Tomorrow will be the second Thanksgiving in 20 years that my son has been away from me. I expect that it will be easier than last year when I didn’t speak to another human being all day.  Truthfully, I’m not even sure I brushed my teeth. Ugh. Not a good day. This year, I have to work and have only a few hours between shifts. In those few hours, I have plans with friends. I’ve got the turkey brining right now.

Tomorrow will still be a challenge for me and, likely, for you, too.  With all the cornbread dressing (or bread stuffing if you’re not lucky enough to be in the South), pumpkin, chess, pecan or sweet potato pies, cranberry sauce, etc., etc., etc., it’s going to be a tough one to stay on course.

So, don’t.

Enjoy the day. Enjoy the food. Enjoy your family. Enjoy the parade. Enjoy the football. Enjoy the tryptophan coma.

Then get back on track Friday.

Last week, I mentioned that idea of “if your great-grandmother didn’t eat it, neither should you.” I shared several reasons we can’t eat the same plants our great-grandmothers did, even if we try. Meat. Now meat’s another story, right? I mean, a cow is a cow. Isn’t it?

Not exactly.

Cows, chickens, swine, etc., are all raised and processed far differently than they used to be. Now, ………

Frankly, y’all, I’m not sure I can continue this article or even eat meat anymore.  I’ve just been reading here about slaughter procedures in the US and about how animals are not always dead as they move through the process.  I’m feeling really sick to my stomach right now and will have to come back to this subject later.

In the meantime, I will mention the antibiotics animals are given before slaughter and how bad they are for humans, as reported last week here in the Washington Post.  I will also mention the use of bovine growth hormone used to increase milk production in dairy cows. The American Cancer Society says here that it doesn’t increase cancer rates in humans; however, consumers have shunned the product so thoroughly that most stores no longer carry milk from cows given rBGH.

There is also, of course, the issue of what chickens, cattle and swine are fed – often animal protein.  Animals that are herbivores are made carnivorous and even turned into cannibals by what we feed them. There is evidence to support that the feeding of infected bovine protein to cattle in Europe caused the Mad Cow break out of the last century. At the very least, cattle are overfed with corn in feedlots to increase their weight. Chickens are also overfed to increase weight, putting more fat onto our plates.

I’m still feeling sick about the whole slaughterhouse thing and will leave you with this – we’re not on the farm anymore and these ain’t your great-grandmothers cows.

Well, maybe it’s not impossible…if you homestead…..using heirloom seeds…..no chemical fertilizers….no chemical insecticides.  Or live near anyone else who does.

What I’m talking about is eating like the ancestors – if your great-grandmother didn’t need it, neither should you. The sad reality is that, if we shop in a grocery store, we will have a very hard time eating like our great-grandmothers – even if we buy all of the ingredients that sound the same as what she used to use. Why? There are lots of reasons and Monsanto isn’t behind all of them.

Let’s start with the actual soil. Industrial farming uses chemical fertilizers and insecticides that just weren’t around 100 years ago. Even so, soil on those farms is less nutrient rich than soil on organic farms. That results in vegetables that are also less nutrient rich. The plant cannot give to us what it can’t get from the soil.

Next, there’s the water. I’ve flushed unused meds down the toilet and thought nothing of it. You probably have, too. Millions of us have. What we actually did was to put those chemicals out into the ground water*. Neither Sewage treatment nor boiling will remove them.  Millions of pills down the commode result in pharmaceuticals in the tap and bottled water we use to drink, cook, brush our teeth, make ice cubes and water our crops with. While the amounts are small, the chemicals are still there and the cummulative effects are really unknown.

Then there are those monstrous GMOs. Genetically Modified Organisms are not the result of traditional cross-breeding. This ain’t Gregor Mendel, y’all and we’re a lot closer to the Island of Dr. Moreau than we are to an Austrian monastery. GMOs are plants whose genes have been engineered to include DNA from bacteria and viruses.  GMOs have been linked to disease and the alarming increase in the incidents of food allergies** to the extent that European consumers refused to buy the products once labeling was required. No demand forced food companies stopped selling them. In the US, no such labeling is required. We don’t even know we’re eating the Franken-est of Franken Foods.

