Low Carb Mexican Food

It seems like an alien concept to speak of Mexican food as low carb (and diabetic friendly), but a link to just such a concept popped up on my newsreader today.  About.com, which seems determined to cover the universe in their little multi-page articles concerning what and how, has several pages devoted to low carb Mexican food.  The discussion ranges from Mexican dishes that are already low carb, those than can be turned into low(er) carb, and how to survive eating out at a Mexican restaurant. 

Much of it we knew already (meat, dairy, eggs, some vegetables), but I was surprised to read a recipe for the already-low-carb chile relleno.  I had always avoided those batter dipped chiles, thinking that the batter was heavily starch.  That's what I get for assuming.  Chile relleno's "batter" is whipped egg whites. 

I've missed years' worth of what promises to be a tasty treat.  On my next visit to a Mexican restaurant, guess what I will be ordering?

Twinkies are bankrupt!

For the second time in the 21st Century, which we all know to be still pretty new, Hostess Brands, Inc. has declared bankruptcy.  Hostess makes Twinkies and HoHos and all sorts of heavily processed, heavily sugared treats. 

The company is based in Irving, Texas, which makes this a bittersweet (no pub intended) problem.  One wants to lard (get it?) on the snark, inquiring how they missed the memo that diversification is a good way to deal with changes in the business climate (just how long did they think we wouldn't notice the obesity epidemic and make even a feeble effort to turn it around?).  On the other hand, oh, the humanity!  The employees and their families are likely to become victims if the company folds--and the retired employees, whose pension has been underfunded, are likely to become victims regardless of the outcome. 

I avoid all Hostess products because they would put me in a food coma.  Even so, I still crave Ding Dongs.  Put 'em in the fridge to get the chocolate coating cold and crunchy.  Nowadays I have to make do with the memories, so this bankruptcy is not going to change how I shop or eat regardless of the outcome.  I do, however, hope things work out for their employees.

Just to catch up

Sometimes I post comments on forum related to beading, another love that allows me to express myself.  I dared to respond recently to someone's post about starting a blog by offering "my insights" and realized that I hadn't actually done any blogging in quite a while.  Here is it Christmas time again, and I never even had a chance to finish sharing the delights of last year's presents.  Time flies, and elder care can be fairly time consuming even when it doesn't seem that I am doing all that much.  For writing, it's the interruptions that take their toll.  Come to think of it, I haven't been able to do much beading either.  Interruptions, again.

All is quiet right now.  My Prince has arrived to spend a week with us and share our Christmas celebration.  Mama is resting--for now.  And I really ought to take this opportunity to catch up a little.  Who knows when there will be another chance to do this?

So.  The aforementioned Yoshi blade (ceramic knife) has actually been quite the boon this past year.  I have used it almost daily for cutting vegetables, meats (even semi-frozen), and tomatoes.  I have to say, tho, that the special tomato slicer (oddly serrated knife) that I picked up at a dollar store is even better for those tough old tomato hides.  Still, I love the ceramic blade so much that I have asked Santa to bring me another one (or more).

I never had a chance to blog about my favorite new toy from last year:  An immersion blender (Quisinart Smart Stick).  While I haven't had as many opportunities to use the stick blender as I have the ceramic knife, I have to say that it works a treat.  I feel all Top Chef-y when I use it, chortling like a mad woman as I turn those veggies into a puree.

This year, Christmas is a quite a bit tamer.  Even though I had already scaled things back in 2010, working hard to be "smarter" and more relaxed about it all, there was still too much activity for one person to do.  My Prince is indeed a prince, but he's more a watcher than a doer when it comes to Christmas.  Mama gave up doing a long time ago, but she is still the focus of all our celebrations.

This year I have pretty much called it quits on anything that involves anyone else besides Mama and My Prince.  We did have three friends over last week to sing carols and share a pot luck dinner, but this week has been (and will be, I hope) very quiet.  So far, Mama and I have driven around the neighborhood to look at the Christmas lights.  Tonight we had an old family favorite for dinner.  Saturday--if the turkey thaws out--I'll cook it.  We'll have a quiet Christmas Eve, a relaxed Christmas morning, and hope for some magic in the kitchen (I'm thinking elves here, not a sudden improvement in my cooking skills).  Whatever happens, we won't starve.

