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Put up or shut up (III): lunch edition.

I know this isn't the most fascinating of post series to read, but at least it isn't going to upset anyone. I guess.

So, a few days ago I mentioned that I'm about to make a six-week push to get back on maintenance habits, and started out by making a list of meals -- first dinners, then breakfasts. I really never do the whole-month-at-a-time meal planning, so this is kind of a first for me. Especially in the middle of all the preplanning I have to do for school, which starts right after the six weeks is up.

But... moving right along, in my six weeks of summer lunches I can expect

• 17 ordinary weekdays at home with the kids
• 10 lunches out with the kids on our way to or from somewhere
• 8 times I can expect to come home hungry at lunchtime and will need something quick
• 6 times I might host other families for lunch
• 5 times I will come home from the grocery store and need to have lunch ready soon.

I categorized the lunches at home with kids according to the kind of thing I typically have ready for the kids to eat. I'm afraid they are going to have to go without macaroni and cheese for a few weeks, though, except maybe on date night.

 

• When the kids have sandwiches, I'll have the same: 3 oz ham/0.5 oz cheese or 2 oz turkey/2 oz roast beef on whole wheat with mustard, lettuce, and tomato. Fruit on the side.
• When the kids have quesadillas, I'll have a roasted veggie wrap with 1 oz goat cheese and fresh fruit. (The roasted veggies are the kind of thing that you do ahead of time and freeze in portions. Eggplant, bell peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, onions. I have made this before, it is really easy to do about 6 portions at once.)
• When the kids have tuna salad, I will too, made with white beans and parsley and sun-dried tomatoes, packed in a whole wheat pita with fruit and baby carrots.
• When the kids have hot dogs on homemade wheat buns with corn, I will cook a frozen white fish fillet and have that on a bun with lettuce and pickles.
• When the kids have frozen pizza and fruit, so will I, but I'll choose a thin-crust vegetable pizza like Amy's roasted vegetable or Amy's pesto or DiGiorno thin and crispy.
• When the kids have spaghetti, so will I, with red bell peppers and a lean smoked sausage to flavor the sauce.
• A random emergency lunch is an entire bag of frozen vegetables with whatever protein is handy and a slice of bread.

Hosting another family calls for kid-friendly meals that scale up to a crowd. My ideas are:

 

• Mini bagels with turkey and cheese, lettuce and tomato, fresh snap peas and apples.
• Spaghetti and red sauce -- it stays warm in the crockpot -- with sliced smoked sausage and red bell peppers. Plenty of breadsticks and cheap grated Parmesan for the kids, but not for me.
• Poached chicken, brown rice, steamed broccoli, and pineapple chunks with assorted sauces. For me, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oil.

 

Expecting to arrive home hungry calls for some planned ready-to-eat meals. My ideas are:

 

• Half a cup of hummus, half a pita, and some red bell peppers, carrot, and celery.
• Veggie burger patty on a bun with lettuce and tomato and a scoop of avocado or guacamole.
• One of the Amy's vegetarian Indian food entrées with some Greek yogurt and cucumber.
• Half a package of a Birds-Eye Steamfresh Protein Blend.
• As a last resort, any ~400-calorie frozen entrée will do, or a combination like a frozen sandwich and a can of vegetable soup.

Coming home hungry right after grocery shopping is a bit less grim, since I can bring something nice from the store. The kids often opt for bagels and cream cheese or a rotisserie chicken. For me, how about

• A premium bag salad topped with a pouch of tuna or salmon, or maybe some of that rotisserie chicken, plus bread.
• A bowl of fresh berries and a hot container of some hearty take-out soup.

 

Lunches out with the kids -- there always seem to be a lot of these in the summer as we go back and forth to day camps and the like -- are a pretty important part of rebooting my habits, I have found, because they offer excellent opportunities to practice portion control.