Finally, there are growth and production methods.  Veggies are picked before they’re ripe so that they can be shipped, decreasing their nutrient content. Grains like modern wheat are highly processed to increase their shelf life. The most nutrient rich parts of the wheat are processed out, including the bran and the oils, which will go rancid, causing spoilage.  Whiter flour is better for the producer, but worse for the consumer.

We can buy organic, which has only a small risk of some contamination just from wind and water movement. Crops are rotated and the soil fertilized using natural methods. Heirloom seeds are used for plants that are allowed to ripen in the soil. It’s a great option…..if you can afford it.

Even when we think we’re eating healthfully, we may not be. Sadly, the FDA, the organization we trust to make sure our food is nutritious and safe, fails us on a monumental scale. As in everything involving politics, there are lobbyist and multi-national companies paying for air time (and even board spaces in the past) with the administration. It’s all about making a buck. To protect our foods, we have to educate ourselves, buy organic, grow our own or at least make the best choices we can within our budgets.

I vote we bring back the Victory Gardens!

And this is just the plant side of things! We haven’t even talked about the animal side with growth hormones, antibiotics and the rest of man’s meddling. We’ll do that tomorrow!

*http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/drugs-in-our-drinking-water

**http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edison-de-mello-md-phd/gmos_b_3854198.html

Sunday, it was my great pleasure to go to the Webb School Arts & Crafts Festival in Bell Buckle, TN.  If you’re ever in the area when it (or the RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival) is going on, I strongly suggest that you put it in your schedule.  The festival takes over the entire town and is just a hoot and a half!  I went with some sweet friends and I’m just gonna have to talk about the food.

Ice cream stands dotted the festival but it was far to cold for them to be doing much business.  The same cannot be said for the funnel cakes, the cheese steak sandwiches, the polish sausage with peppers and onions, barbeque, ruffle fries, chicken on a stick (with sides of potatoes and corn – I’ll get to those later), roasted corn, turkey legs, peanuts (boiled, roasted or cinnamon coated) and all manner of fried pickles, cookies, snack cakes and candy bars.  Remember when funnel cakes were the biggest splurge on the menu?! Not anymore! You can have deep fried oreos, twinkies, snickers and peanut butter cups.  My stomach hurt just looking at it.

At the chicken on a stick stand, I watched the guy put A POUND of butter in the potatoes.  A pound. I have no clue what was in the corn.  While I like the taste of it, I hardly ever eat corn anymore -unless it’s in cornbread, I am Southern, after all. (Note: of course kettle corn is exempt from any corn rules. To review, it is a gift from the gods, not a lowly grain.) When my sister lived in Germany, the Germans used to comment about Americans eating livestock food. That’s about all they use corn for – for pigs and cows.  And, really, that’s about all it’s good for.  We humans get nearly no nutritional value out of it.

We enjoyed our brunch of pulled pork sans bun (saving those calories for kettle corn, don’t you know), which was a pretty good option.  We skipped the sides and I went light on the sauce – the barbeque sauce, that is, not Sauce-sauce.  It was Sunday morning, for goodness sake. (Although, wait, we did buy some tequila jelly and moonshine pickles. Maybe there was a little Sauce-sauce.) Nutritionally sound choices were few and far between.

However…

That’s not the point, is it? The point is that we were celebrating Fall – my very favorite season. A treat from time to time is allowed – particularly when you’re walking six hours looking at arts, crafts and what-in-the-worlds. As in everything, balance is the key. I did not dive into those fried dill pickle spears like I wanted to not because of calories, but because: 1. I didn’t have a beer, and 2. deep fried foods now give me a stomach ache.  The memory of enjoying them will just have to serve.  On occasions like this, it’s essential to remember to live a little.  Allow yourself to enjoy life.  Breathe deeply of the crisp air and enjoy some pumpkin bread.  When going to a fair, save a few calories and let yourself enjoy the fair fare. After all, it’s the kettle corn mother ship!

