2 Rich 2 Thin

Eat Like a Cat, Not Like a Dog

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Cat, wondering why the dog is in a treeBefore I start a range war, let me say that I love dogs and cats.  I had both growing up, and the only reason I don’t still have both is that my son is terrified of dogs.  (He’s not all that wild about the cat, but he and the cat manage some sort of detente by pretending that the other doesn’t exist.)  Plus, and this is where the eating philosophy comes in, you can leave a cat for the weekend with a bowl of food and water (and a litter box).  Not a dog.

Preying Together as a Family

In the dim reaches of their ancestral history, dogs and cats developed radically different eating styles because they had radically different hunting styles.  Canines hunt in packs.  They surround, drive, and wear down their prey until the prey are too tired to fight back or evade attack any longer.  This method allows a pack of hungry wolves to routinely bring down prey that are physically much larger than a wolf.  Once the, say, moose is brought down, it’s every wolf for himself, and the faster you can eat, the more of the moose you’ll get.  The wolves will eat until every scrap of moose is gone, then gnaw on the bones and sniff the ground hopefully for a stray moose morsel.

This behavior is still instinctive for your dog, so when you put food in his bowl, he will eat it down to the last scrap, lick the bowl, then give you the “hungry eyes” in case he can catch you in a weak moment.

(This is hugely oversimplified, because there are incredible social complexities at work, but that would take waaaaay too long to explain.  If you are inherently fascinated by the ancestral roots of your pet’s behavior, I recommend the books by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, specifically The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Tribe of Tiger.)

This behavior is still instinctive for your dog, so when you put food in his bowl, he will eat it down to the last scrap, lick the bowl, then give you the “hungry eyes” in case he can catch you in a weak moment.  If you were going away for the weekend, and you tried to leave out enough dog food for your whole trip, chances are good that your dog would eat it all, throw up, and since you’re not there to clean it up and he’s a dog, eat it again.  If he’s an older dog and his appetite isn’t what it used to be, you’ll come back to find your dog happily mesmerized by the neighborhood wildlife eating out of his bowl.  (In my neighborhood, oudoor pet dishes draw birds and squirrels by day and raccoons and possums by night.  It’s kind of a hoot to watch two raccoons sitting back on their haunches, reaching into the bowl, and snacking on kibble like they’re bored cocktail party guests around the nut bowl.)  In his mind, they’re pack members, and hey, they’ve got to eat, too.

Alone at the Top of the Food Chain

Not so the feline.  Cats hunt alone, by a combination of stealth and speed.  A cat doesn’t have to share its kill unless it’s feeding offspring or the pride leader.  (This is why your cat brings you “treats” when she hunts.  It’s a compliment.  Be polite, say thank you, and throw the lizard half or mouse parts in the trash when Kitty isn’t looking.)  As a result, cats only hunt when they’re hungry.  I spotted a feral cat hunting in my yard, which alarmed me, because I habitually put food out for birds and other wildlife, and I didn’t want to entice them into a trap.  Instead of constantly “shooing” the cat, I put out a bowl of cat kibble.  It took only two days for “Outside Kitty” to realize that food she didn’t have to chase was the way to go.  The squirrels still let me know when OK is around, but the wildlife can now feed happily within a few feet of the cat, and as long as the cat has kibble, she doesn’t bat at eyelash at the birds.

That same weekend getaway is a breeze with a cat.  Put out a demand feeder, a large bowl of water, and a litter box, and Kitty will nibble when she’s hungry, drink when she’s thirsty, then wander off for a nap, and return when she’s hungry again.  (The often solitary existence made it safer for felines to bury their scat so as not to betray their presence to enemies; canines enjoyed the safety of the pack and felt perfectly at ease pooping wherever they liked.)  You may have to put up with “drama cat” behavior or poop in punitive places when you return, but you won’t have to worry that Kitty went hungry.

The Tao of Meow

So what does this mean for us?  Somehow, we have learned to eat like dogs.  Maybe it’s instinctive famine-proofing behavior, or the result of living in extended family groups where there’s competition for the food.  Maybe it’s our mothers telling us about the starving children in impoverished countries.  Whatever caused it, we all seem to be the punch line of the “seafood diet” joke.  When we see food, we eat it.  It doesn’t matter if we’re hungry, and it often doesn’t matter if we really want it.  How many times have you taken a snack from a nut dish or candy dish, or sampled a plate of hors d’oeuvres, and eaten something that you wouldn’t have stood up and walked into the kitchen for?  If your waiter didn’t bring you chips and salsa for free when you sat down at a Mexican restaurant, would you order them and pay for them?  Probably not, yet you’ll eat until the chips are gone, and if your dinner isn’t there by that time, you’ll ask for another basket of chips.  You may have consumed a meal’s worth of calories before your meal ever arrives.

Try to start eating like a cat.  Go to where the food is only when you’re actually hungry, not bored or self-conscious.  (If you’re at a cocktail party and you have a drink or a plate of canapés in your hand, you look occupied, and your hands are busy.)  Put away nut bowls and candy dishes.  Put the cookie jar on the highest shelf where it’s hopefully “out of sight, out of mind” and at worst, you’ll have to expend some effort and climb for it.  If your house is like mine, the kitchen is smack in the middle of where most of the living goes on (the laptop I’m typing on is on the breakfast table), so make sure actual edibles are put behind closed, non-see-through doors.

