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Addiction, the sequel (again!); stir-fry problem solvers

A friend’s child went into drug rehab this week. And the way my friend describes the drug use is exactly my thought process when I’m getting ready to medicate my low moods with over-eating:

“S/he was only using a few times a week. S/he’d use, feel good. It would wear off. S/he’d get sick (feel bad) and think, ‘Just this once, it won’t matter if I use again.’  ” And again. And again. We junkies know how that goes just in case you thought being addicted to food is any different than being addicted to other substances providing instant highs, subsequent lows.

OK, it’s not against the law to finish the ice cream in the container when a half serving remains. But the sugar makes me feel lousy in the short run, the fat, in the long run. A significant portion of my difficulties running up and down stairs, after all, is the 40 extra pounds packed about my mid-section.

So, alone in the house last night (well, if two not particularly housebroken dogs, a rambunctious kitten and two pissed-off cats count as alone), I had this chat with myself: “Yes, it will too matter. Go to bed. Feel good about your strengths, instead of bad about your weaknesses. Think about your supper and how in most of the world, that was probably a day’s worth of food.” And I did. Yay, me.

And that supper was so good, we polished it off in two days, with me forgetting to take a picture. It was a gingered Cashew Chicken from the January/February issue of Cuisine at Home magazine, a recipe that answered two of my frequent quibbles about stir-fries: 1) They all taste the same and 2) the meat is overdone to a fare-thee-well. Remedies: 1) Toasted sesame oil, fresh ginger and chili garlic sauce and 2) pre-cooking the chicken.

Cashew chicken

1-1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch cubes

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

3/4 cup roasted cashews

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon chili garlic sauce

1 cup scallion slices (green part)

Find chili garlic sauce in Asian foods section of your supermarket. Use it in recipes or splashed on jasmine rice like ketchup on a burger.

As with any stir-fry, have all ingredients ready to pop in the pan before you fire up the stovetop. Cook chicken in saucepan of boiled salted water until cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes; drain and refrigerate tightly covered,  if not using immediately.

Heat oil in wok or skillet. Add cashews; stir-fry until fragrant, 1 minute. Add ginger and stir-fry 30 seconds. Stir in soy sauce and chili garlic sauce, then add cooked chicken; stir-fry 2 minutes more. Stir in scallions. Serve over rice.

Makes 4 servings, 381 cal and 20 g fat each.

Category:

Chinese food, Emo eating, Food addiction, Simple foods, Weight loss

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Full moon setting; rosemary mashed sweet potatoes with caramelized shallots

Florida-grapefruit yellow moon dropping to the horizon outside study windows this morning, something I’d miss if I could sleep past 4 a.m. The last of the moonlight makes luminous the mist exhaled by the sleeping pastures, and I wonder, again, how I can leave this extraordinary beauty for a more prosaic site with more people,  more life.

Because I drove more than 150 miles yesterday for lunch with a cousin I hadn’t seen in 44 years, my glamorous second-cousin Amy with her mother’s smokey eyes and voice.  Amy’s dad and my mother were first cousins in the more-or-less gothic Lawrence clan. Not that they wore black eyeliner and tattoos, but each of the four children of Amy’s and my great-grandparents seemed to suffer blows beyond the usual twists in life’s journeys. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t beautiful and privileged — they were, all of them. 

So it was extraordinary to sit for several hours with someone who has her own take on our shared family dramas, who remembers me half a century ago, someone who was there when the elderly siblings dove into their Manhattans before every family celebration, someone who also beheld our formidable great-grandmother swathed in black and swirling snowflakes before the annual Christmas Eve blow-out. The Cheever biography I’m reading disparages autobiography-as-novel, but I think my mother’s family was the ultimate, hair-raising novel.

That’s my beautiful cousin on the right who looks WAAAAY more than 6 years younger!

But if they didn’t do well at emotional expression, they excelled in the kitchen. Thus, as their true descendant (even if I do look like her despised mother-in-law as my mother said all the time), I would rather cook and eat than say something meaningful to someone else or, for that matter, see long-”lost” relatives. Which is why I need to live where there are someones, particularly those who walk and hit the Y (which is what I’m going to do instead of joining Weight Watchers — I have to feel good enough to work out which is only going to happen with some water exercise classes).