 

• The Chinese buffet -- a pretty good deal since they charge less for younger kids, and one of my kids' favorite places -- can be dealt with by measuring 1 8-ounce bowl of hot-and-sour soup and 1 equally-sized bowl of all other choices put together, as long as enough of the latter is vegetables.
• There are several workable choices at a Bruegger's Bagels: an egg/cheese or spinach-cheddar omelette bagel, any eight-ounce soup plus the "bagel bites" that come with it, any café salad, a "skinny" veggie bagel sandwich.
• Noodles and Company has some new bowls where they have swapped out the noodles for a pile of spinach. Highly recommended. Similarly, salads at Chipotle with no rice work well.
• At least one kids' meal choice at most fast food restaurants is within limits, e.g., hamburger Happy Meal with apple slices, fries, and a water bottle. Other places make it pretty easy to put together something under 400 calories -- Subway is a decent example, thanks to good menu labeling and a custom-order culture.
• It is even possible to navigate newfangled burger places such as Smashburger if I am willing to split the burger with someone, or have a small one with lettuce wrap instead of bun.

Here's hoping this is a start for a well-planned six weeks.

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Put up or shut up (II): Meal planning, breakfast edition.

A few days ago I explained my upcoming 6-week habit reboot, intended to put the last annoying pregnancy weight behind me for good. I started general meal planning by making a list of dinners that would work with the kind of schedule I will be keeping over those summer weeks. I didn't assign dinners to dates yet, though -- I will do specific meal planning week by week when I make my grocery lists.

Today I attacked the same problem, only for breakfast. Normally I do not plan breakfasts ahead of time. I usually just have whatever I feel like having, typically some combination of eggs or yogurt, toast, and fruit or V-8. I probably don't have to do this, because I rarely have an excessive breakfast, but I thought I would make a list anyway and then I would at least have portions all figured out.

I figured that I have four kinds of mornings coming up:

• Five breakfasts out by myself, early on a Saturday morning.


• Seven weekend breakfasts at home with the family. This calls for muffins, pancakes, or similar.


• Thirteen weekday breakfasts soon after shopping, when we still have fresh fruit around.


• Twenty weekday breakfasts after I can expect all the fresh fruit to be gone.

Breakfasts out by myself need a strategy, not a plan, and I already have such a strategy. At the Ordinary Breakfast Place I always have buttered pumpernickel toast, one egg, and a big glass of tomato juice. At the Fancy Breakfast Place I usually order the delicious breakfast quesadilla, on a house-made sprouted tortilla with black beans, spinach, and guacamole, and take half of it home for later.

I raided my cookbooks for some good weekend-morning breakfasts, around 400 calories, and came up with this list:

• Lemon-blueberry muffin (150 cal), scrambled egg + eggwhite + onions + mushrooms, 2/3 c whole milk


• Coffee cake muffin (220 cal), 1/2 c plain yogurt, 1 c berries


• Chocolate-chip scone (160 cal), 1 c strawberries, 1/2 c yogurt or cottage cheese, 1 Tbsp sliced almonds


• 1 waffle with blueberries and 1 Tbsp maple syrup, 2/3 c whole milk


• 2 cornmeal pancakes (1/4 c batter each) with 1 c blueberries and 6 oz blueberry yogurt

Why the 2/3 cup of whole milk everywhere? Well, published meal plans always call for 1 cup of skim milk. Bleah. I like whole milk, so I only pour 2/3 of a cup.

I think the best plan for weekday breakfasts is to eat the same breakfast a few days in a row; change it to something else when I run out of fresh fruit; then, change it again when I buy more fresh fruit a few days later.