If you find yourself accidentally where the food is, try to think about reaching out for that tidbit you don’t want with your cat claws out.  Imagine retracting your claws before you do any damage.  Better yet, imagine trying to fit into one of those skin-tight catsuits that get inflicted on every actress unfortunate enough to be cast as Catwoman.  If you need a fun reminder, pick up one of the gazillion bracelets the Hello Kitty folks are licensing, like this one, and wear it on whichever hand you use to reach for snacks.

Unless you were raised in the workhouse with Oliver Twist, you have probably never been in a situation where you had to gobble down food before someone took it away from you.  Eating is not a race (and do not get me started on what I think of “competitive eating”–how many kinds of wrong is that?).  The more slowly and selectively you eat, the more time your brain has to tell your stomach (and your hand) that you don’t truly want another tempura shrimp or bite of fondue.  Be choosy.  Eat like a cat.  You don’t want to be a dog, do you?

 

Detox of the Town

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Okay, I want to catch you before it gets close to New Year’s and you resolve to go out and buy lemon juice, cayenne pepper, or a bottle of Master Colon Wash, or worse, pay someone at a spa to starve and torture you.  There is NO evidence that any detox diet does a better job of cleaning out your body than it’s already doing.  Zero.  Zip.  Nada.  No doctor will suggest you starve and then gulp down laxatives, unless you’re having a medical exam.  I was a little alarmed when I saw that “Doctor Oz” was touting a “detox diet,” but it turns out that his idea of a detox diet is to stop eating potato chips and fast food, and start eating more broccoli.  I’m okay with that.

And colonics.  The mind reels.  I recently reached that age where my doctor suggested that I experience the joy and wonder of my first colonoscopy.  I dutifully got my enormous bucket of GoLikeMad (just add water, sugar-free lemonade, and a clear path to the nearest toilet), and I promise you, there was less than nothing left in my colon after that (and scarily enough, I have the pictures to prove it).  I’m happy to say that my innards are free of suspicious bits, and even happier to say that means I don’t have to have another colonoscopy for ten years.  It boggles my mind that healthy people pay to have this done to them, just because they feel a little bloaty.  You’d have to pay me to go through that again without a good reason.  And I’m talking diamonds and convertibles kind of pay.

The Ins and Outs of Environmental Toxins

First off, the world is not nearly as full of toxins as doomsayers would have you believe.  Don’t get me wrong, there are some scary things out there, but your skin keeps out most bad stuff, so we only have to worry about the stuff that we purposefully ingest.  And yippy skippy, our fabulous bodies generally know how to deal.  I grew up in the Los Angeles basin, and during the summer I practically lived in my swimming pool.  Between breathing the smog, and inhaling enough chlorine fumes to prompt an EPA investigation, I could barely draw breath by the end of the afternoon, and it hurt like crazy.  Yet somehow, when I woke up in the morning, my lungs were clear and happy, and out I went to spend another carefree day filling them with poison.  (And my lung function is fine, thanks for asking.)

Unless you live someplace like Bangladesh, where they’re currently having an arsenic crisis, your water is likely clean.  I drink mostly bottled water for taste reasons, not because I think my tap water is dangerous.  Ditto your food supply.  For the sheer volume of food produced and consumed in this country, disease outbreaks and recalls of tainted food are extremely rare.  If you are concerned with food safety, the time to do something about it is before it goes into your mouth.  Patronize local farmers’ markets and stores that carry local produce.  Carefully wash produce before eating it.  It’s better to put good stuff in than try to torture yourself thinking you can get bad stuff out faster.  At some point in your life, you probably will ingest something harmful, but if, like me, you’ve ever had food poisoning, you know how good your body is at getting rid of something it has determined is bad for you.

You are detoxing, 24/7.  Your circulatory system, working with your liver, kidneys, and GI tract, are hard at work, waking or sleeping, regulating everything your body needs and jettisoning everything it doesn’t.  Some things don’t wash out very easily, so your body locks them away in your liver in places so inaccessible it would put that warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant to shame, or “dead” tissue like your hair and fingernails (hence the whole “bald Britney” episode).  If any of the so-called “liver cleanse” programs or products actually could force your liver to give up everything it had tucked away, it would probably kill you.  Even the beneficial things stored in the liver, like Vitamin A, are toxic when taken too much at a time.  If you’ve truly been exposed to something that needs to be forcibly removed from your body, it will probably require chelation or plasmapheresis, in a hospital, surrounded by doctors.  Spicy lemonade will not cut it.

Avoiding Firebomb Solutions to Matchstick Problems

Drinking water is good for you, but too much, even of water, will damage or kill you.  Too little iron?  Anemia.  Too much? Iron poisoning.  Too little food?  Starvation.  Too much?  Obesity-related illness.  Most things we put in our bodies are needed in particular amounts, and too much or too little is a problem.  Happily, our bodies have been forged in the fire of plagues, famines, unsanitary conditions, and outright stupidity to the point that you really have to work at damaging your body beyond its ability to heal.  The species would have been gone a long time ago if we couldn’t tolerate eating stuff that is not exactly optimally healthy.  Or even food.  Ask the mother of a small child how much dirt her kid has eaten.