My FB friend Peg R. has an interesting proposal, that all of us struggling with food/weight issues commit to being 3 pounds lighter by Jan. 1. (She’s also suggesting each of us be able to do as many pushups by then as we are years old, but that’s not going to happen.) A  manageable goal that should, nevertheless, make us feel that we’re constructively dealing with  the stressful holidays.

By way of a positive beginning, I gained nothing over Thanksgiving. It was more important to do things other than eating and, when eating, to choose the healthy foods. The following Nov. 2010 Cooking Light recipe is my go-to sweet potato casserole for the foreseeable future. Farewell marshmallows and gobs of butter; hello, crisply caramelized and lightly sugared shallots.

Rosemary mashed sweet potatoes with shallots

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons good-quality olive oil, divided

3/4 cup thinly sliced shallots (about 2 large)

2 teaspoons brown sugar

2 pounds sweet potatoes, roasted and peeled

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in skillet over low heat. Add shallots and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle with sugar; cook 20 minutes or until shallots are golden, stirring occasionally.

Nothing but healthy food and drink as far as the eye can see.

Put sweet potatoes through ricer. Add rosemary, salt and pepper, whisk until blended. Spoon into serving bowl; top with shallots and drizzle with remaining 2 teaspoons oil. Makes 6 servings of 202 calories, 6.3 fat grams each.

Category:

healthy cooking, Holiday cooking, Holiday eating, Importance of others to recovering addict, Weight loss, Why overweight?

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2 pounds and 2 weeks ’til reunion!

Here comes the sun! Several kinds of sunflowers beginning to bloom with red and white okra at their knees.

I wonder if any other of my classmates has to buy a new fence charger before our 50th reunion in 2.5 weeks. When I went out to put on fly masks this morning, we had a free range quarterhorse, and it will not do if any of our three amigos range onto N. Meadow Rd. while we’re in Pennsylvania.

I wonder a lot of things.  This is kinda like a mega-blind date with 100 or so people I knew a lifetime ago. Who will have grown into really interesting adults? Who will have worked really, really hard at staying the same people they were at 17 and 18? Who’s died? Who’s better than ever? (Is that possible?) Can I have a real conversation with anyone (remember, we’ll be only 90 miles from Penn State)?

Will the guys who called me Baby Huey in 9th and 10th grades repeat it, still thinking it’s so funny? How will I handle it if they do, understanding, of course, that they can only hurt the 14- and 15-year-old in me, not the 67-year-old who’s a year younger than they are, who still has her hair, who shared a Plaza Hotel bathroom with Harrison Ford and who’s within 2 pounds of her 24 years ago wedding weight!

Like so many high schoolers — maybe most — I felt I fit in nowhere (except on a stage so I was always singing somewhere). I didn’t date; I didn’t go to a prom or any of the near-constant dances, all of which required not just a date but a boyfriend. (I am so, so happy that seems to have changed, and many, if not most, of my young friends at church went to their proms this year in flocks of friends.)

I was smart, and the ’50s and ’60s were not a time for girls/women to be bright.   Boys had to do better and be taller, be the ones to talk about themselves on dates (for those who dated).  I had some kind friends, male and female, and it’s for them I’m going back.

Because why? Because I’m curious. Because I want to know that our small group is happy (although I think “happy” is a meaningless construct), healthy and still interested in our world, still taking classes or lessons, still riding our bikes, in good relationships with our spouses, our children and/or  grands if we have them, not complaining about our joints, still laughing, still kind. I want to be with people who share some of my same memories, people who remember me at 16. I want to be inspired and to inspire.

And if I were honest, I’d admit I’d like to see some people really miserable. Proof that karma’s a bitch and all that.

I want to re-visit my younger self, wear that ugly 1962 senior picture on my ID badge and make peace with her. Applaud her and tell her she did the best she could with what she had. Tell her I understand how very difficult it was to be her 50 years ago and if anybody calls her Baby Huey, cold-cock ‘em with my newly tanned and muscled arm.

