Month December 2018

Gifts for Dieters

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Gifts for Dieters

Instant Pot Chicken Curry

First Pass with the Instant Pot

Many years ago, I took part in a diet contest. In fact I organised it. A group of folk got together to lose some weight, and we asked our family and friends to sponsor our losses with their hard-earned cash. The proceeds went towards a local hospital that was trying to finance a piece of new equipment. The first place prize, for the person who lost the most weight, was … wait for it … a food processor!

As a habitual, long-term dieter, that’s my kind of prize. Something to do with food. Things haven’t changed much, I’m still dieting. And I wanted an Instant Pot for Christmas this year.

Santa Claus delivered … Woohoo!

I carefully read the manuals, triple checked some recipes, and I read the manuals one more time before embarking on my first Instant Pot meal. NOT! What I actually did was wing it. After spending about two minutes flipping through the user manual and the recipe book.

There was a family pack of chicken breasts in the fridge that needed to be used so chicken curry immediately came to mind. It was a hodge-podge of whatever was available after that. Potatoes, onions, and a bag of frozen peas, along with a couple of large cans of diced tomatoes for the sauce. And a cup or two of heavy cream, of course. I did a pot of rice for the normal sized people that surround me. But then I had some of that too!

I had hardly started to cook when the “Burn” message came up on the screen. I pushed a bunch of buttons, turning the thing on and off several times in the process. I pried the hissing lid off once or twice, and stirred things around to see what I could see. Eventually some kind of cooking operation went ahead. I really will have to go back and read some more of that manual, won’t I! Despite my best efforts to defeat the thing, when I finally opened the Pot, the chicken was falling-apart tender. From a culinary perspective, the end result was at least good, if not great. But considering it was my first attempt, I’m cautiously optimistic about bending this thing to my culinary will with a little more practice. The great things I see so far are the ease of use, and how quick and easy it is for clean-up. It also makes it very easy to choose real, whole-food ingredients. And that alone is a good thing.

I’m looking forward to exploring this little cooker more. It makes a surprisingly large amount of food. And it’s right in the wheelhouse of my lazy philosophy of one-pot or one-pan cooking. Only without the splatter! I’ll update my progress with this thing along the way, I’m really hoping it makes it onto my top three small appliances list.

But what is it about dieting that has me looking at food-related things for gifts? Ah well, it’s better than looking at recipe books all the time, isn’t it!

Actually, now that I think on that, I have spent just about zero time looking at cookery books, or online recipes, during the course of this diet.

I had to read that last line again myself. There may well be something very important about that!

Bubble ‘n’ Squeak

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Bubble ‘n’ SqueakBubble n Squeak

Bubble ‘n’ Squeak might be familiar to anyone with a connection to the British Isles. In our house, it is very much a part of our Christmas tradition. It is a pan-fried collection of Christmas dinner leftovers. And we very deliberately cook Christmas dinner to excess, with a view to eating bubble ‘n’ squeak for several meals afterwards!

We start out by adding diced turkey and ham to a pan swimming with your fat of choice. Though butter is highly recommenced! Adding the Christmas veggies next, Brussels sprouts and carrots are among my favorites, starts the whole bubbling and squeaking symphony that gives the dish its name. Chop up some leftover roast potatoes, and in they go. Next it’s the mashed potatoes, to glue the whole mix together. These should have been mashed with ludicrous amounts of butter and heavy cream! When the first evidence of pan singeing appears on the potatoes, turn the mess over to brown the other side. Now add heapings of stuffing on the already-browned side. Next comes a strained jar of sour pickled onions. And finally, just before serving, add a big splodge of Christmas gravy, and blend.

If you haven’t had bubble ‘n’ squeak before, it probably sounds disgusting. Trust me, it’s not! Indeed, we have an annual debate about which meal was better … Christmas dinner on Christmas Day, or the first Bubble ‘n’ Squeak meal on Boxing Day. Or St. Stephen’s Day if you prefer.

We went out for Christmas dinner this year. But we cooked a full Christmas dinner on Boxing Day anyway. Just so we could have bubble ‘n’ squeak. No kidding, we didn’t eat the food when it was hot and freshly cooked, we just tossed it into the fridge so we could make bubble ‘n’ squeak later.

I’m really not sure what this all says about my weight problem! LOL

The bottom line is that we need a diet that tolerates occasional bouts of delicious insanity. And what better time is there to go nuts than Christmas. Just now isn’t the right time for me to discuss the impact of all this on the bathroom scale. We’ll get back to worrying about all that nonsense in the new year!

Whatever your traditions, I hope you are enjoying them to the fullest this holiday season. And if you have any good recipes or food traditions to share, please do. I love to learn about new cuisines and cultures. And I’m an equal opportunities eater! 🙂

PS … Next time, I must remember to tell you what those closest to me think appropriate as Christmas gifts for a fat guy trying to lose weight! And no, it’s not socks!

