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Feedback on the Sunday night feeding paradigm.

I wrote a few posts ago

 

--- augh!  I would love to say "a few days ago" but my blogging is so infrequent right now! ---

 

about our shift to eating prepared cold "party food" for Sunday dinners:  cheeses, crackers, cured meats, olives, cut veggies with dip, etc.   So that Sunday can be a day of rest for the cook, but Sunday dinner can still be a feast:

 At least two kinds of crackers... are set out in bowls, and sometimes a take-and-bake baguette is popped in the oven and sliced. Someone slices salami ... someone arranges 2 or 3 kinds of cheese... If we have leftover deli meats of other kinds, those go out as well. (An alternative to the sausage-and-cheese platter: lox and cream cheese on cocktail rye. Mm.) We keep a small stock of jars and cans of fancy olives and preserves and spreads and pâtés and things... and one or two of those goes on the table. We cut up peppers and celery and carrots and radishes, and put them out for dipping, either with bought hummus or with good olive oil, salt, and pepper.... We open wine or beer, and the kids may have juice boxes or soda if they have some. It takes maybe 20 minutes to put on the table and is not hard to clean up.

And it feels like Sunday.

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Today I got some feedback from a reader named Jenny in New Orleans:

 

[T]hank you so much for your recent "what we do about Sunday night dinner" post!!

 

We live mere blocks from the in-laws, and our regular Sunday routine has been Mama-made brunch here after Mass, then over to the in-laws' house in the afternoon for playing-and-supper. As the in-laws are aging, they've decided to drop back to more like twice-a-month Sunday get-togethers (when everyone shows up, my MIL is cooking for 22 people!!).

 

I totally  understand, and actually sort of prefer to have our Sundays to ourselves, but we were definitely languishing in the but what about supper area. We don't have the means to go out every week, but--like yours--my husband wasn't interested in me cooking a whole 'nother meal (especially since we do a fairly full brunch mid-day). And leftovers or sandwiches just weren't special enough.

Well, after your post, we've seen the light!!

Every Christmas, one of our kids' (girls: 8.5, 8.5, 7, 5, 3 months; boy: 2) favorite traditions is eating a "snacky supper" (read: you don't have to sit down, you can walk around, food is arranged in a buffet-type style on the table) while we decorate the tree on Christmas Eve.

And now!! We're doing it on Sundays!!

You're right--it strikes exactly the balance we were looking for between "special" and "easy". (I even put it out on paper plates because I've already run the dishwasher after brunch.) We've done cheese, crackers, fruit, deviled eggs, leftover tuna salad, ham chunks, chips-and-salsa, hot dog bites... it's awesome. Everyone loves it, it relieves the near-temptation to just go out, it's super-easy to clean up, and I can keep my eye out for crackers and such on sale at the store.

And one of the best things, to me, is that it's allowing us to establish our own Special Sunday Routine Treat that will already be in place when the inevitable happens and going-to-grandma's on Sunday is done with. It's flexible and quick enough that we can accommodate the occasional Sunday afternoon outing--a pool party, a quick trip to the museum to catch the closing-today exhibit--and still do our "regular" Sunday Snacky Supper.

So: thanks. It's a great idea, it works perfectly for us, and I'm really glad you mentioned it.

Awesome!  

Anybody else try it?

Fourteen-hour fasting.

Every May and November I try to write about the long-term maintenance of the significant weight loss I achieved in 2008.

(Care about numbers? I am 4'11" tall. From lifelong obesity, having had an all-time nonpregnant high of 160 lbs, I went in 6 months from 148 lbs to 108 lbs. After my subsequent pregnancy, I ended up at 113 and felt better there then I had at 108, so stayed. Since then I have had an additional pregnancy.)

Longtime readers will remember that while that was going on, I blogged about almost nothing else, to the point that, for example, wildly popular paleo websites linked to me and called me a "weight loss blogger." I probably overdid it, but I can't be too sorry because the hyper-focus probably helped.