Twice last week, I was talking to people who strive to eat healthfully; but, they get stuck because they are cooking for one.  How do you cook for one, eat well and not eat the same thing a million days in a row?

One word – freezer.

Once every month to six weeks, I take a day and cook  entrées.  I did this on Sunday. I boiled a chicken, used the broth for butternut squash soup (that is also fantastic as a sauce for ravioli). I used some of the broth and some chicken for white chilli, the rest I divided into single servings.  In fact, I divided everything into single servings and put them in the freezer along with the chicken breasts that I baked. In the mornings, I can remove whatever I want for dinner and put it in the refrigerator to thaw.  In the evenings, while I am warming whatever the entrée is, I can steam some vegetables to go along with it and voila! A healthful dinner that didn’t take hours to fix.

This Sunday, I seasoned all of the chicken breasts with Montreal steak seasoning (it’s not just for steak anymore, dontcha know). Often, though, I cook each piece separately, wrapped in foil and seasoned differently.  I like to use the steak seasoning, Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning, Italian dressing, ginger dressing, onions, teriyaki, or stone ground mustard.  I use a lot of those same seasonings when I cook a pork loin that I’ve divided into portions with two servings each. For pork, I also like to use applesauce. Once the meat is cool, I just put the foil wrapped entrée inside a plastic bag, marking on the bag what’s inside and into the freezer it goes.

You can do this with most meats, although I would suggest cooking them until they are just done before freezing them. If they are overdone, they will dry out and be like shoe leather when you go to warm them up. Pot roast is great this way. I brown ground meats and put them in the freezer for easy additions to salads, tacos, eggs, or rice.  I season the ground meat with Italian seasonings, chili seasonings, or just a lot of garlic.  Again, I note on the outside of the plastic bag how it’s seasoned.

If you cook a few different things on that one day, you’ve got choices at hand every day; but, you’re not eating the same thing night after night.  And, really, how much harder is it to cook five chicken breasts than it is to cook one?

With the things I cooked on Sunday, I’ve had white chili with rice and a green salad. I also had a green salad with chopped chicken. Then there was the butternut squash soup with a side of rutabagas and green beans. Tomorrow night will be baked chicken with asparagus and roasted carrots. There are all kinds of options here to keep my diet varied and healthful.  It just took a little planning.

On Saturday, a friend and I went on a four mile Heartsore Hike. (Okay, it was on a paved trail and not really a hike, but Heartsore Walk doesn’t have the same ring to it.) Both of us are struggling through some things and decided that motion was a good way to deal with it.  The walk was fantastic and we were both in better spirits afterwards; so, we headed out to Mimi’s Cafe for lunch.

I haven’t been to Mimi’s in over two years and was really looking forward it. I ordered an Omelette Basquaise – substituting fresh cut fruit for provençal potatoes and a buttermilk spice muffin for toast.  I ate all the fruit, but half of everything else. The food was as savory as I remember.  It was tough to do, but I ate slowly and was careful to consume only half plus a slice of that carrot bread they bring out. I mean, seriously. Have you tasted that?! I could climb in a bin of it and eat my way out! Anyway, since we were talking over our meal, I didn’t check loseit.com for nutritional information and I didn’t think to ask for a chart.

Big mistake.

When I got home, I put everything into my food diary.  Because I don’t know how many ounces were in the carrot bread slice, I estimated that item.  My estimate put my meal at 975 calories – and that’s just the portion I ate!

Had I ordered the potatoes instead of the fruit, eaten my whole omelette, the carrot bread and the whole muffin, my meal would have chalked up a huge 1880 calories.  That’s more than my entire daily allotment! Mimi’s has lighter options I could have chosen.  Had I done the smart thing and asked for the chart prior to ordering, I would have had a much healthier meal.

At present, not all restaurants are required to provide nutritional information on their menu offerings. Those who do are not required to have their foods tested in labs; however, if they make certain claims, they must be able to substantiate those claims.  For instance, if a restaurant claims that their mashed potatoes are low-fat, then the serving can contain no more than three grams of fat.  The serving must comply with FDA definitions.

