Another thing I’m learning is that I must, must, must have protein at my first meal. I can couple that protein with healthy carb/fiber, but full-on grains just kill me in the morning. I don’t just mean bagels or toast — even a healthy breakfast of steel-cut oats can send me crashing to the bottom of Carb Canyon and then messes with my digestion. So, for breakfast I try to pair a lean protein with fruit or vegetables and it’s enough fuel to see me through to lunch.

Weight Watchers mornings present a special challenge. My meeting is late enough to allow me to sleep in. (Blessed, blessed sleep.) With a 10:00 start time, I don’t get so ravenously hungry or thirsty before weigh-in that I feel I’ve done real damage. Then, though, the most reasonable time for me to do laundry is after the meeting. More than once, to fuel up for the laundromat, I’ve thought — “I’ll just grab some fast food. Just this once can’t hurt.”

But, it’s not just the calorie of the thing. It’s the soft-serve, hot-and-cold-running crap that awaits me at the fast food drive-thru. It’s the fake cheeses, fake eggs, and fake meats. Generally, I’m pretty good about packing lunches and snacks. But, when I’m on the run and have a hunger emergency, I sometimes need to find fast food in other places than the drive-thru. Sue me.

Here’s one solution that I’ve found:

Most grocery store produce sections will have sliced-up melons and fruits for sale in cups. It’s way too pricey for every-day use, but it works in this particular pinch. Then, I’ve found that many deli-meat manufacturers are selling single-serve pouches of meats. These pouches contain 70 or 90 calories of turkey. Yes, deli meats are notoriously high in sodium, but that salty flavor makes the breakfast feel like a melon and prosciutto plate. Since I first tasted that delicious combination in Paris, I always feel like it is super fancy and even the cheap grocery-store knockoff version satisfies me on an emotional and mental level in addition to the physical.

I swing by the store’s salad bar and smuggle a fork and a napkin and, if I need to, grab a bottle of water at the register. Voila! For less than the cost of a drive-thru meal, I’ve satisfied my need for protein/fiber combo and avoided that dangerous, soul-sucking hunger.

What do you do when you’re on the run? Help me continue to Ditch the Drive-thru!

Well, who can blame me?

I like to counter his wiley, psychological ways by stating that I’m living out an unfulfilled fantasy of being tiny myself. An as yet unfulfilled fantasy. But, I digress.

Last year, when I was getting really serious about packing my lunch for work, I found some websites about bento boxes. Apparently¹ there is a tradition of Japanese mothers carefully packing compact lunches for their children, with cute little touches and flourishes to encourage their healthy eating. Like any good idea, this has been seized on by marketers and now there is a whole industry built up around “cute foods” with accessories and characters and so forth.

Still, a white, adult woman can find some use in the idea, and I bought a few grown-up boxes from J-list (which ships from Japan, so you have to be patient) and a few Ebay stores (most of them ship from the states) and began dutifully packing a small, healthful, interesting lunch every day. I got a lot of inspiration from other websites, bento bloggers² and the flickr.com bento group.

My experience with packing bentos is that it was a really great way to impose portion control, while still being interested in what I was eating. I did not create faces on my food with strips of cheese or use Japanese condiments just because I was using a Japanese tradition (as many bento-ers do, to make their food feel more “cute” in a Hello Kitty way), but I truly enjoyed the time I took each morning to pack lunch, and the challenge of maximizing nutrition, health, and satiety in small packages.

Just like purses and dogs.

This week, I am experiencing a return to bento. My first day, I did so with just plain kitchen containers, so you could see that you don’t have to have a fancy Japanese box to start in on the fun. Believe it or not, I managed to get lunch and THREE snacks into these containers. The larger container is a Ziploc disposable deal that I think is built for packing a sandwich and a few sides. It’s got little compartments, though, so I love it. (Little compartments! So cute!)

