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September 20, 2009
Eggplant Sloppy Joes!!!
MR and I were idly chattering about foods we used to like, and the topic of the Sloppy Joe came up. In my never ending quest to make foods that make MR laugh, I came up with the stuffed eggplant Sloppy Joe! It turned out quite good. Here's the recipe, but feel free to tweak it with your own favorite Sloppy Joe ingredients.
1 eggplant, cut in half lengthwise, pre-cooked in microwave for three minutes and hollowed out
100 grams Quorn tenders (or whatever your favorite ground beef substitute may be)
1/2 cup of no salt added tomato sauce (we just use Giant generic brand)
Worchestershire sauce
dash of Splenda (or we used neotame)
nonfat mozzarella
olive oil, 1 tsp
50 g scallions
garlic or garlic powder
Walden Farms ketchup
Mix up the eggplant guts and all the other ingredients (except cheese and oil)
Restuff the eggplants, top with cheese, microwave till it's melted. Top with oil.
This turned out really good, and very entertaining!
Posted by april at 8:13 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
September 17, 2009
Soy Ginger Eggplant Mushroom Dish
I made MR's dinner early this morning so as to make sure it was done by dinner time... it was that kind of day when I had no idea where I would end up... so I marinated half an eggplant, chopped into bite sized pieces, with the stems of four portabella mushrooms, also chopped, in 2 tbsps low sodium soy sauce, 1 tbsp lemon juice, and a ton of garlic and ginger powder. You could also use fresh garlic and ginger, minced, but I'd leave them to soak in the lemon and soy for at least an hour before mixing with the veggies. I left those to marinate all day in a large dish, and then set out chopped asparagus and broccoli, as well as 150 g Quorn tenders (pick your own protein!) that MR could mix together and steam shortly before dinner. He was very pleased with the final product.
It was a chilly and rainy day here... took me an hour to get home from Temple hospital, which I can make it to in 25 minutes under good conditions, but the rain was so bad that there were lots of accidents and I was driving very slowly and carefully. I didn't want to eat anything other than hot soup, so for dinner I took my lunch time kale salad and put it in two cups of beef broth and then added a half cup of nonfat plain yogurt and a teaspoon of flax oil. It's amazing how you can make cream of anything by adding yogurt after removing from heat. It's not creamy like stuff made with cream, but I like the tart tanginess of the yogurt, and it certainly gives you a lot of calcium for very few calories!
I've also started eating those little Laughing Cow Light wedges for snacks/dessert. I don't eat sweets -- sugar gives me anxiety, in addition to being a pointless waste of calories -- so I look to the "cheese plate" for an after dinner treat. Right now I'm enjoying some light garlic and herb wedges, but I also like the original Swiss light and the French Onion. They're only 35 calories. MR says he can't imagine wasting 35 calories on such a thing, but he's rather have broccoli, and as much as I love broccoli, sometimes I'd rather have creamy cheesy goodness!
Work is crazy as always, but I've managed to find time to practice yoga at a studio downtown near some of the places where I'm working. It's a big studio, much bigger than the one close to home, with classes practically on the hour. Had an amazing class today that really felt like taking it to the next level... learned a whole lot. I think my Sanscrit name will have to be "shoulders back and down!" since that's the main direction my teachers give me. I carry so much tension in my shoulders, and yoga really makes it obvious.
Okay, middle of the night writing done... going to attempt to go back to bed!
Posted by april at 12:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 13, 2009
I guess all greens look alike...
I piled up my numerous greens at the grocery store: mustard, turnip, collards, kale, romaine, and the cashier took one look at them and said, "Are those all the same?"
This is the same one who last week failed to identify okra.
We shop in a regular old grocery store, and the produce guys are very nice and stock a lot of good organics, and the organic section manager has been gracious enough to order my Nancy's organic cottage cheese for me, but the cashiers all seem brain dead when it comes to vegetables. I guess they just don't see a lot of them coming through the check out lines. How depressing.
Makes me miss the hippie kids at Whole Foods. At least they can identify the vegetables they carry.
Posted by april at 8:31 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Hunger Is Relative
My cat Kieffer howls to wake the dead when anyone gets anywhere near where we keep the cat food in the kitchen. He also howls anytime anyone is in the kitchen at all starting a few hours before meal time, and continuing with growing franticness (is that a word? Frantacity?) until the cat food actually appears in his bowl.