May is disappearing fast, so here I am with my update.

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My youngest is now nearly seventeen months old, still happily breastfeeding, and generally keeping us on our toes. I am feeling really good overall. I haven't run a 5K in a while, and have been swimming more often than running, mostly because swimming feels better and is easier to convince myself to do; but I am getting to the gym at a fairly reliable pace of twice per week.

However: I am really, really frustrated by the non-budging of my postpartum bathroom scale.

Is it just the difference of being four years older in this last pregnancy than I was in the pregnancy before that? Or is it from being four years farther removed from the felt experience of constant, successful self-denial in my 2008 weight loss, so that I forgot how to work hard? Or is it from having 25% more children vying for my limited attention than the last time around? Whatever: After my last pregnancy, the weight came off with very little effort, and fairly quickly. This time -- it appears to be happening, but verrrrrrrry sloooooowly.

Seventeen months postpartum, I am still 7-10 pounds above my prepregnancy weight, which (on my 4'11" frame) means I am still one full clothing size larger, which means that I have a bunch of clothes that I would really like to wear that I can't. The conflict: I am still, unnecessarily it would seem, living in the yoga pants that I bought at the beginning of pregnancy to bridge the gap until maternity clothes. Should I accept life in my current size, buy more clothes that fit me, and get rid of the ones that don't? Or should I keep on working at it, in the hope that little by little, enough flesh will slip away to allow me to wear my "real clothes" again?

I don't look bad. I don't feel bad. But I don't want to buy a whole new wardrobe either. It feels like giving up.

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One factor is certainly attention. The self-denial that I have found necessary to drop pounds -- mostly, from sticking to small portions -- is not difficult to endure; I am quite used to it by now. But the body has tricks to play. As odd as it may sound, I seem simply to forget my intentions, forget to account for food I have already eaten, forget that I meant not to snack or to have seconds, forget to arrange plates full of vegetables and to limit rice and tortillas and bread. To combat this, I should make a meal plan for each day, but it is hard to find the time; family life is so distracting right now. The only time I have ever had rapid success is when I prioritized eating self-control over all other family priorities, and I am unwilling to do that now.

The best I've been able to do at this attention level, it seems, is to work on it when I remember, and hope that my efforts pay off over time.

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I am trying a new experiment on myself right now, though, to shake things up a bit: what is called Intermittent Fasting, of the "14/10" variety. That is, I'm spending at least 14 hours of every day (including my sleeping hours, of course) not eating at all.

Intermittent fasting (IF) is popular in a few circles right now -- paleo and bodybuilding, for instance. I guess the idea is that dividing your day into a (longer) period of fasting and a (shorter) period of eating is somehow better for your blood sugar, even if you eat the same stuff in your eating window as you would have if you had spread it out over the whole day. As a practical matter, it presents a clear-cut rule that should reduce one's exposure to snacking opportunities, simply because there is a biggish block of the day where you have pre-decided that you won't eat. Besides the daily block of fasting that I am trying out, another flavor of IF is to periodically, perhaps twice a week, go 24 hours without eating (generally skipping dinner-lunch-breakfast so that every calendar day does have some food), and a third is to follow a more-frequent modified fast (very-low-calorie days intermixed with high-calorie days).

I started by attempting 16-hour fasts, but very quickly switched to 14-hour ones -- which some say is more appropriate for women, anyway. A typical fasting period would begin sometime after dinner -- so, perhaps I would have my last bite around 8:30 p.m. -- and last until a late breakfast, around 10:30. But sometimes, because I chose to have a snack around 10 p.m., I would not eat until lunchtime.

As a lifelong believer in light but early breakfasts, I expected to have trouble getting used to the long delay before the break-fast. Indeed, I find I am pretty hungry when that first mealtime rolls around. But it isn't as bad as I feared. I typically drink coffee all morning anyway, and that hasn't changed, so my routine isn't all that different. It is the kind of thing that would happen to me sometimes when, interrupted by children or intent on the preparation for the day, I would forget to eat until later. That never caused me any great distress, other than a little light-headedness, and I find that doing it on purpose is no worse and often easier because of having planned for it.

