Low Fat versus Low Carb

Ye gods, what with having company for a month (vegetarian high starch diet) and a trip to the Berkshires (pecan pie bars and lots and lots of food), the scale crept up.  And up.  And up.  Now, Grapeshot never met a fat gram she didn't like, and drastic methods were called for, so we went back on a modified South Beach Diet/Dr. Atkins Diet, the only "diets" I've ever lost weight on except for starvation, and I gained that back so fast your head would swim.

The South Beach Diet has some really tasty recipes.  We love the lone dessert, the veggie-egg cups for breakfast and some of the main dish salads and entrees.  I have some low carb recipes  I alternate with these dishes, and we eat a lot of grilled chicken, veggies and fruit.  Of course with ripe tomatoes, there's a boundless supply of Insalata Caprese.   In 4 days I lost the accumulation of 7 weeks.  Not bad.  We allow modest treats occasionally, and work out.  I intend to keep this up until an October vacation, and I'll be posting occasionally to report progress or a lack thereof.

Next on the menu are roast beef sandwiches on rye crisp, tuna salad and then fajitas (no sour cream) with steak and shrimp.  We use corn tortillas instead of flour.  Flour tortillas lack fiber and do have fat, whereas corn is a low cal treat with fiber.  And it actually tastes like something.  Oils from avocado are good.  Just don't overdo it.  We make one avocado last for 2 meals, which means one is eating 1/4 of an avocado.  So delicious.  So satisfying.  I flunked out of Weight Watchers 4 times because of the stringent lipophobic menus.  Weight Watchers is for carb lovers.  I can take carbs or leave them.  Naturally, fresh fries, garlic mashed, baked potatoes with the works are wonderful lovey foods, but I can say goodbye to them for long periods of time.  

Summer makes for easy dieting because of the grill, fresh produce, wonderful main dish shrimp and chicken salads, and hot weather.  No need for pot roast or chili con carne or those darned baked potatoes in summer.  Actually, I knew someone who could eat a baked potato plain, and another woman who liked it with non-fat yogurt.   Ecch!   Non-fat anything to me tastes like chalk.  Once we bought non-fat cottage cheese by mistake and it was almost inedible.

Years ago, I ate some Weight Watchers macaroni and cheese and it tasted like detergent.  This was a while back, and I hope they fixed the recipe in the meantime.  But you get the idea.  Some people will eat chalk and detergent if they can just get to those carbs underneath, but not me.  To each her own diet.

It costs more at the grocery store, because produce and lean meat are expensive, and carbs (pasta, rice and beans) are cheap.  Not that you can't add a few black beans to the fajitas.  Or to a salad.  Moderation in all things.

In the meantime, we discovered grilled fennel, grilled portobellos and other exotic grilled veg.  We will also be doing grilled peaches and grilled plums.

Yup!  In the good old summertime, dieting isn't such an ordeal.

Grapeshot

Dove Sta Amore

Some observations about doves.  Both in our old neighborhood and here, we always had 3 doves hanging out together, a little menage a trois.  A week or so ago, when the snow started, they huddled together under the picnic table on the deck, where I have been throwing out bird seed.

A few days ago, there was a thud against the window and some poor sparrow, according to the book a swamp sparrow, who had been hanging out with the chicadees and juncos came to grief.  I watched and watched and finally he flew away.  Whew!  Did not want to bring him in for the night and plop him into the cat carrier.

Driving along I-495, we saw 40 or so doves on a wire, and fifty yards from there a hawk sitting in a tree top.  Didn't seem to freak out the doves, although one of them would have made a tasty meal.  Twice today I saw them swoop, go into formation and then settle on an electrical wire.  There seems to be some method to this, but I don't know what it is.  You can watch and observe your entire life and still not know the answers to practically anything, at least in the natural world.  I can't even figure out whose footprints are along the edge of the yard.  Not deer, bear, coyote, fox, raccoon, rabbit, skunk, squirrel, etc.  Who be it?  No idea. 