Tonight's treat was Corned Beef Stew.  This was something my late father cooked.  It was always a treat.  I have changed the recipe slightly to lower the carbs (a little).

• Corned beef (canned is "traditional" at our house) - the meatier the dish, the less need for carbs.  Tonight I only had one can of corned beef in the pantry, so we here heavier on the carbs.
• Potatoes - I used red potatoes to reduce the starch a little; Daddy used Irish potatoes.  Quantity depends on how far you need to stretch the soup and how many carbs your table-mates can handle.  
• Onions - I used white onions, halved and sliced.  Actually I load up the stew with onions; suit yourself.
• Salt and pepper - I favor coarse ground pepper.  I have to go lightly on both because of assorted dietary needs (and people-who-get-cranky-about-too-much-pepper), but the stew can handle a heavy hand on the pepper.

Throw it in a pot with some water (cover the vegetables, add more if you need to stretch the stew).  Cook the vegetables until tender.   Since I am lazy about chopping the potatoes (and never peel them anymore), just quartering the smaller ones and hacking up the bigger ones, I use a potato masher to smash the potatoes once they are cooked.  This releases a little starch into the broth, but that's pretty much in the nature of potatoes anyway, I reckon.

My father thickened the broth with a flour and water paste.  I stopped doing that long ago, wanting to cut down on carbs wherever I could.  I don't think he really liked my version of the stew without that extra dose of starch, so you might want to try it both ways.

Traditionally, we serve this with cornbread.  It's yummy to crumble your cornbread into the stew, soaking up most of the broth with the bread.  Since I have to worry more about carbs, I have started eating the stew without any bread at all.  It turns out that that broth is quite yummy, and I don't miss the cornbread at all.

Tomorrow, we'll have another Christmas favorite:  Tamales.  Those we will have to buy.  I think if you remove the corn husk tamales don't actually have any carbs.  Right?


Merry Christmas!  Happy Hannukah!  Safe and happy holidays!

Fat good, carbs bad

Dr. Andrew Weil is probably a very nice man, but his views on health and medicine tend not to attract me.  Indeed, I tend to veer away from New Agey, Old Hippie kinds of things as much as possible (too much emotionalism, too much "true believer").  A recent Weil blog on the Huffington Post did, however, attract my attention for its discussion of fat versus carbs.  In it Weil draws on recent research and a recent book by Gary Taubes to highlight these points (made by Taubes in his book):

1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.
2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis -- the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and well-being.
3. Sugars -- sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically -- are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.
4. Through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases of modern civilization.

Weil does recommend, for environmental reasons, to reduce the amount of meat in the diet, but not to fear to give it its proper place.   As for me, Taubes has a whole chapter on fiber!  I am so getting this book.

Chill the fat to skim it

The Mayo Clinic offers this healthy eating tip:

Cook meat in advance. Make soups, stews and other dishes in which you boil the meat in liquid a day or two in advance and then refrigerate it. As the dish chills, the fat hardens on the top and you can easily remove the fat.

We all knew this, of course.  There's no way, once we've seen that chilled layer of fat on top of yesterday's roast that we want to break off a chunk and eat it.  When it's liquid and blended in with the stew, we enjoy the flavor.  Animal fat is not, however, the healthiest of flavors, so the cook-in-advance strategy may be a good way to cut fat (and fat calories) in our diet.

Nuts!

The Food Network offers the following Healthy Eating Tip:

Although high in calories, nuts often enable people to maintain or lose weight. 

A small handful eaten between meals or added to salads, grains or vegetables 

gives a sense of satiety and results in less total food intake.

Sounds reasonable enough, and, in truth, it works if you can limit yourself to the one handful.  I tend not to be able to do that.  Nuts are a convenient snack to munch on while I am working at the computer, which means that I am fully capable of eating handful after handful.   