I find that each day naturally seems to fall into one of two patterns, depending on whether I can set my own meal schedule or whether I am around other people who are eating normally.

If I set my own schedule, I eat a late breakfast at, say, 10:30 a.m.; a somewhat late lunch at about 2 p.m.; and dinner at the normal time or a bit later. Because the meals are closer together, it is not terribly hard to keep to a fairly light lunch and dinner (though I am still getting used to not inhaling a huge breakfast after the long fast).

If I am around other people, it works better to break the fast with a small snack as soon as the 14 hours are up. Then it's a normal lunch and a normal dinner at the normal times.

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Trying this out was a bit of a philosophical departure for me. Most of the time I try to focus on dietary disciplines that seem as if I'd like to adopt them as lifelong, or at least long-term, habits. And before I tried this, I definitely thought it would be something for the short-term. I just like breakfast too much to take it seriously! I justified the uncharacteristic "crash diet" approach by thinking that I just needed to shake things up for a few weeks, maybe break through the plateau that's dogging me.

But now that I have tried it for several weeks, I find it ... appealing, actually. I think I will keep going for a while and see what happens if I tweak it a bit here and there.

Some reasons why I like it:

• Bright-line clarity. I don't risk overthinking it. It is very simple: Notice what time I last eat before going to bed, and don't eat again for 14 hours.
• No food restrictions. Except, of course, that it's easier to fast if you've eaten something that is not empty junk.
• Flexibility: On average, of course, the eating window is 10 hours long. But in any given day, I can go ahead and have more food later into the evening; the tradeoff is a later breakfast. (How bad can it be? I doubt I will ever eat past 11 p.m., so the worst it can be is 1.) Sometimes that seems like a good tradeoff and sometimes it doesn't. I get to decide. Similarly, I get to decide when to have meals during the day. If for some reason I want to have an early breakfast -- say 8 a.m. -- all I have to do is stop eating at 6 p.m. after an early dinner the night before.
• Less time to wait between daytime meals. This means -- I hope -- that I could be satisfied with a smaller portion size. When I decide to try that.
• I am practicing a useful skill. Fasting for 14 hours is occasionally necessary. I am slowly learning that it will not kill me or make me crazy or unbearably irritable, but that I can do it without difficulty if I plan well (and carry that fast-breaking snack if I have to leave the house in the morning).

I think I will keep this up for six weeks or so, and then maybe -- if I can sustain the effort required to pay attention -- start watching the total calorie count as well. I am not ready to give up on those non-yoga pants yet.

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In search of a kid-friendly vegetable soup: Tortilla-lime version.

As part of my efforts to serve a first course at the start of our family dinners (see here, here, and here), I've been hunting for a vegetable soup that the kids will happily eat.  If only I could find one, I  thought, I could make gallons of it, freeze it, and have it ready to go as the first course for any dinner.  Or if it was well-liked enough, we could have it several days in one week.  

Ideally, it wouldn't contain potatoes (which don't freeze well at all), and it would be meatless.  Even better if it would go together quickly and contain plenty of different vegetables.

One possibility is minestrone, which most of the family loves, but we think of minestrone as a main dish; we pile Parmesan cheese on it and have it with a salad and crispy garlic pita chips.  So it can't be a first course without ruining the tradition, unless it's leftovers.  

Another is tomato soup, but again, this soup already occupies a niche in our diet:  90% of the time, it is an equal partner with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Carrot soup and butternut squash soup are classic ideas, but I think of them as autumn recipes, and don't much want them in the spring and summer.

Last week I started trying new recipes.  My first soup attempt was an enormous pot of Alton Brown's garden vegetable soup, with the potatoes removed and extra carrots and corn added.  I don't know what happened to it, but everyone agreed it had a funny "soapy" taste.  Too many leeks?  Insufficiently rinsed pot?  I don't know.  I don't think I'll try to make it again.