There was a disturbing article in the Wall Street Journal (Friday) about the end of the slush pile, just what a scantily published writer doesn't want to see, and another great article today about the popularity of the Scandinavian detective novel.  I am reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and after a slow start, it is now so scary that I can't read it before bedtime.   I loved the Wallendar series on PBS, too.  Good stuff.  I don't know who wrote the detective article, but it was thoughtful and well-researched.

I found the link for you, and the author is Laura Miller.  A good read!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703657604575004961184066300.html

I found a great (so far) calorie counter on the web, googling free calorie counter.  Ye gods, some of them charged.  Since we eat a non-standard diet (no fast food, no takeout, no pizza) but a lot of ethnic dishes and retro faves cooked at home--with few prepared foods, I was dubious about finding the right tool, so I Googled "stuffed pork tenderloin" and "breaded pork tenderlion" and "goulash soup."  Guess what?  They all popped up on the calorie counter I finally picked.

What happened was, after our guests left, I had an unopened jar of peanut butter in the house and while I was debating whether to keep it or send it to the food pantry, I unaccountably found myself removing the lid and taking a knife and digging out a big portion.  That was last Sunday.  There is one helping left, which means I ate 2280 calories of peanut butter (no crackers, no jelly) this week in addition to my usual food, and the scale heralded the bad news this morning.  Hence the calorie counter.

I am not a person who likes any kind of diet, and the more rigid, the more preachy, the more "sincere" the more I want to race out of the house for a double cheeseburger, fries and a half-bottle of wine.  There is indeed something contrary about my personality.  Just like my dad.  Well, we know about the apple and the tree and how far it falls.

 I washed out of weight watchers either three or four times, until I lost count.  I mean, who had time to count points and you could eat a pile of sh__ but no butter, and I don't do butter substitutes.  Never.

South Beach diet was o.k., good recipes, but I didn't really lose much weight, because I don't do weird non-foods like "fat free half and half."  Ever read the ingredients on something like that?  Cripes, it will kill you. 

Dr. Atkins and I saw eye to eye, all that meat, all that fat, yum, and no boring potatoes or bread.  Except I spent the winter on the road and gained it all back.  Motel breakfast bars are just not calibrated for a high protein low carb breakfast. 

So it stood.  Lost the weight I gained last Christmas and kept it off thru January 5th, and then this week there was the incident of the peanut butter.  It is one of my "no control" foods, so I don't keep it in the house.  Fried chicken is another, but of course, you don't run into the kitchen and quick fry up a chicken and we are far enough away fromt the "Colonel" that this isn't a problem. I permit myself  7 Roche Bros. honey stung drummies for lunch ever so often.  About half a pound and it's mostly bones.  The lovely bones.  Everyone is panning the movie.

This post makes up, I hope, and thanks for sticking with me, for all the posts I haven't done lately.  Many tasks, with people and aggravations I don't want to discuss on the web.  Taking an on-line course on "Revision."  Revising Promiscuous Mode. 

Finally I have 3 ideas, one for each day between Denver and Reno for "In flight" and also my new Drug Lord scene.  So that's coming along if I could just write it.  And a terrible, awful idea for the climax. A really good twist.  Fortunately, no unfortunately, I'm not writing to deadline.  Only self-imposed, and I should get my butt planted on chair.  Actually, it has been, but I've been doing other computer stuff.

I'm learning Garage Band, too.  Not bad for an old broad.  Anyhow, onward to the sorting of the pile of paper on my desk, a few quick tasks, and then dinner.  The stuffed pork tenderloin.  I  just used Pepperidge Farm stuffing, a processed food, but it's a good quality brand.  We buy them the tenderloins as BOGOS, buy one, get one,  and it's good quality lean protein.  I like good quality lean protein, just like the flank steak earlier in the week.  The trick is not to eat too much, but enough so that you don't hit the PB at 11:30 p.m.  There's a trick to everything isn't there?