**********

In the meantime, nourishing that kick-ass body, I made this salad last night with leftover corn frozen on July 4 and with the last of our 2011 green beans. Corn had been cooked on the cob and beans, blanched when frozen so I did no further cooking.  Both need at least a 2-minute blanching.

This recipe ran in EatingWell magazine in 1995 and The Essential EatingWell Cookbook (2004) as well. I don’t think the amount or proportion of beans and corn matters much — I used roughly half and half which is more corn than recipe calls for.  But it’s just like any salad — your creation. We enjoyed it with tilapia fillets baked in cumin-, cilantro- and jalapeno-laced tortilla chips.

Green bean salad with corn, basil and black olives (see caption)

2 pounds green beans, trimmed

3 ears corn, husked, blanched and cut from cob

1/2 small red bell pepper, finely chopped

1 small red onion, finely chopped (I used scallions)

2/3 cup black olives, halved and pitted (wish I’d had)

1/3 cup chopped fresh basil

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 cloves garlic, minced

Hot sauce, such as Tabasco, to taste

Salt and freshly ground papper, to taste

Leftovers make a perfect summer lunch with slices of ripe avocado.

Combine bell pepper, onion, olives, basil, oil, vinegar, lemon juice and garlic in appropriately sized bowl. Toss to mix well. Season with hot sauce, salt and pepper. Toss in corn and beans. Cover and refrigerate to let flavors blend. With proportions given, makes 6 to 8 servings.

 

 

Category:

Salad, Simple foods, Summer salads, Uncategorized, vegetables, Weight loss, Why overweight?

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Puppy poop

It’s hard to fault a day in which a kitty shares her lunch chipmunk. Even a day when the air is like wet bread. Puppy and I walked 2.5 20-minute miles this morning. For her, that’s not even stretching her paws. For me, it’s faster than lightning, and I was soaked at the end of those 50 panting minutes. Then I tackled the wisteria and some other garden issues for two hours.

This is the final push: 4 weeks and 2 days until My White Knight and I walk into my h.s. classmate Barb’s house to stay for 3 nights. I want to lose 6 pounds in these 4 weeks+. Yesterday I told livestrong.com I want to lose 1.5 pounds per week (instead of 1) and upped my daily exercise to 2 hours. (Meanwhile, My White Knight will lose that much, damn his eyes, by giving up his second cookie on his second work break.)

The problem isn’t the two hours — it’s doing anything else afterward, not to mention house/crate-breaking said puppy. We haven’t had a puppy in 14 years or so and I’m remembering why. If dogs are good at being dogs, puppies are absolute geniuses at being puppies with puppy teeth and puppy poop!

I’m either going to eat from the garden or eat 300-calorie frozen suppers until August. I’m going to eat Italian ices instead of ice cream at night, and I’m going to sleep. (This is not difficult after 3 hours of exercise and walking a puppy about 20 times.)

I am proud of myself for not falling face-forward onto the groaning board on July Fourth, for having just a bite of the fresh peach pound cake and half a chocolate chip cookie while savoring a piece of Hungry Girl’s Banana Split Pie (under 200 calories).

You can enjoy a holiday meal without eating so much you want to throw up. Put down your fork between bites, drink a lot of water and talk to others. Ask them questions because you’re interested in people besides yourself. By the time you and your friends  move to the deck to watch 7 different municipal fireworks displays on the horizon, you’ll be able to pack up those  second helpings as leftovers for the next several days.

Haven’t had a pig-out since April 17 and reading Holy Hunger. Two months of saying to myself, “Really? Why, exactly, do you need that?” is some sort of record for me, and it feels really good. And all this exercise, combined with a good chiropractor, means — I just noticed this — that my joints feel better which, in turn, means I’m inclined to move more. And — this is odd — my hips and waist feel smaller when I move.

Jane Brody’s column on joint replacement in Tuesday’s New York Times says when we walk, we burden each knee with 1.5 times our body weight. That means with every step I take , I slam each knee with 275 pounds. And if I run (!), I can multiply that by 7 or 8, which means around a ton of avoirdupois on each of those old knees. No wonder they hurt after I run!

