I didn’t realize how addicted I had become to curling up in bed with my laptop until my laptop decided to not connect to the internet anymore. It has now become an expensive personal TV on which W can watch Peep and the Big Wide World, which we practically have on permanent loan from the library. (Peep and the egg, that is. Neverevenmind the others.)
Have you ever reached the end of a day and not been able to summon up even a fleeting memory of the past several hours? I might not have noticed had I gone to bed instead of sitting down at the computer to document those hours… they did involve an asparagus frittata, something I hurriedly (and frustratingly, when asparagus is woody and close to the price of platinum) had to test for a spring issue of something or other, so dinner was taken care of early. (W thought it was the Most Revolting Thing Ever, so I made him a pita pizza – first boiling up some cauliflower I had in the freezer which I whizzed with my hand-held immersion blender with some tomato paste and a pinch of Italian seasoning into something I could spread thickly between the whole wheat pita and mozzarella cheese.)
Asparagus, Tomato and Spinach Frittata
A frittata is a baked Italian egg pie, much like a quiche but without a crust. It has the same characteristics as an omelet, but is much less finicky since you cook everything together at once in the pan. The eggs bind together any combination of ingredients you like – meat, cheese, vegetables, potatoes, herbs, cooked pasta – anything that goes well in an omelet makes a great frittata, and it’s a great way to use up leftovers. If you want to wing it, the basic proportions are 1 to 1 1/2 cups filling for every 5-6 eggs. Egg substitutes work well for frittata too.
1 tsp. canola oil
1 small bunch asparagus, ends trimmed, chopped into 1” pieces (about 2 cups)
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved (about 2 cups)
1 garlic clove, crushed (optional)
1-2 packed cups baby spinach leaves, torn into pieces
3 large eggs
3 large egg whites
1/2 cup grated old cheddar, Monterey Jack, Gouda, Parmesan, crumbled feta or goat cheese
salt and pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Heat the oil in a 10-inch ovenproof skillet set over medium heat. Sauté the asparagus for 2-3 minutes, then add the tomatoes and garlic to the pan and cook for another 2 minutes, until the tomatoes release their juices. Add the spinach and cook until it wilts.
Meanwhile, stir together the eggs, cheese, salt and pepper in a medium bowl. Spread the vegetables into an even layer in the pan and pour the beaten eggs overtop; reduce heat to medium-low and cook the frittata for 5-8 minutes, until the bottom is set. To help it along, gently pull back the sides with a heatproof spatula to allow any uncooked egg to run underneath.
Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake for about 10 minutes, until the top is set and golden. Serve hot, at room temperature, or cold. Serves 4.
I am loving all of your comments, by the way. I read them all. If I’m slow to reply it’s because I am minutes away from hauling this computer out the window, which may very well be my upper body workout for tomorrow. Beside me is a brand spanking new iMac, waiting for me to get up the nerve to take it out of its box and start learning new programs and transferring files. I’m sure rage burns calories? I remember reading about how fidgeting burns an extra several hundred calories a day – I have actually tried to be a fidgety person. It doesn’t work.
You make great points and have great ideas. I’m not against pulling together a little group so that we can all meet in 3D, if enough of you think it would be fun or helpful or just an excuse to get out of the house. We could call it Book Club. Everyone gets a free pass to go out for book club, right? If you’re into it say so, and I’ll see if I can’t nab the community hall or something.
My sister is going forward with this weight loss thing too. She’s a single mom of three kids and a (more than) full time teacher, and has the most stressful life and busiest schedule of anyone I know. She plans and budgets and schedules everything. We sat down a couple weeks ago and had a little pep rally – she had made up her mind to do this thing, to make it a priority, and we chatted for hours about how we felt and what worked and what hindered our progress. Her kids rolled their eyes at us. We came up with meal ideas and she filled her freezer in a preemptive strike against end-of-the-day hunger and crankiness. I’m happy to report, although I have not been authorized to reveal numbers, that the new scale she bought at the Linens and Things closing-out sale is moving in the right direction.
Tonight as we briefly compared notes we agreed that evenings are the worst; mornings are easy but either of us could easily graze from pre-dinner to bedtime. So I decided that considering a) this is the most important thing for me to accomplish right now, b) if I sit on the couch and watch TV all night (which never happens for either of us except on Thursdays when I watch The Office and she watches the Amazing Race), I am officially being productive. Both of us, as I’m sure a great many of you can relate to, possess this inner need to be accomplishing something at all times – I hereby consider reading and TV watching and napping to be productive if you’re doing it without unnecessary snacking.