So if you’re feeling like your engine isn’t running on all cylinders, here’s what you do.  Drink a glass of water, eat a salad, and walk around the block.  Resolve for a week to eat nothing from a fast food place and to get 8 hours of sleep every night.  If you’re really determined, avoid alcohol and caffeine for the week.  By the end of it, you will be every bit as cleansed as you would have been on a detox diet, and you won’t have a sore throat, a chapped backside, or a vitamin deficiency.  You might feel so good that you’ll make it a habit.

Loren Cordain’s “Paleo” OMG

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Loren Cordain's The Paleo DietWhere to begin?  Unlike Peter D’Adamo’s Eat Right 4 Your Type, where I could quickly and easily dismiss the author as a crackpot, Loren Cordain’s  The Paleo Diet (Wiley, revised edition December, 2010) contains enough facts and actual sense that I have to wonder where the obviously intelligent Cordain got off the logic train.

If you are familiar with the Paleo Diet and you think Cordain walks on water, stop reading now, because I’m about to say bad things about him. <pauses for the misguided to leave>  (The quotes in this paragraph are straight from Cordain’s website, with the links to prove it.)  Okay, PhDoctor Cordain, I have two giant problems with your book, website, method, etc.  You begin by announcing, “The Paleo Diet, the world’s healthiest diet…”  ANYBODY who makes that claim had better follow it with the endorsement of the AMA and the World Health Organization, which of course, he has not got.  Cordain’s referenced dietary studies have more holes in them than the swiss cheese you can’t have on the diet.  By far the scariest thing, though, is that by following Cordain’s diet you can supposedly “slow progression of an autoimmune disease” and “reduce or eliminate your risk of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and the vast majority of all chronic degenerative diseases that affect humanity.”  Really?  When someone tells you that you can cure cancer or lupus by eating better, RUN.  Anything that follows is sure to be heavily laced with snake oil (which, as an animal product, probably is on the diet).

Good Caveman, Bad Caveman

I spent most of my time reading this book, as well as its slightly more academic predecessor, Neanderthin by Ray Audette, feeling incredibly torn.  I would read one sentence and think, “That is factual and sensible.”  I would read the next and fling the book across the room.  The conventional advice on how to lie convincingly is to “sandwich a lie between two truths,” and I can’t help feeling that these books are doing much the same thing.  Because I have a science background, I could go through point-by-point and illustrate where studies are flawed or syllogistic conclusions are backwards, but that takes a lot longer than it takes for an author trying to promote a belief as fact to simply bury their guesses in a stack of certified facts and hope the reader isn’t experienced enough in critical review to spot them.Neanderthin by Ray Audette

It all starts out with the basic premise.  “We are the product of millenia of evolution.”  Absolutely true.  Unfortunately, that’s followed by their theory, presented as fact and logical conclusion:  “And our bodies haven’t changed much since then, so we should eat now what we ate then.”  ARE YOU %$&# KIDDING ME???  Both phrases in that statement have fatal errors.  (WARNING:  there will be science.  I will try not to reach eye-glazing levels, but I’ve got a nail here, so you’ve got to give me my hammer.)  Number one, we have changed.  I will grant that 10,000 years is a blink in the total genetic development of humankind, but it is by no means insufficient time to make substantive internal and external changes in anatomy.  Paleoanthropologists and archaeogeneticists are still arm-wrestling about it, but if what’s known as the “out of Africa” hypothesis is correct, then in 70,000 years of human history, we have gone from basically one population to every ethnic distinction on the planet, including height, weight, fat distribution, skeletal formation, and internal processes.  If 70,000 years is long enough to turn three similar creatures into, for example, a Maasai warrior, an Inuit, and, say, Björk, what could it not have done to our insides?  For comparison, the domestication of the dog roughly parallels the development of agriculture and domestic animal husbandry, so in the time since we were eating like hunter-gatherers, we have selectively bred a couple canine lines into everything from a mastiff to a chihuahua.  No big changes in 10,000 years?  I think not.

The second error?  Suggesting we should eat like cavemen presupposes two things, namely that cavemen were healthier than we are, which is patently untrue based on life expectancy, and that cavemen, given the opportunity to eat something other than what they were eating, would still choose their hunter-gatherer diet.  This is obviously untrue because we did develop agriculture and animal husbandry.  As soon as humans figured out a way to get calories that were always in the same place and didn’t have to be chased, they went for it in droves.  The population that can survive, reproduce, and pass on their DNA in the most efficient manner wins.  The time you spend chasing down your dinner is not available for mating or protecting your offspring.  It was anthropologically worthwhile for some populations to develop the ability to digest excellent nutrient sources like dairy, so we did, and since more milk-drinkers lived to pass on their DNA, more of their descendents can handle dairy.  The only places we see widespread lactose intolerance are where land and climate issues make it difficult to keep cows, so there was never a survival advantage in tolerating dairy.

Should You?  Can You?

I have two friends who tried the Paleo Diet; one gave up before a week was out.  I spoke to the second at day 27 of her 30-day induction, and I asked how it was going.  “I’ve got a lot more energy!” she said cheerily.  “And…?,” I asked.  “And I would kill you for a baked potato with butter and sour cream,” she said.  And therein lies the difficulty.  It’s just too extreme a lifestyle change for most people.  (If you think you can do it, try out the Four-Day Diet that I wrote about in You Can Stand Anything For Four Days, which is also free of dairy, gluten, and refined sugar and starch.)  And it has to be a lifestyle change, and the proponents know this.  Chemical and glycemic-dependent diets like Paleo and Atkins balance on a knife-edge, physiologically speaking.  One slip off the wagon, one good-sized injection of simple carbs, and the metabolic process collapses and you have to go back to start.  Maybe I overestimate the power of taste buds over will power, but I believe that any diet that tells you that you must give up most of your favorite foods for the rest of your life is doomed to failure.

