It’s not just about the calories

By Caitlin Kelly

I’m intrigued by what we eat, why we choose it and how challenging it is to eat (and drink!) very differently if you’re trying to lose weight.

Here’s a link to a new book that explains how major food companies carefully engineer things like potato chips so they are quite literally irresistible.

English: A pile of potato chips. These are Utz-brand, grandma’s kettle-cooked style. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 2002, I gained 23 pounds in one year, stunning both my GP and ob-gyn.

I hadn’t done anything very differently, (no entire-cream-pie-eating-sessions, for example), but two major events had happened in the same six months — I’d started research, and lots of travel, on my first book and my mother (who survived) was found to have a very large brain tumor.

I went out to Vancouver, British Columbia, (I was in Dayton, Ohio doing book research when I learned I had a few days to get there) to see her through the surgery. Oh, and, I’d discovered some cysts in one breast (turned out to be nothing) that was scaring me shitless.

My point is this — if you’d commanded me, then, to count every calorie I was ingesting, I’d have laughed hysterically. Every ounce of my energy and wits was already in play.

Nor did I have much free time to go to a gym or be intentional about weight loss. I was writing a book about women and guns in America, a topic that was sometimes so dark and frightening I got secondary trauma. I’ve never owned a scale, nor am I the sort of person who stares at herself in the mirror every day pinching every excess inch with self-loathing.

But I do live and work in a wealthy suburb of New York City, where the alpha women are all ropy arms, size 2′s in sheath dresses, their calves the diameter of my forearms. And, in America, being productive trumps everything, so we’re all running reallyfastallthetime, tending to the endless needs of our bosses, clients and families, usually in that order.
Oh…..and our needs as well.

I think this skewed order is very much a part of why so many people are so fat. When the only source of real, cheap, accessible pleasure is something in a crinkly bag you can cram into your mouth while driving/commuting/sitting at your desk, you’re going to take the path of least resistance.

If the only thing that day (or week or month) that is going to make you 100 percent happy, (without a fight or eye-roll or endless negotiation with a whiny toddler), is a doughnut (dopamine hit alert!), odds are higher you’ll reach for the easy, quick and cheap holy trinity of sugar, salt and fat than a pious, low-cal apple or pile of celery sticks.

The Thai versions of Lay’s Potato Chips. Most of the flavours are seafood oriented. Why can we not get these flavours in America? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Our choices are also deeply cultural. I recently interviewed a senior manager who tried to call a lunch meeting of her staff in Montreal, a city with French values (food matters!) in a nation much more committed to life balance. No one came. I love that!

We are all deeply hungry, throughout our lives, for many things — silence, beauty, kindness, understanding, stimulation, leisure, pleasure, solace. Many of us simply do not have enough of these things in our days, or lives. We under-value them, or refuse to carve out time for them or have made too many commitments to many other people. We’re lonely or bored or overworked or underpaid. Possibly all of these miseries at once!

Food becomes proxy for so many other things we really want but can’t get, often in public moments when we most need comfort or joy: Fries instead of a hug. A Coke instead of a compliment. A bag of popcorn, with butter, instead of ten (six?) hours’ unbroken sleep. A 20-ounce latte instead of 20 minutes’ walk in fresh air with a lovely view.

I’m trying, still, to lose that weight, upping my exercise routine and being more careful about intake choices. So fucking tedious!

English: Snack food (potato chips and the like) vendors at side of church in Coyoacan, Mexico City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Simply counting all those calories doesn’t address the fundamental and challenging issues of every single choice affected by our knowledge [or lack of] nutrition, our limits of self-discipline, our self-awareness, and the limited time many of us have to choose, prepare and consume affordably healthy food.

I did an eight-day silent retreat two years ago and when I re-emerged into the noisy chaotic world I was much more aware how noisy environments made me unconsciously eat more faster.

Food contains so much more than calories!

Here’s an interesting blog post about how we decide what to eat.

Do you enjoy cooking, and/or eating?

