Okay Daysonethroughfive GO

I am going to lose some of these awarenesses that are coming and going like so many lights on the freeway if I don’t write em down.

1. Day 1 – Friday – I woke up really excited to try this temporary dietary shift. I’d hit Trader Joe’s (Which, can I just tell you, that store has to be 90% hype. They have as much, if not more, pre-packaged processed shit as your local SuperJumboMarket, but they couch it in this… Okay. I’ll say it. I kind of hate Trader Joe’s, not least of all because they suck me right IN to the hype and I walk through going – Oh, I LOVE Trader Joe’s…HEY WAIT A MINUTE…) Aaaaaanyway – I’d hit Trader Joe’s and picked up a little produce and some steel cut oats and some unsweetened dried blueberries on Thursday night. So I woke up Friday Morning PSYCHED about breakfast.

Usually I skip breakfast, or if I eat it I pick up some greasy biscuit thing at the Wawa, or a bagel at Dunkin Donuts. Never, never NEVER do I get up and make myself something from scratch for breakfast, at least during the week. And even then, if I’m doing that, it’s really a family breakfast I’m cooking, and I get to eat because I’m there. So the first plus was waking up and thinking, kind of What can I do for Amy this morning? I got the same feeling I get when I am cooking for company, putting things together just so, creating order out of chaos, thinking of how they’ll react to each taste. So BANG. An awareness – right there, before I started. Like a ton of bricks. It was made more delightful by the underlying smug feeling of superiority I felt toward Oprah, who did her cleanse with people cooking for her, singing her praises. Oprah missed treating herself like company. I didn’t. I KICKED OPRAH’S ASS.

Awareness 2 – Cooking steel cut oats takes about 30-40 minutes, and so instead of my usual, wake up slowly, screw around, grab coffee, take shower, grab more coffee, run out the door at the last minute
there was a deliberateness to my morning. I was more awake, on account of having breathed well the night before, and while the oats simmered I made myself up lunch from a little recipe I love that I stole from Linda over at Losing the Cow. It’s basically a salady mixture of black beans, tomatoes and corn, thrown together with some lime juice and then I think I threw in cumin, but I may have been out of cumin at that point. I left the house feeling a little more accomplished and taken care of than usual, if that makes any sense.

Having taken the time to plan for myself for the day, and having actually eaten breakfast (WHICH, by the way was AWESOME – the steel cut oats are porridgier than rolled oats, giving what is usually accomplished by the addition of milk, and the blueberries added a WONDERFUL and flavorful sweetness), I missed that point in the day around lunchtime where I am suddenly hungry as hell, and wandering off to find the closest fastest bulkiest greasiest thing I can. When I got hungry, I ate the beany thing. I ate it until I wasn’t hungry anymore, and took the rest home. The other thing that didn’t happen, the other thing that was different, was that I didn’t get that after lunch crash that I normally get, well, after lunch.

Dinner was tasty, I had a snack, blah blah blah. Let’s not retitle this blog WHAT AMY ATE, shall we? But you get the picture. The day was a lot about time, I think, and self care, for me, and the fact those things? Actually? Really enjoyable. Not a chore, when you approach it a little differently.

There was caffeine. OH, there was caffeine. But instead of freaking out about how I SHOULD be doing the thing, and now I’d screwed up the thing, and I might as well just trash the whole thing right there, I just, well, I just didn’t. I just kind of shrugged and went – Wow. I am REALLY attached to caffeine. Okay then. We won’t give up the caffeine just yet.

Day 2 – See – Dammit, this is why I should have been writing one through four daily. I don’t remember a lot of day 2. I was fine during the day, felt okay, reconnected with my old friend cantaloupe and remembered how wonderful a cold slice of cantaloupe is in the morning. I felt a kind of discomfort about any eating I did in a rush, or at the computer, or reading. I invented a dinner that, while good, really needs some perfecting, involving tofu, asparagus, mushrooms, red onion slices, garlic, freshly squeezed orange juice and ginger, all over quinoa which was bland, I think because not enough orange. Carly and Sam were in a tiff over dinner, and then Carly was grumpy with me, and that sort of, I’m not sure. I got really self righteous and grumpy. OOOH! Awareness! Drama while I’m eating makes me cranky!

Actually, now that I think about it, that makes some sense, given the drama surrounding meals just about everywhere throughout my life. When I was a kid, being forced to eat hubbard squash, (Which, actually is from the devil), fights between my parents, fights in my first marriage, our first anniversary where I was so hungry by the time we got to the grocery I got completely out of sorts, and my ex-husband actually THREW a tube of liverwurst at me which smashed gloriously across the floor, being a young mother with picky eaters who were not as compliant when I tried to force them to eat things they didn’t like, even recent meals, cooked with a sense of martyrdom and an inevitable falling apart on my part when some kid or another said, eeew, what’s in this????