(That whole not eating after 7pm thing, by the way? It has nothing to do with timing – although it seems to make sense to not eat before bed, it doesn’t really make a huge difference when you take in those calories, so long as you eat regularly and include breakfast. Think of how late they eat dinner in Europe! It’s effective because the vast majority of us eat the vast majority of our calories in the evenings, and if we cut out any snacking we might otherwise do between dinner and bed, we’d take a big chunk out of our daily consumption.)
I’ve had a lot of you ask about my eating plan. I’m trying to give you an idea in as real-life terms as possible – plan enough that you aren’t left scrambling when you’re tired and hungry, but not so rigidly as to not allow for moods and occasions and curveballs the day may throw you. I don’t believe in weighing and measuring and calculating everything that goes into my mouth. It makes food too clinical, and scary. It isn’t something I want to do every day for the rest of my life. I understand what’s good for me and what isn’t, and we all know – don’t we? – what to do in order to lose weight. Every time someone asks me “how I did it” I tell them by eating properly and exercising. And virtually every time they look disappointed and say “well I know that!” Although it isn’t easy, it isn’t that complicated. In fact, most of us could free up a lot of grey matter if we would just stop thinking about it and start doing it already. Yes, it’s hard. No, it’s not fair that some people can eat whatever they like and yet don’t have an extra ounce on them. (But I’ll bet they are not without their own struggles.) And it’s important, I think, to remember that although life isn’t fair, it’s generally unfair in our favour.
Surveying the contents of my fridge yesterday I had leftover roasted peppers from my demo in Lake Louise and a ziploc baggie of chick peas – a few days ago I accidentally opened a can, so it needed using up. I took a peek back at the chickpea recipes I made last year – wanting badly to roast them with garlic and chard, but knowing that although it’s great for you and full of heart-healthy mono and polyunsaturated fats, it’s pretty caloric on account of all that oil. The chick peas with lemon and Parmesan were pretty good – I figured they could be improved upon with the addition of roasted red peppers (very vitamin-rich and low calorie), fresh parsley (ditto), a slick of extra-virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and finely squished clove of garlic. I made it yesterday but had no parsley, and figured the peas and peppers would be better with a day to marinate anyway.
And it was. Today I roughly chopped half a bunch of parsley and stirred it in, along with a fine grating of Parmesan cheese (amazing how much you can get out of a small chunk with a Microplane grater) and topped the lot with plenty of black pepper. Yum.
Mike and I were caught on security camera while computer shopping today…
I know, these could not sound less appetizing. They might have come straight from the 60s, when party food tended toward gellied, deviled, Spammy, whipped canapé things. And I’m not going to tell you to go on the Sardine Diet (which actually is a thing, believe it or not), but they are very tasty, and I will make a case for them:
To sum: my Dad has been pestering me to read a new(ish) book written by Taras Grescoe called Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. His main point is that we would all be healthier and fish stocks in better shape if we ate lower on the food chain – that is the bottom-feeders – small fish and crustaceans such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, squid and octopus whose stocks are thriving in the absence of bigger fish – predators such as tuna, cod and shark, which are being overfished. (In fact, their populations are depleting in a big way.) It’s also the larger predatory fish that have been found to be higher in mercury, which tends to accumulate to some degree in all fish but especially in shark, swordfish, tuna (particularly albacore), escolar, marlin and orange roughy, which absorb mercury from the prey they eat, causing it to become more concentrated as it moves further up the food chain.
So the bottomfeeders – and particularly the 11 or so species that are packaged as sardines (herring, smelt, pilchard, et al.) and feed on algae and other green stuff – are the best for us nutritionally and environmentally. Plus they’re cheap. Brisling sardines (King Oscar cans them) are Norweigan sardines that are particularly small and benign – you can generally tell the fishiness of sardines by their size and how badly roughed up they are when you open the can – one I picked up at the dollar store from Portugal contained about 3 mangled fish, and the Mediterranean-style brisling sardines I bought at the grocery store in the same sized can contained 12 perfectly formed wee silver fish. Mediterranean-style means they were packed in olive oil with olives, garlic, herbs and red pepper, and were phenomenal mashed with a bit of mayo, grated onion and some snipped parsley, spread on toast, cut into triangles and toasted again, inspired by the Sardine Puffs I found on Epicurious. (It won’t produce 120 appetizers, by the way.) Sardines are particularly high in omega 3 fatty acids and are of course packed with everything else that makes fish so good for you – try using a can or two in your next tuna casserole. They really aren’t any fishier than tuna. Sardines on toast is also popular, and my Grandad used to eat sardine sandwiches dipped in apple cider vinegar – his 94 year old taste buds needed some extra stimulus, I guess.