 

My "there is fresh fruit in the house" weekday breakfasts might include

 

• Toasted whole wheat English muffin, 2 tsp whipped butter, 2/3 cup plain yogurt with a teaspoon of honey, and 1 cup sliced strawberries


• 1 egg scrambled with bell pepper, tomato, 1.5 oz turkey kielbasa, red onion, garlic; 1 slice wheat toast, 1 cup blueberries


• 2 eggs scrambled with cream and spinach or broccoli and bell pepper, half an English muffin, butter


• Ham, egg, and cheese (or bacon, egg, no cheese) sandwich on an English muffin with tomato and a cup of fruit salad


• 3/4 cup plain whole Greek yogurt, 3/4 cup chopped fruit or berries, 1/4 cup granola or other crunchy cereal, drizzle of honey

 

After the fresh berries run out, I could have one of these:

• 2-egg frittata with green pepper, onion, cheese, and salsa; 1 slice toast; half a grapefruit or some canned mandarin oranges


• Toasted English muffin with 4 tsp peanut butter, half a banana, and 2/3 c whole milk


• Toasted English muffin half, spread with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese; hard boiled egg; fruited yogurt cup; tomato juice or V-8


• 3 ounces of bagel (e.g., mini or half), 2 Tbsp hummus, cucumber and tomato, 1/2 c canned fruit


• 2 soft-boiled eggs, (six minutes for me), 1 slice of toast with plenty of butter, glass of V-8 or tomato juice


• 2 scrambled eggs with cream and butter, half an English muffin with a bit of honey, glass of V-8

You might notice the total absence of bowls of cereal in this breakfast plan. This is because once I start eating bowls of cereal, I usually fall into an iterative loop of "Oops, I ate all the cereal but there is still milk in the bowl; add cereal" followed by "Oops, there is no more milk in the bowl but I still have cereal; add milk." I do better with oatmeal, but I don't really want that in the summer.

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Sunday dinner paradigm shift.

Have I really not ever written a whole post about this? I can't believe it. I must have put everything on Facebook. Well, going to do it now.

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Sunday afternoons wipe me out. If we don't have a planned family fun activity scheduled, I will often wander upstairs right after lunch, lie down for "just a few minutes," and the next thing I know it is 4:30 and I feel like I have been run over by the special truck that comes on Sunday afternoons just to run me over.

And then, of course, it is time to get dinner on the table.

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I like being in charge of cooking. Really, I do; one of the things that makes our life so lovely is that I enjoy cooking, never really get tired of it; I achieve moments of flow in the kitchen, chopping and stirring; I love trying new recipes; I like eating, so it's nice for me that (being the cook) I get to make whatever I feel like eating; I like choosing menus that will fit into our week. The only thing about it that isn't much fun is trying to make the grocery list and menu plan when I am feeling rushed, because then I know I will make suboptimal or boring choices and that makes me less happy than everything being interesting and well-chosen, but it is still okay.

Mark is capable in the kitchen if necessary and has his own little repertoire of things to make when for some reason I am unable to make dinner. Which is great. The kids like his stuff (chilaquiles, bacon-vegetable-tomato spaghetti sauce, the rarely seen lasagna) and so do I.

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We used to use Sunday afternoons for Mark to catch up on household projects and for me to plan my school stuff for the week. Then a few years ago Mark had a sort of -- I don't know -- head-of-household conversion experience and started working on remaking our Sundays to be more restful with more family fun time in them.

This has been a slow change, but it has made a big difference. Saturdays are more busy now -- I do my school planning in the afternoon on Saturdays, and often we have a big housecleaning binge from everyone -- but Sunday afternoons are truly more fun and family-focused. We don't clean the house, just the necessary dishwasher-loading and the like. We take walks sometimes, or naps while the kids do their own thing. I have learned to suppress my inner busy person and just enjoy hanging out, ignoring the sword of Damocles which is things I could be doing right now so that I could relax LATER even BETTER when the things are all done.

Because you know what, the things are never done and if I am going to be restful I have to seize it from the jaws of things that are not yet done.

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Sunday dinner was a sticking point, though. Because you have to eat, and making the dinner was my job.