For a woman who’s spent her life in search of instant gratification, this has been a long, strange trip — two years in October — that should last for the rest of my life. If you’d told me in October 2010 that it would take me this long to lose 42 pounds (seems so trifling in light of “Biggest Loser” and “Extreme Makeover — Weight Loss Edition”), would I have cheerfully skipped down the yellow brick road of gradual fitness? I doubt it. Would I have believed you if you’d told me it would take this long to feel this much better? Yes, and then I’d have eaten a pound of salted nuts!

So it’s kind of a glorious accident that I’ve lasted on the (relatively) straight and narrow. In church we call it grace. Another word for a blessing I did nothing to deserve. Just like the puppy who’ll need at least 18 months to calm the heck down!

To use the vernacular, Black Pearl is both “a hot Southern mess” and “wide open all the time.”

Category:

Weight loss, Why overweight?, Maintaining weight loss, Compulsive eating, Animal rescue

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Best crockpot potatoes ever

Plug, plug, plug. This is what I do every day. Work at turning eating in a healthy way into a way of life. A lifestyle even. Keep track of my calories. Measure food with scales, cups and spoons. Exercise. Exercise more. Drink quarts and quarts of water. Sleep.

On the plus side my flowers look as good as they’ve ever looked in the almost 23 years we’ve lived up here on our hilltop. On the minus, I’m not much fun, collapsing into my recliner before it gets dark and trudging to bed not long after that!  Today I did my 15 minutes worth of yoga,  rode my newly tuned-up bike for 45, then weeded and clipped irises for two hours. Whew!

This week I’ve also weeded around the rhubarb and realize we probably have some of those lovely red stalks out there now, ready to eat. I’ve picked huge heads of broccoli and found them full of small jade-colored worms that have crawled in to spin their cocoons (a saltwater soak disposes of them most efficiently). I’ve picked lettuce that’s somehow stayed green and crispy in this summer heat (90s today), cleaned up around our two apple trees, pruned 3 gigantic mock orange bushes, several shaggy harlequin glorybower and forsythia bushes. I’ve made an impatiens bed for coral and salmon-colored blossoms and planted 14 basil babies ($2 at Walmart) in the herb bed. I am gardening woman, hear me moan.

The upside here is I lunched on our neighbor Anne Cain’s amazing goat cheese terrine with pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and green olives spread on good garlic crackers. Even with a lime fruit bar (70 calories) for dessert, I still haven’t eaten as many calories as I’ve burned. (Remember, I track calories in and calories out for free on livestrong.com.)

I think I decided (!) yesterday that I’d like to lose 30 more pounds and that it will probably take at least a year, but that’s OK. I don’t want to give up all things tasty, just plan to continue moderating how much I eat. This morning’s breakfast, for instance: One serving of a 277-calorie per serving blackberry cobbler with 1/2 cup of plain Greek yogurt (another 70 calories).

With these potatoes, which were devoured before I remembered to take their picture, I trimmed fat from the recipe (original recipe called for 1 pound bacon, among other mind-boggling extravagances) and ate no more than 1/2 cup per meal, much as I wanted to devour the entire slow cooker-full!

Best crockpot potatoes ever

3 pounds potatoes, peeled and cut into slices, cooked in gently boiling water until done, about 15 minutes

2 ounces Cheddar cheese

3 ounces Parmesan cheese

5 ounces reduced-fat ricotta cheese

5 slices bacon, cooked, drained and crumbled

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix 3 cheeses. Layer in slow cooker with potatoes and bacon crumbles. Cook on low for 3 to 4 hours and try not to eat the whole thing

 

Category:

good food, Rural life, Simple foods, Weight loss

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Holy hunger

On April 17 my friend Dannye lent me a book that’s changed my life. One month and 4 days may not seem like a long time, but it’s a long time for me not to overeat. And thanks to Margaret Bullitt-Jonas’s Holy Hunger (Vintage Books, 1998), I don’t think “long time”  anymore but a day at a time. Sometimes even a few minutes at a time, until I can get up and walk around, leave the kitchen, brush my teeth, go to bed, whatever I need to do until the destructive impulse to eat fades.

Bullitt-Jonas found healing in Overeaters Anonymous, the church and the writings of psychologist Alice Miller. “Miller showed me that the true self is a potentiality within each child that only comes into existence as the child is noticed, understood, and taken seriously by its parents.”

