Category Archives: Recipes I Try From Books:

Tofu tastes good! When you fry it, of course.

As we all know, everything is made better by frying, especially vegetables. Well, now I’ve discovered that it works on tofu, too. I just went into the kitchen hungry, and thought I’d try another Kind Diet recipe: Crispy Tofu Slices with Orange Dipping Sauce.

It’s delicious! Basically you dredge slices of marinated tofu in a mixture of flours, and then you fry them up. There’s a dipping sauce included, which I need to figure out how to thicken. It’s just orange juice and maple syrup, and it doesn’t cling to the tofu as well as I’d like, but then of course in my ideal magical world sugar just clings to everything in an inch-thick crust, without making our arteries hard or giving us diabetes. What a world!

Here’s what the tofu looks like when you take it out of the package. It comes marinated (I’d never noticed marinated tofu before, but it’s there – at least at PCC in Seattle it’s there):

Tofu, the marinated kind

About as appealing as raw meat, wouldn’t you say? But you slice it up, dredge it in a mix of flours, and then fry it in a pan of oil (the recipe calls for safflower but I used canola):

Tofu sizzling

Then you lay it out on some paper towels to soak up the excess oil (there isn’t much at all), whip up the dipping juice, and viola! Tofu that isn’t that offensive! In fact it’s actually quite nice!

The Kind Diet Crispy Tofu Slices with Orange Dipping Sauce

I was still hesitant to eat it. It’s TOFU after all. I got fooled a few weeks ago when we all hopped in the car to go get a Christmas tree, and I ordered “tofu wraps” at a Pho place. DISASTER. It tasted like soft, mushy, soapy shoe leather. This was after just a few days of being vegetarian, and let me tell you, I was rethinking my options. Greg ventured a bite and said, “Oh it’s not that bad,” and then went back to his delicious-smelling beef broth and noodles. And then I threw food at him.

In this recipe, I’m sure that it helped a lot having the tofu both marinated and fried. I can’t eat a lot of fried foods due to my lipid levels, but this fine to eat once in awhile (certainly much healthier than my usual curly fries), and I’m guessing I could even get this past the kids if I called it chicken. If I call it tofu I might as well call it snails and make Jason speak French all through dinner.

Barley eludes me

For the last couple weeks I’ve been trying to make Barley Casserole, from Alicia Silverstone’s yummy new book, The Kind Diet. I finally had to post on her website’s forums today:

I’ve tried this three times, but I can’t get past the barley. Each time the barley gets either burnt or turns to mush.

The directions say:

“Bring 3 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan; add the barley, and cook for approximately 55 to 60 minutes or until tender. Drain off any remaining water, and set cooked barley aside.”

I assume there should be a comment in there about turning down the heat to simmer, right? Are you supposed to keep the barley at a boil for an hour? That didn’t make sense to me, so I simmered it for an hour. The first time it cooked too long and got mushy. The second time I let it boil too long and it burned. The third time I thought I had it right, but it was mushy again.
Has anyone else made this dish? Any barley tips?

What about you guys? Any BARLEY MASTERS out there? Care to share your magic?

Bought some hand weights tonight

The old hand weights were too small (1lb and 3lb, that I’d use while doing aerobics), so Greg and Beth and I picked up some new ones today. I have a set of 5lb, a set of 8lb, and a medicine ball that weighs 8lbs, that I’m already having too much fun with. Everything was surprisingly inexpensive.

I also got 101 Ways to Work Out With Weights today, and it looks great. The author looks like someone sculpted her muscles onto her with babe clay. I found it pretty inspiring after looking at raw food waifs for the last few months, who all seem to think thin is beautiful. I haven’t seen a single woman raw foodist with visible muscles yet.

I worked out for awhile tonight with the weights, taking it very, very easy. I made a list of the exercises I did so that I can build up from them over time, and I also took my measurements. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the yellow tape time. While I didn’t care for some of the numbers, I like data, and I like the idea of getting super crazy strong and having muscles I can actually measure. With the exception of my waist which made me nervous because visceral fat is so volatile; I didn’t feel afraid of being big. Rather, I felt like I was delineating my space, and now it’s time not to shrink necessarily, but just transform the soft stuff into hard stuff. Doesn’t that sound like more fun than just “losing weight”? I think so.