My greatest weakness is…

La bildo estas kopiita de wikipedia:fr. La originala priskribo estas: Six fromages (du centre, puis dans le sens des aiguilles d'une montre) : Valençay, Ossau Iraty, Bleu d'Auvergne, Époisses, Cœur de Neuchatel, Saint-félicien. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was talking to a friend who’s a doctor who admitted he can’t be safely left near any large container of ice cream. It’s all or nothing.

Made me think what my weakness(es) might be.

Sadly, it’s a long-ish list, including:

– Tabletop. Anything used to set a table, from bowls to linens to candlesticks. Yes, yes, all of it! I love to set a pretty table and entertain, so I collect anything charming in aid of same. Jose threatens often to de-bowl me as I keep bringing them into our small apartment.

– Antiques. Specifically, jewelry, textiles, prints. Anything from 1860 and earlier, and 18th century and older is a big draw, if more difficult to find here in the New World.  We live in a one bedroom apartment, with very limited space to add anything new. But (yes, I admit) we also have a garage. And a storage locker. OK, several storage lockers. Small ones.

– Scarves. As someone who loves to travel and pack lightly, scarves are a fab way to make the same outfit look different every day, doubling as shawls or even sarongs when necessary, adding warmth and style.

– Almost anything French. My new hip even has a ceramic head made in France. Chic! Having lived in Paris for a year and traveled to France many times, j’adore les choses francaises. These include everything from my polka-dot apron and mini-juicer, both bought in Paris, to a funky little Art Deco perpetual calendar to my super well-cut black cotton jacket whose elegant proportions are so utterly not made in China.

If you’ve never heard the late, exquisite chanteuse Barbara or the raspy Mano Solo, check them out.

– Cheese. Speaking of things French. My friend who loves ice cream went into a little lusty haze as he began rhyming off some of his favorite French cheeses: Brie, Camembert. I’d add Cantal, Roquefort, Gouda, Cheddar, fresh creamy Mozzarrella. Yum!

– Beer. As a Canadian, this is a legitimate weakness, as some great brews come from my home and native land. If you ever get to Quebec, try to find this gorgeous apricot tinged ale. Love Magic Hat No. 9, Hoegaarden and Blue Moon (even though it’s really made by a major manufacturer of really bad beer, Coors.)

– Jewelry. Thank heaven for a husband who indulges me! I buy a ring to mark major life moments, like the silver one I bought at Saks when I sold my first book and a gold ring, with the impression of an ancient Greek coin, bought from a local designer, when it was published. I love wearing my Deco earrings from the LA flea market, my pottery ring from Mesilla, NM and my pendant charms found in Atlanta.

‘Fess up, mes cher(e)s…what are some of your weaknesses?

I Love Dinner Parties!

Image via Wikipedia

When Jose and I started dating, it was a very short time before I put him to the acid test — helping me throw a dinner party.

I love giving dinner parties!

They satisfy many urges: to make people happy, to feed them well, to set a pretty table, (candles, flowers, home-made place cards, linen or cotton napkins, colorful plates, shiny silver), and to create new connections between the people I love.

We had two couples over recently who had never met, but I knew would get along and enjoy one another, (another key to a great dinner party. No random guests!) The two women, even with a 15-year age difference, had both worked in book publishing in Manhattan. Their husbands are quieter, but both have a dry sense of humor. They all love to eat well and everyone loves to laugh.

The menu:

tomato soup (with a touch of gin!)

salmon with tangerine/butter/soy sauce glaze

asparagus

mango rice

chocolate ice cream with my invention, (what I call drunk fruit), served hot on top. (Throw blackberries, raspberries, apple, pear, butter, cloves, cinnamon, maple syrup, lemon or lime juice, scotch and/or Marsala and/or sherry into a heavy pan and boil. Yum!)

The best part was remembering that one of the women had cut a CD a few years ago, a gift from her family. So we all listened to it, and the other woman happily sang along.

We love remembering dinner parties we held a decade ago, like the one that included our minister and his wife (in their 60s), a young photographer and journalist, a Times shooter just back from Afghanistan and my web designer. One couple locked eyes across our table — and married a few years later.

The mix matters!