We’ve talked about portion control.  It is particularly important in the context of eating out. Enormous portions are served on enormous plates, tricking our eyes and helping us to overeat. We already know that we need to divide the portion in at least half the instant it arrives, instantly creating a more reasonable portion. I’ve heard of people boxing up that half portion immediately.  My friend Julia even brings her own glass containers to also avoid contributing to landfills. Even with a reasonable portion, we don’t know what’s actually in it.

Most chain restaurants have nutritional information charts or brochures available upon request to tell us what’s in our food. Next time, I’m going to do myself a favor and request it!

When it’s in a carbonated soft drink.

My cousin read an article on aspartame that really scared her – scared her off her Diet Cokes, even.  She switched to drinking one regular Coke a day and maybe one regular Dr. Pepper.  Her activity level remained the same and she carefully remained within her 1300 daily calorie budget.  In a month, she gained five pounds and felt like a can of exploded biscuits.

I’ve talked about calorie budgets and how I lost weight by staying within the one recommended to me by LoseIt.com.  There’s more to it than that.  I changed what I ate – more veggies, less starch, nothing processed.  I did not eat my 1500 daily calories in the form of three candy bars,

Why? Because the body processes calories differently according to their origins.

While I talk in terms of budgets, calories aren’t pennies, they don’t all spend the same way.  A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius. (My chemist mother would be so proud right now.) What we refer to as a calorie in dietary terms is actually a kilocalorie, or a large calorie.  It is the amount of energy required to raise a kilogram of water one degree Celsius. In terms of water, a calorie really is a calorie.  In terms of food, a sugar calorie is a whole different kettle of fish than a, um, fish calorie.

Massive oversimplification warning!!  Your metabolism is the process that breaks down all of the energy you take in (food) and converts it to energy you store (fat) or into energy you use (beast-mode lifting or just breathing). Your metabolism has to work harder on some foods to break them down. Fish is harder to break down than the liquid sugar in soft drinks; so, your body is going to actually use energy to metabolize the fish while the cola is pretty much going straight to your butt.

Let’s say in this 1300 calorie budget, it takes 1200 calories to maintain basic life functions (which is pretty close to accurate for women), the surplus 100 must be burned or they get stored.  Let’s say that those extra 100 are from protein and that your body uses five calories to break them down (that’s not an accurate number, just an illustration).  You burn 95 of them on a walk but you actually burn all 100 of them because of the metabolic burn.  Now, let’s say that those 100 calories came from a soft drink, but that your body needs only one calorie to break them down.  You burn the same 95 on your walk, but you burn only one extra because the sugar was so easily accessed. You now took in four more calories than you burned.

Ingesting 3500 surplus calories equals one pound of fat gained. Even at a rate of four a day, if you continually take in more calories than you burn, eventually, you will gain weight.  Small deficits or surpluses add up. Ounces make pounds – in both directions.

As Jeanna found out, it can take only a month for those ounces of soda to add up to five pounds.

Every day, while driving to work, I see a billboard advertising pediatric care for a local hospital group.  ” You deserve a choice in pediatric care,” it touts, while featuring this photo:

Clearly, the message is that brussels sprouts are yucky and you ought to have a choice in care that is less hideous than vegetables.

I have tried several times to photograph this offensive advertisement, but have been unsuccessful.  The last time I tried, Waze told me to cut it out and pay attention to the rush hour traffic all around me.  Sounded like a good idea…a good idea that left me without photographic evidence to support my outrage that the MEDICAL COMMUNITY is feeding the myth that children will not like brussels sprouts or perhaps even all vegetables. What an utter crock!  They ought to be ashamed of themselves!

As I’ve already told you, I know that I got really, really lucky with my son.  He was easygoing, food adventurous and just a good child. As a toddler, he ate salsa, all manner of vegetables, pickled herring in cream sauce on crackers, and haggis. (Before you go there, my ancestors are Danes and Scots. We eat things like pickled herring and haggis. It’s a thing.) He really ate anything that couldn’t outrun him.  Except ham. He hated ham and I wore it every time I tried to sneak it past him.