Week 3 Summary: Changing habits around food and exercise requires change around other areas of life, too

It’s Tuesday morning, and the start of a new week. Last week was just messy. I did accomplish my goals last week (see the Progress chart for latest notes), but barely. I was exhausted, I hardly exercised at all, my anxiety problems were acting up, and there was a lot of stress. As if to punctuate all this, I awoke to jackhammering right outside our window – the neighbor is apparently destroying her driveway. It’s three hours later and still going strong. Where did I put that tranquilizer dart gun again? I’m humming the theme song to Wild Kingdom…..

All that aside, my life is amazing in a hundred small and large ways, and I’m incredibly grateful, and not intending to complain. I do notice though, that eating better, exercising more, and trying to change one’s lifetime habits are hard to do if life is in any way extra stressful. It’s a matter of maintaining concentration in the face of distraction, as well as letting go of comforting (and fat-producing) habits right when you crave them the most.

My weight didn’t change this week, and that gets me down a little bit. It’s hard to picture yourself still on the path when you aren’t actually going anywhere. But I am still moving, even if I’m taking turtle steps. I got a new book that should arrive today or tomorrow: 101 Ways to Work Out with Weights. I love doing strength training at home, with dumbbells or kettle bells, but I don’t have any books about making your own workouts. This got great reviews, and I’m excited to see where it takes me. I also started writing out some lists of meals we all like (feeding three adults and two kids consistently and nutritiously is a lot harder than I realized).

But outside of exercise and food, the real work of this week was changing other habits. To eat better and get in shape and lose weight, you just pick healthier food and go to the gym, right? Wrong. Changing your habits around food and exercise requires planning, and exploring. That takes time and motivation, both of which are in short supply when life is otherwise completely overwhelming. How do you find more time? How do you get less overwhelmed? These are questions that I have to answer before I accomplish things.

This past week:

- I cleaned off my desk at home, and got my files organized, so that answering mail and paying bills will hopefully be a breeze.

- I put a give-away box in the closet, and have started chucking clothes I don’t wear that often. This is freeing up space in my drawers, making laundry time easier, and making my mornings easier because I can reach for things quickly.

- I started spending an hour a night just puttering around, cleaning up anything that needs cleaning. I count this in part toward my exercise, since I’m usually worn out afterward (but feeling great).

- I’m putting aside time every day to READ. How on earth does sitting on your ass help you lose weight and get in shape? No, I’m not reading diet books. I’m actually reading The Player of Games. But reading every day, or every evening, means that when I go to bed I don’t sit up until 2am with my headlamp and my book. And getting more sleep means I’m more awake during the day and have a much more cheerful attitude, which makes it a lot easier to eat better and stay on track. Win win!

Week 3 may look like everything is stalled, but I think that’s an illusion. Things are actually ticking along even better than before. They’re just ticking quieter, and deeper down. Am I right? Will all this pan out to my eating better and getting in shape? I guess we’ll see! If it does, I’m totally writing a book entitled, “How To Sit On Your Ass and Read Your Way To Better Health”, which will soar to the NYT bestseller list, as everyone sits on their ass to read it.

Staying Heart-Healthy Part 2: The Diet Wars, cont.

The longer I write this blog and read about nutrition, the more interested I become in the idea that diet is the way that we can stay healthy into old age. The key to longevity, as far as I can tell, is to avoid heart disease in cancer. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women, in the United States. Cancer is second. It’s very likely that a significant percentage of people reading this blog will eventually die from one of these two. The older I get, the more intent I become on not being a heart disease or cancer statistic.

When last we left, I was reading a new book about a diet based in low-fat veganism, and I was commenting on how ridiculous I think the Atkins diet is. When the author of a diet book advises you to eat all the bacon you want and then dies from a fall, overweight, with heart disease and high blood pressure, it should go without saying that this isn’t a diet you want to try.