No boors/bores. No mean jokes. No one smokes. No one drinks to excess. We’re passionate about the news and current affairs. Aggression, whether passive or active, is deeply unwelcome; here’s a sadly accurate blog post about watching three sorts of moribund marriages across the table.

Our friends have generally traveled the world, are educated, read widely and avidly, share enough cultural references we’ve got something in common but enough (civil!) difference of opinion to enjoy talking to one another.

We’ve got it down to a science, helped by the fact I work at home and can easily make time for fussy niceties like ironing a tablecloth and napkins or re-filling the votives. I love settling in with my recipes and cookbooks to plan a meal that’s balanced, interesting and good-looking. Our kitchen is very small, so we do it restaurant-style, with prep work in advance, and plating on the kitchen counter.

I grew up in a family that frequently had friends over for dinner, and Jose’s Mom, as a small-town minister’s wife did often for family and church visitors.

It’s one of the happiest traditions he and I now continue. (I do know that having kids, especially small ones, makes this sort of thing more difficult. We don’t have kids.)

Do you enjoy entertaining?

The Best Meals Of My Life

Oooh-la-la! This is how my tastebuds felt. Image via Wikipedia

Having just survived eight days of an all-vegetarian retreat — I may never eat field greens again! — it got me to thinking of the best meals (and, yes, drinks!) I’ve ever enjoyed.

The food we ate wasn’t bad at all, and in fact beautifully presented, healthy, full of vitamins. The cheese/fennel scones were perfect little pillows; the berry crumble lovely; the crispy green beans just the right color and texture…

But still.

Here are some of my favorite meals:

In a port-side cafe in Concarneau, Brittany, cold, fresh oysters, a baguette with sweet butter, tiny hot sausages and a crisp glass of Muscadet.

Street-vendor food in Bangkok.

My late granny’s Christmas goose.

My mom’s hamburger smash — ground meat, salt, pepper, carrots, potatoes — all mixed up in a frying pan.

The sweetie’s blueberry pancakes with, of course, real maple syrup.

A spectacular fish soup I ate on a frigidly cold winter’s day in Old Montreal — in 1987! It was that good.

The peach crumble with sour cream at Stash Cafe, also in Old Montreal.

On my first visit to England, when I was 12, eating clotted cream right from the bottle.

Some hellaciously good barbecue in Fort Worth.

At a rooftop party in Paris on New Year’s Eve, fistfuls of fresh oysters shucked right in front of us.

At Los Almendros, in Merida, a fish dish so good we went back the next night and ate it again.

The tiny perfect sweet mussels our friend Celia made for us for dinner when she lived in Paris, served on her rooftop.

The stew my Dad and I made in Ireland from mussels we picked ourselves from Galway Bay.

My friend Mary’s Brooklyn roof-top open-air feasts, with a bottomless tureen of lethal/delicious caipirinhas.

Hot, fresh churros with a melting chocolate center, bought from a Mexico City roadside stand our driver Gerardo took us to.

The spaghetti carbonara, eaten at the bar, at Morandi in New York City.

The tacos al pastor and homemade guacamole at Toloache, also in Manhattan.

My first pisco sour, at Carlin, in Lima.

At Casa de Piedra, a long-gone and lovely hotel in Cuernavaca, my first and unforgettable taste of sweet chestnut paste. Not to mention their enormous, salty home-made potato chips. (Here’s a link to a replacement every bit as lovely and charming, Casa Colonial.)

How about you?

Dish!

The Pleasure Of A Four Hour Lunch

The Standard Grill, NYC. Image by thms.nl via Flickr

I finally ate yesterday at the Standard Grill, one of Manhattan’s trendiest restaurants — the scene at the front door a dazzling blur of entitlement, of leopard coats and Goyard handbags and great jewelry and the set jaw of the people who expect everything now having to actually wait a few minutes for their pleasure.

But it was worth it. I’d made a reservation five days earlier, sitting on hold for 10 minutes, to meet a young friend there visiting from Ottawa. He’s a stylish guy and I knew this would be a good fit.