So conscious eating, maybe there’s an element of creating some peace for myself in the taking of a meal. Eliminating distractions. Maybe there’s a really good, really human reason behind prayer before eating, a gratefulness, yes, but also a setting the stage, creating a space to really BE grateful as we go.

Day 3 – Day three was my only no caffeine day, and I do remember it well. First, in my body, my muscles were begging to be stretched all day. I was busy all day. I met Margie down at the new office, and we measured some space, and within, like, a minute and a half, she’d come up with so many BRILLIANT thoughts on the space that I was thrilled I’d imposed on her. We had lunch, and then trolled a couple of resale shops where she said things like – “No, that’s a dressing table, you need a secretary” and I’d go wha???? She’s got these really magnificent design books that she’s put together, and DUDE, she just KNOWS stuff. (I would bet she could even identify mauve, which, what is that, some kind of tan thing? Or is that taupe?). Anyway – Margie gets her own entry, later, but we walked around like this for about 3 & 1/2 hours and just, well, I can’t speak for her, but I enjoyed her company and just felt most of the time that
I was in the presence of absolute brilliance and I should just keep my mouth shut. (You know, better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt). Toward the end of the day I felt a little tired, and I went to bed quite early, to just let my body acknowledge the lack of caffeine. But generally this isn’t what I do on the weekend. Generally the weekend is my sitting around time, accomplishing nothing productive, and I didn’t feel like doing that. Well, until I actually sat down at the end of the day.

Yesterday, well, I wrote about yesterday yesterday, kind of, and Scott’s home from the grocery store and I’m now feeling quite peevish and self righteous about how he shops. So I need to take a moment or more. I’ll write about day 5 separately, as this entry’s starting to feel like work. And I’m feeling lecturey all of a sudden.

The Purge

I don’t like thinking of this as a cleanse, just because that brings to mind all sorts of posts wherein I discuss my colon at length. That ain’t gonna happen, although I am pleased to report less farting and an increased firmness of my poops.

Anyway – I told Margie that I was going to call it the purge, just because that was the only thing I could think of that sounded just a wee bit grosser than cleanse, and for some reason I can amuse myself by grossing Margie out, which is just horrible, because she is truly one of the nicest, most down to earth people you could ever hope to meet.

Whatever. It’s just this temporary change in my diet, wherein I can spend some time looking at my relationship with food. That does not make a good title, nor is it good shorthand.

I’m on day four of what the author of this book, Quantum Wellness (which I’m not linking to again, because I find it, on the whole, incredibly problematic, and I’m not sure how much trust I have in the writer, but some of the ideas are good. E-mail me. I’ll send you my copy when I’m done), refers to as “The Cleanse.”

The basic notion has to do with bringing an increased awareness to the table (get it?) in regard to our eating habits. That is only a small part of the book, and I’m finding the book really problematic, because although I believe the underlying premise is valid, the execution is just so, I don’t know. A lot of talk of “Spirit” and “putting intentions out to the universe,” or “to the ether,” or, whatever, that I just find so new agey and squishy that I find it off-putting. In addition I’m not getting a sense of ol’ Kathy’s credentials in this arena, and the science she reports is couched in the same sort of squishy terms that I find irritating. But the underlying premise, that wellness is a holistic body-mind-soul relationship, and that we have the power to make huge positive change in our lives with small shifts in our consciousness, that I do believe is true.

At any rate. End tangent.

In the process of this purge, I’m giving my body a break from certain things in my diet, in an effort to gain a deeper sense of awareness regarding my relationship with food. The reasons for this are multi-fold. First, I’m overweight, and would like to come to a place where I could care about that. My current and historical place comes almost solely from my mother’s voice in my head, and that leaves me feeling angry, unloved, disappointing, and rebellious. Not toward my mother, in particular, although therein lies the root, but just in general. None of those feelings are useful to a life that moves forward, and I want a life that is on a forward path. So I’d like a relationship with food that is about nourishing my body, and enjoying eating.

Second, I do remember my initial foray into vegetarianism being motivated by something deep within myself. There was a deep sense of adventure in seeking out intriguing sounding ingredients, and finding them delicious. There is also a sense of connection that I had then, briefly, with the building blocks of fueling my body, and the result.

There’s also the aspect of corporate America, and consumerism, which I know I am too much a part of, and which I’d like to disengage from. The initial vegetarian “convincer” was not about additives, or health, or baby bunnies, but about the incredible amount of waste that goes into meat production. It was Frankie Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet and it’s wealth of information between the energy cost of meat production vs. plant proteins that intrigued me then, and intrigues me still.

