Dogged Blog

Frankencookies as surrogate marker for a world without real food

I'm not suggesting homemade Toll House cookies are good for you -- flour and sugar are pretty much my kryptonite. But I do think the comparison between the original Toll House cookie recipe I grew up making and the ingredients of Nestle's Toll House frozen cookie dough are a damn good surrogate marker for everything that's wrong with how we eat today.

Toll House cookie recipe:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) chocolate chips

Ingredient list of Nestle's Toll House frozen cookie dough:

Bleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Hot Fudge Filling (High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hydrogenated Coconut Oil,Corn Syrup, Sugar, Water, Cocoa [Processed with Alkali], Non-Fat Milk, Modified Cornstarch, Disodium Phosphate, Salt, Potassium Sorbate[Preservative], Soy Lecithin, Artificial Flavor),Margarine (Palm Oil, Water, Sunflower Oil, Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil, Salt, Vegetable Mono & Diglycerides, Soy Lecithin, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Vitamin A Palmitate Added, Beta Carotene [Color], Whey), Nestle Toll House Morsels (Semi-Sweet Chocolate [Sugar,Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Milkfat, Soy Lecithin, Vanillin-an Artificial Flavor, Natural Flavor]), Water, Eggs, Molasses, Salt, Baking Soda (Contains Soy Lecithin), Vanilla Extract, Vanillin-an Artificial Flavor.

Transfats, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, and preservatives. And a whole generation of children growing up thinking you make cookies by taking a hunk of Frankenfood out of the freezer and heating it in the oven.

Low Carb Creamy Chocolate Muffin

After a long descent into emotional eating and food crazies that started near the end of my mother's battle with cancer and continued until recently, I seem to have gotten my mojo back. Food went back into its corner and seems willing to stay where it belongs in my life -- ie, as food/fuel, and an occasional form of entertainment rather than comfort -- and I got back on what worked to help me lose 187 pounds, whole-foods, sugar-free, grain-free, low-carb eating.

This way of eating never felt like deprivation to me. It does for others; I'm speaking here only for myself. But one of the misconceptions people have about whole foods low-carb is that it cuts you off from some of your favorite foods. It's true, if pasta and pizza and flour-based layer cake is your favorite food, it does. I won't deny it.

But if you're willing to put out just a small amount of effort, you can eat a lot of pretty awesome things and stay away from carby foods as well as low-carb processed junk food.

I made this recipe up myself, if you can call it a recipe since I'm a pretty ramblin' kind of cook. But it hits that sweet spot when you just have to have something full of rich, dark chocolate and a little bit of sweet creaminess.

Low Carb Creamy Chocolate Muffin

Basic cake recipe:

2 sticks butter (softened)
4 oz cream cheese (softened)
1 and a quarter cup Splenda
5 whole eggs
2 cups almond flour
Approx. 4 Tblsp unsweetened dark cocoa powder -- batter should be very dark, if not, add more, along with a little more Splenda if you increase cocoa. If it seems dry, you might want to add another egg. Sorry to be so vague.
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter, cream cheese and Splenda, then add eggs and vanilla and mix well. All by hand.

Mix almond flour with baking powder and add to egg mixture.  Mix well by hand.

Spoon into greased (I use butter) cupcake/muffin tins.

Bake in pre-heated 350 degree oven for around 20 minutes - check for doneness by tapping the top. If it feels firm, it's probably done.

Each cupcake has around 5 grams of net carbs (which is total carbs minus fiber).

Whipped Cream

Once, on a low carb email list I used to be on, someone asked the list if it was true, as she had heard, that it was possible to make "homemade whipped cream." I wanted to cry.

If it comes in a can or a plastic tub, it shouldn't go in your body.

For those who don't know how to whip cream, it couldn't be easier.

Purchase heavy cream at the market. This was made with heavy cream from grass-fed cows, and while it was pasteurized, it was not ultra-pasteurized. Sadly, most organic and much non-organic heavy cream has been ultra-pasteurized, so if that's all you can find, it will still taste just fine, even if it should be illegal.

Get a mixing bowl. It's bonus points if you put it in the freezer for an hour or so before you begin, but I almost never do.