Here’s what I did:

1. Tuna salad on a bed of lettuce with sliced grape tomatoes. (Little tomatoes! So cute!) The tuna is one 3-oz can of water-packed tuna, about 3 tbsp of plain yogurt, 1 tbsp of fat-free mayo, and a handful of black beans tossed in for good measure.
2. Here you can see little packets of lemon juice, salt, and pepper that I bought from Minimus.biz when I was really into bento. (Little packets! So cute!) I use these on the tuna salad to make it more juicy and appetizing without wilting the lettuce throughout the day.
3. A Weight Watchers carrot cake. I don’t consider this a dessert, since I don’t find them very enjoyable, but I have some that I want to get rid of.
4. Under the cake, there is a layer of almonds — one ounce worth — which provides yet another snack.
5. A mid-day break of crackers and Laughing Cow cheese (Little cheese!) is perfect when paired with…
6. Grapes. Eating this snack mid-day feels all fancy, like a wine and cheese party (even though I don’t drink wine).
7. Finally, my favorite standby snack these days is a sliced apple with a tablespoon of all-natural style (yes, the kind you have to stir), reduced fat peanut butter. I find that this snack totally fills me up, provides some protein and good fat, and fiber to keep me going.³

I think I’ll be trying to incorporate more bento-ing into my plans, and dig out my old, cute bento boxes and little tiny condiment bottles and colorful muffin cups and… and… and…

Let’s finish off this cute entry about cute things with one more tribute to the ultimate cute.

That will be all. Carry on, soldiers.

1. I am not Japanese, nor do I know anything about Japanese culture, so I am only reporting hearsay and what I have read on the InterWeb. Do with it what you will. [↩]
2. Seems like just about any weird obsession has its own blogger following these days… [↩]
3. Heh. I just realized how you might read that. OH WELL. [↩]

What sort of amazes me is how much time and energy it takes to eat well and be mindful about things. For me, even after I had pretty well gotten the bingeing under control, I still had a problem with fast food and not, of course, because it tastes so much better than its opposite. (Whole food? Slow food? Speed-impaired food?) Fast food is just easier. It’s quicker to satisfy. It doesn’t involve washing dishes or storing leftovers in little plastic bowls which you then, also, at some point in the future, end up having to wash. Again.

Sure, I watched Super Size Me and was appropriately — even righteously — disgusted. I read Fast Food Nation and nodded my head along the whole way. I still wince when I think of my granny — an old farm girl and my favorite republican hippie — and the whole fresh foods that she insisted on eating and preparing for herself and for us. I know all about trans-fats and about french fries whose first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup and about the whole unfortunate Mystery Meat situation. Cheese substitutes. Formed patties of mincemeat resembling, on some alien planet, a chicken breast or a pork rib or a “nugget.”

It’s not that I don’t understand why fast food is bad for me. It’s just that I work 13-to-14-hour days and I get tired. It’s that I want to spend the weekend with my boyfriend, cuddled up and watching Buffy. It’s that, when you get right down to it, I sometimes lack the mental and physical energy it takes to plan ahead, have ingredients on hand, scrub, pluck, bake, scrape, and scour my way to healthy living.

PastaQueen talks about this very phenonemon in her new year post, stating that:

It will take time: I don’t just mean this in the sense that it will take a year to lose 50 pounds, though it will assuming you lose a pound a week, a safe and attainable rate. I mean you have to take time out of your day to exercise and prepare food.

Fast food is fast for a reason. It is fast in every way. It is quick to deliver what precious few nutrients it contains, then burn out and become lethargy. Become insulin overload. Become fat. It is quick to digest, due to the absence of fiber and natural ingredients. It is first in and first out, in a way. It is fast.

But, I’m trying to eat slower now. Slower in every sense. I’m trying to eat foods that digest slowly, that release their nutrients and energy slowly, that last longer, that require more work. I want to eat this slower food, well, more slowly. To savor and enjoy it. I am not, unfortunately made of money. I cannot hire a personal chef to prepare this food for me, and a maid to clean up the dishes afterward. So, in the service of slow food, here are some things that have helped me on those days when I’m in Danger of Drive Thru.