But what about Paleo diets? They aren’t “low carb” in the Atkins sense of the phrase, they’re a whole different story, chock full of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grass-fed meat. As someone who loves anthropology, the story is fascinating. Paleo diet proponents claim that we aren’t evolved to eat grains, and a diet stocked with them (refined grains are obviously out, but they’re talking about whole grains, too), leads to disease.

The Paleo Diet

The low-fat vegan diet proponents (T. Colin Campbell, Dean Ornish, Joel Furhman, John McDougall), whose books I’ve read and studied, are all medical doctors with multiple articles among them. Their diets have been the subject of numerous studies. Ornish and Furhman have both reversed heart disease, and I recently read that McDougall’s specialty is bringing women back to health from breast cancer.

The Paleo Diet - Loren CordainThe Paleo diet proponents are still new to me, but the most popular writer seems to be Loren Cordain, who wrote The Paleo Diet. He’s frequently referred to as “Dr. Cordain”, but my search to uncover what his doctorate is in has been unsuccessful so far. In his book he calls himself an avid researcher of “health, nutrition, and fitness”.

Paleo dieters are all over the web now, and they’ve brought a lot to the discussion. Put “Paleo Diet” into Google, and you’ll find a wealth of links to sort through. Both the low-fat vegans and the Paleo proponents are very concerned with heart disease – the statistics they quote match up throughout my books, and both sides claim that their diet will keep you from developing it. The low-fat vegan proponents claim (and have proven, in several studies), and their diet will even reverse it.

The general Paleo viewpoint, from my reading:

  • The genes of modern humans haven’t changed significantly from their stone-age counterparts.
  • These stone age people were short-lived only because of trauma (injuries, falls, etc), and were otherwise extremely healthy; “Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them.” (1)
  • In modern hunter-gatherer societies…..”10-20% of the population is 60 years of age or older. These elderly people have been shown to be generally free of the signs and symptoms of chronic disease (obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels) that universally afflict the elderly in western societies.” (2)
  • These paleolithic humans at a diet composed of meat, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and that is what we should be eating today.
  • Grains, beans, and potatoes, are all toxic when raw and retain some of that toxicity when cooked. They’re also low in nutrients and have a high glycemic index. (1) Replacing them with fruits and vegetables is the healthiest alternative. Incidentally, raw food advocates say the same thing.

Paleo dieters claim that by eating this way, they’ve recovered their health and lost weight.

Where To Go From Here?

I’d hoped to write all day, picking pieces out from both sides of the debate, but my life is just too busy with other things right now, including teaching myself how to cook (let’s get some more recipes on here!), finding out what the weird smell is in my office, teaching my daughter to read, and getting our household ready to move back to Seattle in a few months.

INSTEAD, what I’ve decided to do is to just pull out conversation points on all this as I go along, post them, and see where we end up.

On the Dangers of Becoming a Google Scientist

One of the Paleo blogs I really enjoy is Son of Grok. In a post on 7/14/09, called Where Has the Motivation Gone? , he said:

Another thing that kills me is all the Google Scientists around. I don’t mean scientists employed by Google, I instead mean the guy who Googles a topic, does a bit of reading on it and suddenly thinks he is the Sir Isaac Newton of the topic. Also in this group are the micro-nutrient micro-analyzers and the people who try to way over science the approach in my opinion.

I don’t want either myself or this blog to ever assume it has all the answers. I love learning, I love reading, and I love sleuthing out information. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but whatever I end up doing the most of, I never want to give the impression that someone doing it differently is, by definition, doing it wrong. No matter what anyone says, I deeply believe that every BODY is different, that what works for one person isn’t going to work for every person. If anything, I think that’s the missing ingredient in all this. What if A LOT OF THINGS are right? What if it isn’t just one thing?

Isn’t that more exciting than one side having all the answers?

Questions? Comments?

Do you have questions you want answers to? Are you befuddled by any of this stuff? Or do you feel like you have answers you want to share? Comment away! I’ll make a list and address everything in future posts.

Links on this page:
(1) Introduction to the Paleolithic Diet, by Dr. Ben Balzer, family physician
(2) The Paleo Diet – FAQ – Loren Cordain’s website