Sugar, Sugar Everywhere!
Peanut-Butter Cap'n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Quisp, Pop-Tarts, Entenmann's Coffee Cake... ah, the building blocks of my childhood, the breakfast of Midwest school-children-champions. Perhaps with a glass of orange juice or milk (except orange juice made me ill, and I hated milk as a child, still do, actually, unless it's used in scarcity with strong coffee).
For lunch, a white bread sandwich with lunch-meat, American cheese, mayo and a one-serving bag of Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos or potato chips followed by a small treat, perhaps a Little Debbie oatmeal pie. Usually accompanied by a small milk carton, just big enough for grade-school hands.
For dinner, meat accompanied by mashed potatoes or noodles and heated frozen vegetables which I was not allowed to leave the table without eating. Beverages... milk for Mom, a beer for dad, soda or juice or milk for myself and my brothers. (Whoever cleared the table after dinner would mix the remnants of all the leftover drinks together and tell the other one to drink it. Except the beer... I think.) Dessert always followed dinner... a cookie or some ice cream or another wonderful treat.
This, my friends, is a gastronomic snapshot of my childhood. Like many kids in the Midwest, heck, probably in the States, I was raised on refined flour and sugar.
Okay, Mom, if you are reading this, don't be offended. I loved my childhood, food and all. And I hold dear the Midwest way of food being an integral part of hospitality. It's true, readers. If ever you come to my apartment, you will not leave without being "fed and watered." Because even if you aren't hungry or in need of a beverage, eventually your steadfastness will crumble under the exuberance of my Midwest instincts.
And, oh goodness, sometimes even now I will revert to that type of childhood lunch with glee.
With a few refinements.
Lenny's #1 - grilled pastrami, corned beef, coleslaw and Swiss on seven grain bread - plus kettle-cooked jalapeno potato chips with seltzer followed by a lovely bite or two of dark chocolate (or peanut M&Ms).
So, when I realized somewhere in my mid-twenties, I had to give up sugar to help improve a pesky health problem being caused by yeast, I was not just changing my diet; I was changing years of habit, of taste, of comfort.
By that point, I was already on my way to becoming a vegetarian. I had changed a lot... whole grains were part of the ongoing menu. Meat was almost absent from my belly. And, I was studying... devouring information from all corners... books, yoga teachers, my crazy roommate (at the time), the Web.
I knew by this point that sugar meant not only "sugar" but high fructose corn syrup. I dispensed with as many food items as I could containing these items. And that, my friends is tough to do in any grocery store. If you doubt the veracity of that statement, read a few labels.
A few years after I first started limiting my sugar intake, (with a few kooks in between that you have yet to hear about), I sat in the office of a specialist, an important woman who had delivered famous babies with funny names, and was told that "sugar" also meant anything that acted like sugar in the body, e.g., honey, maple syrup, molasses, white flour, white rice, potatoes, and alcohol.
Horror!
Oh the sheer horror.
The saving grace?
Dessert once a week, only if you have to, and if you are going out, have vodka or gin, nothing like a classic martini.
I stopped eating honey, maple syrup, molasses, bananas, mango, pineapple. By that point, I had already cut myself off from white flour, white rice and potatoes.
But, I took my once a week and ran with that dessert.
I took the vodka and ran... still running with that one. (I never really like the juniper taste of gin though I'm learning now that not all gins are equal, of course.)
I bought Get the Sugar Out by Anne Louise Gittleman.
I experimented. I had already gone through a three-month period of preparing every bite of food that went into my mouth whether meal or snack, and yet still, I experimented.
And sometimes, I cried. My then boyfriend gave me a brown 8 x 12 clasp-style envelope for Valentine's Day holding a poorly drawn Valentine covered with the dust of a handful of conversation hearts that were bouncing around inside. Because, really, he asked, what do you get someone who can't eat sugar for Valentine's Day.
Oh, my. There are countless answers to that question, none of which we will digress into here.
It was a long haul from Cocoa Puffs to a diet free of refined foods. And, every time I enjoy a glass of wine, like the Arboreto Montepulciano I am sipping at Vesta in my hood this very moment, I thank Dionysus (and maybe Shiva), it was only temporary.
But it was not temporary in the way that things return to their status quo. It was transforming. Slowly, over months that became years, my taste buds changed. They were no longer sugar whores, and everything, from vegetables to rice to dark chocolate tasted... well, how do I explain? Tasted wonderful and different and complex. Because my taste buds weren't slapping their veins for sugar; they were experiencing life!
(Okay, it's totally fine if that made you laugh.)
It was during that time, I discovered one of my all-time favorite snacks: roasted sweet potatoes, rolled in whole wheat tortillas with peanut or almond butter with a few tiny pieces of super dark chocolate (because it has less sugar). Microwave it for 20 seconds before consumption.
And now, a whole doughnut from my previously favorite baker Dunkin would probably make me toss my cookies. Those things got me through High School, along with pie at Baker's Square. But alas, now it's everything in moderation (except cocktails).
That's all I have! Stay tuned!
Oh, and by the way, LP and I went to the newly opened East Side Social Club on East 51st this week. My jury is still out. First visit indicates the house specials aren't so fab, but the cheese plate was delicious and the broccoli rabe was superb!