Today I tried to adapt a sopa de lima recipe to make a vegetarian version.  I started with a corn-cilantro stock that appears in a tortilla soup recipe in Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven, and then I followed an old cookbook recipe for chicken-tortilla-lime soup, replacing the chicken with extra vegetables.  I borrowed a page from the Colombian soup sancocho de gallo and saved time by cutting the corncobs for the stock into manageably small chunks that could be transferred to the soup; this saved the work of cutting the fresh corn off the cob to put kernels in the soup and the cobs in the stock.

It was good, bright with citrus and not too spicy for the kids.  If I wanted it to be a main-dish meal, I'd introduce a can or two of cooked black beans or pinto beans, and pass a big bowl of chips.

Here you go:

Vegetarian Tortilla-Lime Soup

For the stock:

• 3 ears fresh corn, each cob shucked and cut crosswise into five or six chunks (still on the cob)
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro, left whole
• 2 bunches green onion (about 16 green onions), cut into 1-inch lengths
• 8 cups water
• 2 tsp salt, or to taste

For the soup:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup (or more!) minced garlic
• Finely minced jalapeño chile to taste -- I used a couple of teaspoons, no seeds
• 1-2 zucchini, cut into quarter-rounds
• 1-2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes with juice
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 6-8 Tbsp fresh lime juice (2-3 limes)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Tortilla chips for a garnish
• Paper-thin lime slices, cut into quarters, for garnish

Combine stock ingredients in a large pot, bring to a boil, and simmer about 30 minutes while preparing the rest of the ingredients.  Strain the stock, reserving the corncob chunks (most or all of the onions and cilantro can be discarded).

In a soup pot, warm the olive oil. Add the onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.  Add the garlic and jalapeño and cook for 1-2 minutes.  Add the stock and bring to a boil; reduce to medium-low. Add the carrots, tomatoes and zucchini, cover, and cook until the vegetables are tender, 20 minutes or so.

A few minutes before serving, add the cilantro, lime juice, salt and pepper, and the reserved corncob chunks.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  

Ladle into bowls (including at least one corncob chunk in each), top with lime slices and a few tortilla chips, and serve.

 

The light at the end of the tunnel that is 2014--2015.

Have we quite finished all of our work yet this year, the children and I?  Not quite.  I had planned to do a bit more.

Once upon a time, we used to continue "doing school" in each subject until we'd finished the book, so to speak (except for math, which is never done... there is always another book around the corner, and we just keep chugging along... a little slower in the summer, perhaps).  

This meant that we emerged gradually into the summer sunlight.  History book complete!  A few days later, perhaps the science curriculum would run out.  And so on until there was nothing left but the math books, so that the children would be rewarded for "I'm bored" all summer with "Well then!  Go do a math lesson.  It'll keep you sharp!"

This year it isn't going to work that way.   We took a look at the calendar.  In a few weeks there's a week blocked off on the calendar for a family vacation.  Then a week that isn't blocked off -- but H's family will already be gone on their  family vacation -- and then a week where the boys are at scout camp -- and then soon thereafter we'll go to Ohio to visit family -- and then the boys will stay a little longer with Grandma and Grandpa -- and then the boys go on the high-adventure Scout trip... and then we're going on a bike/camping trip with friends...

They've all managed to defeat me by scheduling their summer to be full of valuable experiences that will prevent them from checking educational boxes!

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What this means is that, like it or not, I have about three full weeks left in the school year (one of which has Memorial Day in it).  

It is time for me to stop asking "how much longer will it take for me to finish all the stuff we are supposed to finish?"

It is time for me to ask instead "what is the best use of our time in the last three weeks of the school year?"

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Mark laughed and said, "You know, I've heard that once or twice there was a public-school teacher who had to stop for the year before she finished the last chapter of the book."