Pour the heavy cream into the mixing bowl. Add a capful of vanilla extract and two-three packets of stevia powder.

Mix until it forms stiff peaks, and stop just before it turns into butter. How long will depend on many factors, so if you're using a standing rather than hand-held mixer, don't walk away from it. Once it turns into butter, you can never go back.

That's it.

Depending on how much you add, it's around 1-2 more grams of carbs per serving.

One more round with the food demons

You know what's eating at me? Food.

I was lucky enough to find a way of eating that worked for me, and as a result lost 187 pounds over a period of around 4 years, and kept it off for a couple of years. I started menopause and found it impossible to lose any more -- well, I lost a couple of pounds in a year when many women gain weight, but still -- but I was really okay with that. My relationship with food was sane, I was eating healthily, and I felt great.

Then my mom got sick. For a long time I was still okay, although the stress was really getting to me. But eventually she was so ill that she needed me during the night, often multiple times, and sleep deprivation has always been a big problem for me physically. But I loved her, she needed me, and that was that.

And I still managed to eat pretty well, although the regularity of my meals was faltering, and I was not as careful about my portions as I'd been. I gained 4 pounds, lost it, re-gained it, and then three more.

I joined a gym and lost the 7, but soon the nightmare of my mom's cancer destroyed pretty much everything in my life except my love for her. And still -- I wasn't eating sugar or grains or anything starchy. I had some problems, and I gained some weight, around 15 pounds. I was upset about that, but all things considered, I couldn't give it a lot of thought.

In the last two weeks of my mom's life, I broke. I ate sugar, I ate pizza, I ate every comforting thing I could find. I was really shocked that I did that, but I have never been so completely raw and in so much pain as I was then.

After she passed away, I tried to get back on some kind of healthy eating program, but it was hard. Incredibly hard. Much harder than I thought it would be. I tried a lot of things, talked to a lot of people, went back to the gym -- but eventually, my weight gain crawled up and up until it pushed past 35 pounds re-gained.

I don't know if anyone who has been more or less a normal weight all your life can imagine what it's like to be set free of super-obesity and to believe you really had found a way of eating that could work for you forever, that you were finally FREE of a lifetime of insanity around food and obsessing over your weight, and then be plunged back into it again.

I am not mad at myself. I am not beating myself up. What I'm doing is mourning, for a lot of things -- my own past, the loss of my mom, the loss of food as a form of comfort, my own lighter, more limber body.

I had pulled myself back from the worst of it, and had gotten back on track pretty well -- lost some weight, wasn't obsessing, felt pretty good. Then the stress of moving,  the hell of the drive, the stress of being in a new place -- a new place where it's a lot harder to find the kind of food I want to be eating, both because it's unfamiliar and because it's not California.

So now I'm facing this whole process one more time.

Don't get me wrong. I think our obsession with slenderness in this culture is nuts. I think if you eat mostly whole, wholesome foods and are active and don't eat for emotional reasons, your body will probably settle into a good weight for you, regardless of what the charts in the doctors' offices say.  I don't believe my life will be all that different if I lose the weight I re-gained. I am, I think, pretty sane about the whole subject.

All I want is to get free of the sense of sticky, unwelcome food-obsession again. I want to feel loose and free in my body again, as I did even when I still had 75 more pounds to lose. I want to break that false connection that food is comfort, is emotional balm.

I am so utterly tired of this particular battle. I just want it to be over.

The 'food of love' thing: How I learned to stop hating food and how to cook

 I was chatting with someone the other day about emotional eating, and she made a remark that "comfort foods" could be "like an old, familiar, good friend."

I was speechless. I have never felt that way about food in my life.

No, I had despised, loathed and feared food. I wanted nothing more than to take a daily pill and never, ever have to eat again. It wasn't a friend, it was my bitterest enemy. And when I succumbed to emotional eating, it was never comforting or reassuring; it was like going back to the spouse who beat you, because it was all you knew.

Something like ten years ago, I had a food epiphany, and slowly, with the help of hours spent watching the Food Network (which was different then than it is today), I healed that relationship. I wrote about it on my dog website, since this was in pre-blog days. I'm going to re-publish it here, because it's been on my mind a lot lately.