In other news, I’m down 10 lbs as of this morning. (According to my home scale, which I think I’ll stick to for now in order to maintain some sort of continuity.) Ten pounds isn’t as visually significant as it sounds on an almost 6′ frame – I still look the same, but feel better, my jeans are a bit less strained, and it’s nice to have my freighter moving in the right direction. (Maybe in doing so I’ll go from freighter to streamliner?) And it’s a thrilling feeling to know that I can lose ten, because that means I can lose the next. And the next. And it really is up to me. And it’s not as massive a deal as it was when I fretted, uncomfortably in my skin, about having to lose it – you get to a point where it’s just easier to do something about it than to not.
Speaking of my Grandad, he used to have a saying (many actually, as I’m sure most Grandads do, but this one particularly stuck): Life is hard by the yard - by the inch it’s a cinch. When you’re staring down the barrel of 100 pounds to lose it can be more than a little daunting, and easy to put off until tomorrow, or Monday, or after your birthday party, knowing that it’s going to take a really long time to get where you’re going. But imagine if you started inching in that direction a year ago? It’s easy to get caught up in the desire for immediate gratification, and sucks when you choose a long walk rather than a lie on the couch and yet come home to the exact same reflection in the mirror, but that’s how it works. So I break up the war into smaller battles: the first 10 (which is always the quickest to go, I’m sad to say), and now 8 left before I see that needle dip below 200 again, at which point I’ll maybe have a cupcake and a latte while I ponder my next destination.
Still had some of that garlicky hummus from the weekend, whole wheat tortillas and fresh parsley; took some frozen shredded chicken from the freezer and had something made before I had time to nibble through enough to count as dinner. The motivation behind the mandarin milkshakes was mainly to reclaim a large chunk of prime real estate in my freezer that has been occupied for far too long. Besides, I had to put that vanilla ice cream out of its misery (if just to shut it up); likewise the last of the mandarin oranges that were getting too soft to be appealing. (Kind of like me.) I didn’t partake, but whizzed about 5 peeled mandarins with a few scoops of vanilla for Mike, Ben and W as they came back from playing at the park and ice skating.
I buttoned the middle button of my pea coat today – comfortably, without fear of someone losing an eye by the sheer force of it popping off in the wrong direction. And I sat down in the car without even having to undo it, nor feeling particularly sausagelike. It’s funny the little things that make the most impact. When I was at my largest, I had a recurring dream about wearing jeans with front pockets; I fantasized about putting keys and change in my pockets, and when I lost all that weight, my biggest thrill was doing just that. And – get this – squatting. When the Oprah show called the first time (another story – and no I wasn’t on) they asked what I most wanted to do that I couldn’t before – fly in an airplane? Go bungee jumping? All I could think of was squatting down to pick things up and put them in my pockets. I don’t think that makes for particularly exciting TV.
I hope I’m not coming across as too preachy on the subject of weight loss; I don’t profess to know all there is to know on the subject, but only speak from my own experience - almost a lifetime of diet programs (the first time I joined Weight Watchers, with my Mom, I was around 10) before figuring out what worked for me. I have a hard time watching other people put their trust in unlikely methodologies, having been down that road so many times and knowing far too well how defeating it can be when things don’t work out the way you hoped.
Just remember this: the success rate for diet programs is 5%. And yet it’s a $50 billion industry in North America! If any other product on the market failed 95% of the time, how many repeat customers would it have? And yet the industry continues to thrive because when plans and products don’t work we don’t blame them, or lose faith in unrealistic promises; we blame ourselves. Our own shortcomings. If it didn’t work, we were just not doing it right. (Have you noticed the small print beside success stories for places like Jenny Craig? *results not typical. And have you noticed that Queen Latifah has quietly disappeared from her role as JC spokesperson since she signed on to endorse them a year ago?)
I have to look at my life as a whole, not broken down into stints of dieting or not dieting. Diets by nature are temporary, meaning that when it comes to an end the weight comes back, usually with interest. So here’s the thing: whatever you do to lose weight you have to be willing/able to continue to do indefinitely in order to keep it off. And you’re not going to give up cake for all eternity, are you?
This is how it is: most of the time I’m going to eat as well as I can, and some of the time I’m going to eat things that aren’t as good for me, or that might require an unreasonable number of hours on the elliptical trainer to burn off, and whatever it is is going to taste fantastic and I’m going to enjoy it because life is too short not to, and nothing ruins something delicious like a hefty serving of guilt. It’s what you do most of the time that matters. My mom once likened it to a freighter changing direction: you can’t undo all the good you’ve done by eating a lobster salad sandwich on a croissant, drinking some wine and taking a few dips in the chocolate fountain when you’re spending a weekend at the Chateau.
I decided a long time ago that I can’t approach life from a standpoint of damage control – worrying about how I’m going to “get through” parties and Christmas and holidays – all the events that strung together make for a happy life. But that’s what happens. You worry about how you’re going to handle it, plan to sip on tomato juice or nibble crudites or order the fish, then give in to the moment and eat a bigger piece of cake than you meant to or order a hot fudge sundae, then feel guilty for “cheating” or “ruining your diet” and have another piece of cake and finish the platter of butter tarts because you cheated anyway, and spend the rest of the day/weekend angry with yourself for it. Repeat. Promise yourself you’ll start tomorrow. Order pizza and make a batch of cookie dough to eat raw because you’re starting tomorrow so you might as well get it out of your system tonight.
A spring green salad topped with slices of roast chicken, mandarin oranges, dried cranberries and pumpkin seeds from the deli this afternoon, with balsamic vinaigrette – it was outstanding, and although it’s one of those dishes I’m so familiar with it would never occur to me to actually make it, now that the seed has been planted I might - a good use of leftover roast chicken (or turkey still in the freezer) perhaps with pea pods, asparagus, toasted pecans, chopped iceberg lettuce (along with the greens for extra bulk and crunch) and an Asian dressing made with 3 Tbsp. canola oil, 1 Tbsp. sesame oil, 3 Tbsp. rice vinegar, 1-2 Tbsp. brown sugar and 1 Tbsp. soy sauce. (Those chow mein noodles are a delicious addition because they are deep-fried, so I’d leave them out.)
When we got home I pulled a container of spaghetti sauce with spinach out of the freezer and boiled some pasta. And I’m eating one dark chocolate square while typing this and catching up on Battlestar Galactica. (So many people argue ‘I can’t eat just one!’ Actually, you can. Yes it’s hard and trust me, I know how badly you want to keep going, but it is humanly possible. Although sometimes I find it’s easier to not even start. But when you do stick to one, it’s about as empowering as you can get.)
Good news: went to the gym this morning at the Chateau and spent half an hour on the elliptical trainer. Felt so much better for doing it. (A friend once said ‘I always regret not going to the gym, but I never regret going’.) Also wandered around the hotel with a green tea in hand instead of a latte (the act of carrying around that coffee cup and having something to sip is almost as important as the contents. I said almost.)
Bad news: the gym had a medical scale that’s 6 lbs off my home scale. Not in my favour. Why is it you never discover you’re actually 6 lbs less than you thought? Oh well – I don’t look or feel any different than I did before I weighed myself – interesting how a number can completely change your perspective, so I’m not going to let it.
A few years ago I vowed to go an entire year without weighing myself. Having been overweight since I can remember, it was pretty liberating. Because it really is all about how you feel, and seeing those numbers can totally throw you off. Case in point: About 10 years ago my nephew, around 7 at the time, made the connection between my sister’s mood and the number on her scale. He started adjusting the dial at the base, turning it down just a smidge every morning, so that by the end of the week she was ecstatic over losing howevermany pounds it had amounted to. She was happy, confident – just bursting with general elation. When she figured out what was going on she was completely deflated. Silly, since everything was exactly the same except for a number in her head. (It’s sort of like vanity sizing – clothes sizes are getting smaller and smaller because women are more likely to buy a pair of pants that’s a size 6 than a 10. Have you ever heard that Marilyn Monroe was a size 16? That’s because a size 16 back then is about an 8 today – when has there ever been a size zero? What’s next – minus 2?)
However. I am going to use the scale this time as a tool to help track my progress, but not the only tool - how I feel and how my clothes fit have always been as important a gauge. (Unfortunately not a unit of measure as easily conveyed to y’all.) I don’t want to put too much importance on weight, but I also need a little push out of my comfort zone by putting it out there, which I’m hoping might help some of you who are in the same boat.
The Ski for Heart event was fantastic, by the way – a great family event with tons of activities for kids of all ages (explorer camp, movies, skating parties, cookie baking in the Fairmont kitchens, scavenger hunt, hockey games, horse-drawn sleigh rides around the lake), all to benefit the Alberta Heart & Stroke Foundation. There were a lot of families there who make it a yearly event, raising funds throughout the year and then coming for a fun weekend that might not otherwise be affordable – participants get a steal of a deal on accommodation at the Chateau. I’ll be back next year! Email me or Ski for Heart if you want to get in on the fun. You can cross-country (me) or downhill, or just hang around the hotel, go snowshoeing and skate.
I didn’t realize how addicted I had become to curling up in bed with my laptop until my laptop decided to not connect to the internet anymore. It has now become an expensive personal TV on which W can watch Peep and the Big Wide World, which we practically have on permanent loan from the library. (Peep and the egg, that is. Neverevenmind the others.)