The cat is not starving. The cat is not even CR'd. The cat is actually a little chubby (just big boned!) though he has lost weight in recent years on his doctor's advice. I'm sure he is hungry for meals, but I sincerely doubt that he's hanging around all day in an acute state of hunger. However, the possibility of a human nearing the catfood cans sends him into meeeeeoooooww overdrive!
Here's another funny thing: if one of us feeds him when the other is not home, then the other walks through the door, Kieffer will immediately start howling in an attempt to convince us that he has not yet been fed. He is so convincing that MR frequently leaves me notes saying, "Kitty lies!" if he's giving the cat his meal while I'm out. The cat can not be biologically hungry, but his little kitty instincts tell him that he must be fed again!
Hunger is a funny thing... most people who hear about CR say, "But aren't you hungry all the time?" I know when I was on hardcore CR, I was definitely not hungry all the time, but the hunger when I was hungry (a bit before mealtimes) had a totally different character to it from the hunger that non-CR'd people feel. It was real, biological hunger. Not just a stomach rumbling or an "It's time to eat" hungry. It was even different from the hungry feeling of not having eaten for quite awhile (like if you skip breakfast and it's half an hour till lunch) and genuinely being in need of a meal. The CR'd hungry started to kick in when my body fat stores were way down... I never did get the percentage professionally tested but the Tanita scale said 18%. It was completely different, and not upsetting or scary at all. It was more like being in touch with what the body *truly needs* as opposed to what it might be craving. It was actually rather nice. My meals were extraordinarily satisfying (nothing like 100 grams of kale and a cup of cottage cheese to fill you up!) and the feeling of being satisfied with a healthy meal was also completely different from the feeling of being "done" with a meal that's less nutritionally optimal.
Now, of course, there are limits. At one point I went to what I would consider too low for me, for too long, and I didn't decide it was too low because of my weight or how I looked. I was 99 pounds at the time, and I was fine with how I looked (though I like my body with yoga muscles better) and I was eating 1200 consistently without days out. I may have at one point dripped just a tiny bit below 1200, and then instead of just feeling hungry for awhile before meal times, I noticed that I was really, really hungry, and thinking about food more than I wanted to. At the point where it became distracting, I decided it was time to go up on calories. We are always telling people that you have to make your own decisions about what's too low for you. There's no weight number or calorie number dictated from on high. MR's rather random rule (and he knows it's random) is that he doesn't go below 115. My low point seemed to be defined by when I felt that hunger was becoming no longer a pleasant reminder of our place in the natural world, but a distraction from the things I wanted to focus on in life. Just a few more calories and I returned to my CR-happy point, but I know for sure that 1200 is too low for me.
It was my experience that the quality of hunger changed when I started exercising. I wrote awhile back about hungry muscles, and I can testify that there's a different kind of hunger when you're exercising and building and maintaining muscle mass. When I was on my way down and at my CR-low, I had about as much muscle as a paper bag. I hadn't been exercising much for years and I lost weight by cutting calories and improving nutrition alone. I wish I had lost weight with exercise, and now that I'm dripping back down and still holding onto my muscle mass, I know I'll prefer the way I look and feel. It's a difficult balance though. Some exercise, especially a lot of cardio, seems to make me hungry disproportionately to the calories it burns, and that's the last thing you want if you're on CR. Yoga doesn't seem to do this as much, even though the style of yoga I practice is very swift and athletic. But still, I have to eat a lot more now that I have muscle mass than I did before. It complicates the equation, and I'm still working out a balance between all my exercise practices and the need to drop my calories lower.
Hunger is not something to be feared, not if you're a little hungry because you're dropping your calories, not because you're out of money to buy food. When I feel hungry now, I sometimes head straight for the Nancy's Organic Lowfat Cottage Cheese and shove it in my mouth as fast as I can. But at other times, especially if I've made plans for my meals that don't involve an extra cup of cottage cheese mid-afternoon, I take a moment to settle in and remember that the hunger is a cue, not a command. I can follow it, or I can make another decision. I have the power to determine what's right for me at any given moment.