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So, for example.  I've got five sessions left to work with the two high school boys on geometry.   But if I didn't have a time limit, I'd have 17 more sessions (why am I so behind?  Because last school year H and I had three babies between us).  However, by happy coincidence, there are exactly six lessons left in the book, and the second-to-last is much more important than the last one (it lays the foundations for understanding calculus by introducing the notion of building up volume formulas by constructing solids from a large number of very thin "slices"), so I'm going to spend one day on each of these lessons.  I won't get to do two chapter reviews, I won't get to do two chapter tests, I won't get to do a final exam, and I won't get to spend two sessions per lesson.  Oh well!  It will have to do.

I had five weeks left in Modern World History, with the last week to be spent on a capstone timeline analysis.  The capstone week is probably the most important and so I'll keep it as the last week.  But I'll need to remove half the material from the rest of the course to reduce four weeks' assignments down to two.  Since they're trying to finish a course-long research paper at the same time, I'll probably do that by reducing the writing workload to almost nothing.

I'm going to totally finish 9th-grade Latin though!  Woo hoo!  Two weeks of lessons left in the book!

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The elementary schoolkids' work will just stop at one point.  My 9th-grader was put in charge of his own schedule for a few other subjects -- Algebra II and Evolutionary Biology -- and I'm going to let him live with the consequences of being just a little bit behind on those, meaning that he might need to schedule some time finishing up the books over the summer during the weeks he isn't at Scout camp.  I've checked -- it isn't an onerous amount, and doing a little bit in the mornings here and there should be enough.   I am not in charge of that, though.  He is.

Which means that... after three more weeks of work...

... I'll be done.  

And my last schoolday of the year will be a Thursday at H's house where we have dinner there and the elementary school kids will recite the poetry they memorized all year long.

I just realized I will have a perfect use for the bottle of decent bubbly that Mark brought me at Valentine's Day.  I think I will struggle on until then, with the pop of that cork awaiting me in the light of summer.

Kindness and reasonableness: spread it, because it matters.

On Mother's Day I received an email from my father-in-law and mother-in-law. It was addressed both to me and to my sister-in-law, who is married with one young child.

It went like this:

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[My name], [SIL's name]

 

We just wanted to take a moment to express our warmest thanks to both of you for being such wonderful mothers. Our grandchildren are truly blessed to have you for their Mom.

 

A big part of being a good Mom is showing your children what real love between a husband and wife, and within a family should be. We see that with both of you, and are forever grateful for the loving example you set.

 

You know that we love you with all our hearts and always will. Thank you for being you, the wonderful women, wives and Moms that you are. We are so proud of both of you, and live with the joy of having you as a part of our wonderful family.

 

Best wishes for the happiest of Mother's Day.

 

With all our love and blessings,

 

Mom & Dad

 

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I paused and read this email over and over before I was ready to sit down and compose a reply thanking my in-laws for such kind words and for being the role models that they are to me.

In one sense, a message like this is completely unremarkable. It is the kind of thing that they do and say for the people around them all the time. The two attributes that I admire most in Mark's parents, the ones I aspire to: they are kind, and they are reasonable. Everybody, I think, should try to be kind and reasonable. On top of that, they are people of faith. This is less a thing that people can "try" to be or can "aspire" to be; it's the sort of thing that comes to you as a gift. It is a thing to be thankful for and to appreciate. I do appreciate it.

Perhaps it is a small thing, for a kind and reasonable and faithful person, to send such a message.

It is not always a small thing to receive one.

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Jen Fitz wrote an almost-entirely-unrelated blog post that I saw yesterday right before leaving for church, when I was feeling down about all the things on my list that I was not going to be able to get done. The post was aimed at pastors who felt they were preaching into a black hole. The line in her post that lifted my heart up was this:

"Your stalwart troops aren’t uncrushable, like Wile E. Coyote. They need to hear the truth over and over again, because life in the world sucks the spirit dry."