(One of the greatest pleasures of living in New York is deciding which bar or restaurant to take someone to who is visiting from elsewhere; tonight we’re heading to Toloache, our favorite midtown restaurant, which is a gorgeous room, serves amazing, fresh small margaritas and serves beautiful Mexican food.  Our guests tonight are friends from small-town Rhode Island, an artist and her professor husband.)

Our lunch was perfect, as much for the waiter’s patience as for the food and ambience — the penny tile on the floor actually was pennies. We had only met once before, last July in Vancouver, and we are still getting to know one another. Plus we’re both journos, both Canadian and love to read. I think we must have talked for at least half an hour before we even ordered.

The food was simple but good, and my martini blessedly powerful. We suddenly noticed the lights changing — and, having met at 1:00, it was now 4:40 and the sky outside was darkening.

My lunch companion was a young man half my age, someone (yay!) whom I recently found a job for through — who else? — a man who took over my Montreal apartment in 1988 and found me this summer on LinkedIn. We met on-line as bloggers for the same site, now defunct, and decided to have dinner when I visited B.C.

As someone self-employed, a long lunch and lazy afternoon are my best work-related “benefits”  — not a 401(k) match or paid sick days — but the ability, when and where possible, to savor a great leisurely meal in lovely surroundings with someone whose company and conversation I enjoy.

One new friend, who lost her job two months ago, meets me once a week at a local diner where we catch up. She is OK financially, if bored and restless, and only now — now that she has time to sit and relax and not rush off — are we finally getting to know another.

Time to enjoy one another has become the ultimate luxury.

Do you ever take long, lazy lunches? Who do you have them with, and where? What do you eat?

Importing A Taste Of Home — Chiles, Chocolate, Cheerwine

Turkish delight. Yum!!!Image via Wikipedia

No matter where I live — and it’s five countries so far — I miss Canadian candy: Big Turk, Crunchie, Aero, Oh Henry, Crispy Crunch, MacIntosh toffee, wine gums and liquorice allsorts. Yesterday I finished (sob!) the last of my wine gums, brought back from my recent trip to Vancouver.

They have nothing to do with wine and they are not gum. Think of something chewy, translucent jewel colors, in subtle flavors and different shapes.

But Big Turk is it! (Dark chocolate covered Turkish delight, soft, pink, chewy.)

One American friend won a whole new level of respect for his sophisticated palate when he begged me to bring some Big Turks back to New York with me. Most Americans have never heard of it, nor of Turkish delight. I can’t even explain the delights of Crunchie because it’s sponge toffee….which is orange and crunches and melts in your mouth.

Just try one.

Once you’ve developed a taste for something that reminds you of home, and something that just tastes amazing, you need a pipeline. From today’s New York Times:

Although Internet buying makes sense — why haul a treat through Customs if a computer click brings the same result? — plenty of purists favor lugging over logic. For them, a treat bought at its source and carried home by their own (or a loved one’s) hands is somehow more genuine, more delicious, more earned, than one secured in an easy, remote transaction on the Web. This is particularly true now, with the height of summer travel upon us. Food souvenirs are food, but they’re also souvenirs, and as such are evocative of people and places.

“The whole experience of getting it in its context is something you cannot duplicate if you’re not there,” said Michael Stern, a founder of Roadfood.com, a Web site about local restaurants and foods across America, and the co-author of many books on those subjects. Such food mementos are “appealing for the same reasons that anyone travels anywhere,” he continued. “We could all sit in our den with the windows closed and watch TV and see every corner of the world, but having the experience of breathing the air somewhere other than our living room — the whole, complete sensual experience — isn’t something you can replicate.”

Anna Sturgeon, 27, a movie content reviewer from Cincinnati, agrees. She is a big fan of Cheerwine soda, a drink that sounds sweet enough to make your teeth ache.

For my sweetie, it’s pozole, used to make soup. We keep a big bag of it in the freezer since it’s what he ate growing up in Santa Fe.

What’s the food that makes you homesick? Do you cart it back from trips? Ask others to bring it for you?

Emotional Eating — When You've Gotta Have Some Salt/Fat/Sugar

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been so good — eating much less and much healthier than ever before.

But yesterday I fell so far off the wagon it was lost in the the distance.