In a world of mindless eating, this isn't easy. Yoga and meditation have helped a great deal, but I still find myself picking up the bruchetta just because it's on the table. But as I drop my calories lower and try to negotiate the balance between exercise and CR, it's something I've been thinking about.
And as Kieffer reminds me, several times a day, a beast doesn't have to be experiencing biological hunger to howl for the Fancy Feast.
Posted by april at 4:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 12, 2009
Fun Weekend Cooking!
Finally a quiet weekend at home with MR! He had a wonderful time at SENS, and then he came back to excitement as my first play was performed in the Philly Fringe Fest on Wednesday! It's going up again on Saturday, the 19th. I hope that explains my absence from blogging: the show, a delightful visit from my parents, and attempting to keep up with yoga.
Finally this weekend I've settled in at home to do some great cooking! Last night was a traditional stuffed eggplant, stuffed with Quorn tenders, Walden Farms marinara, shiitakes and Italian spices, with a giant zucchini and cauliflower side dish. Today for MR I've made a pumpkin and shiitake soup:
Pumpkin Shiitake Soup:
1 cup veggie broth, no salt added
1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
70 g or so shiitake mushrooms, chopped
1 tbsp nonfat sour cream
1 tsp olive or flax oil
Garlic powder
Black pepper
Boil the veggie broth, then add the shiitakes, garlic and pepper. Boil the mushrooms for approx one minute, then add the pumpkin and stir. Serve piping hot, and top with the teaspoon of sour cream, with teaspoon of oil on top.
Here's the soup I've made for myself, a hearty concoction for under 500 calories that I'll be eating on all day:
Clam and Vegetable Soup With Paprika
1 bag frozen veggies, I choose Italian Blend, Giant generic brand!
1 can clams
1 can water chestnuts
1 can no salt added diced tomatoes
black pepper, garlic powder, paprkia
Heat it all up and mix together, season to taste! This is super simple but it is so yummy! Especially for one of our first crisp fall days. It's the paprika that makes it!
I'm going to make an asparagus and zucchini side for MR at lunch, and then tonight I'm going to heat up some portabellas and make pumpkin and artichoke portabella pizzas! It's pumpkin time at the home of the Orange!
Posted by april at 9:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CR Society Conference Coming Up!
See Fight Aging for some info!
MR and I will be there!
Posted by april at 6:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 11, 2009
An Excuse to Buy Blueberries!
This article, posted by our buddy Matthew Lake!
Posted by april at 5:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 7, 2009
A Blog I Love!
Okay, I really love this blog.
Read it. You'll be glad you did.
Posted by april at 3:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Will You Walk With Me Out On the Wire?
Yes, it's a repost of an oldie but goodie...
Will You Walk With Me Out On the Wire?
Lately I feel like this blog has been missing something. Well, two things: philosophy and pop music. This is due in part to a fear that I would offend some of my audience, and now that I am on the Mprize front page, I am very conscious of a need to be correct and inoffensive in all things. But I fear I am becoming bland... stuffed vegetables are nice, but there is more to life than cooking!
Today a confluence of events: my first day back at negotiations, a "Battle Cry of the Moderates" email on the CR Society list, and the Philly classic rock station playing "Born to Run" on my way home from work has created the perfect storm. You are going to get some pop music and some philosophy this time. Don't worry... nutrition information to follow.
I first started to love the song "Born to Run" during my senior year in college (1996 if you must know) when I was making the decision to leave the promise of a secure, economically rewarding career in human relations for a large corporation you've heard of (they make your toothpaste) in order to become a freedom fighter for the disenfranchised, ie, a union organizer. I had huge loans to pay off and all my friends were going on to law school or graduate school, except for the tiny group of student activists who were also setting off to become organizers. The song was my anthem as I left the beaten path to try something much harder and much more dangerous, and I believe, in the end, much more rewarding.
Today in negotiations when we were talking about the nurses' pension program, our lead negotiator, an old friend of mine, got going on the subject of how real people's choices have led to a situation where people who should be retiring with dignity and economic security have to work at Wal-Mart and Home Depot in order to pay for their medications and their heating bills. His speech reminded me again of how glad I am that I decided to walk out on the wire with the people who don't just roll over and play dead in the face of injustice. Who stand up and say that they deserve to retire with respect after 30 years of caring for the sick and dying. He spoke of how someday there will be more equality, and I thought to myself, "Because I didn't eat that cookie, even though it looked really good, I might live to see that day!" I was proud to be in the room this afternoon with twelve brave nurses, elected from amongst their co-workers to stand up for themselves, their patients, and their profession. It would have been so much easier to take the other path... more tomorrow on my first two years of driving around the South getting doors slammed in my face... but I wouldn't trade the ability to sit there with these women and men who stick by their convictions and their patients, even when those around them say, "It's bad everywhere... why bother fighting?"