The 'food of love' thing

Ask people with weight problems if they love food, and most will say yes – too much! But do they?

If your consumption of food is accompanied by feelings of shame and the desire to stop eating even as you eat, if you hide what you eat, if you measure, weigh, balance, and ration what you eat, if you lie in bed at night cataloguing the day's food intake with guilt and regret, that isn't love. Or rather, it's only "love" in the way a woman who is involved with a man who cheats on her and insults her in front of her friends and blows their joint savings at the track is in "love."

True love, on the other hand, enriches your life. It makes you feel more connected with the world around you. It softens your heart, and helps you feel better about yourself and others. Can someone who has spent his or her life seeing food as the enemy and the kitchen as a battleground find true love with food?

The answer is yes, and I'm the living proof. And it wasn't a diet plan or nutritionist or therapist or doctor who changed the way I related to food. It was a TV chef named Emeril Lagasse.

For those who don't know, Emeril hosts an unbelievably popular daily show called Emeril Live on cable's Food Network. Emeril has a few opinions about food that fly in the face of common wisdom about healthy eating, "pork fat rules" probably being the most obvious. At first it was hard to understand all the bacon fat and butter and exactly how that was supposed to fit into a nutritious diet. But Emeril's message started to get through to me after I read the book Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, a cookbook cum manifesto reclaiming traditional ways of preparing food and questioning our society's demonization of dietary fat.

But it was not ideas, facts or theories that cured my dysfunctional relationship with food. It was Emeril himself, with his silly "BAM!" as he threw a palmful of salt onto a dish, the look of glee on his face as he added "thirty thousand cloves of garlic" to a stew, the rapture apparent as he solemnly asked his adoring studio audience, "Can't you feel the love in there?" as he added sausage to a pan of greens.

And they did. And so did I, as I finally understood that to learn to cook, you have to lose your fear. You have to decide that it's worth it to plan a meal in advance. To sit down at the table and enjoy dinner. To care what you are putting into your mouth, and appreciate what it smells, tastes, and feels like. To build into your life the regular stocking and re-stocking of your refrigerator and kitchen cabinets, and not always have a meal be something you think of and prepare approximately five minutes before your blood sugar crashes to levels that leave you light-headed and irritable (or worse, five minutes after).

Isn't that what true love is about? Being thoughtful, appreciative, considerate? Making room in your life for the one you love?

The other way Emeril taught me how to cook was by demonstrating. I suppose all cooking shows do that, but I'd never had the slightest interest in a cooking show before this one. Watching Emeril slice food, add food to pots, and sauté, brown, deglaze, and perform other previously-arcane culinary arts, I found that I was able to do those things myself. I could see what they looked like, see what it meant to "brown" a chicken breast, understand what "blanching" was, see how plunging broccoli into an ice bath would stop it from cooking and preserve its green color. I'm sure that many people have this experience in their own homes, being taught to cook by a mother or grandmother, but that wasn't what happened to me. I honestly believed I couldn't cook, and my rare attempts at it produced food that tasted all right most of the time, but no pleasure or joy on my part. My culinary dreams involved eating at restaurants, not in my own dining room. My definition of a successful home-cooked meal was one that I could make in less than five minutes in a single pan.

I know that many of us who struggle with weight problems and eating disorders would consider it a huge relief if we could stop eating altogether and just subsist on a daily pill. The struggle with food can consume your life. But you could stop struggling, and stop disrespecting yourself with fast food, binge eating, starvation dieting, eating things you don't like because they are "good for you," secret eating, last-minute meals, and self-loathing. Because it's not only food I'm suggesting deserves your love – it's YOU.

Still don't get it? As Emeril would assure you, it's a food of love thing. Believe it. 

Sundays are for navel-gazing

I'm cautiously thinking things may be getting better.

I had a steroid shot for my knee, and subsequently was able to do a lot more in physical therapy than before. I have a great PT, and he designed a program for me, specifically based on the equipment at my gym, that gives me a real workout as well as letting me strengthen the muscles around my knee, to help keep my meniscus tear from being so painful.

I never thought working up a sweat could be so wonderful.