Paraphrasing Miller, Bullitt-Jonas gives a pitch-perfect rendition of my childhood: “If…a child feels that she must earn her parents’ love by behaving a certain way or by expressing only certain needs and feelings — if…she must construct a ‘false self’ in order to be accepted and to survive — then, however successful and accomplished she may grow up to appear, inwardly she will be fragile, anxious, depressed.” And probably expressing those feelings within the framework of an eating disorder. Wow, it’s like Miller and Bullitt-Jonas grew up in my house.

So what to do to put the ice storm behind me, besides trying to figure out how my parents were themselves damaged? Reading about Bullitt-Jonas’s enlightenment in OA seems to have made brain tumblers click into place and unlock a subconscious vault:

“In the lexicon of OA, the verb ‘to eat,’ when it stands alone without a direct object, is shorthand for ‘compulsive overeating.’ To refuse ‘to eat’ means to refuse the first compulsive bite, to refuse to binge.  If I wanted to have a life, if I wanted to find out who I was and why I was here on this earth, if I wanted to learn how to love and how to let love in, if I wanted to be happy and at peace with myself, if I wanted my existence to have any sense of meaning or purpose, if I wanted nothing more noble or ambitious than simply to stop being so miserable and so filled with self-hatred — if I wanted any of these things, I’d have to stop eating compulsively. I’d have to put the food down. It was as stark, as simple, and as scary as that.” Yeah, baby. What she said.

This is why “Biggest Loser” contestants are always crying and why their biggest job lies ahead of them when they leave “the ranch” and go home. Home is where the heat is (not necessarily heart). Surgical weight loss and “diet” drugs must be like slamming into menopause overnight, leaving you to deal with (or not) all this stuff in a scalpel snip or swallow.

Years ago, I found myself envying a newsroom co-worker whose dad the alcoholic butcher used to knock the kids around but when sober, told them he loved them. “We always knew we were loved,” he said. I would have given everything for that as a child.

Maybe I need to stop kicking myself for taking 66 years to manage my mouth. Maybe I need to say, it’s OK, it took this long to navigate the twists and turns of my family tree (has to be a curly willow, doesn’t it?). To realize, in Bullitt-Jonas’s words: “There’s no way in hell you’ll find out who you are, what you’re doing, if you’re eating compulsively. Every escape into food is a delay, a retreat, a decision to close down. So get with it. Work your program or die. Stay awake. Open your eyes, not your mouth.” Holy hunger, Batwoman!

Category:

Compulsive eating, Food addiction, Overeaters Anonymous, Seniors and weight loss, Weight loss, Why overweight?

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Baby onions, grown-up onions

Baby onions have stems no bigger than the stick on a Q-tip. The easiest way to slip them to their 1-inch recommended depth is to use a dibble planter with inches marked on it (like the one made for me by my friend Jerry Keys out of poplar wood). Poke a hole to 1 inch, plop in the onion and firm the earth around it. Just make sure that your onions can enjoy all-day sunbathing — I put a few in a shady nook  to see what would happen (and because I was out of onion room) and they haven’t grown a bit, just moped.

Baby onions waiting to go in ground. The established plants in each hill are garlic and leeks.

If your onions do something more productive than mope in the shade, someday you can enjoy this onion tart from the April 2011 issue of Cooking Light.  A rustic crust like this (no pan) is also called a galette. This one is heady with the earthy flavors of roasted onion, feta and Swiss cheese and fresh thyme. My thyme plants are also mopey (or deceased) so I used 2 teaspoons dried thyme instead of 2 tablespoons chopped fresh. The magazine suggested an arugula and walnut salad to accompany since neither of those ingredients will be overpowered by the  onions and cheese.

Onion tart

1 tablespoon olive oil

2-1/2 pounds onions, peeled, trimmed and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 14.1-ounce package refrigerated pie dough (1 crust)

1/4 cup crumbled reduced-fat feta cheese

1/4 cup shredded reduced-fat Swiss cheese

1 large egg, lightly beaten with 2 tablespoons water

Heat oven to 425º. Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion, thyme, salt and pepper; cook 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Roll or stretch out dough on parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle feta cheese in center, leaving 1-1/2-inch border; top with onion. Sprinkle with Swiss cheese. Fold piecrust border up and over onion mixture, pleating as you go, leaving a 6-inch-wide opening.