I remember once (I was pregnant, which is probably definitely relevant) walking into the messy kitchen about 3 pm and bursting into tears because Mark had been insisting that we all relax and have fun on Sunday because it was Sunday and as a result no one had cleaned up anything in the kitchen all day and now I had to MAKE DINNER in the MESSY KITCHEN and everybody got a day of rest but MEEEEEEEE and I don't remember how that ended but I think takeout was involved.

But it all changed soon after the 15-month-old was born almost a month early and just a couple of days before New Year's Eve. We felt deprived of a party, so when I was just starting to sit at the table for dinner again -- maybe 10 days postpartum -- Mark went to the store to buy festive food. He remembered how after a previous birth, his parents had sent us a gift basket from the fancy grocery store, and he bought the kinds of things that were in that basket, and things that pregnant women are supposed to avoid these days. Lox, and several kinds of crackers, and good runny cheese. Cut vegetables with some kind of dip. And fancy salami, maybe proscuitto, and some sweet things too. Party food! We sat around the table, a brand-new family of seven, and devoured cheese and crackers. Probably there was good beer, or maybe some bubbly. It was great. Satisfying. Festive. Special.

And -- this is crucial -- almost no work at all.

It was sitting around that table with the new baby that we had the epiphany we had been waiting for. This was how Sunday dinner needed to be, for as long as we were busy raising young children. It was the solution to the puzzle that had eluded us for so long.

Making food from scratch is not restful enough. Leftovers (at least on their own) are not feast-ive enough. But bought hors d'oeuvres -- enough for everyone to get their fill -- are both festive and easy! Problem solved!

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Now Sunday dinner prep looks like this: At least two kinds of crackers (even if it's just saltines and Triscuits) are set out in bowls, and sometimes a take-and-bake baguette is popped in the oven and sliced. Someone slices salami (or summer sausage); someone arranges 2 or 3 kinds of cheese, usually a mix of fairly inexpensive cheddars and goudas appreciated by the kids, with one good cheese appreciated by me. 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, which we add to whenever we happen to see something interesting while out and about, 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 -- a trick we learned in Rome. 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.

We call this kind of dinner "plate," borrowing a word from the family of a friend. I think smorgasbord would be a better word, but plate has stuck.

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We can't keep the work at bay forever. After dinner on Sunday it's back to the grindstone, cleaning up and prepping for the week. But I feel like we've finally hit the sweet spot.

A lot of "wow this is the best solution ever to our problem" doesn't stick. I post about my life-changing new idea with enthusiasm, my readers tell me I am a genius [polishes nails on lapel], and then after a month or a season or a new baby I give up, slink away, and never speak of my formerly great idea again.

i have a feeling this one is robust enough to stick, at least as long as we can afford cheese and crackers.

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Fish on the way home: a repost from several years ago.

This is from 2008. If you have trouble with the link, try going to the original post.

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Here's the deal with fish at our house:

1. Some time ago I put my foot down and said, darn it, I'll cook fish once a week, but it has to be good fish. Fish from a reputable fish counter, where we can ask whether it's been frozen or not and when it was caught and whether it was wild-caught or farmed and whether it is being sustainably managed or not.


2. We shop on Saturday, but we want to eat fish on Friday. A day when my fridge and pantry is especially empty; a day too long past shopping day to keep fresh fish.


3. The cheap grocery store where we shop on Saturday doesn't carry especially good fish anyway.


4. Therefore, the plan is for Mark to pick up some fish on his way home from work on Friday, either at the co-op or at the expensive grocery store (motto: "Costs a lot more, but WE have baggers").


5. But! These places have different fish for sale each week! And at different, unpredictable prices! And you don't really know what you want to buy till you get there and are standing in front of actual fillets and steaks!


6. It's me, not Mark, who carries an extensive many-branched decision tree of recipes in my head. He is a smart guy; he knows that if he's coming home with fresh fish, buying a baguette, some salad greens, and a couple of lemons is a satisfactory solution. A safe solution. An engineering solution. Works for any fish. But if we're going to do this every week, we'll get bored with lemon fish/bread/salad.