We are omnivores.  We are designed to eat everything that doesn’t eat us first.  It’s what has kept us alive.  Unfortunately, now that food is so easy, it’s what’s killing us.  Cruel irony.  Will you lose weight on the Paleo Diet?  I’d bet money on it, if you can stick with it.  But you’ll also lose weight on Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, and a host of other plans, simply because your eating is so heavily regulated.  My husband lost 20 pounds on Atkins, but gained it all back (and more) when he went off.  He likes Häagen-Dazs too much to stick with a low-carb lifestyle.  So we’ve started a “lifestyle change” where he eats sensibly during the week, gets regular exercise, and get Chocolate Peanut Butter on weekends.  The weight comes off a lot more slowly, but it does come off, and he’s happy.

We’d all do better without a lot of processed food.  Most of us eat too many simple carbs.  Some of us are better off without gluten.  Some of us are better off without dairy.  But whether your forebears hail from Yorkshire, Hokkaido, or the Arctic Circle has a lot more to do with what’s healthy for your body than what cave your ancient ancestors called home.  Heck, one of the premier examples of early modern man is the Paleolithic “Cro-Magnon” man, found in the south of France.  Roughly 45,000 years after this guy lived, we’re still trying to figure out why his descendents can eat an enormously high-fat diet (loaded with dairy, btw) without developing heart disease.  Slink off to your cave if you like, but before you go, passez-moi les croissants.

 

Low Carb Canapés

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low carb party snacksWe’re coming into the heavy-duty party season, and finger-foods abound.  But what can you do for your guests who can have dip, but no chips?  It’s nice to have something to offer them besides cheese cubes.  (And if you’re the one on low carbs, consider taking a platter of low carb treats to the party yourself.  I’m a big believer in making and sharing the goodies.)

There are plenty of things you can buy ready-made.  Check the appetizer section of your favorite restaurants’ menus for treats you can copy or pay them to make for you.  I have a Mexican place right across the street that does a bacon-wrapped grilled shrimp with queso blanco and a sliver of jalapeño in the center.  I could make them myself, but it’s my contribution to the economy to pay them to make them.  That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

If you don’t have low-carb options available for easy purchase, here are a few ideas for stocking the snack tray.

Choose Your Cheese

Not all cheese is created equal when it comes to carbs, so choose wisely when you look to lay out a cheese board.  Gruyere, the real-stuff ancestor of Swiss, is a low-carb champ at roughly .1 gram of carbs per ounce.  Compare that to Swiss at 1.5 grams per ounce, and you can see that picking the wrong cheese can blow your carb limit in a heartbeat.  Close behind Gruyere are the French soft cheeses Brie and Camembert at just over .1 gram per ounce.  Cream cheese has six times the carbs of Brie, so any soft-cheese-filled goodies should have a little French flair.  If you live in the middle of nowhere and only have access to common commercial cheeses (I’m sorry), go with Monterey Jack at .2 gm/oz or sharp cheddar at .3 gm/oz.  Mild or Colby Cheddar has twice the carbs, and American has two full grams of carbs per ounce.

If you can stand a few more carbs, fillings of cream cheese can be flavored with a variety of yummy things, or you can take the lazy way out and use a prepared cheese spread like Boursin.  The Garlic & Herbs is our favorite, but if you can find the Apple-Cranberry at holiday time, it is not to be missed.

Choose Your Vehicle

Since most crackers and chips are just too carb-intensive for a low-carb diet, the trick to interesting canapés is to find a vehicle, a base, to get delicious cheese, meat, and other low-carb treats to your mouth.  My husbands favorite is hard salami rolled up with a soft cheese filling inside and secured with a skewer.  Any cold cut or sliced meat that is firm enough to hold its shape makes a great wrapper.

For crunch and color, I like to use thin slices of cucumber loaded with dip and garnished with caviar, salmon roe, or, if you have fish weanies like I do, some grated carrot.  For an Asian flair, make sashimi-gari rolls.  Sashimi is raw fish (sushi is the raw fish over a foundation of rice, which is a low-carb no-no); gari is pickled ginger root, those thin pink slices usually served with sushi.  Again, for those too squeamish for raw fish, you can wrap chunks of a firm steamed fish or fake crab (and fake crab is basically firm steamed fish with some added color and crab flavoring) in the gari.  Gari does have carbs, but the individual slices are so thin, each bite is negligible.  A 3-ounce container of gari, about 16 grams of carbs, will make a large tray of appetizers.  Just don’t eat the whole thing.

If you’re lucky enough to find nice, large walnut halves, they can be a great dip vehicle as well.  Each half has about 1/4 gm/oz of carbs, so don’t go wild, but a walnut half with some of the Apple-Cranberry Boursin is totally worth it.

