Cooking with Miss Lady

So, this post is going to be like this time I texted my friend from a bar to say that I had a successful interaction with a man. I described it and we were both excited, but then we realized that I was basically saying that at 30something I had finally learned to talk to boys. You got it; I finally learned to feed myself with mild success.

Previously, my rate of cooking efficacy--like you could cook, eat it, and possibly feed it to someone else, was like 50%. Chickens cooked by Miss Lady...hmmm....could be delicious (less likely), could be merely edible, or could be just...no: dry, raw, weird. There's no telling. Recently, my rate of total edibility went up, maybe to like 75%, oddly due to poverty. You see, when you spend 1 million dollars on veterinary care for your pet, you can't really afford to waste money effing up dishes, especially if you still mostly insist on using expensive items from Whole Foods. Anyhow, I'd like to share my recent successful recipes, especially for other cooking challenged people. Nothing here will be earthshatteringly gourmet, just accomplishable.

Italian Sausage and Stuff
Ingredients

• Italian Sausage (Or if you can, this artisan sausage from the farmer's market near my house on Sundays. Course, if you do that then you can't embarrass the meat counter guy and possibly yourself by saying "I neeed some hawwt Italian sausage, the big one, please." Not that I did that this weekend. Nope.)
• Basil or something else green
• Something brown, like bulgar, rice, or quinoa
• Tomatoes, fresh or in a can
• Maybe some spices or garlic powder.

Method
Find your big pastel skillet. Put the sausage in it and brown it. Sausage is greasy, so you don't need oil, which most people probably know through common sense, not trial and error. While you are doing that, it turns out to be efficient to cook your brown stuff. I do that by boiling to wrong amount of water, then pouring some out once that becomes apparent. I lost my measuring cup several years ago, and um...it hasn't come up that much till now. Don't worry--if this system stops working, I'll buy one. Once the sausage seems brown, which is confusing because it still kinda looks pink even when its brown, you put in the tomatoes, and spices. After you stir that put in the green stuff. I originally did this with basil, but I've been using Organic Girl Viva la France greens lately. I wouldn't say it adds much flavor, but it does add veggies. Anyhow, once all that seems pretty done, you mix in the brown. Oh yeah, at some point you already remembered to turn down the heat. How much brown stuff depends on how much you haphazardly made, how carby you are feeling, or how many of your storage containers are clean. If most of them are dirty and still at work, you could even skip the brown stuff, though I usually need it to be full.

Curry or Vindaloo Rotation Type Dish

Ingredients

• Chicken breasts or thighs-- This could depend on how much money you have and/or whether or not you are a protein type a gal. Turns out that dark meat is a little better for my metabolism AND I find it a little easier to cook.
• Veggies like carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli. It's nice if this is fresh, but it is easier to keep a few frozen bags of this mix on hand, so that's what I've been doing lately. It's like if being prepared is an excellent way to be prepared.
• Chickpeas/Garbanzo-- WTF do they have two names?
• Green stuff like in the last recipe
• Some Indian sauce marketed to white people-- I rotate them out, or otherwise I get overloaded on the flavors, but my favorites are the $7 tubs of Vindaloo or Curry at Whole Foods in the cheese section, which is probably not their official name. The Korma is excellent too, but it has too much cream for me to do for daily eating. Target oddly carries a green curry sauce I like too.
• Brown rice

Method
It is really pretty similar to the sausage. Slice up the chicken small enough to cook in a skillet. Get your big skillet, which is aqua instead of pink as you would prefer. Brown the chicken so that it's cooked. Not like beyond a shadow of a doubt, since you'll probably bring your sauce to a boil, but pretty much cooked. Then stir in your sauce. Add the veggies first and wait a minute if frozen. Add the chickpeas and greens sometime around here. After your sauce is kinda boily, turn down the heat. Ideally you would simmer this with a lid, but I don't have a lid for the big blue skillet, so sometimes I put a cookie sheet on top of that and call it good enough. Other times, I just say fuck it and cook it without the lid. Oh yeah, I hope you already cooked the rice. Once the chicken mixture simmers for a bit-- timing depends on hunger!-- stir in the rice, being sure to be like "oh fuck, there's all this extra water here because I refuse to measure" and pour said water out. Simmer while you wash up some plastic containers and curse it up while you try to find matching lids from your collection of 800 lids. Voila, dinner and lunch and dinner is served.

Also, I do a Tex Mex version of this as well. Same shit, but use beans, corn, onions, and vaguely Tex Mex sauce.

Soothing with Nutrition

I thought I had a reason to be sad when I broke my leg. I thought I had a reason to have the heavy heart on New Year's Day. But I didn't even know sad.

My dogbaby, Jimi Hendrix, has a carcinoma. After a troubling bout of diarrhea that led to finding a tumor, I got confirmation tonight that he has a carcinoma at the junction of his upper and lower intestines. Tomorrow we will visit the doggie oncologist, and hopefully learn right away about his chances for being treated with success and returning to health. From there I get to make decisions.

The whole process has involved a lot of waiting. Waiting to see if an antibiotic worked, waiting for an ultrasound and biopsy, waiting for the lab results to arrive at the vet, and waiting for the vet to call me, and then waiting for the words. And heartbreak, as I reflect over the reality that the time when I lose the best cuddler, hiking companion,travel buddy, comedian, and friend I've ever known might be here. I was holding it together and staying pretty positive, since Jimi was in excellent spirits, but on Saturday, when he actually started to show signs of anemia and an awareness that all was not right with him, I slid right down into an abyss of sadness.

 I know I am certainly not the first person to go through something like this, and that people certainly deal with loved ones even dearer with even more tragic problems; in fact, loss seems to be a hallmark of the human experience...but I can't imagine how. I don't know how we keep having children, or parents, or pets, or friends at all when sickness and tragedy exist. I think I've been blessed so far; though I've lost people and pets, I've never had to deal with the possibly imminent loss of someone so integrated into the fabric of my life. (Silent howl.) I was gladly ignorant to that wrinkle of humanity. For me, as much as I am sad and worried about Jimi, this also reminds me that I want to be close to my aging parents, who are separated from me by numerous states, that I need more financial power, and that I meant to have a life partner to lean on by the time things like this had to be faced. Making decisions like that will mean contemplating different kinds of losses. (Silent howl.)

This is a Miss Lady nutrition and body image blog, so I want to include some stuff about my nutrition. In the past, I've dealt with sadness by eating wildly--see Break-up Ice Cream Diet, or by eating in a nibbly and pitiful manner--see Break-up Starvation Diet. I can say that neither has good results; the former results in weight gain, pretty much immediately for me. The latter results in muscle loss, lowered metabolism, and eventual RAPID weight gain. Whatever the other side of this pain is, I know I want to reach it healthy-- with no mental or physical damage to my eatology. In the meantime, I know I want to be on fucking point for decision-making, appointment chauffering, and dogbaby advocacy. Having a broken leg taught me to absolutely be prepared for nutrition success, so I've stayed on top of stocking up on healthy items whenever I am near them and cooking ahead of time. I'm sure I'm still under-calorie and probably burning up my adrenals for a number of reasons, BUT I eat hearty portions as often as I can and load myself up with whatever veggies I can stomach. Every time I do that, I feel happy and affirmed--or I would if I didn't have a big anvil dark cloud ball of awful thingy sitting on my heart. If you didn't get slapped by that newsflash, lemme break it down for you: a white middle class southern woman, who is currently overweight, and who is me, a woman formerly lost in the forest of nutrition, has truly positive thoughts about feeding herself.

An even more important piece of the nutrition story here, is Baby Jimi's nutrition. As with my leg, I've figured out that doctors, particularly those not billing themselves as holistic, only deal with parts and illnesses. And that's fine with me...I suppose. I've not got time to radically rethink how I approach healthcare at this moment. When I broke my leg, my surgeon did the surgery stuff, and did it well, as he should. He also evaluates my x-rays, prescribes the appropriate pain pills, and helps me authorizes shit like parking placards and PT like a champion. The whole person stuff though, that was up to me. I  thought about the health I needed to heal my leg, and I fed myself accordingly. My leg didn't heal all lined up because of this-- that was Dr. Smoot's doing, but ultimately I healed "ahead of the curve" and that was all me (and a good dozen or so helpful friends). What I do holistically, complements what he does allopathically. (Am I using that right?)  The same has been true for Jim Jim. When they prescribe antibiotics, I replenish his GI tract with a multi-strain probiotic. When they put him on a low-fat food to help him baby tummy, I ask "what about the calories he needs to stay strong everywhere?" and work with the vet to find a diet that meets all the furry fur fur needs. I'm struck at this moment by what a journey this has been: just a few years ago, I ate entirely from boxes and had a disasterously meager set of cook skills. Now, I'm thankfully able to choose, procure, and make some pretty healthy stuff for myself and my loved pup without a second thought.

I did something for Jimi the other day that I never thought I would do, something that suddenly made me understand my own mother just a little more: I made my own chicken stock. I've previously scoffed at people who do this-- you're an American; just waste the damn bones, you overachiever! But after I roasted Jimi my first and the best whole chicken ever (turns out the extra ingredient IS love) and boiled him some rice in an almost correct fashion, and pulled the chicken from the bones, I placed them in some water, to make my own chicken stock in case he decided to forgo the toilet bowl (his fav) again and become dehydrated. Why did I do this? I mean, I had a box of organic chicken stock in the fridge. I did it for the same reason that I cooked the chicken and the rice and brought it to him in bed. I did it because I can. I can't make the cancer not be there, just like my mom can't make it so that nothing bad ever happens to me. I cook because I can.

Postscript: I'm not ready to really write about what it means to me, but an update should be here. I did all I could for him, but it didn't work out. On January 20, 2013, Baby Jimi crossed into dog heaven, the only heaven I'm really sure of.

Burger--no bun, with fries, thank you.

So...since I just got done eating this, and I non-resolved to post more, lemme write about my favorite fastish food order. For the purpose of clarification.

I am lucky enough to live in a city with lots of what I call fastish food options. Really, it IS fast food, just somewhat less industrialized and non-food (to varying degrees) than your typical fast food. Chipotle, Snap Kitchen, Fresa's Delicious Chicken, erewhere. I've noticed that the businesses that tend to do the best are the ones that mimic our beloved junk food but in a healthier way-- hence the long lines at P. Terry's. The burger, more than any other item ruined by modern American foodways, seems to call for reform. I mean, it was a simple meat and usually involves vegetables-- how did we make it so awful? So, it is not surprising to me that I can visit Elevation Burger, Flattop, Wholly Cow, P.Terry's, Hopdoddy for a better burger (various combinations of grass-fed, organic, local, etc) -- sometimes without even getting out of my car! You may think that's some lazy American horseshit (it is) but things like breaking your ankle or teaching to the point of exhaustion all day really make you appreciate people first world handing your first world food inside your first world car.

Anyhow, its a good thing, because I love burgers AND they are one of the few restuarant items I can always count on to be adapted to my eatin needs. When I'm not bending and flexing my own nutrition guidelines, I order a plain patty (or two) on top of a salad, BUT sometimes I bend and flex my own guidelines for the sake of sanity and variety. This means that sometimes I get cheese and if I wanna get real wild, I will order french fries, provided the fries being served are just potatoes and reasonable oil, two things that aren't inherently irritating to my system as long as no other french fry hoo doo happens. (As an aside, I really love that P.Terry's gets to advertise fries in canola oil like it is fancy-- what the hell are the fast fast places using? Gasoline? Heart attack sauce? Never mind, I don't wanna know.)

Here's the deal I want to clarify: Every time I order my burger without a bun but WITH fries, it causes confusion. Either for companions or employees, but always someone. Look, people, I KNOW that the whole lettuce wrapped burger or burger salad thing became popular because people were avoiding carbs totally. I KNOW that it would be less calories, etc to skip the fries, but sometimes I get them. I don't think that's exactly what causes the confusion though. What seems to confuse people is the idea that I don't just hog down on all the indulgent items, just because I want one of them. Like when people scoff at the idea of ordering a slice of pizza and a diet coke.  Remember when "pigging out" was a thing you could say you were going to do? That phrase went away though because A) the 80s ended and B) pigging out and eating are pretty much synomous in the standard American diet.

Even though I'm already ramble-ranting, I think it is worth the effort to explain why there's merit in my skipping the bun even when I want the fries. The first reason is simple--the bun is gluteny and gluten makes me feel like shit beyond a certain threshold. And bread is beyond that threshold. By shit, I mean that it causes bloating, irritability, and joint inflammation. I prefer not having those things, though I will put up with for something really good.

The second reason, people of 'merica, is the 'betes. Fries plus bread! That's just too much sugar to process, unless you just kick ass at processing sugar, and I don't. In the event that you don't know, it works something like this: If you dump a crap ton of sugar, in any form, but most especially in the forms that convert to sugar in the system pretty quickly, you get a profound insulin response aka an insulin spike. Your body is supposed to use insulin to process sugar, but SAD tests the limits of that system and often wears it right the fuck out-- also known as type two diabetes. The insulin response, in my experience and I THINK in science, can be evened out in a number of ways: not ingesting too much sugar/carbs-- why I'm able to keep my blood sugar in the 80s even though my insulin response is a little worn out, combining your sugar/carbs with fat (preferably good fat) which emulsifies it and keeps it from just DUMPING into your system, and using some sense of food combining-- like eating a balance of protein, carbs, and veggies ( for me, at least half as many grams of protein as carbs seems to work.) The latter two support my decision to get the fries instead of the bread, though of course the first point is why I usually don't get them. Oh apparently you can also slow the hell down when you eat though I haven't mastered this. I think it used to be that food traditions helped with this-- milk with cookies, balanced meals, sugar only in desserts, but I can only barely remember such things being widespread in my lifetime. Collectively, America's tradition is to eat like you are at a carnival, always.

So, people really expect me to either not get the fries if I'm not getting the bread-- who do I think I am making decisions that can't be marketed easily as a diet with a name?! Or more often I think it's just expected that I will get the bread because I'm getting the fries and also get a shake or a pie and wash that down with a soda (seriously soda, wtf are you? I'm not even drunk when I drink you. Useless.) Why not? It's crazy really-- even at the places that exist for the purpose of selling a more nutritious burger, I swear people would be more comfortable if I'd just order a dinner that will kill me. Or make me fat(ter). Gawd.

Happy New Year

Sigh. I'm supposed to come up with resolutions or something, but I'm officially in a funk. Not sure what brought it on..post-holiday let down? the bs symbolism of the "new year" that requires you reflect over the past year only to realize that nothing has changed since last year? the fact that I'm (re)rewatching an episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon realizes that her life doesn't change from year to year while I'm realizing that my life doesn't change from year to year which is probably what I did last year? Having only a gay male stranger to kiss at midnight on NYE, again, because another manfriend couldn't live up to my ever lowering standards? Or perhaps having reached the pinnacle of hair awesomeness and glamour with no clear direction  for my next coiffure? Who could know that answer to this? It's probably that last thing though.

Anyhow, my strategy for dealing with the funk is to write a blog entry, finally. I kinda want to clean the house or walk the dog...but unfortunately my bum foot hurts quite a bit (you know...like the kind of hurt that makes you think it will never be normal again and reminds you that you haven't done your PT and causes a pity spiral) from some ill-advised dancing last night. So, writing. Also, I'm worried that soon my friend Nora will point out that I haven't updated my blog in a while, and then I'll have to confront the fact that I haven't updated my blog in a while.

So here it is. Let me apologize for not being my usual cheery optimistic self.

On 9/7, I wrote that I "said it and meant it, no matter what" in reference to my goal of eating healthy for a year. So I was, and am, super proud of myself for maintaining excellent nutrition during the period of limited mobility after my leg break. As it turns out, this period of trying to return to normal is pretty hard too, but the 10 weeks after my surgery were some of the hardest in my life, and it was both awesome for my health and a significant symbolic victory for me to know that I could maintain a nutrition goal no matter what the obstacle. And if you don't count my Tacodeli concession/addiction, I didn't turn to food for emotional comfort at all!

So...if I could stay the course even while my ability to grocery shop or cook was limited, I can do anything right? Sure success, right? Nope.

So if a leg break didn't break me (har har), what did? Teaching. I'm not ready to go into the stresses of my job, which are compounded by my loving of it, but let's just say that you should hug a teacher immediately AND give her what's in your wallet. Anyhow,it started with some tortilla chips, and before I knew it...there was a snickers...and then I ate the Yule Log at my mom's house that she ordered from Gabriel's, the bakery that Paula Dean's cousin owns...have I mentioned this?...and then I ate a Homophobic Chicken Biscuit at the airport...and now I have 800 chins.

It's possible that I'm being dramatic. I'm still eating mostly healthy stuff and I even cooked a fresh and edible turkey chili today. And my beauty grows faster than my chins, so there's that.

Nonetheless, I can't get over the fact that I'm starting the year off with no dating potentials, not able to run, and unsure of where to go in my career. And I haven't taken a bath yet. Oh, and I wrote a wrote a whole post about resolutions without actually coming up with any. Blerg.

The Scale

Orginally, I was gonna tell the scale to fuck off in this post, just like Weight Watchers, but then I realized that all the harm the scale has caused really isn't the scale's fault. The problem is mine/ours: we keep trying to get it tell us info it just isn't designed to tell us. (And it could also be related to the fact that WW, who needs to fuck off, uses that scale so much. Hmm. Still mad.)

I think we've already more or less covered the story of the WW scale weigh in: the nervousness, the lightweight outfit...getting a star if the lady thinks you did good...did we talk about pooping beforehand? Here's another story for you:

In the spring of 2011 when I first started seeing a nutritionist, she did a baseline body composition test on me. I'm not talking about a test with calipers, unkindly applied to your fatty fat by a gym teacher or a sophmore kinesiology major at 24 Hour Fitness. I mean a sophicated, many thousands of dollars machine that measures your body fat, water, and lean mass including bone and muscle by sending some electricity...to...do some...stuff. We like to pretend that all that matters is monitoring the fat, but in reality we know that we are made up of all of these things, and that the water and muscle also fluctuate in ways good and bad. Body comp provides ALL the information.

So after doing a food based cleanse for about two weeks, where I felt great...if a little starved, I went back in to check and discuss my body's response. Carly always has you get on the scale first. I'm not totally sure of her purpose for that, but for me it was interesting proof of the utter lack of relationship between the two sets of numbers. Anyhow at the first check-in, the scale said I was down 7lbs! A WW leader would have done a cartwheel. Doesn't that sound fantastic? Doesn't that mean you should keep eating exactly the same thing since it is WORKING?

You know me too well...the answer is no. When we did the body comp, it revealed that I had actaully lost 5.5 lbs of muscle and only 1.5 lbs of fat. As you may know, Miss Lady is made up of many proud muscles and lots of glitter.  Since I didn't want to lose any muscle, because I need it, and because muscle loss looks unpleasant to me, and because the point of nutrition is not to become weak and jiggly, we knew we had to change this. She ordered me to eat more MORE protein, up to 8oz per meal, and though we still haven't gotten to the bottom of the lack of fat loss, I have never lost any more muscle, and I generally can at least maintain my weight without feeling starved.

What strikes me too about this story, is how the converse would have played out at a WW meeting, or, to be fair, in any situation where the scale is the only real measure: If you work your ass out, let's say doing something badass like roller derby or boxing or powerlifting, you will gain muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat, so even if you lose fat too, your overall number might be larger. Its my understanding too that muscle retains water while it is building (or somesuch, no need to belabor the science if it holds up) so it is also possible to have the water number increase. In a scenario like this, you could have your muscle go up 5lbs, your water go up 1lb temporarily, and your fat decrease by 3lbs. Even though that is actally a kick ass situation for your body, if you only look at the scale, you will think you have gained 3 damn lbs of badness. If you are in a weigh-in situation, you will get a pitying head tilt. You will stress and wonder how to change your diet and if you will ever lose weight and if the world is fair at all, when you should be congratulating yourself.

So, what to do? I'd say throw out the scale, but it is one of the cheaper, more widely available ways to evaluate your body mass. The body composition tests are not everywhere and are not cheap, though I do think they are worth the money and time at least a few times a year. Of course, I am a big fan of measuring. For two dollars, that damn thing tells me plenty...though I do have to be careful to remeber that my measurements can vary for reasons like sneaky gluten bloating or lady cycles.

The solution really seems to be in not asking too much of the scale. I know, as well or better than anyone, how much you want it to tell you whether or not you'll ever lose weight or if people think you are pretty...or even just what the numbers mean that week, but it can't. Yes, if you weigh 20 lbs less on a scale after two months, you can probably say that some of your choices are producing fat loss. Or if you weight 20lbs more and can't find any new bulging muscles, you might make some assumptions from there. But on a week to week or day to day basis...all it can tell you is what your muscle and bone and water and fat add up to be. Nothing else.

News: "Ahead of the curve"

In foot/ankle/leg news, I visited the doctor today. After a very scary weight-bearing x-ray, the doc pronounced that my leg looked good, and that I am, in fact, "ahead of the curve."

What do I attribute being "ahead of the curve" to? You guessed it: nutrition. Avoiding processed foods, which are inflamtory to all kinds a people AND taking up space in your belly while being anutritional. Avoiding foods that are inflamatory to me, such as copious cow dairy. Eating plenty of calories-- not like Seymour gave me any other choice. Eating all the protein I could. And taking fish oil.

So there you have it. My doctor indicated that it was a good plan and definitely one I should stick with if it seems to help. He also said I should write a book, which is something people say to me here and there. Hmm...

Look out your damn window for unicorns...

or to see if hell froze over or something.

So this needs its own separate post, just to highlight it: I lost a small amount of weight, seemingly fat, while not able to exercise, or even move around that much.

Yes, people it can be done. No, it isn't drastic. Yes, my metabolism is probably still jacked in some way. (Side note: I have blood test results waiting for me, but my gyno is located on top of one of the biggest hills in Austin. No, I'm not going there in a wheelchair or on a kneeling scooter. Soon though.) I haven't had a body comp done, but I am pretty sure I lost fat along with the inevitable loss of muscle that comes with this--seriously, I have one bird leg.

My current measurements are something like this:

Overbust: 45
Waist 34
Hips 45

And my clothes don't be bothering me like they were. It's also possible that a lot of this is getting rid of BLOAT, which seems to have partially returned once I started up with the bourbon and coffee, but even if I actually didn't lose any fat...I didn't gain any, which is a miracle*. So now you should look for a unicorn.

*Not God, people--my friends, who have helped me eat right despite not being able to prepare much myself. Special shout out to Joan Jolt, who preps the food ALL the days.