Every once and a while, I need to indulge in something decadent. Eating healthy is best done in moderation as are indulgences. This month, I want to try bacon pancakes.
Kathy at Merriment Design has the recipe she tried for bacon pancakes with wonderful results.
The next time you need to have an indulgent meal, try bacon pancakes!
The ever wonderful Braidwood has written a couple of great entries about eating healthy and listening to your body when it comes to eating:
What impacted me the most when I saw this was hearing that, “The root of the problem is giving away your power.†! What? That’s the root of the problem? … Hey, that is the root of the problem!
I said that phrase to myself a few times and then turned it around. If that’s the root of the problem, then: The root of the solution is accepting my power.
She recommended this video:
I understand the feeling of not wanting to diet again. Somehow, Weight Watchers works for me because communicating with my body was really hard at first. Weight Watchers gave me a good idea of what to eat to stay healthy. Eventually, I’ll develop enough Thintuition to eat healthy without guidelines, but for now, I WANT to follow a program that helps me make healthier choices.
Yesterday I talked about cupcakes and how the easiest way for me to eat them is to not eat them. If that is confusing, take a moment and read yesterday’s entry:
What if I really WANT a cupcake, however?
If I really want a cupcake, I can eat one whenever I want. That is the most powerful reason why it was so easy for me NOT to eat those delicious cupcakes a couple of weeks ago. I knew that I could have one if I wanted, but the thought of eating them stressed me out so much that I didn’t, even though I had plenty of calories left that day to afford one.
Every time I read a diet book that goes into scolding mode about what foods I can and cannot eat, it sends me into a binge. Even if I’m not planning on following that diet, I will start to WANT to eat foods that I never wanted to eat before. If I read a book that told me pickles were bad, I would suddenly want all sorts of pickles: dill, bread and butter, kosher, and sweet. You call it a pickle and I’d want it.
Won’t eat it is VERY different than CAN’T eat it. One is control imposed on me by another person. The other is a CHOICE. We all prefer to have choices. A prison is a prison, no matter how gilded the cage.
For me, eating healthy is about having infinite choices and fulfilling them. The minute I start limiting my choices, the animal within me rebels and craves only those foods I am denied. Ironically, I don’t need to eat foods to consider them one of my choices. I just need to give myself permission to eat them. All of this makes very little sense to me, but learning how to deal with the way my mind works will eventually set me free.
Photo via: Nicole Lee
You are looking at some of the most delicious cupcakes in Salt Lake City. They were provided by The Sweet Tooth Fairy at a geek event I went to a couple of weeks ago.
They were beautiful and lovely, but I had absolutely NO desire to eat them.
Surprising, really, considering my eating patterns, but they didn’t appeal to me at all.
That was the day that I realized that I don’t actually like cupcakes. It has taken me forty years to finally come to that conclusion. Sure, I like the flavor. I like the frosting. I like the cake.
It’s the cup that I don’t like.
Cupcakes are top heavy and awkward. I have to get frosting on my fingers while I try to take off the cupcake liner or I have to risk a bite of paper if I don’t remove it. The frosting is usually piled too high at the top to eat appropriately with the rest of the cake, so I end up with some bites with too much frosting and others without any. They are simply impossible to eat neatly.
When I attended that geek event in Salt Lake City, the delightful catering included platters and platters of gorgeous cupcakes. I looked at the table of food, and all I could do was stress out about how to eat one of those cupcakes. I was in a room full of people that I barely knew peppered with people who I knew really well who were desperate to introduce me to all of their friends and I was stressed out about a CUPCAKE!
In desperation, I decided not to eat.
Suddenly, the weight of all that beautiful catered food was lifted from my shoulders. All those people I was introduced to asked me if I had tried a cupcake and I said, “I’m not eating cupcakes today.” They accepted my words and most replied, “I shouldn’t be either.”
I watched them struggle with the cupcake liners and the frosting and the top heavy creaminess of it all and I breathed a sigh of relief instead of feeling left out.