I thought: She is right.  I am not anxious today because there is something deeply and particularly wrong with me.  I am anxious today because like everyone in the world, life in it sucks my spirit dry now and again.   I need to hear the truth over and over, as a corrective to the false promises and threats that are taken in with the air we breathe.   And my heart was lifted because I was about to leave the house to be immersed in truth for just a little while, and I knew that it would do me some good.

(The biggest falsehood our society tells is the utilitarian one: the idea that a person's worth is measured in production and consumption. I don't believe it anymore, but I fall for it sometimes still in small ways. "Success" and worth are not the same.)

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Here is something you may not know about me:

I have a relative who makes a point of telling me directly, when this relative gets a chance, that my children receive "horrible parenting."

Those are not scare quotes. The words appeared in writing to me. I still have the communication in my possession and can double-check it. Pointing to a particular disapproved-of behavior the last time we were invited to visit: "Just another incident of horrible parenting."

There was more. There has always been more.

I grew up hearing -- not from everyone in my life, but by one significant person -- that I had no common sense.

I grew up hearing that I was heartless and that my actions proved that I didn't care about other people.

I grew up hearing, repeatedly, that I was full of shit.  

This is not the only thing I heard, of course.  I got excellent grades. I won awards. I was offered scholarships. Those earned me praise. They were the only way I knew for a long time how to measure the worth of a person.

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As I grew into adulthood and watched other people raising their children, married and began to have my own children, I came to understand how very unhinged from reality all those words were; how unhinged they still are.

They must come from a place that is small and pinched, a place I cannot understand -- a place I thank God I cannot understand, at least as long as it is not my vocation to provide care for someone who lives in such a prison.

I understand that these are not words that have ever been meant to mean anything. There is not a reason behind them. They are meant to go out into the world to try to make a different reality, because people loving each other and being kind and reasonable somehow offends.

Some people, they say, do not really want to be happy.

 

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So I know that there isn't any there there. I do.

And yet. It is good to be washed in the words of kind and reasonable people from time to time.

I respect and love them -- not because they say nice things to me that I want to hear, but because I see their lives of good work and reason. I see that they are honest in everything they do. I have reason to believe people of integrity. I have reason not to believe people whom I know not to be people of integrity.

But none of this would be worth anything if people of integrity minded their own business and kept to themselves. To set the record straight, the kind and reasonable people have to testify.

All this is to say:

Tell the people you love that you love them, and tell them that you see and know and appreciate the fruits of their work, the fruits of their love. Tell the people you meet in passing that you see their good work and appreciate it. Tell people they make a difference, even a small difference, in a good way.

It matters. It matters so much.

You might think it's obvious (especially if you are kind and reasonable and you expect to see kindness and reasonableness everywhere).

It isn't always obvious.

You might think, "Other people surely tell them."

Maybe. But not everyone finds it easy to speak kind words, because sometimes kind words are punished.

If you have the gift of being kind and reasonable, spread it. Tell people. Say, "Good job. You are loved. You are worthy."

Go out on a limb.

It matters.

Everything we say or do to someone else bears fruit, and we do not know the impact we have.

Here are two quotes from Elisabeth Leseur, whom I've written about before:

[N]eutrality is impossible where it is a question of doing the good... Every person is an incalculable force, bearing within her a little of the future. Until the end of time our words and actions will bear fruit, either good or bad; nothing that we have once given of ourselves is lost, but our words and works, passed on from one to another, will continue to do good or harm to later generations.

This is why life is something sacred, and we ought not to pass through it thoughtlessly but to understand its value and use it so that when we have finished our lives we will have increased the amount of good in the world.

and,

The first thing to do is to try to become our best selves... And God will do the rest. Our effort, our sacrifices, our actions, even the most hidden, will not be lost.

 

This is my absolute conviction: everything has a long-lasting and profound repercussion.

This thought leaves little room for discouragement, but it does not permit laziness.... I am unable to despair of humanity.

Despite all efforts by the Opposition, neither am I.

 

 

 

 

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