Ripped from the Headlines

Serving up lamb in a rare, delightfully nasty way

One of these days I'll write a longer post about the joys of discovering the fiction Roald Dahl wrote for adults, rather than children (most of us only know him by his "Matilda" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" books). It's twisty, detailed, tightly-written and often delightfully nasty.

But for now, I'll send you to one of his greatest: "Lamb to the Slaughter," which seems to be following me around this weekend: The New York Times Education Life section featured a psychology quiz that cited the story, and my fellow TV writer Marc Berman (of TV Media Insights) noted that today in 1958 "Alfred Hitchock Presents" aired the (very well done) televised version of the story.

In the tale, a mousy, pregnant housewife dispatches her husband by clonking him on the head with a leg of lamb and then finds an ingenious way to get rid of the evidence.

Read it here, or watch the episode here. You'll be doing yourself a favor, particularly if you're spurred to hunt down more of Dahl's short stories.

 

Dune, the dessert planet

I have fallen off the posting wagon, not for lack of things to say, but time to say them in. So in honor of my recent "Dune" posting, I'll just leave you with this. "Dune," in gummi worms.

It is, as one wag in the comments notes, a dessert planet.

Be back anon.

 

Blackouts and slippery slopes

Blackout day! Today, several sites around the Internet will be blacking themselves out for 24 hours to bring awareness to SOPA/PIPA, legislation that wants to start the process of muzzling the internet on behalf of corporations. That's a huge generalization, but I've only got a few minutes here. It is funny to think how quickly we've become reliant on things like Wikipedia for information; there was one Twitterer who was amassing all the collective moanings of students saying they wouldn't know how to do their homework without it. Hello: Libraries. We're letting our kids down if the only way they think they can get information is via the internet. The collective hive mind is great and powerful, but only works if we have electricity and a hundred other things going right.

Anyway: Went out of town Friday through Monday. Did my best to eat Paleo by way of the convention food that was available; did bring nuts, dried fruits and real fruit but didn't have a proper refrigerator. The hard-boiled eggs in the staff den were so hard boiled you could have balanced furniture on them; the fruit was excellent, but three days of that is fairly dull. Got a lot of Caesar salads, but even there it's dodgy: No croutons, no cheese, and the dressing is also a no go, so finally I just threw up my hands and did my best. I had one very "off" meal at Redbones (ribs, dontcha know) and that's OK. Then came the cookies. It's a very short slope down to where things had been. That said, I'm back on track and doing well. Really -- not so much cravings, as we don't keep that stuff around the house -- but if you put cake in front of me I am going to start thinking about it.

Caaaaaake.

On a B road heading for the sea

Heading out of town this weekend, going up to Boston. Nice thing about the train is you can pack extra food and not worry about whether anything's going to be considered "liquid" or a "gel." I've made some more of the awesome Caveman Crunch (civilizedcavemancooking.com/grain-free-goodies/caveman-crunch/) and have dried fruit and real fruit and am taking salad. If all goes well we're supposed to have an empty fridge in the room. When you're staying in a hotel not just to sleep but to do most of your activities for three days, pre-packing seems to make sense. This will be the longest I'll be away from home since starting Paleo (not saying much, it only being Jan. 13 (Happy Luck Day!) but still.

The one "open" meal I'm allowing myself (we get three each week but it just hasn't seemed too necessary at this point) will be on Sunday, when we hit Redbones in Somerville. You can't keep me away from ribs forever! But as to the open meals: What I've decided at this stage (at least until we see how the scale is registering) is that rather than go a whole meal, something like salad dressing is something I'm going to leave open at the moment. It's a small amount, I don't use full-fat/sugar/what have you ones anyway, and the dressings Paleo provides that I've tried are thus far pretty wretched, with short shelf lives. So that's something I think is OK.

And that's my navel-gazing for today. On to Boston, where updates are less likely!

Making an ass out of you and me (mostly me) plus, pork recipes

Eh, so there you go: One week into the blog and I skip a day. It happens.

Still continuing Paleo, best as I can: We went to dinner on Sunday (discussed) and I had lunch with a colleague yesterday. Did pretty good there: No bread from the table, ordered more sea bass. It came with soba noodles, which I had swapped out for broccoli, so the only questionable item was the miso soup it came in, but that's mainly about the salt.

Last night for dinner I improvised with our pork cutlets, making up an apple-walnut-olive oil-sage-thyme concoction in the pan and then adding it to the meat that went in the oven. The thing about pork is it needs slow cooking and we don't give it enough, so the meat was a bit tough but the apple/walnut combo was delish. I have to atone for all my years of hating on walnuts. I still don't want them in my brownies, but alone and in recipes like this they are terrific.

Unrelated: Know how you sometimes hear what you wanna hear? Had a great example of that yesterday. I thought my colleague had said she'd have her company pay for lunch, but that made zero sense because she's a freelancer like me. She has no expense account! So I took 100% of the responsibility for the faux pas when it came out over lunch, and all is well. Yet another way in which life is not like a sitcom.