Because I had to say goodbye to my Mom, who I see, at most, once a year and sometimes only every two years; we live very far apart and the costs of hotel (small apartments for us both with too-big personalities) make it a challenge to do it frequently. She lives in Canada, and I in the U.S., having traded our native countries.

I hate that goodbye, not knowing when, or if, I’ll see her again. She’s 76, in OK health, living alone. I’m her only child.

She beat me bloody at gin rummy and I trounced her at Scrabble. That’s a good visit for us.

So it was a plate of Belgian waffles, (whipped cream and strawberries), that morning on the ferry ride back to Vancouver. It was a beer at lunch, and some of the fries that came with my fish and chips. It was a package of wine gums (a chewy candy I can’t find in New York.)

Yes, dammit, all in one day.

Comfort food. It didn’t heal my sadness, but at least I’m now quite conscious when I make lousy choices and why.

Today I took a long bike ride around Stanley Park, admiring herons and seaplanes. Healthier, more fun, fewer calories.

The first wagon-abandonment — and the first time I was really aware of this comfort connection — was the day True/Slant was suddenly sold to Forbes, putting my future with them (still) in doubt. I had a small scoop of ice cream and it tasted very good. Wrong choice, yes, but the day a carrot really makes me feel better I’ve turned into a rabbit.

What’s your comfort food? What pushes you to (over) indulge in it?

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 Simple Diet Tips (medicalinsurance.org)
• Sugar Wars (lifescript.com)
• Using a Food Journal to Stop Emotional Eating (brighthub.com)

Wendy's Employee Forgets The Mayo — And Customer Pulls Out Her Taser

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Hold the mayo — and you’ll get Tasered.

No kidding.

Here’s a true story from Florida of a woman — and her pink stun gun — who threatened a Wendy’s employee after they left out the mayo and mustard from her order.

Pink, that’s important.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Furious woman chased Wendy’s employee with pink Taser (pinkbananaworld.com)

Foodie Institutions — Waffle Cones, Hot Dogs, Ice Cream. What's Your Local Legend?

Image via Wikipedia

As someone currently allowed nowhere near an ice cream cone or hot dog, a girl can still dream. I liked this recent piece about Doumar’s Cones and Barbecue, in Norfolk, Virgina:

Now 88, Albert sports an orange cap bearing a stitched ice-cream cone and his nickname, “Big Al.” It sets off his gray suit, suspenders, and bow tie. Sitting by the humming soda fountains, he explains that Uncle Abe came to the United States from Damascus, Syria, around the turn of the 20th century, in hopes of making enough money to move his parents and three brothers here. Once his brother George joined him, the two worked in the waffle-cone business together, creating an ice-cream-cone empire. He would scout a location, arrange for a local ice-cream manufacturer to deliver his product, set up a site, and put one of his relatives in charge. The stands eventually stretched from Coney Island, N.Y., to Jacksonville, Fla.

Albert’s son-in-law, Randy Windley, says that at one point Norfolk boasted more than a dozen drive-ins, two of which were Doumar’s, including one on the beach near the Chesapeake Bay. In 1933, a hurricane flattened the restaurant on the water, and another in Florida closed when an interstate made the land it stood on more valuable than the restaurant. The Doumar’s that has stood on Monticello Avenue since 1934 is the family’s last outpost.

The place recalls another era: Fifty people can dine at the soda fountain or in booths that ring the restaurant, and the staff can serve about 60 cars at a time in the parking lot. Waitresses cruise the parking lot bearing trays of burgers, fries, and milkshakes. Several generations of one family arrive in search of homemade limeades or double scoops in a cone.

I  live in a county north of New York City, with two foodie institutions I like, La Manda’s Restaurant — despite its formica, fluorescent lighting and noise — thriving since 1947 and Walter’s, whose extraordinary Chinese -themed red tiled roof and hanging lanterns on each corner has offered great hot dogs and curly fries on a quiet residential street in Mamaroneck since 1928.

When we’re in Paris, we live for Berthillon ice cream, with 33 amazing flavors like rhubarb and blood orange. The line-up at Berthillon’s shop on the Ile St. Louis (our rented apartment faced it) began early and often snaked around the corner.