When he would fall down, bump his head or whatever, as long as there was no blood, I would respond with an “oops!” or an “oh! my head!” and play it off.  He would typically just rub the bump and go on his merry way. He had better things to do than lose valuable playing time by howling.

My point in telling you this is: he responded as he thought he should most of the time. He took many of his cues from me and my behavior and reactions. I generally didn’t impose drama or tastes on him and he responded accordingly. Children in Scandinavia eat herring and love it. Children in Korea dig kimchi. Indian children eat food so spicy the aroma alone makes my eyes water. My point is that, in large part, children eat what is available and what their culture tells them is good. There are, of course, those picky eater exceptions and those one-off dislikes (mine are celery and olives). I’m not going to argue that. What I am going to argue is that children don’t like vegetables.

They can understand messages as subliminal as the one on that billboard. They are suspicious of unfamiliar foods – like all of the vegetables that we don’t regularly prepare and eat. They don’t eat vegetables because our advertising and our children’s menus are full of fried nuggets, starchy mac and cheese, pizza rolls, toaster “pastries,” and other sweetened or fried Frankenfoods. With our color, glossy photos – and with our own plates – we are telling them that vegetables are bad.

In my search for the photo above, I also found this one:

Same child. Same photo shoot. Totally different message.

This is the one the hospital (and we) ought to be living and advocating.

I know.  Obvious, right?  EVERYbody knows that!

Puh! The lady at the Publix bakery sure did seem surprised when I told her!  (Maybe that was more alarm than surprise.  Hmmm.) You see, the cannoli I wanted were on special – a lower piece price if I bought two.  She was surprised when I still wanted just one. Why would I want just one when, for less than double the price, I could have two? The mind boggles!

Because they’re Jedi masters, that’s why!

If I bought two, that would be to eat one now and to eat one “later,” Yeah, right.  In this case, “later” would have been right after I finished licking the crumbs from the first one off my fingers.  Who am I trying to kid here?

As I have previously confessed, I cannot be trusted with sweets or really snacks of any kind.  As a result, I generally don’t buy them for fear of the danger they present in my kitchen.  However, from time to time, I like to pretend that I’m an adult and can handle the responsibility of baked goods.  I choose to take the responsibility slowly and purchase them singly.  That really seems to freak out the people selling them.

I once ordered a single mini-scone at Starbucks.  The kid behind the counter proceeded to tell me how much cheaper they were if I bought three.  I thanked him for the information and repeated my order for one.  His head exploded. Seriously, it was like that scene in Austin Powers when the fembots blow up.  This poor kid didn’t even know how to ring up the sale of a single one.

What’s wrong with us when sufficient is a bad word? Why must I always want more? Why can’t I be content with enough? Because a burgeoning market cannot be sustained that way, missy!  That’s trouble talk right there.

You know what else can’t be sustained that way? A burgeoning belly, that’s what.

If I eat what my great-grandmother would have called “a sufficiency (anything more would be superfluous)” then my body gets what it needs without all of the extra that it doesn’t need. The chief problem with this is that we don’t eat a sufficiency anymore.  I dare say that most of us wouldn’t even recognize it. We eat too fast and too much.  We don’t realize that we are over-full until it’s too late to do anything about it.

Here are a couple of ways I have found to help me define a sufficiency:

1. When dining out, I either split the entrée with my companion or divide it in half and eat only one half.  I’ve even heard of some people ordering a to-go box right then and putting half of the meal out of sight immediately.
2. Remove a single serving from the container. Even if the yogurt, ice cream or chocolate container holds only two servings, I am more apt to eat only one serving if I immediately remove it from the package.
3. Buy cookies, scones or other baked treats in singles pieces or slices. An added benefit here is that you get fresher items.

I don’t have to display impressive feats of will-power at home if I display small feats of control at the grocery store. The cannoli my mind control cannot if I leave it in the case.