Combine egg and water; brush over dough. Bake at 425º for 25 minutes or until golden. Cool for 10 minutes. Makes 4 servings, 402 calories, 9 g fat each.

Onion galette with the last of our 2011 onion crop.

 

Category:

good food, healthy cooking, Local food, Rural life, Simple foods

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Five guys, anniversary and pickled eggs

I have a long-time friend who’s said since she met His Royal Plaidshirtness (HRP) that he’s one of only 5 good guys in the galaxy and that if I ever leave him, she will personally take me apart. I agree he’s one of the good guys, and I happily think back to 24 years ago at this moment  when oldest daughter Joanna and I were on our way to Divajade to get our hairs done for the 1 p.m. wedding whoopdedo up here in the pasture.

A good partnership at work: Lew, Dannye and their 3-year-old grandson, Townes. Baby eating Greek yogurt.

At the same time, or near’bouts, daughter Alexandra was headed for a shower in HRP’s grandparents’ pink shingled house where she spent the night and discovered just how many praying mantis nymphs hatch from one egg case (up to 400, evidently). 

I don’t agree with the 5 good guys part, though. Projecting myself back into yesterday’s choir loft I see many more than 5 men who are grownups, who are funny, sexy, committed to their relationships and hard at work at something, be it a job, a father-daughter dance, babysitting for grandchildren or cheering a daughter-in-law’s flute solo.

HRP is the right guy for me who will always (damn his eyes!) call me on my delusional thinking, but there are plenty of others “out there,” including the loving, longtime husband of my friend Dannye, who hosted a real ladies’ lunch for us old newsroom gals last week. I know for sure Lew made the good coffee, and I’m guessing he helped with a few other things as well. The house and yard and table were completely Southern Living-perfect, and Dannye taught us how to make good deviled eggs without mayonnaise (hummus, yellow French’s mustard and a few drops of Tabasco).

All of us ate the pickled beets, but I alone braved the pickled eggs. I’m a Pennsylvania Dutch girl, and pickled eggs are just a colorful part of that. I’ve eaten some from a sketchy-looking gallon jar on a bar, but mostly I’ve made my own by peeling hard-boiled eggs and letting them take it easy for a few days in a non-reactive container (glass or stainless steel) of pickling beets. 

I use the easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy pickled beets directions from the always reliable 1987 Fearrington House Cookbook: A Celebration of Food, Flowers and Herbs (Jenny Fitch, Ventana Press, Inc.). The older my taste buds become, the more I find I enjoy a small, piquant taste of pickle with many meals.

Pickled beets (and eggs)

A fuzzy picture of chicken salad, grape tomatoes, chips, a deviled egg, pickled beets and a very colorful pickled egg. You can see how the pickling liquid works through the white.

1-1/2 pounds fresh beets, cooked, trimmed, peeled and cut into wedges

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

2 whole cloves

1/2 teaspoon pickling spices, tied with cook’s twine in cheesecloth

Combine water, vinegar, sugar and cloves and bring to boil. Add pickling spice packet and stir until sugar dissolves. Pour over beets. Add hard-boiled eggs for a little taste adventure and cover the container. Let sit, refrigerated for 2 or 3 days (stirring gently every now and then), but serve pickles at room temperature.

 

Category:

Beets, eggs, healthy cooking, Marriage, Pickles, Spices

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Neuroses, chocolate bunnies and tuna casserole

I will never be able to eat everything I want to eat. I will never be able to eat enough to make me “happy” (read: numb). I will never be able to eat enough to make me feel loved, appreciated, beautiful, fill in the blank (and this I mean literally — the hollow that is within me is like that of a chocolate bunny).

OK, having realized that, can I now move on with my life? Please? Millions of privileged, normal-weight people do that daily, hourly even. Look at a cupcake, the rest of the tortilla chips, whatever, and hear an internal voice that says, simply, “No, I can’t.” And that’s the end of it. There’s no tussle back and forth between the lean conscience and the chubby devils on the shoulders. Just: I can’t.

