Because ‘tis the season, I’m going to slip into the dangerous territory of diets.
First disclaimer: there is absolutely nothing scientific about this discussion; my feelings about diets are strictly anecdotal.
Second disclaimer: whatever I say probably won’t work for you, but it’s sometimes interesting to read what other people think about eating.
I believe that as different as our bodies, our genes, our backgrounds are, so our bodies’ responses to diets - or, really, our bodies’ responses to how we process foods - is different. (I swear, I can get fat on fruit, because I love it so much. Cake doesn’t tempt me, but a bowl of grapes is lethal. A wedge of Boston Cream Pie for me is the safer dessert choice, because I just don’t care about it that much. How strange and personal is that?)
Anyway, my feeling about diets is really the anti-diet. Stop saying “I can’t have that,” and say, “What am I going to have for lunch today?!”
Make something really delicious, or at least something your really want. Others may not think it’s so delicious, but it’s your lunch. And have a couple of things, not just one sandwich. Add some stuff on the side to whatever you’re having- a really good pickle and chips. After all, one sandwich, no matter how large, is still one thing. It’s more fun to have more different tastes, but in smaller sizes. If you live in Gloucester, get some olive bread from Alexandra’s, and have a piece of it with a smear of butter with whatever you’re having. You will feel rewarded.
The diet game is all about deprivation and denial. So learn to outsmart the game. Learn to play it in reverse. Make the game be about, “what delicious thing CAN I make for myself today?” But, do it at regular times if possible, meaning at least lunch and dinner times.
This is definitely NOT on anyone’s diet list, but I drink tea with lots of milk and sugar (lots of sugar), when I’m feeling draggy mid-afternoon. It might not be part of the food pyramid, but no celery stick or apple slice has ever been able to extract me from the late-afternoon blahs. Tea with milk and sugar (lots of sugar) works really well. And if we have to count calories (I don’t, ever) it’s probably better than a candy bar.
I also don’t eat breakfast. (I beg you to read to the end of this blog, at which point I quote from the woman who was a food blogger before the word existed, M.F.K. Fisher, about eating 3 meals a day.) I used to eat breakfast, but it began to interfere with lunch, and I adore lunch. I love being REALLY hungry, and having a moment to think out what I can make. But it’s the being REALLY hungry part, and then sitting down to something really delicious, that makes the result so happy.
M.F. K. Fisher was not as challenged as we are today to find time for a nice sit-down lunch, even if it’s toast and salad, but her basic premise - in 1942 - was cast off eating rules - Diets are not eating, they’re rules. Deny nothing but denial.
But add exercise. Yoga, dancing, walking, hopping a lot, movement matters. Almost no one chops wood anymore, or threshes wheat, or even walks to the library much. It’s really important, therefore, to create the time to get exercise. Our big evolutionary joke is that our brains created enough technology to make it so our bodies could stop doing anything at all. It’s therefore our brains’ obligation to get out the schedule and add back exercise.
I’ve been posting my lunches this week, because I have all these wonderful leftovers in my refrigerator from the holidays, and think they make even better lunches than they did dinners.
I threw the last of some butternut squash cubes in a pan with the last of the apple cider and one old pear, and cooked it all until mashable. I added nothing else to it but a little salt.
I rubbed a small piece of cod, cut from the cod I was making for a fish stew dinner, and rubbed it with zatar, a middle spice blend I had on my counter at the moment. I tossed it into a pan while I was starting the fish stew, and roasted it on top of the stove in a teensy amount of olive oil.
I set the spicy cod on top of the hot, sweet squash, topped it with the last of the cilantro sauce (Recaintro) in the refrigerator, sprinkled on some chopped mint I’d saved from something else, and added a dollop of the raita that had attended the New Year’s Day Lentils.
Truly, if you’re counting, this was probably four hundred-ish calories, and so good I could have cared less about dinner.
The next day I made a chicken soup with all the leftover vegetables in my refrigerator. With a good chunk of bread, it was cheering and soulful.
Today’s lunch is - well, let’s call it a Scandinavian Nicoise: an assembly of green-ish things from my refrigerator and high quality sardines, along with Wasa Crisps, which I love, and a bit of that now famous raita.
Here is MFK Fisher’s 1942 complaint about 3 meals a day, the absurdity and forced-march qualities of eating “balanced meals.”
One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be “balanced.” (This still goes on in big-magazine advertising, but there seems less and less insistence on it in real life: baby doctors and even gynecologists admit that most human bodies choose their own satisfactions, dietetically and otherwise.)
In the first place, not all people need or want three meals each day. Many of them feel better with two, or one and one-half, or five.
Next, and most important perhaps, “balance” is something that depends entirely on the individual. One man, because of his chemical set-up, may need many proteins. Another, more nervous perhaps, may find meats and eggs and cheese an active poison, and have to live with what grace he can on salads and cooked squash.
Of course, where countless humans are herded together, as in military camps or schools or prisons, it is necessary to strike what is ironically called the happy medium. In this case what kills the least number with the most ease is the chosen way. And, in most cases now, the happy medium, gastronomically, is known as the balanced diet.
Fisher complains that not only is a balanced diet dull, but it is “hell on the pocket-book.” Instead, she recommends, “Balance the day, not the meal.” Eat what want wants, not what one has been taught.
,