we could go out through Sears because I wanted to look at the new washer and dryers.
Since we were the only customers in the white goods department we had a number of salesmen descend upon us. I will never forget the starry look in Carter’s eyes when the clerk asked if there was something he could help us with.
At six, she was sure he was talking to her, so she responded in a sing-songy voice, “No thank you, we are just dreaming.”
That salesman must have thought one of two things, that Carter was his ideal life-time customer or that we were too poor to own a washer and spent hours at the laundry mat, otherwise a small child would never dream of a new front loading set.
Today I love my stick blender with it’s 8 different attachments for whisking, chopping – both rough and fine and blending of all sorts. It is a dieter’s best friend. I can make smoothies, soups, sauces and purees all without dirtying another bowl, pitcher or appliance. You just put the stick in the pot of tomatoes sitting on the stove, flick it on and within seconds I have whirled up a soup for dinner.
So in case you do not have the appliance gene, or you are looking for the perfect gift for your mother for Christmas, think of a stick blender and dream of all she will do with it.
Less Dana, More Good 