• Invest in good tools. If all of your tupperware containers have matching lids, if your knives are sharp and easy to clean, if your plates and bowls are microwave friendly, you’ll be more likely to use them. Period. Toss out what doesn’t work and replace it with what does.

• Learn how to cook. I don’t mean “learn how to follow a recipe,” though that’s a good starting place. Learn how ingredients go together, then force yourself to experiment. You don’t like eggplant? Fine. Substitute it for zucchini, winter squash, roasted tomatoes, or something else that you DO like. Read books about basic cooking techniques (poaching, broiling, braising…) and use your imagination. Watch cooking shows. Check cookbooks out from the library and read them for ideas, not recipes. Be brave.

• Prepare ahead. Okay, yes, this one is obvious and I already said that I don’t always have time or energy to do so. Please note that I did not say “Plan Ahead,” which makes me feel constricted — like I don’t have choices. What we are going for here, at Chez Mal, is a combination of interesting options and reasonable alternatives. It’s crucial, for me, to feel that I can make any number of delicious meals that will fill and thrill me, and still get to bed before 11:00 on weeknights.

  So, I very pointedly set aside time each week (usually on the weekend) and I try to use some of that high-energy time to prepare food for the upcoming week. During Prep Time (someone in a blog recently called it “shop and chop”), I may do any combination of the following:
  

  • Slow-bake a pound or so of chicken breast fillets, topped with herbs (rosemary, oregano, chili powder, whatever…). I refrigerate the whole batch, once it’s cooled, and use these throughout the week, chopping them up for sandwiches, salads, and main dishes.
  • Broil a large salmon filet and eyeball it into 4-ounce-ish servings before refrigerating. This is great in salad or as a quick, delicious protein and, like chicken, I don’t mind eating it cold.
  • Roast winter squashes, and mash them with parmesan, fresh-squeezed citrus juice, or nothing at all. Refrigerate in one-cup containers.
  • Simmer a pot of steel-cut oats for quick breakfasts. I like to cook these up with a handful of frozen berries (even cranberries) and a nice dousing of ground-up flax seeds. Stirring it cold with plain yogurt is also delicious, if there’s no time for microwaving.
  • Make big batches of soups, beans, and sauces. Some of my favorites are crock-pot friendly, and involve dried beans (cheap!), homemade tomato pasta sauce (delicious!) and baked meatballs from scratch (proteiny!). All of these can also be frozen and are, if I do say so, awesome.
  • Concoct a simple, fruit-filled muffin that can be refrigerated in individual bags or frozen for a quick breakfast or snack.
  • Chop and freeze fruits for smoothies. I always like to have frozen banana slices on hand because they are so sweet that I never, ever, ever have to add sugar to my smoothies. Recently, I’ve also been chopping up mango and freezing them on cookie sheets until they can be stored in big ziplock bags. Holy smoothie goodness, Batman.
  • Hard boil some eggs. They make quick, on-the-go, reasonable protein alternatives. Also, if you use a pencil or non-toxic pen to mark these puppies (I like to draw emoticons and faces, but you could also go with the boring “HB” for Hard Boiled), you’ll never accidentally go cracking one of them over a bowl when you are trying to make cake.
  