The undisputed king of cracker substitutes, though, is the parmesan wafer.  On a baking sheet covered with a silicone sheet like Silpat or good-quality parchment paper, place small stacks of grated parmesan (be sure to leave room between stacks for a little spread).  The wafers shown above were made with about a tablespoon of coarsely grated parmesan each.  The coarser the grate, the more lacy the look of the baked wafer; a fine grate will make a more solid wafer.  Flatten each stack slightly with your hand, and bake them at 350° until they are the color you want.  Golden brown takes about 10 minutes (if your oven runs hot, start at five minutes and check every minute until you get the color you want); that’s what I like for canapés, because it’s still a little chewy and it doesn’t shatter when you bite into it.  Fine grated parmesan will bake faster, so start checking at the 5 minute point.  You can also shape the wafers if you want; take them hot off the baking tray and drape them over a wooden spoon for little taco shells, or push them gently into a mini muffin tin to make cups. 

You can also bake them 14-15 minutes to a mahogany color, salt them, and eat them like potato chips.  Toss some chili powder and cayenne into the cheese before baking, and you’ll get the closest thing to a carb-free Dorito that you’re going to find.  They will be much more brittle than the golden brown wafers, but they should hold up to some salsa or hot queso.

Enjoy the party, and be prepared to defend the low-carb goodies from everybody else!

Walk the Walk

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Shoes.  It’s a love-hate relationship for most women.  The pleasure of an adorable pair of pumps that makes the whole outfit, weighed against the pain of balancing your body on less real estate than your average tightrope walker is accustomed to.  Personally, I think it’s a vast misogynist conspiracy.  In our modern world, happily, men simply aren’t allowed to oppress women as a class.  Unless, of course, they can convince us to do it to ourselves.  Think I’m wrong?  Check out photos of Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin, and see what they’ve got on their feet.  Not a strappy, stiletto,  or platform in sight.

I’m kidding, at least mostly.  But from whalebone corsets to needle-toe boots, it’s utterly appalling what women have been willing to do to their bodies in the name of fashion.  You probably know that you’re damaging your feet, and possibly your ankles, back, etc., and maybe you’re willing to take that hit in the name of looking fabulous.  But did you know you’re also sabotaging your diet?

Stumbling in the Working World

When I worked in an office, I was famous for striding, and sometimes running, through our long, carpeted office corridors in my stocking feet.  Anybody who came looking for me in my office knew that if my shoes weren’t sitting empty under my desk, I was either in a conference with a client, or in a partner’s office.  If I needed something from the data storage vault or the word processing department, I knew I could cover the several hundred yards in roughly one-third the time if I left my pumps behind, so I did.  Yet I secretly laughed at the fitness-buff secretary who kept a pair of running shoes in her desk and changed at lunchtime, because she looked like a complete doofus walking out the door in a tailored suit, silk blouse, and Converse All-Stars.  I now have the perspective of greater age and wisdom, and I say, Welcome to Doofushood.

I looked into a “walk to fitness” plan awhile back, so I dutifully bought a pedometer and I discovered something amazing– I was already at their goal of 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day, between running up and down stairs putting laundry away, walking to our mailbox, grocery shopping, running errands, etc.  It seems like no matter how carefully I make out my list, I make a complete traverse of my grocery store at least four or five times per trip.  And Walmart?  Forget about it.  If I went to Walmart every day, I could do a 10K by the end of the month.  So if I’m going to take those steps anyway, why not do it at a clip that will get my heart rate up and burn some fat?  But you can’t do it in heels.  So I make sure that if I have the opportunity for a few thousand steps, I’ll wear at worst a comfy pair of loafers, and ideally good-supporting athletic walking shoes.  (At home, of course, I’m barefoot or in socks, but even if they’d let me in Walmart without shoes, the thought of contacting that floor with my bare skin fills me with unbridled terror.) 

You wouldn’t step on the treadmill at the gym in heels (I hope), so why would you waste valuable time out of your day tottering around a grocery store in heels, when you could get some exercise AND get your shopping done in half the time if you were wearing different shoes?  I would never say sensible shoes, because isn’t THAT the kiss of fashion death.  I can probably be fined by the San Antonio Cultural Commission, but I truly believe that SAS Shoes (San Antonio Shoes…Shoes…) should just change their name to BUS (butt-ugly shoes) and be done with it.  Still, there are plenty of walkable shoes that won’t make you look like you mugged an old lady for her kicks.  Put “penny loafers women” into your favorite search engine and behold the number of companies making a cute leather loafer that will look great with jeans and not unreasonable with business wear.  Take loafers AND pumps to work, look fabulous when you want to, but be mobile when you can be.  Turn heads in the meeting, then put it in high gear for the walk to lunch or the parking garage.  And if you do routinely walk through a darkened parking garage, I don’t have to tell you that being able to safely break into a dead run is a good idea.

Hobbled by Fashion Sense

I admit that I didn’t really get the shoe gene.  My mother had the most adorable tiny feet (size 6 1/2 AAAA, I am not kidding), and every shoe looked great on her.  Better yet, she wore such an extreme size that stores frequently couldn’t sell them, so they marked them down to the point where she got designer shoes for a song.  Not me.  My feet are pretty enough– no bunions, hammertoes, or corns– but they aren’t tiny.  I wore size 8 1/2 AA before I had my son and size 9 M afterwards.  (Yes, those of you who drop $1000 on Manolos and plan to have children in the future had better start preparing now to give those shoes away to a really good friend, because there’s more than a good chance that pregnancy will change your shoe size.  Permanently.)  It’s the rare shoe that can make my feet look delicate.  But occasionally, when I know I don’t have to walk far or stand for long periods, I, too, will wear the cruel shoes in the name of style (Yes, those are my actual shoes in the picture.  Cute, huh?).