This is AMAZING for me. It’s like one of those breakthroughs or A-Ha moments everybody talks about. Food stresses me out and sometimes it’s just easier to NOT EAT IT! If you had asked me that morning how to deal with the mess of eating a cupcake, I would have written you a bullet list on how to eat a cupcake without splurging too much or making your hands too messy. I wouldn’t have even considered not eating it. It just wasn’t an option
So, the answer to the question of how to eat a cupcake is: DON’T.
The simplicity of it all could just knock me over with a feather.
Photo via: Crystalyn Life Images
Here is an interesting talk from Ann Cooper, The Renegade Lunch Lady, from Berkley, California.
She says:
We are feeding our kids to death.
The USDA cannot be the be all and end all of what we feed our kids. We cannot believe that they have our best interests at heart.
We are responsible, but big companies are ALSO responsible for what kids eat.
We have to teach kids that Coke and Pop Tarts is not breakfast. If they eat a diet of sugar, then they’ll go up and down like a crack addict.
We have to teach people to cook again.
One gourmet coffee costs more than what we spend on school lunch for kids for a WEEK.
She talks about the Farm to School Project. Here is a link to them to see if they are in your area.
Here is her list of food guidelines for her school district:
Chef Ann Cooper : Food Guidelines
I just found a new webcomic that looks promising. It certainly started out with a bang. Edmund Finney met some aliens on his search for the meaning of life.
Why are the aliens a little pudgier than we normally envision them? What consists of their very filling diet? Click on the comic to see!
Thank you, D. Long for the fun look at Edmund and his search for the meaning of life.
I just saw this commercial for Pepsi Throwback.
The reason why this soda is supposed to be better than normal Pepsi is because it is made with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. They aren’t saying that it’s healthier than normal Pepsi, but there are a lot of people out there who believe it is:
Yes, sugar is made up of glucose, which is easier to digest and metabolize. High fructose corn syrup has been altered to increase the fructose and decrease the glucose. The body doesn’t metabolize fructose as easily as glucose; it metabolizes it more like fat. The natural fructose in fruit is counterbalanced by the fiber but this is generally not present in foods with high fructose corn syrup. For this reason the blood sugar level goes much higher, especially if drinking high fructose corn syrup. This can lead to obesity, diabetes and poor digestion.
Authors: Heather Basciano, Lisa Federico and Khosrow Adeli of the Clinical Biochemistry Division, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Published in the journal: “Nutrition & Metabolism”, February 21, 2005.
In the end, however, it all comes down to calories. There are EXACTLY the same amount of calories in a Pepsi Throwback as there are in a regular old Pepsi. Some people might think it tastes better than HCFS, but you can’t get me to believe that 100 calories of regular soda is going to make me fatter than 100 calories of cane sugar soda.
Via: Go Retro!: Throw Back Some Pepsi Throwback
Watermelon has been in my grocery store all winter this year, but the one that I bought didn’t taste right. Not to mention the fact that it cost about three times what it would have cost me in the summer. So, I’ve been waiting for watermelon season and it’s finally here!
Watermelon is a great, low calorie treat. It’s only 46 calories for a full cup. You can have two servings of fruit for less than fifty calories, so it’s a great food value.
It’s also very thirst quenching. Unlike the other melons, watermelon bursts with water and juice in your mouth. That’s why I love to eat watermelon at a picnic. By the time the Utah sun has bled me dry of moisture, I’m ready for a huge slice of watermelon to quench my thirst.
Here is a great video from Photoweborama on how to cut a watermelon:
Personally, I like watermelon with the rind, so I have a handle for the food. This video shows you how to cut a watermelon for the kids.
I can just imagine taking one of those large slices and eating it all the way through. Drops of juice are on my cheeks where they hit the side of the rind. I love to eat right through the white rind and enjoy the slightly sour taste in contrast to the extra sweet pulp.