Peanut-Butter Cap'n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Quisp, Pop-Tarts, Entenmann's Coffee Cake... ah, the building blocks of my childhood, the breakfast of Midwest school-children-champions. Perhaps with a glass of orange juice or milk (except orange juice made me ill, and I hated milk as a child, still do, actually, unless it's used in scarcity with strong coffee).
For lunch, a white bread sandwich with lunch-meat, American cheese, mayo and a one-serving bag of Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos or potato chips followed by a small treat, perhaps a Little Debbie oatmeal pie. Usually accompanied by a small milk carton, just big enough for grade-school hands.
For dinner, meat accompanied by mashed potatoes or noodles and heated frozen vegetables which I was not allowed to leave the table without eating. Beverages... milk for Mom, a beer for dad, soda or juice or milk for myself and my brothers. (Whoever cleared the table after dinner would mix the remnants of all the leftover drinks together and tell the other one to drink it. Except the beer... I think.) Dessert always followed dinner... a cookie or some ice cream or another wonderful treat.
This, my friends, is a gastronomic snapshot of my childhood. Like many kids in the Midwest, heck, probably in the States, I was raised on refined flour and sugar.
Okay, Mom, if you are reading this, don't be offended. I loved my childhood, food and all. And I hold dear the Midwest way of food being an integral part of hospitality. It's true, readers. If ever you come to my apartment, you will not leave without being "fed and watered." Because even if you aren't hungry or in need of a beverage, eventually your steadfastness will crumble under the exuberance of my Midwest instincts.
And, oh goodness, sometimes even now I will revert to that type of childhood lunch with glee.
With a few refinements.
Lenny's #1 - grilled pastrami, corned beef, coleslaw and Swiss on seven grain bread - plus kettle-cooked jalapeno potato chips with seltzer followed by a lovely bite or two of dark chocolate (or peanut M&Ms).
So, when I realized somewhere in my mid-twenties, I had to give up sugar to help improve a pesky health problem being caused by yeast, I was not just changing my diet; I was changing years of habit, of taste, of comfort.
By that point, I was already on my way to becoming a vegetarian. I had changed a lot... whole grains were part of the ongoing menu. Meat was almost absent from my belly. And, I was studying... devouring information from all corners... books, yoga teachers, my crazy roommate (at the time), the Web.
I knew by this point that sugar meant not only "sugar" but high fructose corn syrup. I dispensed with as many food items as I could containing these items. And that, my friends is tough to do in any grocery store. If you doubt the veracity of that statement, read a few labels.
A few years after I first started limiting my sugar intake, (with a few kooks in between that you have yet to hear about), I sat in the office of a specialist, an important woman who had delivered famous babies with funny names, and was told that "sugar" also meant anything that acted like sugar in the body, e.g., honey, maple syrup, molasses, white flour, white rice, potatoes, and alcohol.
Horror!
Oh the sheer horror.
The saving grace?
Dessert once a week, only if you have to, and if you are going out, have vodka or gin, nothing like a classic martini.
I stopped eating honey, maple syrup, molasses, bananas, mango, pineapple. By that point, I had already cut myself off from white flour, white rice and potatoes.
But, I took my once a week and ran with that dessert.
I took the vodka and ran... still running with that one. (I never really like the juniper taste of gin though I'm learning now that not all gins are equal, of course.)
I bought Get the Sugar Out by Anne Louise Gittleman.
I experimented. I had already gone through a three-month period of preparing every bite of food that went into my mouth whether meal or snack, and yet still, I experimented.
And sometimes, I cried. My then boyfriend gave me a brown 8 x 12 clasp-style envelope for Valentine's Day holding a poorly drawn Valentine covered with the dust of a handful of conversation hearts that were bouncing around inside. Because, really, he asked, what do you get someone who can't eat sugar for Valentine's Day.
Oh, my. There are countless answers to that question, none of which we will digress into here.
It was a long haul from Cocoa Puffs to a diet free of refined foods. And, every time I enjoy a glass of wine, like the Arboreto Montepulciano I am sipping at Vesta in my hood this very moment, I thank Dionysus (and maybe Shiva), it was only temporary.
But it was not temporary in the way that things return to their status quo. It was transforming. Slowly, over months that became years, my taste buds changed. They were no longer sugar whores, and everything, from vegetables to rice to dark chocolate tasted... well, how do I explain? Tasted wonderful and different and complex. Because my taste buds weren't slapping their veins for sugar; they were experiencing life!
(Okay, it's totally fine if that made you laugh.)
It was during that time, I discovered one of my all-time favorite snacks: roasted sweet potatoes, rolled in whole wheat tortillas with peanut or almond butter with a few tiny pieces of super dark chocolate (because it has less sugar). Microwave it for 20 seconds before consumption.
And now, a whole doughnut from my previously favorite baker Dunkin would probably make me toss my cookies. Those things got me through High School, along with pie at Baker's Square. But alas, now it's everything in moderation (except cocktails).
That's all I have! Stay tuned!
Oh, and by the way, LP and I went to the newly opened East Side Social Club on East 51st this week. My jury is still out. First visit indicates the house specials aren't so fab, but the cheese plate was delicious and the broccoli rabe was superb!
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