There’s a saying that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels.  True enough, but she was getting paid rather well for twisted ankles and bleeding toes.  What’s your excuse?  Walking is one of the best, most natural exercises we can do.  We walk every day.  We have to.  So start thinking about the steps you’re already taking in a day, and look at them as opportunities.  Step lively, and don’t let your shoes set your pace.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

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Here I go again with the fattening desserts.  I love dessert.  And I think the richer you make a dessert, the more likely it is that you’ll be satisfied with a reasonable-sized portion.  If you’ve tried my recipe for Lemon Cheesecake, this recipe will look very familiar, as the method is similar.  I find regular pumpkin pie a little cloyingly dense and sweet; this cheesecake variation is much nicer in both departments.  As with any high-fat dessert, make this when you’ll be hosting family or friends so you don’t eat the whole thing by yourself.

Crust:  Blend 1 3/4 c. gingersnap crumbs with 1/2 c. ground pecans in your food processor.  (The nuts add some protein and some heart-healthy fat, as well as a wonderful crunch.)  I like Anna’s Ginger Thins or Mother’s Iced Oatmeal Cookies for the crumbs.  Pour into a 9″ pie plate or springform pan.  Add 3-6 T melted butter and mix well.  (A raised cookie like the Iced Oatmeal will absorb a lot more fat than a pogen-style cookie like Anna’s, so correct your butter accordingly.  You want the result moist enough to hang together, but not oily-looking.  It’s easier to add more melted butter than more cookie crumbs, so start at the low end of the butter measure and work up as needed.)  Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the springform or the bottom and sides of the pie pan.

Fillling:  Cream 4 oz regular cream cheese, 8 oz mascarpone cheese and 3/4 c. sugar together.  Beat in 2 eggs and one 16-oz can of solid pack pumpkin until creamy.  Fold in the spices: 1 1/4 t. ground cinnamon, 1/2 t. ground ginger, 1/4 t. ground nutmeg, 1/4 t. ground cloves, and 1/2 t. salt.  If you want some extra zing, you can add 1T fresh lemon zest.  Pour over crust and bake at 325° for 45 minutes.

At this point, the surface is somewhat set, and you can garnish with pecan halves without fear that they will sink into the filling.  I like to put pecans on top in case one of my guests has a tree-nut allergy I don’t know about.  Since most people don’t expect nuts in their pumpkin pie, it’s nice to alert them that there is a hidden ingredient in the crust.  Plus, it’s pretty.  Bake an additional 20 minutes at 325° or until the filling looks completely set.  If you jiggle the pan a little, the whole pie should jiggle as a unit.  If there seems to be a much softer puddle in the center of the pie, leave it in the oven for another 5-10 minutes, but be sure to set a timer, because it will go from done to overdone in nothing flat.  The firmer you bake the pie, the more likely it is to crack during the cooling process, so err on the side of underdone.

Remove from oven, cool, and chill.  Don’t try to cool it too quickly, or it will fracture on you like the San Andreas fault, and you won’t have a pretty pie (if this happens, just slice it in the kitchen and bring out individual slices– your guests will never know).  This is best if it has 4-5 hours to chill, so make it in the morning to serve as an after-dinner dessert, or make it the day before.  Of course, there should be whipped cream (what’s pumpkin pie without whipped cream?), but I like to serve it on the side of the pie slice rather than on top so my guests can choose to indulge or not.  Enjoy!

Stuffing Omelette

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Another favorite alternate use for Thanksgiving leftovers, the Stuffing Omelette is a great brunch dish for the guests who stayed overnight after Turkey Day, or a fortifying lunch  for hardy shoppers returned from their Black Friday early-morning adventures.  (Personally, I think Black Friday is nuts.  I will be inspecting the insides of my eyelids at 6:00 am the day after Thanksgiving.  If you’re going to brave the crowds, be sure to read Spend More to Spend Less before you go, and don’t give in to the bargain hysteria!)

Whether this recipe works for you will depend on what your traditional stuffing recipe looks like.  (And if you’re a cheater, I’m not sure I’d try this with Stove Top unless you do a lot of doctoring to it.)  My traditional family stuffing recipe is mostly white bread and a few stray gizzards, and my husband begged from the earliest days of our marriage not to have that dish at our table.  It wasn’t much of a sacrifice to agree with him, as I am not a fan of organ meats.  Four years living in England could not convince me that it is a good idea to eat parts whose sole intended function is to cleanse waste from the body.  You know that bag of suspicious parts that comes packed inside your turkey?  In our house we call that garbage.  I mean, come on, not even the cat wants to eat it.

My “new traditional” stuffing has bread crumbs and homemade corn bread, but it’s also got sausage (I love the Jimmy Dean Sage Sausage), diced onions and celery, shredded carrot, and diced apple, so there’s plenty of stuff that makes sense inside an omelette.  Sadly, most of the green cooks away, so if I happen to have some leftover asparagus or broccoli, I’ll toss that into the omelette as well, for color.