This summer jump right into watermelon season with both feet and enjoy!
This photo of a Dr. Pepper advertisement from 1939 surprised me.
The advertisement says:
When you drink a Dr. Pepper
You drink a bite to eat
It’s a surprising bit of honest advertisement. A can of Dr. Pepper is 156 calories, so it’s as much calories as an apple and a bit of cheese. Of course, if you eat the apple and cheese, you won’t be hungry again in two hours, but honestly, Dr. Pepper WANTED you to be hungry again in two hours.
In fact, they built an entire advertising campaign around it. If you notice on that advertisement, there is a clock with the numbers 10, 2 and 4 highlighted. In fact, I own a Dr. Pepper clock with those numbers highlighted as well.
Their marketing campaign suggested that at 10 am, 2 pm and 4pm, you should have a Dr. Pepper. If you were to add three cans of soda to your diet every day, that’s an extra 468 calories a day, meaning an extra 3276 calories a week. That’s a weight gain of almost a pound a week, just from soda.
Back in 1939, most people didn’t need to worry about getting fat. They were too busy trying to get enough calories to maintain weight, but now, that Dr. Pepper slogan is ominous.
Next time you’re tempted to get a Big Gulp, remember the Dr. Pepper slogan:
When you drink a soda, you drink a bite to eat.
Wouldn’t you rather just have a bite to eat?
It is finally Farmer’s Market season here in Utah. Every Saturday at Pioneer Park, they have a Farmer’s Market with tons of wonderful food just for me!
I love to go to the Farmer’s Market for a lot of reasons:
The food is CHEAP: This is the main reason that I go to the farmer’s market. Compared to fresh fruits and veggies at the grocery store, the food is very cheap. Sometimes I feel guilty because the farmers are asking so little for the yummy food.
The food is FRESH: A lot of times when I buy produce at the grocery store, it goes bad within a day or two because it has been sitting at the store for so long. The fruits and veggies that I buy at the farmer’s market tend to last longer than the produce that I buy at the grocery store.
The food is YUMMY: I don’t know why produce that I buy at the farmer’s market tastes better to me. Especially the tomatoes, taste just like the tomatoes that my grandpa grew in his garden. I’ve never been able to get that taste from a grocery store tomato, even at Whole Foods. I think part of the reason the food tastes better to me is because I saw the person who grew and picked it. I gave them money and they put it into a bag for me. I know that shouldn’t make food taste better, but it DOES.
I like to take pictures: The farmer’s market is a place where there are tons of interesting people and colorful food. I love to take photos there.
Here are some tips to make your farmer’s market trip hassle-free:
Bring cash: I use my debit card EVERYWHERE, so it’s a bit of a surprise when I actually need to use dollar bills to buy something. The farmer’s market is one of those places. Make sure you get plenty of cash in small bills so it’s easy to buy what you want.
Bring a basket or canvas bag: A lot of us are used to bringing our own bags into the grocery store so we can get a discount (or to save the environment), but when I first went to the farmer’s market, I wasn’t in that habit. Hardly any of the vendors had bags to put my fruit and veggies in, so I ended up carrying food in my shirt to the car, embarrassed at my tummy for all to see. Make sure you bring something to carry what you buy.
Expect to talk: At the grocery store, I’m able to just run in, get what I want and leave. Sometimes, I don’t even deal with a clerk because I go through the self-checkout line. At the farmer’s market, however, you end up talking to everyone. If you want tomatoes, pears and peppers, you’re going to end up talking to at least three farmers unless you’re lucky enough to find one that sells all three. The farmer’s market is a community thing, you can’t escape it without talking to someone.
There are plenty of farmer’s markets this time of the year. You can find one in your state here:
I wish we had farmer’s markets all year here in Utah, but they will close up shop in September, so I have to enjoy them while they are here. Next weekend, make sure you get out of your house early and hit your local farmer’s market for some fresh fruit and veggies.
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