Tag Archives: mindful eating

What shall I eat?

Posted on by

9780465020416[1]I seem to be on a bit of a binge lately–not eating, but reading about real food, fake food and the quality of food and the effects on health.

This whole thing seems to have started with Richard Wrangham‘s Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human which lead to questions about how we arrived at what we are currently eating–our trip from “traditional” foods to the current state where we seem to have given up the true pleasure of food–treating it almost as “medicine”. It must be low carb, or low fat, or…

I’ll be the last to disagree that our diet determines our health, but why have we given up the true hedonistic pleasures of eating good food to spending more time thinking of all the things our current “diet” doesn’t let us eat?

All these books were well worth reading if you like to eat. The bottom line of all this leaves me feeling that our food needs to include raw, cooked, vegetables, meats, dairy, eggs, and fish–all real foods–but not processed foods. Shop around the edges of the grocery store, except for the side excursions to find the grains, and legumes which are underused by most of us.

Real Food/Fake Food is enlightening in terms of how to shop for foods that are not adulterated–which is so common today. It’s unfortunate that we have to shop for our food using the caveat emptor mindset, but that’s what we have allowed to happen by not exercising selectivity in what we will purchase–in looking for “cheap” as opposed to high quality.  We need to not buy adulterated foods–it’s worth the bit of extra effort to find out what we are buying and find shops where we know that quality is foremost even if the price is just a bit higher.

—Ô¿Ô—

…

 

Summer plenty

Posted on by

Walking through the farmers’ market we see an abundance of fresh produce. We cook and eat without thinking about the food waste between seed and plate. I’ve posted and reblogged articles about this issue: what has been done in other countries, tips on how not to waste food, making efficient use of leftovers, mindful eating, and grocery shopping for one, all with thoughts about food waste.

vegetable-chard IMG_0728This morning I read an article from Food 52 on kitchen scraps–with some statistics on food waste. This post gave a lot of recipes using those things that we often consider “scraps”–and some information on how long those (sometimes) impulsive purchases from the farmers’ market will last once you’ve gotten them into the kitchen.

This article has links to 125 (yes–one hundred twenty-five) recipes that focus on using that whole bunch of greens (even the stems) and things we often don’t consider for cooking and eating–radish tops, and even peels and skins of fruits and vegetables. We often discard the stems from chard and other greens when we cook the tender leaves but those stems are just as nutritious if treated just a bit differently–added first to the pot, or even used separately rather than discarded.

I’ve not tried all these recipes, but from my experience, the recipes from sources cited here are usually good. Even if you don’t use the recipes per se I think perusing them can show many ways that we can better use our food.

Õ¿Ó

On a related note, while we are enjoying the benefits of pollinators–honey bees included-Summer Harvest IMG_4487-those ladies of the hive are experiencing a decrease in the nectar and pollen that they can
gather–what we beekeepers call a “dearth” (scarcity or lack of something). We are eating and putting by the “fruits” of their work in the spring–and we don’t think about what is available for them at this time of the year.

I’ll be inspecting my hives tomorrow to see how much honey and pollen is stored. Most likely my ladies are consuming stored honey and pollen while awaiting the start of the goldenrod and aster seasons here in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. If necessary, I’ll be providing supplemental food (sugar syrup with supplements added) for them until the fall nectar flow starts and they can store honey and pollen for the winter.

I’m not planning a second harvest from hive Rosemarinus, or a first harvest from Salvia–they will get to keep all they produce from the autumn nectar flow to see them through the winter.

IMG_8902Feb hive

Ô¡Ó

Always Hungry? Oops!

Posted on by

I hate to have to admit this, but I fell off the meal plan, not because I was hungry, but just because I wasn’t thinking.

The Always Hungry? plan cautions you to be strict about following in the first fourteen days. Well, that is serious advice that should be heeded. I tried–really I did, but being away from home at a meeting in Alexandria, VA,  lead to a couple of deviations in the balance. Frist was a snack of cheese and crackers during a break in our meeting. The second was a glass of wine with dinner; the third was eating a small quantity of pasta with the entree I ordered, and finally that sandwich I had when I stopped to eat on my drive home.

The cheese was not the problem–it was the crackers as they are carbohydrates in a form not allowed on this plan. The second big problem was the pasta. This plan is doable in a restaurant, with just a bit of though. My problem was that I wasn’t thinking. I was enjoying good conversation with colleagues and good food.

After out meeting we had a delicious meal at Vaso’s Mediterranean Bistro. The entrée that I ordered had clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari, and scallops in a tomato sauce. There is nothing there that would “undo” the Always Hungry? meal plan–except for the pasta that was buried under all that lovely seafood. Just because it was there, didn’t mean I had to eat it–with the cup of avgolemono and the side salad, the seafood would have been a generous serving. But, I was just enjoying the meal and the company and ate some of the pasta! That alone was probably not a huge issue, except in conjunction with the crackers that I’d eaten with the cheese (St. Andre and Cambazola) earlier, and the added “insult” of the sandwich–yes, with white bread.

The result of these infractions? Well, I had not realized how good I felt for past week until I woke today. Until this morning, I had posted 7 pounds off my weight–now back up to 5 pounds off the weight. That wasn’t the real problem, though–I’m sure most of that was fluid and will go away quickly. It was how I felt–it’s hard to describe, but that week of no starchy things, except for legumes, made a huge difference in energy and well-being. It will be interesting to see how long it will take to recover from this lapse. This interlude has certainly impressed me with the effect of what I eat with how I feel–and not just hunger (or not), or satiety.

Õ¿Õ

.