A plate-sized omelette as pictured above is made with three eggs.  Add a little salt and any other spices you like while you’re beating the eggs, along with a tablespoon or so of water.  Using milk or cream at this stage actually weighs down the egg– you’ll get much better volume on your omelettes with water.  Cook in a hot pan (the calories you saved by not adding milk or cream to the eggs can be allocated to the butter in the pan).  Just before the omelette is ready to fold, put about 1/2 cup of stuffing and 1/4 cup green veggies on top.  I recommend you microwave the stuffing and veggies before adding them to the pan to get them nice and hot; stuffing tends to be pretty dense, so if it is well-chilled from the refrigerator, it won’t have a chance to heat through in the short time it will be in the omelette pan.  You don’t want your guests cutting into their steamy omelette and hitting a lump of cold stuffing in the middle.

For a really decadent spread, make Leftover Latkes, the sweet potato variation, with a side of fresh fruit and a bubbly pitcher of mimosas.  Then sit back, relax, and decide you’ll go shopping later.  Much later.

 

Leftover Latkes

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So, now you’re frowning at leftovers, wondering how to use them up without endless repeats of the basic Thanksgiving menu.  You’ve also got odd amounts of certain items, depending on their popularity at the main feast.  I always seem to end up with slightly less than enough mashed potatoes for the last presentation, unless I find a way to extend them.  Here’s my favorite.

I can’t remember when I made my first latke, or potato pancake; growing up in a Catholic household, it wasn’t a cultural food for us.  But at some point I ate one and decided that it was pure genius (and pure deliciousness), and I determined to add it to my cooking repertoire.  Peeling and grating potatoes, though, is frankly a drag.  So one day I decided to make latkes out of leftover mashed potatoes, and it worked like a charm.  It has the secondary advantage of portion control– instead of plopping an indeterminate amount of loose mashed potatoes on your plate, you now have individual pancake portions to keep you honest.  And a little sour cream on top is probably still fewer calories than the lagoon of butter or gravy you normally create in a mound of mashed potatoes.

The basic latke recipe is typically:

1 cup grated potatoes
1 T grated or diced onion
1 beaten egg
1 T all-purpose flour
1/2 t.  salt

You stir this together into a loose “batter” and plop by generous spoonsful into a hot frying pan (prepared with your favorite fat, or nonstick spray if you must).  It takes quite awhile to cook, because the potatoes are raw (if you’ve ever cooked hash browns, you’ll have an idea).  I sometimes make this classic style, thanks to the nice folks at Simply Potatoes who do the peeling and shredding for me.

Working from mashed potatoes is a much quicker job, because your potatoes are already cooked.  And yes, if you cheated and bought your mashed potatoes from Simply Potatoes or Bob Evans, their product will work just fine for this recipe.  You probably already added salt to your mashed potatoes, so you don’t need that.  Whether you want onions is a personal choice.  Start with one cup of your mashed potatoes, and add one beaten egg and 1 T flour.  If you added a lot of milk, cream, or butter when you mashed the potatoes, this may result in a gooey mess, and you’ll have to add more flour to compensate for the added liquid.  Don’t add more than 3 T in total, and if you need to add that much flour, I recommend adding a 1/2 t. of baking powder to lighten up the batter. 

Now cook it like a regular pancake, just 1-2 minutes per side until golden brown.  Serve hot with a dollop of sour cream.  This method will also work for mashed sweet potatoes; in additional to the sour cream, drizzle a little maple syrup over the top when serving.  You may find you like these so much that they’ll go on the regular menu instead of the leftover menu!

Jennifer McLagan Chews the “Fat”

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Book cover of "Fat" by Jennifer McLaganI won’t keep you in suspense– I LOVE this book.  I’m a bit squeamish about some of the recipes (if I tried to serve jiggling bone marrow to my husband, he’d just look hurt and wonder what he’d done to make me angry), but I love her no-nonsense approach to the defense of the foodstuff that has been keeping our species alive for millenia.

In Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (Ten Speed Press, September, 2008… and okay, brevity is not the soul of book titles these days), Jennifer McLagan unapologetically lambasts the low-fat movement.  Pointing out that our fear of putting fat in our bodies has nonetheless caused us to put historically unprecedented amounts of it on our bodies, McLagan calls for a return of fat to our kitchens and our plates.  In fact, she champions a number of fats that I don’t think will really make significant inroads into the American palate; I believe butter should be its own food group, but I will not be spreading pure lard on my bread anytime soon, rosemary-infused or not.

A Quiet Rebuttal to Loud Propaganda

After reading a bit of the book, I looked carefully at McLagan’s bio and found that her college degree is in Economics, and I don’t mean Home Economics.  I mean that little-understood discipline full of unemotional people who routinely challenge our assumptions and slaughter our sacred cows armed with the twin blades of logic and statistics.  Using the same mind set that led Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (in the fabulous Freakonomics) to tell parents that it’s much safer to send your kids to play at a house where the owners have guns than it is to send them to play at a house with a swimming pool, McLagan calmly explains that no matter how loudly the anti-fat activists shout, the data still proves them wrong.  Our forebears frequently managed to live long, healthy, normal-weight lives while frying things in bacon fat, so there’s no reason to suppose that we can’t do the same.  (My grandmother’s diet consisted mostly of white bread, butter, beef BBQ, and pie, and she lived to be 95.)