This reminds me, however, of my late father-in-law's assertion that he once lost a significant amount of weight by eating a caramel before a meal.  One caramel.  This took the edge off his appetite and allowed him to eat less and still feel full.  He seemed to maintain a trim weight for the 25 or so years that I knew him, so I'm guessing there was some willpower in the mix also.

Nonetheless it does make the point that "spoiling your appetite" with almost anything is not the worst idea we can come up with for weight loss--or moderating mealtime consumption.  So far I haven't found it to be my solution, but it may work for you.  What I do find with nuts is that their high soluble fiber content has been good for my cholesterol.  In that regard, raw, unsalted almonds seem to be my best friend.

Getting control of portions

I think I will just continue to face defeat in getting control of my weight if I don't somehow manage to get control of the portions I eat. No matter how healthy my cooking is, if I eat too much of it, I will not lose weight. Indeed, I will probably gain weight.

What, however, is a serving size? Good ol' Wikipedia, once more, comes to the rescue with this article on serving size.

No wonder we can get confused about serving size! There are actually two kinds (serving size in the food pyramid and serving size on nutrition labels), and they are each based on different criteria. Yikes! What's a poor foodie to do?

Worse, different foods have different serving sizes. One egg is a serving all by itself, but a serving of meat measures about the size of a deck of cards. Celery comes in stalks but can be chopped to fit into a cup. Which is used for serving size?

Don't even try to think about how many servings to have in a day. Nobody even agrees on those for normal bodies much less metabolically impaired ones.

No wonder Americans have no clue about food. Guidelines are in conflict. Information sources contradict each other. Food marketing attempts to brainwash us into making food choices that are profitable for corporations but deadly for our bodies. Our local foodways channel our food choices to comfortable and familiar foods which are similarly deadly (have some more gravy, honey). And there is no easy way to get control of what we eat if we can't figure out how much of it to eat.

Well, this rambles, I know. I just tried to figure out serving size and got a brain freeze. The problem is way bigger than I thought. I guess I was hoping to find out that "3 cups of food per day" or some simple formula for calculating intake would pop up on these interwebs, and I could go back to thinking about flavor. No today. *sigh*

Rounding up 2008

End of year round-ups can be fun. We get the top 10 this or that, often with pictures, and can enjoy the reminders of news stories and pop culture fads for the past year. Another round-up comes from the Diabetes Self-Management website in "2008: The Year in Diabetes." The post covers news stories, blog entries, web stories, and even recipes of note from 2008.

The most interesting of the lot (to me) was a story that I had missed: "ADA's New Guidelines OK Low-Carb Diets for Weight Loss." This is an major (like tectonic plate size) shift in policy regarding diet for diabetics. For many years, the American Diabetes Association has advocated a carb-filled diet for diabetics that has to have killed off quite a few Americans and made many more totally miserable.* It doesn't sound like the ADA is ready for a full on embrace of reality and the effect that carbs have on blood glucose and what that means for diabetics, but it sure looks like a truce. Things could get interesting in 2009.

*If that sounds a little too scathing, let me note that, when first diagnosed with diabetes, I visited the ADA web site. The one question that I had at that time was: what can I eat? After reading their recommendations, I never went back to the ADA site. I don't donate to their charity. I don't pay attention to what little advocacy that they do. I just ignore them. I would dearly love to have some easy answers to my question, but, after that look at the ADA, I've been digging out the answers on my own, one vegetable at a time apparently. *sigh*

Where da brown rice?

My Prince and I just returned from a trip to our warehouse store. Buying bulk can really save us money--as long as we can use up what we buy and don't end up throwing some of it out because it has spoiled before we can consume it. We tend not to buy as much of the fresh items there but focus on multi-packs of favorite canned goods and big bales of necessary paper products for that very reason.

Today I was on the lookout for brown rice. We've eaten a lot of it this past week, so I need to rebuild my stock. I've noticed before that there were several varieties of white rice available, but never any brown rice.

Today I put the absence of brown rice together with my understanding that one of the "missions" of this warehouse store is to support small business by making the tools and supplies needed for small restaurants and convenience stores available in comparatively small (although humongous for a small family) quantities at discount prices. That "mission" paired with the absence of brown rice means that a healthy food choice will not be easily/cheaply available at the establishments run by their clients. This forces the small businesses and institutions that use the warehouse store as their supplier to offer a less healthy food choice to their customers, saving everyone a few pennies in the process but adding yet one more challenge to the health of everyone but those at the top of the chain.