7. Enter The Fish Buying Decision Tree. (Download fish_on_the_way_home.doc)

With this document, printed out, slipped in a page protector, and kept in the glove compartment or bike bag, Mark can bring home useful additional stuff that, with the fish, I can turn into dinner.

Caveats: The document is written for my family, not yours. The combinations are not guaranteed to please you. Also, it assumes the presence of certain pantry staples: canned broth, herbs and spices, soy sauce, wine, onions.

Finally, the document doesn't actually contain any recipes. If you want to try reconstructing them, try Google, possibly including the search term "Mark Bittman," who wrote the three cookbooks I drew on most heavily to construct the chart.

Of course, everyone should have a couple of fish recipes that rely on tinned fish for those days when stopping on the way home isn't practical. My quick one is a pasta salad with tuna, mint, tomatoes, and capers; the more involved one is fried salmon patties with succotash and pot greens.

 

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Packing lightly.

While Mark is tasked with assembling most of the gear for our family's upcoming European trip -- we'll be going to the mountains, so "gear" includes, e.g., things that clank when you walk -- I am tasked with assembling wardrobes, at least for the smaller children and myself.

Because of the large amount of gear, it almost seems like a fool's errand to attempt to pack "light," but I figured that the exercise would be good for us anyway. Ever since I had the first chance to remake my closet during the Year of Four Wardrobes (tl;dr: significant weight loss followed by my fourth pregnancy) I've been playing around with paring things down to a small collection of pieces I like and wear, pieces that all go together in a variety of ways so that each has its role: a designed collection. There are numerous advantages of having such a design in mind: you buy fewer garments and accessories overall, wear the things you buy more frequently, have a less cluttered closet, and make it easier to quickly grab an outfit that works by thinning out the clutter of things you don't really ever wear.

On a side note, while I was posting about this on FB, ChristyP suggested the Project333 website. This is another minimalist-wardrobe blog, with a twist and a challenge - the idea is to pare down to thirty-three items for each three months of the year. You rotate different collections of thirty-three as the seasons change (and, of course, replace items as they wear out or become less useful). I rather liked this concept, as the rotation keeps it fresh, and weather extremes aren't much of an issue. The whole thing appeals to me a lot; I like planning, I enjoy shopping for clothes when I have a purpose in mind, and I hate clutter.

The author has some other articles here and there pertaining to the be-free-of-your-excess-clutter philosophy. Fortunately, I never developed an obsession with cosmetics, so I am ahead in the minimalist lifestyle there; I almost never wore them when I was younger and now, as I have occasionally wanted to look a bit more put together, I took time to curate a targeted kit (exactly one mascara, exactly one foundation, exactly one lip color, 4 brushes, etc.)

I cannot really brag about my minimalist makeup drawer, however. First of all, I am not inclined to wear much anyway, so buying too many lipsticks is just not a temptation I experience. More importantly, whatever simplifying cred I may have earned by not having much of that I make up for in spades with my recurring belief that all my problems will be solved if I just buy one more bag. But the wardrobe-simplifying, facilitated by a few size-changes necessitating several do-overs, has been going well.

Going on a trip is an opportunity to pare down even further. It wasn't till I started trip-planning that I learned the name for the entire concept: "capsule wardrobe." Here is a sample article from TravelFashionGirl, a website that I enjoyed perusing as I started thinking about putting together a travel capsule wardrobe for my upcoming 28-day trip.