McLagan starts out with a tiny bit of science, and I am ashamed to say that even with a background in science, I could not have told you why an Omega-3 fatty acid was called that.  Now I can.  (Not telling.  You’ll have to read it yourself.  It’s only a paragraph.)  She explains just enough about fat types to give you a basis for understanding why animal fat is not evil.  She delivers some hard truths about the role fat plays in giving food flavor, and why it is so satisfying to our taste buds.  And yes, you will get hungry reading this book.  Have some crusty bread and good butter at the ready.

Everything’s Better With Bacon and Butter

An Australian by birth (I have to think pretty hard before taking culinary advice from someone who can stand to eat Vegemite), and trained in classic French cooking, McLagan does recommend a lot of food items that I quite frankly find scary.  But there are plenty of American-accessible recipes here as well, starting with making your own Homemade Butter.  The whole butter chapter (subtitled “Worth It”) made me smile.  Though I think even I draw the line at agreeing with the blanket statement, “Butter is actually good for us,” (because of the fat-soluble vitamins and minerals it contains, pg. 15) I was glad to be reminded that more than one third of the fat in butter is monounsaturated.  The chapter on pork fat will be cheered by bacon lovers everywhere, and trust me, you really want to try the Bacon Spice Cookies.  Really.  And I wish I had read the chapter on poultry fat before I threw away the turkey fat I skimmed off the drippings from the Thanksgiving bird when I made gravy.  Sigh.  Live and learn.

Will eating fat make you fat?  Well, it depends on how much you eat.  Fat has more than twice the calories per gram as protein or carbohydrates (9 calories per gram versus 4).  On the other hand, as I mentioned in Juicing Your Java, fat is so satisfying to our mouths that when you take out the fat, you often have to replace it with more than double the carbs, so what are you saving?  Eating too much of anything is going to make you fat.  A little of something fabulous and satisfying can help you avoid a lot of something starchy and dull.  So check out McLagan’s Fat, and pardon me while I go butter something.  And may the Blessed Haseka keep your butter as fresh as the day it was churned.

Tailor Made For Your Diet

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My sister used to love shopping at a store near her called “Comfy Clothes.”  I guess it was a better marketing strategy than calling the store “Muumuus ‘R Us.”  Their entire inventory was loose-fitting, stretchy, elastic-waistbanded creations in which you could lounge, relax, and most importantly, hide at least 25 extra pounds before anyone, yourself included, noticed.

I yield to no one in my appreciation of comfortable lingerie and sweats.  In our house, we have a saying that if it’s dinnertime and Mom is still in her jammies, it has been a good day.  But I guess I’m old-fashioned, because to me, sweats are not something you wear out into the world, even to the grocery store, unless it’s an emergency (like you’re in the middle of putting together a fabulous recipe and realize you’re missing an ingredient).  I expect the clothes I wear out in public to actually fit me.

Make Your Clothes Your Size

If, like me, you don’t have an off-the-rack body, consider finding yourself a good tailor.  Your dry cleaners should be able to recommend one; if not, go to your nearest men’s store and ask the tailor they have on staff.  I actually know how to sew rather well, but I don’t enjoy it.  So rather than say bad words and throw things, I found a nice lady who charged ridiculously low prices for basic alterations.  I’m tall enough to rarely need a hem altered (and that I do for myself), but I have a small waist in expected proportion to my large caboose, so it’s incredibly rare for something to fit me nicely in both the waist and the hips.  If I buy a large enough size for my hips, the waist swims on me, and if I don’t tailor it to fit, I can easily pack on several pounds of belly fat before it becomes uncomfortable.  If you’re on a long-term weight loss plan, your tailor can be a huge help in limiting how much you have to spend on new clothes as the weight comes off.  You’ll be able to invest in nice things knowing that your tailor can keep making them smaller as you get smaller.

If the garment is washable, be sure to wash it a few times and dry it well to make sure that any shrinking it’s going to do is done.   Then, make it fit like it was made for you.  Be sure you take into account what type of fabric it’s made from– anyone who has ever owned a pair of jeans can tell you that cotton denim twill is evil.  You’ll put on a freshly-washed pair of jeans and think you’ve gained ten pounds, but after you’ve worn them for an hour or so, they will fit fine.  Have a garment tailored straight out of the dryer; if you have it taken in after the fibers have had stretched, you’ll never get it back on when it contracts in the heat.

Replace Your Scale With Your Waistband

Once your clothes fit, even if you never go near a scale, you’ll know quickly if you’ve been bad in the calorie department, and you can address it before it becomes a long-term problem.  We like to joke about having “fat clothes” and “skinny clothes,” but the fact is that your size and shape shouldn’t change all that much, week in and week out.  If you are truly getting so bloated at the end of the month that you need larger-sized clothing, it’s time to see your doctor, because that’s not normal (though it is by no means uncommon).  Hormones are tricky at the best of times, and stress, seasonal changes, birth control, and many other factors can throw your endocrine system out of whack.  What’s affecting your outsides is also affecting your insides, and bigger clothes won’t help there.

So stop avoiding darts, pin tucks, and waistbands, and embrace what they can do to keep you on the straight and narrow, diet-wise.  A good relationship with a tailor can be as important to your weight loss as your relationship with the trainer at your gym.  And if you keep up your progress on your weight-loss journey, you’ll experience the joy of taking something into your tailor and telling them that it needs to be taken in.  Again.