(French women don’t get fat because when you order une boule [one ball, i.e. one scoop] it’s the size of a golf ball. Order a “small” in the U.S. at a Ben & Jerry’s or Baskin-Robbins and it’s three huge scoops, likely three times the calories.)

What’s your favorite foodie destination — in your town or elsewhere?

Why Diets Fail — Boredom! NYT Writer Test-Drives Pre-Made Meals

Here’s one male writer’s frank assessment of what he was buying when he signed up for pre-made meals to help him lose 30 of his 230 pounds:

After online searches and conversations with friends, I decided to compare the offerings of four companies: Zone Manhattan, Chefs Diet, Nu-Kitchen and eDiets. All four would deliver the meals to my door in Brooklyn. Three deliver daily, while the fourth, eDiets, sends a large package once a week. None of the companies knew I was a reporter.

Image via Wikipedia

There were dozens of companies I could have chosen, though it is hard to say how many are in the business at any one time. Research from Mintel International, which studies consumer behavior, suggests that the recession has made all-in-one diet programs less appealing.

“Consumers are trading down to do-it-yourself diets with foods or supplements from the supermarket,” said Marcia Mogelonsky, a global food and drink analyst for Mintel, a Chicago company.

Nu-Kitchen bills itself as the “ultimate personal chef and meal delivery company.” I ordered the five-day plan ($230.53) and was told that I would be sent 1,800 calories a day.

$230! That’s a really good pair of shoes, maybe three on sale.That’s what two of us spend on two weeks‘ groceries, and I eat 2-3 meals at home every day out of that.

What he’s getting for all that cash are three things, all of them helpful although each of them is actually a crutch. He will have to learn to walk differently. And alone. That’s the hardest part:

1) Portion control. My, that’s no food! Look at all that….empty plate. Eating out will never, ever look the same to you again.

2) They build in their idea of variety. Not what you like.

3) They free you from the tedious torture of grocery shopping for only healthy foods, let alone the endless measuring spoons/weigh scale/measuring cup drama that makes you start to feel like every meal should simply be served in an IV tube or maybe a beaker with graduated white lines so you know exactly when to stop.

I’ve been on what I like to call my doctor-ordered LD — Loathed Diet — for almost a month. I can’t tell you how much weight I’ve lost because (yup) I don’t own a scale and don’t want to. I know my own body quite well, thanks, having inhabited it for a few decades and — having been an athlete and dancer for as long — know intimately how it looks and feels. Yes, I look in a full-length mirror every day in very bright light. My body is noticeably smaller, all over, mostly on top. (I’m OK with that).

Once I start cycling and swimming, I hope to shave off even more, faster.

But, you know, when even the doctor who sent me to the dietitian says: “Most people never lose the weight”, honey, where’s my motivation? A little back-patting goes a long, long way to keeping your shaking, quivering hand away from the chips/candies/Scotch/whatever filthy bad thing you love most.

I wish Fred lots of luck but he quickly learned what any miserable fatty learns — 1700 or even 1800 calories a day is nothing! No sweets, very, very few carbs. That does not include — hmmm — doughuts or cookies or cake or pancakes or a margarita. (I get 1 oz. of dark chocolate starting Friday [woo hoo] but only if I sacrifice one of my two daily servings of fruit (1 cup, 8 ounces) or starch (4 ounces, 1/2 cup) in its stead.

Welcome to the nursery!

The sheer boredom of eating the same damn legitimate foods over and over  and over and over – plain yogurt, a small handful of nuts, a small serving of popcorn (but you better make it because it’s drenched in oil) will kill you.

I am only able, I know, to hang in this far because I work about a 2-second walk away from my kitchen and a fridge filled with so much lettuce it now looks like a rabbit’s hutch. The issue with weight loss isn’t just self-control, it’s control in general — over what, where, when and how you put food and drink in your mouth.

Very few of us have $1,000+ a month to spare for someone else feeding us pre-made small portions.

And, yes I can hear all your potato chip bags rustling! Sigh.