Now, I know that I am making a judgment about the shaping of "food policy" by a corporation, and I have to acknowledge that brown rice is actually deemed inferior in most of the culture groups that use rice as a staple. Still it's sad to see 20- and 50-lb sacks of white and jasmine and basmati rice stacked on a good part of a very large aisle and not a single bag of brown. There is, however, instant and parboiled white rice in large containers to make even the cooking of white rice go faster. Brown rice is harder to cook and might not be the choice of other customers, perhaps making it uneconomical for the warehouse store to stock.

If I want to replenish my supply, I will have to do that at Fiesta, where I can get a 4-lb bag of brown rice. That's the biggest I've ever been able to find.

If I want to change our food culture, I have a much bigger chore, and I'm not entirely disposed to think that (a) I know enough to argue what changes we should be making or (b) I have the will to want to get involved in such a battle. If I did, one place to start would simply be a customer comment at the warehouse store, asking them to stock brown rice and telling them why. It worked for almonds! ;)

Top 10 healthiest foods?

According to Melissa Matinelli, The Atlanta Examiner's Food Examiner, these are the top 10 healthiest foods:

1. berries
2. broccoli
3. citrus fruits
4. garlic
5. nuts
6. oats
7. salmon
8. spinach
9. tomatoes
10. turkey

Hmmm. I'm good on berries, broccoli, garlic, nuts, and tomatoes. Not so good on the others.

We have begun eating more salmon, but not once a week or even regularly once a month. I avoid citrus fruits because of potential indigestion and sugar spikes. I may have to rethink oats, since Martinelli suggests that this grain is acceptable for diabetics (although I have my doubts about the value of the instant and flavored packages). I work spinach in as much as I can, but certainly not often enough and not fresh. Need to do better there. Turkey, well, there's only so much of that we can stand. Might rethink, but might not. I so do not like the smell of uncooked ground turkey.

School lunches

I'm not qualified to talk about this too much, but I am thinking a bit about food policy. My reading is leading me down several paths that look interesting, but the whole issue is a tad complex--and overwhelming--to me. Still, I want to understand it better, so I will continue to try to work my way through it.

My basic question is: Why are carbs so cheap and green vegetables so expensive?

The answer seems to be that food policies are largely responsible. I just don't understand exactly how that may be, so I need to do more reading.

I am not alone in this examination of food policy, and I think a semi-big battle is going to be waged on the matter. We may not read about it so much in the newspapers, even though it will be important to each and every one of us, but the battle will still be fought.

The battlefield? School lunches. But don't be deceived that this is only about school lunches. It will be about farm subsidies, commodities programs, even the food pyramid. And it won't just be about what kids eat.

Here's what I'm looking at so far:

• Gaining "recession pounds"
• Farmer-in-chief
• President's Cancer Panel Report, Executive Summary
• News article on PCP Report
• Unhappy meals

High fiber reading, for sure!

Resistant starch

One of my Christmas presents was food (yea!) in the form of (gasp!) spaghetti. I laughed when I opened the package because I thought it was just a gag reference to the fact that I buy these huge packages of frozen meat balls for Mama's freezer and pop them out for a quick spaghetti dinner for Big Kid Cousin and Little Sister when I'm short of cooking time. BKC eats the meatballs, LS eats everything, and I try to stick with the meatballs but always end up wanting the spaghetti. I figured LS was giving me a gentle dig about a quick meal that I shouldn't be eating.

Not. LS is always thoughtful, always helpful. I should have remembered that.

When I got around to reading the package, I saw that it was supposed to have only 5 net carbs per serving. How could that be? The box said:

• total carbs = 51
• fiber = 5
• protected carbs = 31
• digestible carbs = 5

Huh?

What in the world are "protected" carbs? Could LS have been taken in by a deceptive health claim? Is this spaghetti made of hay?