One of the things that surprised the hell out of me is that he put me on a stationary bike. I always assumed bikes would be hard on your knees, but he said that in this case, it was the best thing, better than a treadmill. I've never used one before, and I don't use a real bike, either, so this thing is working muscles I haven't previously worked, so I've got that great endorphin+pain thing going on that really makes me feel like I'm doing something.

I also got my period for the first time in around 20 months. And for the year or so before that, it was irregular and tended to be scanty and last a single day. I thought it was a little early for menopause, to tell you the truth, but that seemed to be what happened.

But this wasn't just my first period in almost two years, it was a normal period -- not heavy, not light, and exactly 5 days. I also had a day of the crazies before it hit, in which I was sobbing and hysterical and snapping at everyone. I thought I was having a nervous breakdown, truthfully -- if I'd had any idea it was PMS, I'd have been able to detach from it a little, but since I didn't, I was really pretty freaked out. I missed a deadline for my SFGate column, I yelled at a good friend -- and I mean really yelled at her -- and I cried for around 15 hours straight. It was not pretty.

It will be interesting to see if my periods resume now, or if this was just a last hurrah. Because one thing I've definitely figured out, stress can do almost anything to screw with your body and mind. In the last two years since my mother got her first cancer diagnosis until now, I have been sleep-deprived, worried, frightened, and under such constant agonizing stress that even when it was over and she was gone, it took me months simply to get my breath, let alone get back to a normal sense of self.

As for food, I've gotten so tired of trying new things I can barely bring myself to type about it, but I downloaded an iPhone app called "Lose It" that I'm finding helpful in tracking my eating. I love Fitday.com, but they don't have a smartphone version, just a web interface and a desktop version, and now that I live in the city and go out so much more than I used to, I need a mobile program.

One thing I noticed is that I've been consistently below my caloric intake every day -- below my base level of calories not counting activity. And yet, I felt I'd been eating, if anything, way too much. And then I get to the nighttime and I'm wondering why I'm crazy hungry.

The last two nights I've simply eaten a small snack at around 9 PM, something I'd previously told myself not to do, and then often did anyway and then ended up eating a lot, because the hunger/food desire had been building up for a while by the time I "gave in."

And I of course ascribed all this to "emotional eating," but now that I can just look at my day's food and calories and see that, in fact, there's a reason I'm still physically hungry, it's turned into yet another physiological "no big deal." I'm hungry, I still have 3-400 calories in the bank, I eat a small snack, I feel fine and go to bed.

It's interesting in particular because I remember during my early weight loss days, when everything was new to me and I was reveling in being free of the food crazies for the first time in my life, I was following Dr. Atkins' mantra of, "If you're hungry, eat." I DID eat at might that whole first couple of years, and I lost well over a hundred pounds doing it. But when my weight loss slowed down, I started adding in a lot of constraints -- counting calories, increased physical activity, restricting when I'd eat -- and while some of those changes were healthy, necessary and not a problem, eventually I ended up back in crazy territory, AND regained 35 of the 187 pounds I'd lost.

Now, that happened really while I was taking care of my mother, and a lot of that eating was emotional. Absolutely. But I think a lot of it was physiological and related to stress and sleep-deprivation. And I'm wondering if that's not what screwed up my periods, rather than menopause.

I guess I'll know in around three more weeks -- but one thing's for sure, if right around then I start crying and yelling at people, I'm not going to think I've lost my mind.

Okay, I've already done my workout for today, the dogs are fed and walked, and I have a big deadline tomorrow. Back to work!

Consider the knee in all its extremely poor engineering

I had a steroid shot to my knee last week, to help me cope with the pain and swelling from my torn meniscus while Kaiser San Francisco covers its eyes and ears and goes "la la la we can't hear you" when I tell them I need surgery on my knee.

At first the shot made everything much worse, which I now find out is called  a "cortisone flare," but of which my health care provider did not warn me... par for the course at Kaiser, which I  believe is trying to kill me with crappy care.

However, once that was over, my knee felt better than it has in ages, so I decided to very cautiously see if I could, you know, use it. I went to my gym this morning, and swam for 15 minutes or so, and then did another 15 on the treadmill, no incline, very very low speed. I mean, I was careful.