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas!Merry Christmas 2018

Not everyone celebrates Christmas but that shouldn’t stop us sharing the spirit of joy, giving, and celebration together. Of course, it can be a time of great challenge for those of us trying to lose weight! My diet has been terrible this month and I’ve written a letter to Santa Claus, asking for some magic diet dust to help me out as the year winds down. I haven’t checked under the tree yet but, fingers crossed, he has delivered.

I have very few excuses left for my lack of adherence over the course of this month. We have working appliances now so I can cook real food again. Yet I still find myself gravitating towards all the bad stuff. Cookies and dessert seem so much easier to grab as I pass through the kitchen. It’s time I gave myself a Christmas gift and went back to eating more whole, real food again.

I have learned one thing during the month though. And this isn’t the first time I’ve learned this particular lesson.

The longer you continue to eat poorly … the more difficult it is to stop.

Of course, I knew this already. It’s not like like this is a new “light bulb” moment or anything. I just didn’t want to say it out loud. Why I’m saying it out loud on Christmas morning is beyond my comprehension. Why couldn’t I have waited ’til after the Christmas dinner? And dessert!

The other big lesson I’ve learned over the past couple of months is one on the value of writing a daily entry in my journal. It doesn’t have to be a daily essay. Even a short entry, done each day, is a mental reset that can help steer a better dietary course. I have been very erratic in my journalling over the past six or eight weeks, to my detriment.

I think I’ll enjoy my Christmas dinner today. And I will have dessert. I may even behave badly on the following day. But I think I’ll make an extra effort to journal about it too. If you haven’t tried journalling before, give it a shot. I’m not talking about a detailed food journal, or anything like that. Just a little résumé of each day’s trials and tribulations can often provide a stabilizing influence that is quite remarkable. And it’s a great place to vent a little too!

Whatever the light that lights your way, I hope it shines brighter on this Christmas Day for you.

Merry Christmas!

Results … Month #5

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Results … Month #5 (Down 33.8 lbs)Results Month 5

Is this a diet that is beginning to fail or do I have a good excuse for such a modest loss in this, the 5th month of the program?

I’m going to claim that I’ve got a good excuse! And I will use that same excuse for being almost two weeks late in posting my weight loss for the previous month. I think I’ve just come through the most harrowing couple of months of my life. I’m not talking the extreme stress that might be the consequence of the loss of a loved one here. Nor am I talking financial ruin, nor any major health issue. What I am talking about is taking one of those life-changing decisions that saw me pick up all the dominoes & just toss them in the air!

In a nutshell, we decided to move to the coast. At the 11th hour, following a vacation, we changed direction & switched coasts! Our house sold quickly. With a short closing. And the maelstrom began. I won’t bore you with all the details but let me share one anecdote from the adventure that that typifies how totally upended our lives have become. En route to our new destination, we left our hotel room to eat. When we returned, the cat was missing! We were stressed enough already, this was just too much. Had housekeeping opened the door to let our moggie escape? After half an hour of searching the room, wandering the lobby and corridors of the hotel, we finally discovered our missing pet. She had, somehow, found a hole in the fabric of the box-spring and made her way inside the box-spring base of the bed!

Amid all the turmoil of fast-closing houses, finding a replacement home with a short closing was a huge challenge. Scheduling movers, cancelling services, signing up for new services, & all the stuff of moving are challenging at the best of times. Doing all that over long distances more so. Having to do everything under the pressure of such short, & tight, deadlines gave me an enduring dose of stress the like of which I had not experienced before. And it’s not over yet.

Needless to say, eating well ceased being a priority. And yes, I’ve eaten all the bad stuff you could imagine over the course of the past six weeks. I’ve had fish ‘n’ chips, Chinese take-out, & I’ve even eaten pizza, bread base & all. I’ve munched cookies & sucked on sweets to keep me alert as I’ve driven through snow storms. I’ve fallen down so many times that I can barely recognize which way is up any more. Mea culpa.

On the bright side, since I started this whole exercise, I have learned a lot about what & how I should be eating. And I seem to have developed a penchant for doing the right thing. Even under such pressure, I have a noticeable bias towards making better food choices. While bread is so easy to eat on the road, I veered towards better eating following every bread binge. While the sugar fixes kept me going on long drives, I tended to avoid sugar the following day. The upshot of it all is that I was down two pounds in a month of some serious stress, some serious dietary abuse, along with a total lack of routine & familiar surroundings.

All in all, given the circumstances, I’d say that my two-pound loss wasn’t all bad for that particular month.

Now, in advance, I’m trying to come up with an excuse for this month’s possibly disastrous outcome! And if our new appliances aren’t delivered before Christmas, it might be a turkey sandwich picnic on the beach for Christmas dinner! 🙂

PS … I carried the scale with me on the drive to our new home. The weight recorded is the weight on December 1st. My intentions were good!