This led to quite a few hours of puzzling over the matter and revisiting sources for more information about carbohydrates and fiber. As it turns out, there is something called "resistant starch" that may just be what the package is talking about. I particularly like what I read about blood sugar response to resistant starch:

Natural resistant starch helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels by increasing insulin sensitivity in healthy people. Incorporation of resistant starch into processed foods (i.e. as a flour substitute) reduces the glycemic impact of that food and increases insulin sensitivity, which research suggests may help to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Studies suggest continual exposure to elevated levels of insulin as a result of a high glycemic diet may contribute to reduced sensitivity by cells to the insulin (insulin resistance) and a higher risk of diabetes. As insulin resistance increases, the body produces more insulin to maintain adequate blood sugar control. With rising resistance, even more insulin is required, and the body may not be able to keep up or the pancreatic cells producing insulin may stop functioning.

Consumption of natural resistant starch by humans has been shown to result in decreased glycemic response in healthy individuals,^[12] decreased glycemic response in diabetics,^[13] and increased insulin sensitivity in healthy individuals.^[14][15]

The spaghetti is Dreamfields brand. I'll be reading more about that company--and more about resistant starch--this year.

Thanks, Little Sister!

Potato starch

Duh!

I'm just figuring out that what I'm reading is telling me that bigger and older (in potatoes) means more starch. New and small means less (but not "no starch"). I must learn more.

In the meantime, I got to see an episode of (something) with Jacques Pepin. Actually I saw several episodes of several somethings with Jacques Pepin, since it was Jacques Day on that station. In this particular episode, he kissed a fish, demonstrated how to debone a cooked trout, and took some starch out of a potato.

Chef Pepin (who can make even a potato sound romantic) grated some medium white potatoes. He said that some of the starch could be removed simply by washing off the resulting pile of grated potato, but it was faster to just wring it out. And he did just that: took a pile of grated potato in two hands and squeezed it out over a bowl. I was shocked by the amount of liquid (all cloudy and starchy) that he got out of those potatoes.

I'm not looking forward to grating potatoes like that, but when My Prince will just about die if I don't let him have some real potato, I think that that will be the way to get some of the starch out of it. I'm not putting fish eggs on it, though.

Private labels and portion control

Found an interesting article ("Go Lite!" by Kristin R. Ball) on so-called private labels (what I have been calling house brands) and portion control. The article begins with a reminder that we are all getting fatter.

One of the keys to eating healthier, of course, is portion control. Whether it’s an oversized steak in a restaurant or a family size bag of chips from the grocery store, the key is, not to eat the whole thing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “the larger the package, the more people consume from it.” So what was the market’s solution to this problem? Portion control in the form of 100-calorie snack packs.

And then the article just sort of wanders around, making the point that some private labels are offering single-portion foods and beverage mixes, some of it markets healthier eating elements on the front of the package, and finally ends up saying:

So whether consumers are watching their calories or their cholesterol, private label has something to offer those looking for affordable ways to eat better.

"Affordable" as in house brands are cheaper than name brands, but not as in single-portion packaging doesn't cost a bundle (it does). Those little packages are handy when you are trying to force yourself to limit how much you eat, assuming, of course, that you have enough will power to consume only one package at a time. They do, however, use more packaging than larger bags/boxes/containers (i.e., not so green), and, just as important for portion control, the nutritional basis for the single portion may be derived from a unit that is less critical to one's own dietary needs (how many carbs/sodium/cholesterol in that 100 calories?).

I'm getting closer to thinking about ways to repackage using reusable containers. It's a nuisance to count out 14 nuts for a snack, but less so if it's part of dividing up the whole can at once into several days worth of snacks. The problem is, of course, the container. I have a lot of snack size "zipper" bags for my jewelry making, but I hesitate to resort to them for these for snacks. I can take the jewelry out of the bag and put another item in it without having to worry about cleaning up the bag, i.e., I can reuse it. For food use, reuse is a problem. This will take more thinking.

Got milk?

Milk prices have gone out of sight. We don't buy as much with the grandson moved out of the house, but I just about need a guarantee that every drop will be consumed before I bring another gallon into the house. The price of cheese has escalated as well. My favorite 2 lb. bag of grated cheese is nearly $9 now. Needless to say, I monitor its use quite closely.