No problem for me with alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. Just the peanuts in the pantry, the ice cream in the freezer.

Years ago as a struggling single mother of two, I remember rushing home from work to a beer or two while I fixed supper. Then the moment that I realized how much I was looking forward to that beer or two and that I couldn’t drink alone and lonely. That was the end of it. Now, I’d like my Easter miracle, please, to be that this is my end of over-eating to make myself “feel better.” I do believe in fairies, I do, I do, or anything else that will help me take this huge step.

Except that nothing can help me. Only I can take it. Again and again. And again. The bunny never feels full, only complete or devoured. I’m aiming at my version of complete, which is the best I can be. Happy Palm Sunday.

And in a lurching segue (oxymoron alert!), this is the best tuna casserole I’ve ever tasted. The recipe says it makes 4 servings, but they are huge. Can easily be 6 or 8 with a huge serving of spring greens beside. And a blood orange is the perfect capper to make you forget you might “need” a cookie or two.  Use reduced-fat sour cream, mayonnaise and milk, and it still has a decadent mouth feel.

Tuna noodle supreme from Ellen Proctor of Great Barrington, MA, on allrecipes.com several years ago:

1-1/2 cups sour cream

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

4 cups cooked small pasta shells (I hate it when a recipe doesn’t give you the amount of UN-cooked pasta — I used 3 cups uncooked, and it made a little more than 4 cups of cooked small shells.)

2 cups broccoli florets

1 12-ounce can tuna, drained and flaked

1/2 cup chopped sweet red pepper

1/2 cup sliced green onions

Heat oven to 350º. In large bowl, combine sour cream, mayonnaise, milk, cheese, mustard, salt and pepper. Stir in cooked pasta, broccoli, tuna, red pepper and onions. Transfer to oil-sprayed 2-quart baking dish. Cover and bake for 40 to 45 minutes until hot and bubbly. If you like a little crunch around the edges of your pasta, finish with 5 minutes of uncovered baking time. Note: For either fresh or frozen broccoli florets, throw into pasta cooking water for last minute or two of pasta cooking time. Drain pasta and broccoli together and continue with recipe.

 

Category:

Casseroles, Chocolate, Fish, Food addiction, good food, healthy cooking, Self control, Stress eating, Weight loss, Why overweight?, Willpower

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Mindful eating of perfect cornbread

Every once in a while I stumble upon a recipe so perfect that I know I’ll never try another version of that particular food.

The Silver Palate brownies with cinnamon and instant coffee (I added those two ingredients) is one. Rhonda Mellott’s baked corn recipe is another, although I’d call it cornbread because it’s more structured than the dish I associate with corn pudding. I started to say “drier”, but dry is the last word I thought when eating this lusciously moist bread with a real corn taste.

World’s best cornbread ever

1 15.25-ounce can whole kernel corn

1 14.75-ounce can cream-style corn

1/2 cup sour cream

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted

2 eggs

1 12-ounce package corn muffin mix

 Heat oven to 350°.Combine the whole-kernel corn, cream-style corn, sour

This rich "pudding" is somewhere between cornbread and spoonbread.

cream, melted butter or margarine, beaten eggs and corn muffin mix. Mix until ingredients are just moistened, let stand for 5 minutes and then pour into oil-sprayed 9-x13- inch baking pan. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until firm and beginning to brown. (As you can see, I got carried away last night and revved the oven up to “scorch”.) Serves 10 to 12.

 
Having set down those precise ingredients, I should probably tell you I used half light butter to cut the fat content, took the kernels off 9 ears of corn and used them with about 1/4 cup whipping cream in place of the canned corns.
 
It is so good. I tried to eat it “mindfully,” but I’m afraid I’m just not “mindful eating” material. I’ve promised myself I’ll try and eat more slowly, putting down my utensils now and again and even appreciating what I’m chewing. But the idea of paying to go to a Buddhist monastery to learn how to spend 10 to 20 minutes eating 3 raisins just strikes me as hilarious. At the same time, of course, I realize that if I could do that, I would be reedy.
 

 

Category:

good food, Quick bread, Simple foods, Weight loss

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