Before the shot, I'd had to stop swimming because even the pressure of the water moving against my knee was painful. That, at least, was not a problem today, but climbing in and out of the pool was very, very hard. They have a wheelchair hoist but no steps or ramp on this pool -- just ladders, even in the children's end of the pool. I don't see any way around this obstacle. Swimming = good, getting in and out of pool = impossible.

The treadmill is not as "springy" as I remembered it as being, so I'm going to give it another chance while wearing my fugly but bouncy Z-Coil shoes. Because I have to turn this around, for both my mental and physical health. I need to have the mental energy to fight with Kaiser to get care, I need to work, I need to get back on track with my workouts and weight loss. I've come way, way too far to go backwards, but god, this is hard.

It really is.

The impact of a fresh coat of paint on grief

I'm not the world's most mystical person, but there's something to be said for moving everything in a space around and getting the energy flowing differently.

I've been stagnating and paralyzed with grief and depression for a long time. Getting my puppy thawed some emotional paralysis, but I was still overwhelmed with the physical reality of going through my mother's things and making decisions about this house we shared.

I've decided to move down into her garden apartment and rent out the upstairs as a furnished short term/vacation rental. It's a lovely gem of a house, on a beautiful park, and I think a lot of people would find this a really nice place to rent. We'll see if I'm right.

But moving down into my mom's space is psychologically... weird. I've been spending quite a bit of time there with Rawley, as it opens on the garden and is on the ground floor, both easier to get him to the park, to potty, and to hang out in the sunshine than if we were upstairs. I'd set up my big laptop with an external keyboard and mouse and was working down there all day.

But today, painters came in and painted the place. They moved all the furniture into the center of the room, tarped it all, and painted out the dark paneling and unfinished wood of some changes we made as she became ill. They took off the handicapped pull bars, primed and painted shelves and doors and door jambs, and repaired a lot of holes from where she'd hung pictures and curtain rods.

It's... amazing. It feels fresh and different and bright. And this evening, for the first time since my mom died, I've been able to cope with sending some of her things to the thrift store and dealing with her car, which has sat untouched in the driveway for months. My brother came over and put a charger on the battery, and we made plans to sell it next week, after I get a missing hubcap replaced and have it detailed.

Maybe it's just the passing of time, I don't know. I wish I could say I'm less unhappy about how horrible her last months were, or how much I miss her in my life, but I can't. But I do feel that some things are moving and shifting, and I'm going to choose, just for tonight, to be hopeful about the future.

Fuck Prozac

I jokingly said my puppy was pulling out of my depression, but I've also been taking Prozac for several weeks now. But I'm done.

When I was in Austin at SXSW, I was taking it every morning, and I spent the whole week there in a fog. No matter how much sleep I got, it wasn't enough.

When I got home, I started taking it at night, and at first that was better, but now I'm just sleepy and dazed all the time. I can barely wake up in the morning.

I'm going to see how I do without it. And yes, I did let my doctor know. I certainly don't want to be as depressed as I was before, but I'm not sure I will. I'm not chronically depressed, just having a very hard time dealing with my grief and the massive upheaval in my life caused by my mom's long illness and her really very horrible death. I don't mean to understate how much that's affected me, and if the really bad feelings return, I'll try a different anti-depressant. But this one is not for me.

Besides, now that my puppy is here, I suspect things are going to be better. He has the power.

Ninety workouts in 90 days: Splish, splash

Today was day 21 of the 90 workout challenge, and I got in two! I went swimming this afternoon, mostly with my four year old nephew so maybe not the most strenuous workout ever, and then this evening Kyrie and I went for a long hike.

My new puppy is coming Thursday, at which point I suspect I'll be getting about four times as many walks as I'm currently getting. I can't wait!

Ninety workouts in 90 days: Does anyone know what day this is?

I need to go back and figure out what day this is, but I'm current through yesterday on my 90 workouts in 90 days challenge.

I didn't really get much out of the workouts while I was in Austin. The gym at the hotel was nice in terms of polished hardwood floors and view of the pool, but lacked the weights and equipment I'm used to at my regular gym. So a few of those workouts, well... they were technically workouts, but I don't think they did my body too much good.

I actually have a lot of stuff to say about SXSW and my new puppy, who is coming a week from today, but the deadlines are piling up.