Jim and I have been going on big trips ever since we got married almost 28 years ago. Most of our traveling has been in the US, but we’ve now made three international trips together. Back in the summer of 2018 we spent a blissful three weeks in France to celebrate our 25th anniversary (one year late). I was struck with a number of tips and ideas that don’t show up in regular travel books or are given a slant with which I don’t agree. So I decided to write a brief travel book of my own, spelling out some of these unconventional ideas. Jim has recently revised it and gotten it up as an e-book on this site and as a paperback and Kindle edition on Amazon. I’d encourage you to get a copy if you’re planning any type of trip, even if you’re not going to Europe. My emphasis is on that area because that’s where we’d just gone, but my ideas are widely applicable. There’s an appendix with tipping info for most of the countries in Europe; I don’t have anything about tipping in, say, Japan, but that’s the sort of thing that’s easily accessible online. Who’s going to tell you, though, to:
self rules
Once Again, with Feeling: The Small Things You Do Every Day Matter More than the Big Things You Do Once In Awhile
The above is from Gretchen Rubin and tweaked by me. I’ve made this point many times, most recently in the area of healthy eating: What counts are the consistent, day-to-day choices that we make, not the big, dramatic flourishes that we perform periodically. Remember my theory of inverse drama:
There’s an inverse relationship between the drama of a process and the magnitude of its results. (from the post “Lessons from the Dentist’s Chair”)
Some Sweet Syrups that Won’t Help You Much
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.
The Case for Making Food INconvenient
Today I’m sharing another one of my Astoundingly Obvious Observations (AOOs): The more conveniently available food is, the more you’ll (probably) eat. I’ve talked about this idea before, but its truth has been brought home to me even more strongly of late as I’ve kept my intake of sugar under control. Keeping sweet items and other snack foods out of the house means that I can’t just grab a handful of something if the urge hits.
Why All Fad Diets “Work,” at Least Temporarily
My husband listens to a podcast called “The Art of Manliness,” but it should really be called “The Art of Living Well.” They’re up to well over 500 episodes, with different guests and topics. A recent one featured Dr. Dr. John Berardi, who earned a PhD in exercise physiology and nutrient biochemistry, and is a writer, athlete, coach, and professor, as well as the co-founder of Precision Nutrition and the founder of the Change Maker Academy. So this is a guy who actually has scientific chops. He’s not peddling some nutty theory and trying to make money off of it. I found this podcast episode to be so packed with good information that I had to listen to it in chunks, then stop and absorb what I’d heard before going on to the next section.
Join Me in No-Sugar November
Well, this past Friday, Nov. 1, was supposed to be an encouraging day because I had scheduled an A1C re-test, using the second kit in the two-pack that my in-laws gave me for my birthday back in March. (As I’ve said before, the A1C test measures what percentage of your hemoglobin cells have glucose molecules stuck to them, and since those cells live for only three months your results are seen as a three-month view of your blood sugar rather than the one-time reading you get from a simple glucose monitor.) That March test had registered as a 5.3, which was super, super great–but I wasn’t completely sure that it was accurate. Although the brand I had (from Walgreen’s) is pretty well rated, I just didn’t think I could possibly have a score that low. There’s been one time that I hit 5.7, which is the threshold for what is called “pre-diabetes,” the yellow warning zone that comes before the red alert of 6.5 of higher. Once you hit 6.5 you’re considered to have full-blown diabetes. I’ve usually hovered in that 6.0-6.4 range, and as far as I know I’ve never hit 6.5 My doctor told me at one point that he didn’t think I would ever topple over into full-blown diabetes, and I sure hope he’s right.
Take a Sip Instead of a Snack
Hi folks! I’m rather taken aback to see that it’s been over a month since I posted anything on this blog. Are you a subscriber? If not, sign up on the sidebar. How about to my other blog, Behind the Music? You can also sign up for that one on the same form, or you can follow the link and see what’s going on there first. That blog seems to be consuming a lot of my time and attention these days, but I’m still very interested in writing about food and health, so I want to make a stab at keeping both sites going.
What You Say to Yourself Matters!
There have been quite a few temptations around here lately, especially the leftover lemon bars from the wedding. I love lemon bars! I’ve kept them in the upstairs garage freezer, but they’re still there. I’ve eaten some that were still frozen, and they’re not even very good that way. My brownies have only four grams of sugar in them, and I’m not all that into the butterscotch ones so their sugar content isn’t too relevant to me, but the lemon bars are 12-13 grams per tiny little tart. That’s not too bad, but only if I eat just one. Which is pretty well impossible.
The Place of Food In Our Lives
We are helping to host a group of international students/interns as they attend a two-week seminar on leadership and get some good American cultural experiences. My husband is doing yeoman duty as the van driver, thus freeing up the actual leader to do more interacting with the group, and I’ve been lending a hand here and there. One issue that has come up several times is that some people in the group don’t eat pork. At our first group meal we had various dishes that were contributed. One was a big hunk of meat, wrapped in foil
I Attain Pizza Nirvana–and Eat Only One Slice
We are mildly obsessed with homemade pizza at our house. (But not as obsessed as Kenji Lopez-Alt, who carried out a monster experiment in his monster cookbook The Food Lab about whether or not the mineral content in the water has anything to do with crust quality. You can read all about it in the Kindle sample available on the Amazon page linked to above.) My son regularly makes the complicated recipe for deep-dish Chicago-style pizza from Cook’s Illustrated, and I’ve been on a kick