Open meal decisions

Week two of the Paleo!

That makes it sound more exciting than it is. Though seriously, it's not a bad food program to be on; I'm not really craving bread or chocolate. I'm certainly not over either of those things; I'd have a slice of challah and butter in a second if I didn't think it was the road to ruin, but I'm okay. Last night M and I went out to a restaurant for the first time since starting up Paleo -- Persian Glatt Kosher, if you like that combo -- and one nice thing about the "diet" is that you can do open meals. In theory, at this stage, I can do 3 "eat what you like within moderation" a week; I did maybe one all of last week. So while I didn't go bananas at the restaurant -- my main course was grilled sea bass with salad -- I also didn't feel bad having baba ganoush with two triangles of pita bread and a few pickles. The place even gave free fruit for dessert, so that was completely on schedule.

Weighed self; nothing huge to report but again, nothing to compare it against. Here's the baseline, and the best I can say is it wasn't horrible considering how much I ate over the holidays. It was reasonable, which says to me I probably dropped a bit last week before the weighing. But next Sunday should provide a better measure.

Also worth noting: Not feeling ill. Definitely back to normal now.

Unrelated: Saw a CBS Sunday Morning program while working out this AM that talked about charisma, and how something like 3/4 of people say this weighs heavily in their presidential decision-making. I guess I can respect that honesty, but the truth is charisma scares me a bit: It covers -- or can cover -- a multitude of sins, and I'm always a little wary of people who seem a little too ... glowing. Am I alone in this?

On the road to feeling normal

Day five! Feeling a whole lot better today. I'm still not going to say 100%, but almost entirely back to normal. Not sleepy, not nauseous, not anything out of the ordinary. So M was correct: Not a flu. Hurrah!

Benefits thus far: I always sleep well, but sleeping just great. Nice and deep, rarely up. M, who doesn't always sleep well, is also sleeping well (for him), but he tends to go in cycles. I'm crossing my fingers this is a result of less salt in his diet. (He's not full Paleo, but by dint of living with me, is at least partly so.)

One other item of note worth, well, noting: Today's elliptical workout was really tough. There are some days you breeze through it and some you just feel like you've never been on the machine ever, and today was one of those days. Wonder what's up with that.

Short (not really) and sweet (not at all)

Keeping things short today: Definitely feeling better, but I still won't say 100%. Last night, I told M that I was running a low-grade fever (went as high as 99.6, which considering I'm usually 97-ish is high for me) and he said that's all part of the process. So if I turn out to have a huge flu coming on, we know who to point fingers at!

I think he has a point, though. That said, it's more an emotional thing at this point: I think about not eating dairy, bread or sweets for an extended time and things just seem so bleak. And it's only four days in! I need to look into substitute recipes here, though of course I won't be 100% Paleo forever.

There's a terrific article in the New York Times Magazine, about how the body fights back at us when we try and lose weight. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html

In it, they speak with an older couple who have lost a lot of weight but have to exhaustively monitor their food behavior and work out over an hour each day just to maintain. It's tiring just reading what they have to go through, but it mimics my experiences. I feel like the human body is like a rechargeable battery: Every time you charge it up, the "memory" in the battery moves up so that eventually you can't get it to hold any power. I feel like every time we go on a diet or starve ourselves we're changing the information the body has about how we get food, and the body learns not to trust that it will come regularly or in amounts that are healthy, so it shifts gears and makes us work harder, each time, to lose it again.

Probably has no basis in reality. But anyway, the article is worth a read ... it says that the whole losing weight thing and keeping it off is so hard because our bodies are fighting back at us. I've only found actual success with a diet when I go into that incredibly exhaustive total concentration mode: 1000 calories a day, 30 minutes exercise, and an almost religious fear of going over the amount. That helped about 10 years ago when I lost about 30lbs, but it's just not sustainable -- at least not for me. I think I'm pretty realistic about my goals, but just getting to them without getting bored/exhausted/etc. before I get there is the really hard part.

So much for not going long. Must work. Feeling better, but a little hungry at the moment. Will see what's on the docket for breakfast!

Ick fades, yearning rises

While it seems unlikely anyone is reading this, I am endeavoring to be consistent! Here we are on Day 3 of the Paleo. Most of the icky feeling is gone, though I feel a teensy bit queasy. Also beginning to long for some cheese and bread.

But thus far: It is true that you aren't hungry. The only problem is the only way to sate that hunger are fruits, veggies, seeds/nuts and meat. And sometimes you just want something with chocolate.

The good news is that I have decided, against years of reverse belief, that I like walnuts raw. That and almonds. I didn't think my palate would expand further at this age, but there you are. Also, I had figs last night and they were delish!

In other unrelated news: So, Romney wins by a half a hair in Iowa? This does not surprise me. He is the Republican's Kerry: They don't really like him, but they ain't got nothing more presidential.

Sweet as....

There's something about the date here ... a three, followed by a 14, followed by a whole bunch of other numbers ... ah, well, I'll just have dessert.

http://thedailywh.at/2011/03/14/obligatory-of-the-day-6/