Such is life.

Grapeshot

Competitive Cooking

When I was in junior high and accompanied the pastor's daughter to the Wednesday Night Christian Fellowship suppers in the church basement, one of the biggest culinary delights of the spread (and a spread it was) was Mrs. Dahm's poppyseed cake. She made it for every supper, and no one had the recipe. It was white cake and a gooey layer and poppyseeds. Scrumptious. Maybe I wouldn't like it anymore, but back then it was oh-so-good. The good Lutheran woman's reluctance to share her recipe was my first inkling that cooks could be, well, competitive.

The second jolt was at a New Year's Eve party at my friend's house in Syosset, Long Island. We were trolling for hors d'oeuvres, and I made meatballs, always a popular offering, especially in the 70's when people didn't shun beef. A mutual friend, a male, made the comment that I was really a good cook and the meatballs "weren't very competitive," i.e. I could have made a showier dish and garnered more . . . what? compliments? admiration? Who knows.

The New Year's Eve group remained friends forever, and my friend and I used to cook on houseparty weekend's in East Hampton. We had some really cool menus and we cooked together, collaboratively, which is the way women have cooked for millenia. No mention of competition. The host made a fab Key Lime Pie, other guests made lunch or helped with dinner, the hostess, a non-cook, did the dishes. S.O. contributed his fantastic cocktail, the Sea Breeze. We were a happy crowd.

Then came the food channel. I love the Barefoot Contessa, and Paula and Giada and even Rachel and some of the guys. What I don't love are the frantic emo-laden competitions with tears and flashing knives and racing against the clock and the frantic urge to win, win win. This is not cooking as the world knows it. This is something else, rather ugly, actually.

Even the NY Times got into the action this week, pitting two food writers against each other, but the judge (the food critic) had enough sense to delare the competition a draw and just enjoy the meals. As we all should.

This competive cooking is crazy, and it must deter newcomers to the cooking life, which can actually be rather relaxing and easy if one times things right. So. Enough said. I made my poppyseed lemon cake today, and tonight we have a South Beach Diet chicken salad, both yummy. Last night I made a Spanish dish with scrod, and that was toothsome as well. No hurry involved. Working deliberately is one thing. Racing around the kitchen like a bloody fool is quite another.

Grapeshot

Vacation Gleanings, Diet Observations and Faux Turkey

Short men with short legs shouldn't wear long (below the knee) shorts. They look like dwarves. Not a good fashion statement.

One morning at our Chicago hotel, someone abandonned a $6.00 bowl of fresh fruit. Totally untouched. Delicious blackberries, et. al, with juicy watermelon chunks. I wanted to whisk it off to my room and scarf it down. What a shame.

Devon Avenue in Chicago, the longest street in the world. Starts in Pakistan, ends in Israel.

Chicago, like many other cities, has two seasons. Winter and road construction.

Tonight we're having a South Beach Diet chicken salad. SBD has some delicious recipes, although of course sometimes I make a few substitutions in the interest of taste.

The non-fat half-and-half is a weird concoction of chemicals--better living through chemistry I guess. Why don't they call low-fat cheese no-taste cheese, in the interest of truth in marketing. Actually, the Laughing Cow brand (La Vache qui Rit) does taste like, well, cheese. It's good on celery, just like the diet recommends. Whenever the stores have in on special, they sell out the first day, which tells you that many folks must be following the diet. As diets go, it's do-able.

Lots of people do, but I never could hack weight watchers. Counting all those points was a full time job, and they were such lipophobes. 72 points for a pat of butter. Not quite that bad, but almost.

And then there was good old Dr. Atkins, with peaches and cream and pork rinds instead of potato chips.