Finally, although I’ve always been, I think, fairly in touch with my intellectual/emotional and my spiritual life, I’ve always been completely out of touch with myself as a physical being.  I’d like to be just a little graceful, maybe slightly imposing, and, could I hope, coordinated????  And I feel like remembering and having an awareness of the connection between what I eat, and this vessel it goes into, you know?

So, thus far, this seems like a start.

The biggest pro of this stupid stupid book (a book touted on Oprah, no less, hang my head in shame), is that she talks about coming from a place without judgment about yourself.  And that part of it, in terms of what I will call “the Purge” is a wonderful perspective.  I’m just, noticing, you know, in those places where I’m not eating consciously, so instead of this sense of – well, you fucked that up, go ahead and eat some gluten and dairy, now that you’ve had that caffeine, it’s like – eh, well, that’s interesting, now, isn’t it.

What I’ve learned so far, I’ll go into at more length later, but for starters, the basic gist is spending up to 21 days not eating meat products, sugar, caffeine, alcohol or gluten.  Out of the last 4 days, I’ve had caffeine three, yesterday being the only no caffeine day, but then, you know, again, today, the magnificent David brought me a cup of coffee.  BUT, it was the only cup I had, as opposed to the usual 5-10, you know?  And if I want a cup of coffee, then I’ll drink a cup of coffee.  It’s not something I’m willing to cleanse yet, I guess.

Even with the caffeine, though, I’ve been noticing very subtle changes in the way I’m feeling, and they’re positive.

And for those of you who are tuning in solely for the snot report, what I’m starting to notice as a side effect of the neti pot is the cleaner my sinuses, the more chemically gross cigarettes are smelling and tasting.  NOT SAYING I’M QUITTING.  Just saying I’m noticing.

(Mostly) Vegetarian fun.

When I first met Scott he was not a reader.  Oh, he’d read every morning, "magazines," which, quite frankly, were actually catalogues.  When he and I were married, my mom got him a copy of Undaunted Courage for Christmas, and my husband, who actively hated both reading and history, was hooked.

This has opened up all sorts of present giving options for me, and he recently read The Omnivore’s Dilemma which I gave him last year for Christmas.

This turns one story into another, which is the story of how, when I first met Scott, I was trying to raise my family vegetarian.  This did not go well.  The first time Scott cooked for us, he made spaghetti, which, he pointed out, was "almost vegetarian." You know.  Except for the MEAT.

Anyway, The Omnivore’s Dilemma got Scott’s attention, insofar as the weird politics that go into food production, and when we talked about giving things up for lent, he was willing to try to go meatless.

This sent me, as all food inventions do, to Philadelphia’s most excellent Asian Food Stores.  There’s one I particularly love, on Washington Street, that is in an old abandoned supermarket, of some sort.  It reminds me a lot of living in Thailand, and sticking out like a big, ethnic sore thumb.  There are tanks and tanks of fish, lobster, and frogs, all the most wonderful cuts of head on meat you can imagine, produce that you can’t find anywhere else, and every spice or ingredient that you need to make any delicious recipe of your choice. 

Missing the cuisine of Thailand, as I do, I’ve been having a field day.  I’ve made dishes upon dishes of Thai food, and, at the end of the day, all I have to do is throw rice in the rice cooker, and we’ve got a meal.  OH! One of the best things at the market is fresh bamboo.  And fresh tofu.  Like maybe even made on the premises fresh.  In a big bucket.  With tongs.

Anyway – we’ve been having fun.  And in my quest to expose my family to the wonders of Thai Cuisine, I found this terrific foodie blog, with easy to follow instructions (not to mention conversions) and today I made this awesome Thai snack, which I have not had in 25 years.  Thai food is known for a perfect balance of (sometimes unusual to the Western Palate) flavors, and when I gave Scott one of these, he said, "Wow, I didn’t expect the scallions, but that was perfect."  I didn’t have the mini-pancake pan recommended, so I put a couple of tablespoons of the batter into the bottom of muffin tins, and baked them at 350 for about 10 minutes.  So mine weren’t as golden brown on the bottom as the ones here, and I’ll probably have to either look for one of the mini-pancake pans she describes, or something, but the taste is phenomenal, anyway.  Yay Appon! and thank you.  (The other thing is that the batter is way too thin to just cook like pancakes, if you know what I mean, but my version worked okay.

Best thing?  Charlie, who hates EVERYTHING, asked for seconds on the mini flan.  I know that scallions in a sweet sounds weird, but Charlie ate it.  I’m just saying.

Next, I mean to try to make these, and would have already, if I had thought to buy sticky rice flour and tapioca flour.  I’ll probably substitute a very firm tofu for the meat in this one.  I’ve been tasting these since I found this recipe, and I’m pretty sure that this particular delight is responsible for at LEAST half of the weight I put on in Thailand.