Which brings me to the "Battle Cry of the Moderates" email on the CR Society list. It was another of those messages in which the moderate says "What's so bad about an egg yolk? Why not eat bread and oatmeal?" and implies that those of us who are a little more hard core are just neurotic freaks.
I find these messages almost unbearable, but I've realized that if I respond to every single one of them on-list I will end up using all of the extra lifespan I gain by doing CR combatting idiocy on the list. I'm all for people making their own choices about what constitutes quality of life to them, and we all draw the line in different places. I am constantly drawing and redrawing my own line in the CR sand. But the fact is, we're going to live longer if we lower our calories. That means we find more calorie efficient ways to get our nutrition than bread and egg yolks.
The battle cry of the moderates is that we don't know for sure that CR is going to work in humans. And of course they're right. None of us has lived long enough to know if we're going to live longer... though our bloodtests are excellent and I must say, we look fabulous! But for those of us who decide to go further, it is an article of faith that what we are doing will work. We know we can't be sure, but we CR anyway, because the alternatives are unthinkable. To imagine that we would, through our own inaction, damn ourselves to sickness, infirmity and death, is impossible. And for those of us who truly believe that the SENS approach to *curing* age related disability and disease is going to work, the idea that we would miss "escape velocity" because we just had to have one more margarita is really beyond the pale.
I think it's hard in our society which values the quick fix and instant gratification of all sorts to engage in a practice that requires tons of self-discipline and marks you as different (well, I'm still pretty normal looking, but even I will eventually look skinny). You'd better be pretty darned sure it's going to work. Yet we can't be sure... all the animal evidence seems to say it will, but scientists we respect like Aubrey de Grey think it won't. And our friends and family think we're nuts.
Which brings me to our song line quote in our headline. The entire lyric goes:
Will you walk with me out on the wire?
Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider
But I've gotta know how it feels...
I wanna know if love is wild
Babe I wanna know if love is real.
I can't promise you that you'll live longer if you cut your calories and make my stuffed squash. I strongly believe that you will, and that my recipes and endless silly chatter can help you make the transition. But in the end, all I am doing is holding out my hand and asking you to walk with me out on the wire. Asking you to join me in an experiment whose success is far from assured. And hoping that together we will live to see a better day. A day when we no longer see our aging relatives live out their last days in misery and horror. A day when we face the future filled with hope even when their are 89 candles on our birthday cake (does anyone ever really put that many candles on their cake? Wait, I don't eat cake anymore!)
I will not cheat myself out of one minute of youth and health. I will carry around my cottage cheese and eat my eggwhites and turn down the cookies even though I'm really really hungry because there was nothing CR friendly to eat for lunch besides the tossed salad and give my $85/month to the Mprize instead of going out with my friends on weekends, and I will believe with ever shred of life in me that we can make things better.
I am honored to be joined in both of my journeys by some of the most amazing people on earth. From the nurses I spent my day with: the 27 year RN who spoke up today to defend her patients from an unsafe practice on her floor, though her voice was shaking and she feared for her job; to the Mprize brothers and sisters all over the world who give so much of their income and their time so that others may live. From MR, the most brilliant man I have ever seen up close, also possibly the skinniest, who is a constant inspiration to me, even when he's just chopping vegetables; to his bearded boss with his vision of a world in which we are can live in youth and health even though we weren't all so terribly good in our younger days... I often feel that I am not worthy of the company with whom I travel. But they like the food, so I guess they'll let me come along for the ride.
I think Bruce Springsteen will get the last word tonight.
The highway's jammed with broken heroes
On a last chance power drive
Everybody's out on the run tonight
But there's no place left to hide
Together Wendy we can live with the sadness
I'll love you with all the madness in my soul.
Posted by april at May 4, 2005 8:05 PM
Posted by april at 2:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack