bearing blog

Fasting in Paradise.

Melanie has dug up a quote that suggests the Genesis "don't eat that fruit" rule amounted to a prescribed fast:

"Fasting restores to those who practice it the father’s house from which Adam was cast out… God himself, the friend of man (Wsd 1,6), first entrusted to fasting the man he had created, as to a loving mother, as to a teacher. He had forbidden him to taste of one tree only (Gn 2,17) and if the man had observed this fast he would have dwelt with angels. But he rejected it and so found anguish and death, the sharpness of thorns and thistles and the sorrow of a miserable life (Gn 3,17f.) Now, if fasting is shown to be of value in Paradise, how much more must it be so here below to win us life eternal!". 

(Link: http://thewinedarksea.com/index.php/weblog/on_fasting/ )

It is a fruitful meditation. I wrote about a similar theme some time ago, only I identified the forbidding of the Edenic fruit as a "dietary law" rather than a fast:

"Which takes me to the Garden of Eden. How many times have you read or heard a non-Christian, non-Jewish person complaining of the arbitrariness of that whole "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" nonsense? Why would God care if they ate this one fruit? There's no good reason for it -- whoever wrote it down even made a point of mentioning that the stuff was good to eat, so what's the big deal? Alternatively, you'll occasionally see a well-meaning believer defending the don't-eat-that rule on some practical ground of healthfulness or learning obedience or some such thing.
I think it's easier to understand the story -- and this works both if you take the story as something that really happened, or if you take it as a useful teaching story passed down by one of the world's most influential cultures -- as the story of the first dietary law. The first "We eat this, not that. Just because."Pointing at the fruit of the tree while uttering "In the day you eat of it you shall surely die" is not, inherently, any nuttier than pointing at your tablemate's cheeseburger while muttering, "That shit'll kill you." It doesn't matter that the modern health nut thinks that science is on his side -- it's still a prediction of religious significance -- because in reality the connection between any given cheeseburger and the untimely death of the cheeseburger-eater is practically zero, unless the eater chokes on it, I suppose. And even if a lifetime diet of cheeseburgers will shorten your life, who's to say that's not a reasonable choice for someone who likes cheeseburgers?But let's go back to dietary laws for a minute. It's significant that the breaking of a dietary law should play such a crucial role in the stories I'm speaking of. And it's not something that's alien to human nature either. There are many layers to the story, but I can't help but think that it's in part a lesson that there are limits to our natural inclinations. The tree's fruit was "good to eat," and there is no reason to assume the senses of the man and woman couldn't be trusted. Yet, as the story goes, it was better, in that place and in that time, to choose not to eat it. Resisting, if only on occasion, what we naturally want and can see is a good thing, must itself be something good. And doesn't that fit with our ordinary experience?"

(link: http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/2010/04/dietary-laws.html )

One difference between a dietary law and a fast is that a dietary law is generally lifelong -- see the regulations of keeping kosher or halal, or the philosophy of an ethically committed vegetarian. Fasts, on the other hand, are generally temporary. In Jewish history, the permanence and complexity of the dietary law served many purposes -- among other things, to provide a concrete manifestation of identity among the chosen people, to clearly demarcate them from the peoples that surrounded them.  

Another difference is that fasting can be regarded as a positive act, and when prescribed, as a positive duty similar to the duties of prayer and almsgiving. To adhere to a dietary law is more like a negative duty, a "thou shalt not." Negative duties are by their nature more binding than positive ones.

Does it matter whether we identify the forbidding of the fruit as a dietary law or as a fast? Or is it simply a third example of the same sort of class of commandments? Either way it is instructive to meditate upon the words, "for in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death."

   

Something to be thankful for.

Mark just returned from a business trip where he had been meeting with British colleagues who had been living in Switzerland.  

The British colleagues bemoaned the lack of good food in Switzerland.  "It's great if you really, really like cheese," they said.

 So Mark, being that day in eastern Iowa rather than in the vast food desert that is French-speaking Switzerland, took them to a Vietnamese restaurant.  He says the imperial rolls with curry vegetables were quite nice, and the phở looked pretty good too.

"We really take it for granted, living in the U. S., that lots of people will have migrated here and opened restaurants," mused Mark.  No kidding.  

Pandora's sugar bowl.

Monday evening I announced, "Muffins for breakfast tomorrow!"

And the children fell to their knees (okay, it was only the 11-year-old) and begged, "Please, Mom, don't make them completely whole wheat!  Put some white flour in!"

I raised my eyebrow (okay, not really; I am physically incapable of raising one eyebrow; probably I just made a frowny face) and said, "Oh, come on, they're not that bad.  Muffins are quick breads. You barely notice the difference in muffins."

"They don't taste as sweet as other people's muffins."

He probably has a point there.  I don't like to eat super sweet muffins, so the slight bitterness of whole wheat flour has never bothered me, and I usually do not add extra sugar to make up for it.   

Maybe if I could have kept my children's taste buds safely sheltered from the world, he would not know what he is missing.  But this past year the 11-year-old has acquired the freedom to range around our urban neighborhood unsupervised.  He has, I suspect, tasted the illicit luxury of coffeeshop muffins bought with his own money.  There is scant going back once innocence is lost.

"Or, Mom, at least could you put more sugar in them?"

Hmph.  Philistines.  "How about I sprinkle a little sugar crust on top?"

"No, it's the middle that isn't sweet enough."

"But it'll have blueberries!"

"They're sour."

I turned to my spouse, the food processing engineer, who (a) has to stay somewhat abreast of the nutrition literature, and (b) has perfected the art of rapid calculation followed by a guess that makes it sound like he knows exactly what he is talking about.  "Mark."

"Hm?"

"If we had to live on homemade muffins, would it be better for us to eat low-sugar muffins made with some whole grain flour and some white flour, or would it be better to eat whole-grain muffins with more sugar in them?"

He rolled his eyes at me (okay, he probably didn't roll his eyes, but I'm not sure how to describe what he did.  Let's say he made a "here's a caveat" face).  "You realize that all the relevant research about this sort of thing is inconclusive."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Well, if it is an either-or, my instinct -- just my instinct, mind you --"

"Duly noted."

"-- is that it's better to keep it 100% whole grain and add the sugar.  Because the relevant research does indicate that more whole grain is associated with better outcomes.  And also the white flour has the same effect on your body as sugar anyway.  So at least you're not leaving out the additional nutrition and fiber, even if it comes with sugar."

"Got it."  I turned back to the pleading child.  "Okay.  This time I will make sweet muffins."  I stormed into the kitchen (okay, I probably did not storm so much as stalk) and made these.  They weren't blueberry because I discovered the dried cherries while I was rooting around in the fridge.

Extra-Sweet Cherry Yogurt Muffins

• 1 cup yogurt thinned with a little milk, OR 1 cup buttermilk, plus extra if needed (which you will)
• Heaping 1/2 cup dried tart cherries
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 egg
• 3 Tbsp butter or coconut oil, melted and cooled, or other oil
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup sugar (it hurts my teeth just writing that -- a *tablespoon* in every muffin!)
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

The night before:  Put the dried cherries in a bowl and add enough thinned yogurt to moisten all the cherries.  Stir and let soak overnight in the refrigerator.  (Even a half-hour's soak will do some good, if you don't have overnight.)

In the morning, grease a 12-cup muffin tin and preheat the oven to 400° F.  Beat the egg and melted butter together with the remainder of the thinned yogurt.  Add the almond extract.  Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl, then gently stir in the liquid ingredients and the cherry-yogurt mixture.  Add more yogurt and milk if needed to moisten all the dry ingredients (it's hard to say how much liquid will have been soaked up by the cherries).   Divide among the cups of the muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes; test with wooden pick before removing.  Allow to cool in the pan 5 minutes before taking the muffins out of the cups to finish cooling on a rack.

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Now let me tell you something.  I do not (repeat, do not) like sweet muffins for breakfast.  And the idea of these terribly sweet muffins -- I used the amount of sugar suggested in Mark Bittman's "Sweet and Rich Muffins" recipe, but did not add the extra fat -- kind of horrified me, which is why I used yogurt instead of the ordinary whole milk I usually used; I thought perhaps it would balance the sweetness a little bit.

Fatal mistake.   I should have left it unbalanced.

These were very yummy muffins.  I had a taste "of Mark's, to evaluate it" and now I am personally responsible for demolishing three of them.  

So now I have this "aaaaagh, what have I done?!?!" feeling.  I fed my kids a tablespoon of sugar in their muffins and I liked it.  This is less sugar than in the most current formulation of Cocoa Puffs.  

Argh.

 Of course the kids liked them too.  I am still going to write "dried cherries" on my grocery list this week.

But, argh.

 

Well, this is a timely article: How to stick to your resolutions.

I was talking to Mark this evening about trying to nail down the general principles of behavioral change -- not the list of "handy weight loss tips," but the general principles that I've followed to choose my new, permanent habits and to make them stick.  

All right, I'm fessing up:  I've been tossing around the idea of putting these disconnected eating-and-exercise blog posts into a longer and more organized form.  What I'm not yet sure about is focus:  gluttony?  personal change in general?  willpower defeating?  straight-up weight loss?

Anyway, I was amused tonight to encounter this article from the NYT's John Tierney, "Be It Resolved," which is very much like the sort of thing I was envisioning writing.

IT’S still early in 2012, so let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume you have made a New Year’s resolution and have not yet broken it. Based on studies of past resolutions, here are some uplifting predictions:

1) Whatever you hope for this year — to lose weight, to exercise more, to spend less money — you’re much more likely to make improvements than someone who hasn’t made a formal resolution.

2) If you can make it through the rest of January, you have a good chance of lasting a lot longer.

3) With a few relatively painless strategies and new digital tools, you can significantly boost your odds of success.

Now for a not-so-uplifting prediction: Most people are not going to keep their resolutions all year long. They’ll start out with the best of intentions but the worst of strategies, expecting that they’ll somehow find the willpower to resist temptation after temptation. By the end of January, a third will have broken their resolutions, and by July more than half will have lapsed.

They’ll fail because they’ll eventually run out of willpower, which social scientists no longer regard as simply a metaphor. They’ve recently reported that willpower is a real form of mental energy, powered by glucose in the bloodstream, which is used up as you exert self-control.

Well, that explains a lot.  Dieting is hard because low blood sugar depletes your willpower!  

But this is the paragraph in the article that really resonated with me (emphasis mine):

One of their newest studies, published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, tracked people’s reactions to temptations throughout the day. The study, led by Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago, showed that the people with the best self-control, paradoxically, are the ones who use their willpower less often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They play offense, not defense, using their willpower in advance so that they avoid crises, conserve their energy and outsource as much self-control as they can.

This.  This.  A thousand times this.  Using willpower sucks, so you have to exert it in advance.  So much of what worked for me is about this very principle.

The article goes on to give a somewhat outlandish anecdote and then from it derives some strategies that ring very true to me:

• Set one clear goal at a time
• Precommit (like Odysseus lashing himself  to the mast, remove your options to break your resolution)
• Be accountable to someone else, and plan to pay a real penalty if you don't reach your goal
• Keep track of how you are doing
• Don't overreact to a lapse by saying "what the hell" and figuring the day's already ruined
• Tell yourself you can have some later (rather than swearing off pleasures for good)
• Reward yourself, or find reward in your actions, often.

I will have to spend some time thinking about this -- but maybe the first step is to read the book about willpower that is referenced in the article.

A whole post on half sandwiches.

Part of the New Year's gluttony roundup.

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So I have this problem:  I don't actually need very many calories per day.  This means that I should have smaller portions than are typically served.  Logically, then, I should not eat all of most sandwiches, which are standardized to maintain (or, realistically, to fatten) a person much larger than me.  And yet, the sandwich is a sort of a quantized food.  Except in restaurants that do the half-sandwich, cup-of-soup lunch thing, you generally get an integer of sandwiches on your plate.  And there's a strong visual cue there that says "eat the whole thing."

For a little while, in trying to maintain my new weight, I was  trying out sandwiches that promised to be low in calories.  Take the Subway "fresh fit menu," for example.  I happen to like turkey, so I thought:  Well, maybe I will go ahead and have all of a nominally-six-inch turkey sub, with lots of pickles and hot peppers and spinach on it.  Indeed, as fast food goes, it's pretty good.  Truthfully, though, I probably would have been more satisfied with half a nominally-six-inch Spicy Italian loaded with cheese and oil.  Fat is satiating, after all.

But the real problem with the whole six-inch sub is that it is huge-looking; it reinforces the habit that says it's normal and good for me to eat huge-looking sandwiches; and next time I meet a huge sandwich, it might not be as innocuous as turkey on wheat.  Given that many restaurant sandwiches are huge-looking because they are, in fact, huge, it is a much better strategy for me, the terminally calorically challenged, to default to half sandwiches.

But when I started off on a mission to eat only half sandwiches, I was forced to probe my emotional obstacles to restrained eating yet again, and I discovered this: 

I have serious reservations about eating only half of a sandwich.

Even if the sandwich is twice as big as what I actually want to eat, I am disturbed by the asymmetry of the undertaking.

The data suggests that aspect ratio matters.  I don't mind so much if the sandwich is long and skinny (aspect ratio >> 1), so that by cutting it in half it is transformed into two sandwiches that are still long and skinny (aspect ratio reduced, but still noticeably > 1).  

Take a submarine sandwich, for example, such as the nominally eight-inch versions produced by Milio's, which delivers to my house.

  A nominally eight-inch sub (and yes, that is not half a sandwich already, that is a whole sandwich; a sixteen-inch sub counts as two sandwiches, I don't care how many calories you are allowed to eat per day) is pretty skinny and long (actually it's more than eight inches), and even after you cut it in half it's still longer than it is wide.  It is still, in other words, sub-shaped.  It has preserved the essence of sub-sandwich-hood.  I can eat it and say, "This is a sub."  I am supported in this intuitive conclusion by inductive reasoning:  if there are sixteen-inch subs, and there are eight-inch subs, then logically there should be no reason why there cannot be a nominally four-inch sub, and so on and so on -- too bad this name is already taken.

So I don't have any problems with those.

And I don't have too much trouble with wrapping up half of a sandwich made on wide-pan bread that is wider than it ought to be.  Such sandwiches usually arrive already cut in half, the better to artfully arrange the halves so that they are embracing a cup of soup or a bowl of salad or perhaps a pile of potato chips.  There, you're taking an aspect ratio that is approximately 2 and reducing it to approximately 1, which is really the appropriate aspect ratio for food that comes between sliced bread.

 So easy just to wrap up one of those halves and take it home.

But I find I have this horrible resistance to, for example, half cheeseburgers.  Now I love a good cheeseburger as much as anyone, and I'm not very fond of little cheeseburgers.  When I want a cheeseburger, I don't want the kid's-menu version.  I want a thick medium-rare patty and a lot of lettuce and tomato and pickles and mayo and maybe some bacon.  I would rather have half a grownup cheeseburger than all of a kids' cheeseburger...

... at least till it is time to cut my big grownup cheeseburger in half.  And then I am daunted by the prospect of sawing to pieces something so beautiful and complete, the Platonic ideal of a sandwich in all its circular perfection.   I just know that the tomatoes and lettuce will slip to one side, lubricated by the mayonnaise, and the bun will be shredded to crumbs, and I'll be left picking through the pickles and trying to distribute them equitably between two sort-of semicircular half-patties, no longer crisp all around a lacy edge, rapidly cooling and drying out as the juices run all out of the center, its tender pink cross-sectional area now exposed to the ambient environment, and to the disapproving eyes of any nearby E. coli researchers.

This is where Mark points out to me, "You never have any trouble eating the second half of a whole cheeseburger."  

(Too, too true.  But cheeseburgers are about love and geometry, not reason and rhetoric.)

+ + +

N. B.:   The above rant also applies to bagels.

+ + +

And then there's the prospect of making one's own half sandwiches from scratch, by which I mean cutting a slice of bread in half and then putting the fillings on one half and topping it with the other half slice of bread.  Do I even need to explain why this is so abhorrent?

Nigel Tufnel can do it for me:

It's okay to make a whole sandwich and cut it in half and share the other half with someone.  But if there is no someone in sight, I have to make a half sandwich.  And that is just wrong.  Perhaps if I laid in a store of frilly-ended wooden picks.

+ + +

Mark:  "Perhaps if it is the aspect ratio that bothers you, you should cut circles out of the middle of your sandwiches with a cutter, and eat those."

Me:  "Ummmm... I can't drive and calculate at the same time... what's the diameter of a circle that is half the area of a square of side 1?"

Mark (pulls out iPhone, calculates):  "Approximately zero point eight."

Me:  "So I could eat a half sandwich that looks round if I cut off the edges, a tenth of the width on each side, and trimmed the corners, and only ate the middle."

Mark:  "Sure, why wouldn't that work?"

Me:  "Mark, I already eat all the children's sandwich crusts.  What makes you think I will be able to resist my own?  Duh."

+ + +

So this month, I decided to try to beat my irrational resistance to half sandwiches by making and ordering a lot of half sandwiches.

 My first homemade half sandwich was a grilled ham and brie on pumpernickel rye with wedges of green apple melted inside it.  There was no hope of getting anyone else in the family to share this with me, so I was unwilling to grill a normal sandwich and cut it in half.  Nor did I wish to waste brie.  So I carefully took half a slice of bread, cut the rectangular way (since the cross-section of my brie was rectangular) and folded up the ham, a little more deftly than Nigel up there.  I kept the ham from unfolding by weighting it down with the three little pieces of brie.  Then I propped my apple slices among them, and balanced the other half-slice of pumpernickel on top, and smacked it down with my spatula when it threatened to topple over.  How am I going to butter the bottom of this mess? I wondered, but then remembered that I could put butter on the skillet instead.  Somehow I managed to transport the whole topheavy mess to the skillet where it sizzled away, and by employing tongs as well as spatula I managed to turn it over to brown on the other side, only having to stuff one stray piece of apple back in between the chinks.

Once the sandwich had cooled it was pleasant and fragrant as any whole sandwich, and of course the brie had fused it all together so it didn't want to come unfolded anymore.  So that was a success story, though not without its trials.

+ + + 

It has been slightly easier navigating restaurants, where I vowed to order sandwiches and only eat half until I had firmly established the half-sandwich habit.  

Along the way I amended the rules somewhat:  some naturally-small sandwiches, such as gourmet sliders or Skyline chili dogs, can count as halves (at least if normal people might ordinarily eat two or more of them).    

But most of the time I stuck to it.  On a recent road trip, I asked for my Subway six-inch Italian BMT to be cut in half, and I put the other half in front of the baby, who likes salami.  I asked for a plastic knife at Chick-Fil-A and bisected my #1, hiding one half in the foil-and-paper sack (after harvesting the pickles from it) and consuming the other with a side salad.  Once the sandwiches were safely gone, I found, I no longer felt anxious about their aspect ratios.  

With practice, and a lot of sandwiches, I am optimistic that I will beat this thing.  I'm learning all the time, and that gives me hope.  The other day, at "Moe's Almost World Famous Diner" in Osseo, WI with the kids (en route from Madison), I ordered a patty melt.  

What a revelation:  A patty melt is a cheeseburger on square bread that comes already cut in half!  And here I have been eating patty melts on occasion my whole life, and never noticed that they break the don't-cut-a-cheeseburger principle, and they still taste good.

I gave the other half to the baby (yes, it was cooked through, I checked), and I ate my half patty melt, savoring the taste of triumph.

And the entire basket of fries, too.

Guess I'll have to work on that next time.

What's a Christmas dinner that's still relaxing for the cook?

Red at ...and sometimes Tea has a great reader bleg up.  I'm interested in it myself and I know some of my readers have interesting solutions so I'll send you over there to discuss the "Christmas Dinner Dilemma" (which isn't really a dilemma but never you mind).  I'll reproduce most of the post here to encourage you:

One of the problems for us Americans is that we've had Thanksgiving a month before. Some families find it extremely important for Christmas dinner to be Thanksgiving Mark II, complete with turkey, dressing, cranberries, traditional sides, fine china and glassware, and all the panoply of the Thanksgiving meal, with, perhaps, a few unique Christmas touches (such as, perhaps, a real Christmas pudding, though that is not something I've ever tasted myself). Other desserts may be anything from the much-maligned yet under-appreciated fruitcake to the same sorts of pies one might serve at Thanksgiving; and the whole scene is supposed to convey the rosy glow of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But I have to be honest: I find the idea of cooking what is essentially a second Thanksgiving dinner a month after Thanksgiving rather difficult. On Thanksgiving Day the cook or cooks have the whole day to prepare and cook the meal; on Christmas Day the cook has considerably less time, and unless he or she absolutely loves cooking a huge meal and finds it a relaxing and enjoyable hobby to do so he or she is possibly going to be a bit cranky by the time the family troops in to eat. And, let's face it: preparing what is essentially the same "Holiday Meal" twice in a month is a bit boring. Sure, you could change the main course from a turkey to a ham or vice versa, and you can tinker with the sides and desserts a bit, but you're essentially doing the exact same sort of cooking.

Now, I know that lots of people skip the "Second Thanksgiving" type of Christmas dinner. There are all sorts of other meals that individual families embrace as their own family tradition. For instance, my sister's late mother-in-law reportedly made Christmas a day for a deli spread (which would be great in Texas in years when it's 70 degrees at Christmas). Around here, it's traditional for some people to order tamales for Christmas (or for New Year's). Many cultures have traditional Christmas foods which are very far from what is customary in our culture.

So, my bleg is this: I'd like to hear from readers who have Christmas food traditions that go beyond a second round of Thanksgiving fare. What do you cook and serve? Is it a family custom, a cultural tradition, or some combination? Is Christmas a day to pull out all the stops and go gourmet, or is it a day for a sort of glorified snacking?

As for me, I've only been the matriarch of Christmas day twice.  The first time, I was nearly eight months pregnant, and if I remember correctly we had Christmas Eve dinner with friends, then went to Midnight Mass on the way home with our sleepy kids.  It snowed us in in the morning.  I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast; we didn't eat lunch (just more cinnamon rolls); and I'm not sure what dinner was, but I vaguely remember it being chili or something equally simple.  Since Mark and the kids spent the whole afternoon building a snow fort, they were good and hungry.

The second time, our whole family got sick and we were unable to travel to our families in a different state (although almost all of our presents had been shipped there... that was a singular Christmas).  Christmas Eve dinner was certainly chicken soup, that year -- I don't remember what we did for the big day.

Both times we had a few different kinds of Christmas cookies, which is EXTREMELY UNUSUAL for me as I hardly ever make cookies of any kind.  (I had baked and frozen them ahead of time).   When we were sick, my father-in-law sent us a gift basket from the local posh grocery store, with fruit, cheese and crackers, and chocolate, and that was a big part of Christmas.  

Personally, I liked the pattern of festive Christmas Eve dinner with friends, Midnight Mass, cinnamon rolls for breakfast,  and a simple but hearty soup with fresh-baked bread for dinner (plus cookies all day and who really needs lunch?).  Since you're home all day, the soup doesn't have to be crock-potted -- it can burble along in the oven or on the back burner, and can even be the sort of thing that you have to Do Something To every couple of hours, which is sort of unusual.  Christmas might be a good day for boeuf bourguignon, perhaps, or ratatouille, if you can take care of some of the prep ahead of time.  But good old homemade chicken noodle or minestrone, as long as everybody loves it, is also pretty special.

Anyway, shoo, don't comment here -- go over to ...and Sometimes Tea.  Then if you want you can come back and copy your comment.

Hardship.

After what seems like months of watching people stare forlornly at the empty squeeze bottle, and saying I was going to do something about it but not getting around to it, I finally -- yesterday -- made it to the co-op and bought THREE QUARTS of real Grade B maple syrup from the bulk bins.

I would have bought more but I couldn't find any more clean Mason jars.

This morning there was much rejoicing.

As God is my witness, I will never go pancake-less again.

Wrong message.

The kids' chocolate Advent calendars, which they will get to start tomorrow, have Nutrition Facts labels that read:

Serving Size:  24 Pieces

Servings Per Container:  1

Hmmm.

Keeping track of the freezer.

Mark picked up our half-hog order from the farm yesterday and stowed it in the basement freezer.  I went down there this morning for a pork steak from the fridge and, as long as I was there, I unpacked all the individually wrapped cuts and counted them,  then restocked them in some semblance of order.

Right now I know everything that's in there, but come March or April I'll be digging through the bottom of the chest freezer, wondering, "Have I already used all the ham hocks?"  I've tried, other times, making a list of the cuts that are in there, posting it on the wall, and crossing them off as each is removed.  It never seems to work for very long.  Mostly, I think, because I generally don't carry a pencil downstairs with me when I go to the pantry (and don't tell me to tie one to the wall, I promise you the kids will find a way to run off with it).

So I had an idea today.  This would work for all you people who have a giant freezer or pantry full of stuff they need to keep track of, whether it's cuts of meat, once-a-month-cooking casseroles, or homemade preserves.

Here's my list on the wall above the freezer:

But I don't need to bring a pen down to cross stuff off, because I took a cue from the flyers on the coffee-shop bulletin board I was looking at yesterday:

See -- now all I have to do when I get a cut of pork out of the freezer is tear off one of the corresponding strips.  What's left on the list is what's left in the freezer.

Tonight we had one of the pork steaks, thinly sliced, over a spinach salad with white beans and red onions, tossed in a dijon-cider dressing.  Homemade wheat rolls on the side.  Two kids opted for PB&J, so one pound of meat easily fed the whole family.  I have decided it's a good idea to let them choose a meatless protein alternative -- as long as it isn't too complicated -- whenever they want.

Portable: Pseudo-pain au chocolat.

On Tuesdays I leave the house by eight in the morning, to drive out to the suburbs so we can spend our co-schooling days with Hannah's family.  This school year I've been driving even a bit earlier, picking up the daughters of another family as well before swinging north.  The trip is not quite an hour long.

The kids have to eat, of course, and usually in the car.  Normally if someone won't eat breakfast I shrug and say "Guess you'll be hungry later, then," but I had to put my foot down some time ago about refusing to eat breakfast on Tuesday mornings.  Hannah is happy to feed hungry kids a snack, but I wasn't so happy about my children snarfing up all her bread and milk once a week.

Furthermore, my daughter is one of those people who can't bear to look at food before about 10:00, so her breakfast has to come along and be saved till later.  

The emergency food is granola bars, of course, which I keep in my car.  And if we are really desperate (defined by:  I somehow wasn't able to secure a cup of coffee any other way), I am not above hitting a drive-through.  But I really do prefer making a portable real food.

Now if it was  just me, it would be easy.  I love hardboiled eggs, that quintessential portable protein, or sticks of string cheese; and in the summer I would be perfectly happy to drop a pint jar of hulled strawberries and almonds into my cupholder (one of the cupholders; the other one has my coffee) and go.  Kids:  not so much.  Eating what's available because you have to get yourself fed is apparently a learned skill.

Muffins are one solution; they are a bit crumbly, sure, but there are already so many crumbs in my car that I don't worry about it.  At least they don't drip, unless they are chocolate-chip.  I used to make them fresh on Tuesday morning, but these days I tend to bake them the night before.   I used to be intimidated by muffins, but now I can make them practically in my sleep.

Another is quesadillas or their cousin, breakfast burritos.  I typically make plain cheese for one child, egg-cheese-salsa for another (and for me), and a pepperoni-and-cheese quesadilla for another.  They don't take very long and they are all right even after they have gone cold.

I don't favor peanut butter sandwiches because the crusts tend to get left behind in the seats and then get smooshed.  Also, then everyone wants milk.  Which is banned from my car.

Here is a new idea I haven't tried yet, and a new idea I tried this morning.

First:  stuffed buns.  Yes, I know, there is nothing particularly creative about what is basically a sandwich.  Still, I like her nifty method of sealing the bun to keep things from falling out of it.  Check it out at The Big Red Kitchen (where there be photos):

Go to your nearest bakery that bakes up the freshest and most tender Kaiser Rolls. Slice the rolls open leaving one edge intact- like a clam shell, and pull out some of the tender innards saving them for another recipe. Now here is the trick to getting those buns put back together and holding the filling inside. Ready for this?

Fill the bottom well with your filling of choice and pipe beaten egg whites around the lip of the bottom bun, close bun, press lightly to be sure that glue has sealed the bun closed, and top with a slice of cheese of choice. Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 8 minutes. The meringue will seal your fillings in the bun.... 

Brilliant.  Just brilliant.  I am a little bit afraid to try it first with a fresh, tender Kaiser roll, however, because I fear that if the kids get a hold of that, they will never eat one made of a leftover whole wheat dinner roll, which is exactly how I would do this for breakfast.   

Now, on to my other new thing, with a little background.  The bread machine is sniffed at by many "real" bakers, including, sadly, some otherwise inspiring cookbook writers (Mark Bittman, I'm talking to you).  Yes, yes, if you are the sort of person who tosses about  "poolish" and "sponge" without a thought, or even if you are a devotee of the considerably more convenient no-knead Dutch oven breads or Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, then perhaps bread machine bread will never be up to your standards.  But hey, if your family eats sandwiches or toast, especially if they eat a LOT of sandwiches and toast, it's hard to beat a constant supply of homemade sandwich loaves.  I think at this point I would do without my microwave, food processor, and blender all together before I would give up my bread machine.  

So, given that I have a bread machine, it's really pretty easy to have fresh breakfast buns of all sorts, because the dough can be ready to shape when you get up.  I stumble down the stairs, turn on the oven, shape the buns or what have you to the sound of the coffee maker starting to hiss and burble, set them on top of the warming oven to rise, and stumble back up the stairs (it's harder than going down; try it sometime) to get dressed or shower or nurse the baby or whatever.  Twenty or thirty minutes later I come down, pop the pan in the oven, and drink a cup of coffee.  Most yeast buns only take ten minutes or so to bake, so breakfast is ready.  And since that (and maybe a cup of milk) is all the kids need to eat, well, it's actually pretty simple.  I think you can maybe get a similar effect with certain doughs that will willingly rise in the refrigerator overnight, but it takes longer for them to do their second rise.

This morning I tried a version of pain au chocolat.   Yes, yes, it is traditionally made with croissant-type pastry, but my children don't know that, do they?  Milo was inspired to ask about it yesterday when we were reading a book called Let's Eat:  What Children Eat Around the World.  One of the children was a French boy, and a photo showed him and his restauranteur-parents sitting around the breakfast table drinking hot chocolate out of bowls.  "Why aren't they using a mug?" asked Milo, and I read the caption to him, which indicated that the family had dipped their pain au chocolat in the hot chocolate and then when the pain was done they drank the hot chocolate from the bowl, much as we order our kids to finish their milk after they have spooned up all the cereal.

Well.  Hot chocolate with chocolate-stuffed bread sounded like a fine breakfast to Milo, so that's what's on the menu this morning.  And I mention this in the "portable" category because without the hot chocolate, the chocolate-stuffed bread is indeed quite portable, as you will see.

(A side note before we go on:  Why haven't I ever thought before about serving, say, cookies and milk with the milk in a bowl instead of a cup?  Whenever they're going to dunk something in the milk?  It would be a lot less messy and it doesn't impede the drinking afterwards.)

I searched for "bread machine pain au chocolat" and found this lovely British recipe, with the flour measured in grammes, and adapted it.  (The quantity of yeast looked ridiculously small, so I used the amount of yeast I would normally put in a cinnamon-roll type dough).

Here's what I put in my bread machine for six pains.  Next time I'll increase it by fifty percent, I think, and try using a bit more whole wheat, since it turned out nicely with 40% whole wheat.

• 2 eggs beaten (right in the machine pan) with 3 Tbsp milk
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 Tbsp butter
• Pinch salt
• 150 g bread flour (sorry; I have a scale, so I went with her grammes)
• 100 g Dakota Maid whole wheat flour (DM is a finely ground, hard winter wheat that is excellent for bread.  I don't think this would work with a coarse whole wheat)
• 1 tsp bread machine yeast

I cut the dough, which was smooth and elastic, into six pieces, rolled each gently out into an oval, and deposited eight Ghirardelli 60%-cocoa chocolate chips (that's a quarter of an ounce; I think a bit more would have worked okay) into the center of each.  Then I folded them over (like a business letter), pinched them to seal, and tucked the ends under like a little loaf of bread.

I put four of them in mini-loaf pans as suggested in the recipe, and put two on a baking sheet to see if that worked okay.  Then I covered them and let them rise 20 minutes before baking 10 minutes at 425 degrees F.  

Results:

Aren't they cute?  They looked just a teeny bit overly browned; I might try 400 degrees next time.  And I don't really think that they needed the mini-loaf pans, as they all look about the same.  

(Slight mistake:  I probably should have put them seam side down.  I was worried about the chocolate leaking.  I think seam side down would look nicer, although mine turned out kind of interestingly rustic-looking.)

Of course anytime you have something stuffed with chocolate, you should have an interior shot.  Here is one that I managed to catch with my cell phone before Mark ate the other half.

 

I thought the rich bread was lovely, but the chocolate was a bit much for seven in the morning.  Chocolate is good for you, insisted Mark, as he ate one and a half buns plus the chocolatey middle of mine.   Maybe next time I will fill my little bun with something else, like plum jam or cream cheese.

Once they cool completely, the chocolate will solidify, and it will be a very nice, not-messy, quite portable breakfast bun.  

 

UPDATE:  Oh yes.  Well-received.  And not perfectly un-messy, but not bad either.