So imagine my surprise (and secret pleasure) when I ran across this article in the New York Times about the dairy glut that we are now in the middle of. Seems other parts of the world have developed a taste for dairy, thanks in part of the spread of McDonald's, and that (along with drought in New Zealand and Australia) produced high demand for American dairy. And that, my peeps, made for reduced supply in the US. Ergo higher prices for us.

The economy is in the tank globally as well as locally. This is bad, yes. Really tough times are ahead for all of us. Still, I couldn't stifle a little spark of happiness when I realized that there was actual hope that dairy products might eventually become affordable here in the US again. Milk, cheese, sour cream, ricotta, cottage cheese, mozzarella, parmesan--these are all basics in my kitchen. In normal times, I could only occasionally afford a taste of anything more exotic. I can't be unhappy that the home market will get a break for a while. I doubt we will be able to afford those exotics anytime soon, if at all, but it will be nice to get back to a more normal supply of affordable dairy products.

If that sounds a tad callous in regard to the income and well being of American dairy farmers, do note that we have price supports for dairy. The USDA will buy much of the surplus produced and put it into food programs for the poor, meaning more protein and Vitamin D for them, and continued production in the dairy sector. The high prices for the rest of us was a by-product of globalization. Lower prices will be a by-product of the collapse of the market. Dairy farmers will still get paid, just not so much.

A new way to look at carbs?

Sometimes I wander over to the world's healthiest food site to look at whatever they are posting as their food of the week. My most recent visit was drawn by the article called "A new way to look at carbohydrates." The article does a nice job of explaining some fairly complex (to me) ideas about what a carb is, what's in a carb, and how various elements in carbs work in the body.

I was intrigued to read about "resistant starch," since I'm always looking for ways to toss out some of the total carbs in food. I already try to toss out fiber, knowing that it's not digested and, therefore, will not affect blood sugar or weight gain (or loss). Resistant starch is, however, something that I sadly fear I cannot toss out. It looks like we will still get the effects of starch from this part of the carbohydrate, but on a kind of delayed reaction. Our body will digest it (and make us sorry that we ate it), just not right away.

Oh, please, correct me if I'm wrong!

New year, new food

We have been venturing out of the traditional foodways of my family for a while now. Once upon a time, this was just an attempt to discover new tastes and sample the delights of the world. Some of those dishes and foods were adopted as things we wanted to continue eating, so My Prince and I already dine on a diet of foods that would be alien to most of my family.

Lately I've been actively seeking healthier foods to add better nutrition to our diet. I've particularly been looking for lower carbohydrate foods that are higher in fiber. Over the past year, three new foods have made an impression: quinoa (see "Return to Central Market"), edamame (see both posts on edamame here), and jicama (see my jicama posts here). Only the latter two have really stuck in our diet. Quinoa is harder to find here in Austin and impossible in our regular shopping haunts in Houston. (Yes, I could drive 20 miles out of the way to get it, but I tend not to do that for anything except raspberry tea.) Edemame and jicama, however, are on our plates at least once a week, sometimes more.

I have three more new foods ready for review right now. One is really an herb: rosemary. I know I've tasted rosemary before, but I have never cooked with it. Now I have the promised rosemary bush and am making my first efforts to incorporate it into my cooking. Fennel can be used as both a vegetable and an herb. Haven't tried it yet, but look forward to trying. Pumpkin is not exactly new. I've had pumpkin pie all my life. I've even made a couple. I've never tried fresh pumpkin, though. I'm going to try my hands at cooking the seeds and making a couple of dishes from the fresh pumpkin that have nothing to do with pies.

Happy New Year!

Well, it's time for our New Year's Resolutions, isn't it? If we do as many of us have done in the past, we are just setting ourselves up for failure by trying to make too many changes too quickly and too grandly. Better we should make fewer resolutions and make them more manageable, perhaps even measurable.