When we lived in Wellesley the stores didn't even have pork rinds. Wellesley women are thin by nature, driving those big SUVs to soccer practice, and whatever must burn calories. You can stroll through the entire Roche Bros. store and amid all that food and temptation, not see one fat woman. They are all buying that disgusting sliced turkey that has some sixth-cousin relationship to turkey or meat but mostly related to nitrates, saline and flavor enhancers. Yuck.

O.K., ask me how I feel about deli turkey. Do you ever seen skin? Bones? Anything resembling a real turkey? Ask yourself what you're eating.

Better yet, buy a turkey breast--the kind with bones, damn it, and rub it with canola oil, salt, pepper and some seasonings and roast it until the timer pops up. Carve and eat and put the rest in the fridge for turkey sandwiches.

Real people eat real food.

Grapeshot

Barbequed Spare Ribs with Apricot-Ancho Glaze

Yowza! These were about the best ribs ever!

http://www.boston.com/ae/food/articles/2006/05/24/barbecued_spare_ribs_with_apricot_ancho_glaze/

We limited ourselves to half a rack each and are doing penance with a South Beach Diet shrimp salad tomorrow, but I have to tell you, these ribs were supurb.

S.O. is gaining real cred as a grillmeister.

Penzey's has dried ancho chilis and all the rest of the fresh, price-wise spices you need:
http://www.penzeys.com/

The Apricot King (grown in the flavor zone) has wonderful dried apricots and other apricot products so fresh and tasty and vitamin-A rich! http://www.apricotking.com/

The only changes in the recipe I made were 1) light brown instead of dark brown sugar and 2) my ancho chilis were huge, so I only used one. I left most of the seeds in and cut down a bit on the cayenne pepper. I also left the glaze sort of chunky, but not, you know, really chunky.

I substituted smoked paprika in the glaze because I was running low on sweet paprika. Be sure to reconstitute the ancho before you put it into the glaze mixture. The pepper water can be used to flavor other dishes if you have them on your recipe horizon.

The heirloom beets in my garden look good and the one that the bad bunny nibbled is recovering. Cilantro, dill and sage going crazy. Summertime!

I went to a really weird party

Ooops, forgot that Friday (yesterday) was Cat Blog Day. This morning Thisbe told me that a good nap trumps everything except eating and that cleanliness is better than godliness. Feline wisdom from Friday.

Yesterday I pulled a party out of my memory, triggered by a commercial, the rum commercial--looks like South Beach-- where the bartender is making mojitos and pounding the mint and lime into the glass and the dancers are swinging their butts. He stops. They stop. He starts mulling the lime and the mint again. They dance again. I mentioned to S.O. that the first time I had seen sexy dancing like that had been at a beach party down in Ft. Lauderdale and we speculated whether the sinuous swing-your-butt and other parts dancing had come up from South Beach by way of some tropical island.

Thought processes wandered to Boston parties, esp. Boston business parties. I have yet to be present when the ladies didn't all get up to dance, usually to the Electric Slide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Slide

When we first moved here from Chicago I found this odd party custom outre, but now I get up and dance with the girls. Sometimes.

There are a few songs I can't sit still to, YMCA being one, and remembering how I drove to college everyday thru the worst Chicago winter ever jiving to the Village People.

That memory, of the women dancing together triggered a more distant one, of the night the men got up and danced but not together. I won't even say how long ago it was, but I was in college for the first time, home for the summer in Denver, working for my Dad, bored out of my mind and looking for adventure which I never found but came close a couple times.

I had a friend who had dropped out of college. We share the same first name and were both sort of blond and didn't have much in common except that we liked boys and also the business about being bored and wanting adventure. All that jazz. So, we hung out, and doubled dated sometimes, a quaint custom from the Dark Ages of dating.

I can't remember how we met the people where the party was. Obviously her connection, not mine. The host was a neer-do-well salesman who received stolen goods on the side (found that out later) and the hostess, his wife, was 18 and had just had her 4th child. Having so many kids so young and so close together and done a number on her reproductive system and she had also had a hysterectomy at 18. I don't think I had a date. We were just hanging out. The only other guy I actually remember was a big man, looked kind of like John Goodman and he sold shoes at the shopping center down the down from where my folks lived.

The college I was attending at the time, known sometimes as the Harvard of the Southwest, was an intellectual place--I was ready Ulysses that summer--and obviously I knew I was slumming, but yanno, adventure and boredom and all that.

So about 8 people were sitting at the end of the evening in an 8 x 8 living room--(8 is a lucky number in Chinese cultures but don't think it applies here). There wasn't room enough for everyone to sit, but my friend and I, being the ladies present, sat on the sofa. The host's wife had been dancing by herself to Honeybee (?). Think that was the name of the song. Anyway, all the guys agreed to get up and dance, one at a time, quite a novelty. There was a dim floor lamp and an even dimmer overhead light, and a record player, or maybe a radio, and each guy danced to a song. The one I remember was the shoe salesman, such a large guy and so light on his feet and with a serious look of concentration--not quite a frown on his face--and there was something moving about him and his concentration and his dancing and even his pride, such that I remember it to this day, the man sliding and gliding over the small middle of the living room floor. An epiphany.

I don't think I ever saw these people again, except once I went into a shoe store and saw the salesman/dancer and did an about face. My friend had a shotgun marriage the following summer to an extremely unsuitable man, had three boys, got divorced, married another man in Montana, who "showered her with diamonds" as my mother never tired of telling me. I graduated.

What could be crazier than life?

Grapeshot

There was my character, sitting in a squad car

Enough of morose posts. They do clear the air, somehow.

Yesterday morning, we took a stroll along the bridal path in Central Park in NYC. On the way back to my friend's apt., we had to cross 5th Avenue. Yesterday was the Aids Walk, so the cops were out in force, even the canine corps and the riot police--I did the Aids Walk for years and believe me, we never had any occasion for the riot police--but they were there anyhow. As we crossed t 5th Avenue, I looked into a squad car stopped at the red light and there was Spike, my character, a female cop in Northern Wisconsin. It was Spike in every detail from hair to makeup.

It is really cool to see your character, one that came straight out of your head walking around (or in this case driving) out of the blue. Once I saw my character Petra (The Shadow Warriors) in Roche Bros. in Wellesley. Sometimes I write with a real person's physicality in mind, so of course, one is not likely to see them, (if a photo) or else it's someone you work with and you see them every day, noting all their little eccentricities to get authenticity into the writing.

Love it! So, yanno, life is strange.

We're half in diet mode this week, as we won't be the other half and were certainly not last week. My friend in NYC made the most fantatic wild mushroom lasagne. Can't tell you how good it was, because words fail. Although vegetable (are mushrooms veggies? Don't think so) it was not without calories. We ate at a Alsatian restaurant on 2nd Avenue, and that fare is not exactly low cal either.

I'm making a couple chicken salads for the diet days. Never tastes like diet food, even w/o mayo. Just tasty. I belong to a list server and recently the topic of eating healthy while travelling came up, and what lengths those women go to on the road was truly astounding.

My rule when travelling is "eat what is put in front of you, and you never know when your next meal may arrive." Carry a snack along, too. These rules have served me well. Travel is godawful enough without a growling stomach. The worse snack I ever had was on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Cincinnati. It was a low-fat strawberry Fig Newton and two other like-minded pieces of faux food. So bad I wrote a letter. I hate artificial flavoring and will do just about anything to avoid it. Yeccch! And I love the old-fashioned Fig Newtons. There are naturally low-fat and whoever the idiot was to take the rest of the fat out should be condemmed to eat them, esp. the strawberry ones, yech, barf, through all eternity.

Cripes, here I am ranting again. Time to go to the store and buy the healthy ingredients for the South Beach Chicken Salads. Then come home and write.

Grapeshot