My first draft looked like this:

It includes the following 15 pieces, not counting pajamas and underwear and socks and hiking boots and the like:

• Black trousers
• Black leggings
• Red-orange performancewear skort
• Black tank (nursing openings)
• Black tee (nursing openings)
• Black short sleeve empire waist top (nursing openings)
• White tank
• White "button-down" style shirt, 3/4 sleeves, lightweight
• Hot pink scoop-neck tee
• Lightweight black long-sleeve cardigan/wrap (rolls up really small)
• Denim shirt
• Red-orange cardigan
• Black tank dress (no nursing openings, but stretchy enough I can pull down the neck)
• Sleeveless shirtwaist-type dress with hot pink/red-orange/white pattern
• Red-orange scarf

Shoes that go with this:

• Black sandals
• Black ankle boots

I'm really pleased with how this turned out. It only needs a couple of extra things, in fact, to be a complete non-travel capsule wardrobe for late summer/autumn -- mostly things I already have, like bootleg jeans and a few more long-sleeve tees.

Some of the combinations:

 

 

But I need to swap a few things out for my trip, because I think that once I add the fleece, hiking pants, rain gear, and base layers that I need for the mountains, the overall wardrobe will be unnecessarily heavy on warm items. I will probably drop the denim shirt and add another tee and a pair of lightweight capris. This will bring the total up to 18-20 items, which is not bad considering it is for two seasons, requires enough warm layers for an emergency overnight in the mountains, and has to last 28 days.

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I also made a capsule wardrobe for my daughter, which was fun since I had to get her late summer/autumn clothes anyway. I made her neutral color be navy and her accent color be turquoise, since she has a little purse and a pair of Keen sandals that color, and I got almost everything from Old Navy on one of their big sale weekends. Add a pair of navy espadrilles, some fleece and hiking pants, and she is set for the city and the mountains. I think I am going to keep up the capsule approach as she gets bigger.

 

 

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Count your bites: a super-simple measure to check overeating?

From the annals of simple anti-gluttony systems:

Remember the No-S diet? It isn't what I do, but it has always impressed me with its simplicity, and it makes a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn to eat less.

(Its rules are: no snacks, no sweets, no seconds, except on days that start with S. There is also a caveat along the lines of don't be an idiot on S days, but it only comes up in hard cases.)

I know I have mentioned No-S as a viable, simple way of checking one's overeating, but I may have just found something simpler. I came across a testimonial post at the Everyday Systems website, home of No-S, where the writer mentioned that she had modified her No-S approach by including "bite counting."

Curious, I followed a link to the testimonial writer's blog. Yep, she means what she says: count your bites.

What was needed was a simple, less stressful method to enable the patient to reduce his intake of food, and give him short term goals that would mark his progress visibly and also offer encouragement....Count bites, not calories.

It consists simple of using a tally register... to check off every bite or swallow you take, keeping a register of your weight and the number of bites taken every day, and establishing a baseline for the number of bites that lets you lose weight at the rate you find comfortable.

Some measure was necessary to control the quantity of food intake, not necessarily the type of food intake, which is more controlled by the individuals lifelong eating habits. A simple convenient method was to measure actual intake, not by portion, but by bites, as people will always revert to their standard size bite, no matter how much they might attempt to take extra large or extra small bites at the beginning. Attempts to cheat are inevitable, but not lasting. The individual relapses quickly enough to his normal bite pattern...

No Matter what you eat, if your chart shows no weight loss, you simply have to take fewer bites.

 

Here's what about this that strikes me, the data addict, as genius: it's one easily-measured number. So anyone can do the experiment on themselves: can count bites, and observe weight patterns, and see if there is a correlation between the two. It would be straightforward to use as the x-axis of a plot.

Here's what about this that strikes me, the foodie, as genius: you wouldn't have to consciously change what you eat unless you find you want to.

Here's what about this that strikes me, the slacker, as genius: no preplanning or measuring required. There is a little work involved: tallying bites (the author suggests keeping one of those handhed push-button counters discreetly in your lap as you eat), keeping track of the daily number, and evaluating the results to see if the number of bites should be adjusted up or down.

I'm not going to be trying this one out, but I did think it interesting enough to note.

 

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