I'm thinking that I need to lose weight. Of course, I've been needing that forever, but I'm getting more and more worried about the consequences of carrying all of this extra weight around one my aching feet and knees (so far so good on the hip joints!). So I need to set a weight loss goal that in the next 365 days I will lose X pounds. If I keep with the recommended pace for healthy weight loss, I would shoot for 1 pound per week, or a total of 52 pounds in the coming year. That seems like a lot to me (even though I know that it is only a part of the weight I need to lose). I think it will be hard to do. Thinking that, I could just simply wander away from the goal.

So I am setting an arbitrary goal for my New Year's Resolution: 20 pounds. Anyone can do that, even me!

Setting a goal is, however, not enough. I have to have a plan for reaching it. The only plan that works is: eat less, do more. I need to cut more carbs from my diet and do more walking. Since walking hurts, that last part will be a challenge, but I have to try. Even once around the block once a week will be more than I have done. And cutting carbs will involve actually counting them in the first place, i.e., having a carb budget.

Twenty pounds might turn into 52 later on, but making the changes needed to lose those 20 will certainly be hard enough. Let's hope I'm up to the challenge.

The lowly lentil

I hit the wrong button when I first started this post, and the darned thing published itself--without any content! I will continue trying to gather my thoughts and get this article written, but who knows how it's gonna post again. I sure don't.

What I intended to write about--The Lentil--was actually just a riff on a soup that I made a few weeks ago for Mama and The Girls (in this instance, Little Sister and Big Kid Cousin). I had tossed a few items together with a bunch of sausage and then added some lentils, which became the big focus of our discussion of what we were eating. For some of them, adding lentils was introducing a whole new food to their diet.

Lentils were certainly not something that I had while growing up. I don't recall anyone in our greater family circle mentioning cooking them. I don't think I had one until maybe 10 years ago, unless, of course, I ate them while in Africa (which was so long ago I have probably forgotten).

Indeed my acquaintance with lentils seems to derive from the search for new tastes and healthier eating, not from any family foodways. While I had heard of lentils most of my life, they were in the context of Bible stories and some vague idea that this was food for "poor people" or "foreigners."

Imagine my surprise to discover a high protein, low carb vegetable that can be cooked into a variety of dishes. Imagine how happy I am that it's a legume that doesn't take as long as most dried beans to cook. Lentils are also fairly inexpensive to buy and easy to store, so they make a good addition to the basic staples that should be stocked in the pantry.

Happily, my lentil stew was a hit with Mama and The Girls, so much so that instead of sending some of the leftovers home with Little Sister, I ended up freezing a container of the stew. I pulled it out yesterday and served it with some cornbread for Mama's lunch. Sometimes, Mama is a tad reluctant to eat leftovers. She saves them, of course, but she often doesn't want a "do over" on yesterday's lunch or dinner. That was one reason for freezing part of the leftovers--so there would be some time between the meals when the stew was served. It worked--the stew was a hit once more. Too bad it was Mystery Lentil Stew, cuz I have no idea how to make it again. *sigh*

Healthy treat: Frozen berries

The day's "healthy eating tip" is a gadget that I have on my home page. Every day, I get some "word to the wise" about healthier ways to eat. "Smaller portions" seems to crop up a lot (thanks, Mayo Clinic, I had no clue). Here's today's tip:

Fresh berries are kind to the waistline; they are naturally high in water and low in calories. Dried berries also provide excellent nutrition, but since most of the water is missing, their calories are more concentrated and you'll usually wind up eating more of them.

Aside from the annoying italics, which were in the tip when I cut and pasted and which seem to spread like a virus, the tip seems useful. Berries generally the lowest carb counts among fruits, but I keep seeing high counts for the dried versions. While the dried fruit is easier to keep and, sometimes, to eat, I keep going back to the fresh (or frozen) version to help my blood sugar.

Here's one of my favorite treats:

• One half cup or so of frozen mixed berries
• One fourth cup or so of heavy whipping cream

The cream freezes around the berries when you pour it over them. I used to have frozen blueberries and cream for breakfast. Now I like mixed berries as a treat. As an added bonus to the low carb goodness, you are forced to eat the dish slowly because the berries are frozen. Let them melt in your mouth so you can enjoy both taste and feel.