healthy eating

Prepping Real Food and then Eating It–Slowly!

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As I mentioned in my last post, I’m scaling back my writing for this blog as I move towards developing my music blog, where there’s a fair amount going on. I hope you’ll take a look over there and subscribe if you haven’t done so already and if what you see interests you. I’ve also done a couple of posts recently over at my Intentional Conservative blog, so if you’re interested in politics you can head on over there. (You can also follow me on my personal Facebook page, which has nothing personal on it at all—it’s composed entirely of political articles, mostly by conservative writers, some by conservative Christian writers. Good stuff, I have to say.)

But I’ve been meaning to post something here about this whole let’s-slow-down-food-prep-and-consumption idea. If you’re homebound and looking for something to do, of course you’re all in on the slow-food idea. If you’re holding down a deemed-essential job and maybe also juggling child care, my hat is off to you and I fully recognize that you may have less time these days for nourishing yourself and your family. I don’t have any magic answers for those of you in that situation, I’m afraid.

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How Not to Fall into the “Let’s Make Lots of Cookies During the Lockdown” Trap

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Image by palmettophoto1 from Pixabay

Have you been encountering articles online about how it’s a great idea to get into cooking and baking during the coronavirus shutdown? Make bread! Make cookies with your kids! Etc. And while I’m all for positive family activities to hold everyone together during these long days, I’d sound my usual note of caution about discretionary eating. It’s all too easy to binge/gorge on food as well as Netflix. Neither choice is going to have a good end result.

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Some Timeless Sensible Eating Advice–from 1934

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Your carriage madam A guide to good: Janet Lane
Image from AbeBooks; follow the link to purchase: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/your-carriage-madam/

Two recent interests have led me to the above source, and I’ll be developing these ideas in further posts. First, I’ve been struck over the past year or so about how important it is to keep your core muscles—your abdominals—pulled in. I realized at some point that I had gotten into the horrible habit of going around with my stomach pooching out. As soon as you allow that to happen, your whole body goes out of alignment. The stomach sticks out, the spine curves too much, the hips (ahem) stick out, and the shoulders and head poke forward. We tend to think that good posture involves throwing our shoulders back, but in reality our shoulders will just hang naturally straight if the rest of the body is carried properly. (And of course last week’s “Happier” podcast with Gretchen Rubin and Liz Craft was all about . . . posture. Once again the stars have aligned. Be sure and listen to that episode; I will just say that I have no intention of doing the exercises they recommend because I have a routine that works for me, but you may find their ideas helpful.)

So I’d been planning to do some videos showing the exercise routine I do and emphasizing the importance of

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A Great New Salad Ingredient

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Up until this past holiday season I prided myself that I’d never eaten any kale. It just seemed so trendily healthy, and it looked tough and unappetizing. I’d read that you needed to “massage” kale that was being used raw, a recommendation that further discouraged me from trying it. Here’s what the inimitable Deb Perelman said about kale on Smitten Kitchen way back in 2013: ““the world would be a better place if we could all stop pretending that kale tastes good.” But then she went on to rant and rave about a kale salad she’d had at a restaurant. (As has been said, by me and by others, if

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Some random health and fitness thoughts

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Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

Last week I needed to get keep a doctor’s appointment in order to refill an expired prescription, so even though it was pretty snowy I got myself out the door and to the office. (My husband did yeoman duty shoveling the driveway multiple times over the course of the storm.) Since it had been over six months since my last A1C test at their office I had them do that, too, and it was:

6.0

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One Last Bash at an “Alternative” Sweetener–Agave Nectar

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Image attribution: Marc Ryckaert (MJJR) [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
I realized that I didn’t include agave nectar syrup in yesterday’s post, so here’s a short rundown on that hyped-up product. The word “nectar” just sounds so lovely and natural, doesn’t it? And in reality if you had an agave plant sitting on your patio you could go out, cut one of the leaves, and squeeze out the sap into your cup of tea. Well, actually you’d have to boil it down into a more concentrated sweetener, as otherwise it wouldn’t do much.

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Some Sweet Syrups that Won’t Help You Much

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Image by zwei chen from Pixabay

I used to watch a TV show called “Christina Cooks,” with host Christina Pirello. She advocates a vegan diet and will not use regular sugar, opting instead for “brown rice syrup.” Hmmm, I thought. Is that substance really better for you than regular table sugar? I was aware of another syrup that also claimed to be healthy, “barley malt syrup.” I knew that this substance was often called for in bagel recipes and actually have a jar of that sweetener in my pantry for use if I ever again torture myself by trying to make my own bagels, an effort which probably won’t happen any time soon.

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Are the polyols a bunch of Polly-Wolly-Doodle?

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Image by Tafilah Yusof from Pixabay

Ho-kay. I’ve been diving down rabbit holes all over the place this morning as I try to come to some conclusions about these rather weird substances called “sugar alcohols” or “polyols,” with the most commonly used ones being sorbitol, xylitol, and erythritol.  Can you just buy a bag of a powdered polyol and put it in the place of sugar in your pantry and your food? Is that change going to make you into the person of your dreams? Well, sigh, as is so often the case, the answer is no.

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Glycemic Index Issues

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Image by Félix Díaz G. from Pixabay

I wrote an earlier post on the whole idea that sugar is sugar is sugar, dealing with maple syrup, honey, and molasses. At some point I want to write about more of these sweeteners, including agave nectar and brown rice syrup, so stay tuned for that. I also want to deal with what I call “sugaroids,” substances that contain sugar plus something else (alcohol! chlorine!) but since they are not “real” sugar, and since they contain fewer calories than sugar, items made with them can be labeled “sugar free.” This is the type of thing that, like so many other weird dietary ideas, makes me want to tear my hair out. But for now I want to talk about another hair-tearer: the infamous glycemic index. As you might guess (to quote my son when he was a toddler), “I don’t wike dat.” The whole idea is so misguided, and has led to so many people refusing to eat perfectly healthy food, that I think it’s worth a post. (And yes, it should be “healthful” food, but cut me some slack.)

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A Christmas Grab-Bag

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Hi folks! Today is Christmas Day. I started this post two days ago, but company and outings and cooking interrupted me. Probably no one is going to read this post until tomorrow, but if you do get to it today—Merry Christmas! You can think of this as a holiday grab-bag.

First, an idea articulated by my husband, one of those blindingly-obvious statements that never occurs to anyone:

One of the reasons why you had less trouble with your weight as a child then you do now as an adult is that children aren’t in control of what food is available. Adults are.

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