  
• Stock up, but don’t overstock. This applies to shopping wisely for the upcoming week. It reminds me of a recent post over at Veggie Paparazzi where she discusses a few stor-able staples that can be mixed in any combination to make fancy, happy foods. I’ve learned that I need to keep a stock of “easy” foods on hand, without resorting to “sleazy” foods. To do this, I try keep:
  
  • A jar of low-fat natural peanut butter and a collection of gala and fuji apples. It takes 2 minutes to slice up an apple and toss it into a container with 1 tbsp of peanut butter. This is high in fiber, protein, happy mouth-feel, and satisfaction.
  • Frozen fruits and berries, in case of smoothie emergencies. (See above.)
  • Almonds.
  • String cheese.
  • Laughing Cow Light Cheese. Small tupperwares can hold 5-7 sensible crackers and a wedge of cheese. I eat these for afternoon snack with a bunch of grapes and feel that I am being very, very fancy.
  • Cherries, when I can get them.
  • Whole wheat pasta. I prefer the sort of bite-sized kinds (penne, rotini, etc.) to the spaghetti and linguini family, because they cook up with less muss and feel satisfying in my mouth.
  • Lettuce — but not the bagged kind. I find, recently, that lettuce really loses something when it has been sitting off the stem for a few days. It doesn’t take that much more time to rip up lettuce off a head of romaine or red-leaf, it tastes better, and it is cheaper overall.
  • Grape tomatoes. I like to toss these with little balls of fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinegar for an ersatz caprese salad.

• Photograph your food. Okay, this may seem weird. But, the fact is that when I see healthy food, I always want healthy food. This is the same reason why I have rarely (if ever) used a recipe from a cookbook that didn’t have an attached photo — preferably glossy, in full color. One peek at a healthy, colorful plate or bowl of food that I have made (and enjoyed) in the past suddenly makes all of the elbow grease of cooking and cleaning seem worth it. Incidentally, the bowl of lunch-ity goodness shown above includes a pre-roasted chicken breast fillet, a pre-mashed roasted butternut squash, and a quick-steamed head of broccoli. Easy. Delicious. Attractive. Beats a Big Mac every day, but only if I can trick my eyes and my salivary glands into believing so. Enter the digital camera.

• Cheat, but don’t fail. I find that it really helps to have 3-4 delicious, healthy-ish frozen meals available to me for those days when I just can’t. By this, I don’t really mean to buy “Lean Cuisine” or other supposedly healthy, cheap food. I mean frozen dishes that will really fill the void that your mind creates when it thinks that only a Quarter Pounder will do. I like Amy’s Organic entrees, and really recommend the Indian and Mexican choices. The cheese lasagna is also pretty great. Kashi frozen meals are pretty good, too. They taste clean. Fresh. Whole. There are lots of options at organic supermarkets for frozen meals. Many are good. They are filling. The portions are generous, the food is organic, and while it may not be the world’s best choice, it wins the prize if the alternative is a Whopper.

What do you do to make it easier? How do you fit slower foods into your lifestyle? Please do not respond if you are a millionnaire, if you have a private chef on staff, or a full-time maid for clean-up. Tips from people whose significant others volunteer to do the dishes from time to time may be considered.

The cupcakes above are not actual size. In fact, I shrank them down (“reduced,” as our grandmothers would be fond of saying) so as to avoid undue temptation for me or you or anyone else who doesn’t need delicious chocolate cupcakes on their mind. These are the cupcakes I made for my friend’s birthday yesterday, and dealing with the before-and-aftermath of baking them was tricky to say the least. It was a lot like sitting here, looking at the photo of them, and trying to avert my eyes. No really, look away. STOP IT.

I made them from scratch and, without going into the gorey, gooey details, they turned out pretty amazingly. Having never made the recipe, though, I wasn’t prepared for the abundance of cupcake batter it would produce. I probably could have halved the recipe and still had batter to spare., and so I quickly made another dozen cakes to take to staff meeting. There, I reasoned, I could be rid of them and at least get them out of my house.¹

Of course, there was enough batter left for about another half dozen, but I reasoned that I could bake those up when I ran home for lunch hour and then figure out what to do with them. Yes, a part of me thought about eating them all at one sitting, freezing them and attempting to thaw and eat them only one at a time, and any other number of ways that those cupcakes and my intestines could meet and have a one night stand. I tossed the extra batter into the refrigerator and went to work — the diet equivalent of pressing “pause.” I needed more time to think, and only physical distance from the batter could give me clarity.

Then, though, there was the question of the frosting. Again, the recipe I tinkered together was both outrageously delicious and overly abundant. Too. Much. Frosting. To be fair, one ounce of frosting within 500 feet of me is Too. Much. Frosting. Here this was, though, begging to be licked off beaters and “accidentally” “spilled” so that I could just taste it one more time. Just make sure the recipe is right. Just make sure it doesn’t need one more dash of cocoa.

Man. It was a long morning.

I ran home for lunch to finish icing the gift cakes for my friend. Then, I pulled the leftover batter out of the oven. I sat the bowl on the counter, poised with a rubber spatula and a handful of sprinkles. There I stood, staring down the chocolate goo, for a good 12 minutes. All of those scenarios ran through my head again — the midnight binge, the frozen attempt at slowing things down, my “good” behavior this week and related “need” for a reward, and so forth. Then, I picked up the bowl, headed to the sink, and tossed it all in.

I packaged up the leftover frosting and gave it to my friend as part of her birthday present. I licked my fingers (and yes, it was totally delicious) and went back to the office.

This regime is very, very hard work.

1. It turns out that trying to offload 20 or so chocolate cupcakes in the beginning of January is harder than it seems. Most everyone — even the waifiest of waifs — turned me down with excuses of “trying to do a little better” and “not needing” to indulge. [↩]

• Taste [rating:5]
  
• Health [rating:4]
  
• Environment [rating:3]
  
• Processed [rating:5]
  
• Portability [rating:5]
  
• [rating:overall]
  

Taste [rating:5] I tend to like them roasted but raw taste good, too.

Health [rating:4] Tons of healthy fats, but high calorie. Use restraint if you must.

Environment [rating:3] Unless you buy almonds in shell, you will have to buy these packaged. Buying bulk will raise this score, but I had mine in a little can that I don’t think is recyclable.

Processed [rating:5] Sure, you buy them out of their shell, but these are a good, whole food with lots of fiber and no preservatives or artificial sweeteners.

Portability [rating:5] These pack well, and don’t make a mess if they spill in your lunch bag.

[rating:overall]

Click here to complete a survey that will reward you with a free almond tin.¹ The tin is sort of cute, sure², but it also purports to hold exactly one ounce of almonds. Free portion control gadget! Nice! I’m envisioning this thing to arrive looking a hell of a lot like an altoid tin, but I’ll report back when it gets here.

Are the reported health benefits of almonds just the product of a clever marketing ploy? Almonds are high in fat, which eliminates them from healthy eating plans, right?

Almonds are rich in Vitamin E and healthy (monounsaturated) fats. One ounce (about 22-25 almonds) is 163 calories and only 4 Weight Watcher points. South Beach recommends nuts as a healthy snack, but restricts the recommendation to about 3/4 oz (which is only 15 pieces) of almonds as opposed to 30 pistachios (which may feel more satisfying, if you’re all about the quantity). On the flip side, almonds contain many more nutrients (including as much calcium as 1/4 cup of milk) than pistachios, so take your pick.

Also, almond growers have hired great PR guys and I am a sucker for good advertising and ersatz research.

Eating almonds may help maintain or even lose weight. A 2003 study in the International Journal of Obesity found that adding a daily ration of almonds to a low-calorie diet enhanced weight loss, as well as significantly improved risk factors associated with heart disease, when compared to a low-fat, low-calorie diet. Researchers cited almonds’ heart-healthy monounsaturated fat as being very satiating, helping satisfy the appetite and prevent patients from overeating.

1/8/07: Edited to add that a magazine which came to my house tonight cited an “Iowa Nurse’s study” which apparently showed that 1 oz of nuts per day apparently reduced the risk of heart disease by up to 60%. I wish people would cite their research so I could do follow-up, but it does seem like good nut news all around.

1. While supplies last, so hurry. [↩]
2. And totally matches my current website colors! [↩]