Update on Sugarless Diet

I’ve been meaning to update on my relationship with sugar. I really have. I had lofty goals of sharing delicious sugarless recipes weekly, but obviously that hasn’t happened. Mainly, that hasn’t happened because I’ve been busy - studying education psychology, theories of ESL education, linguistics, and math, mostly. But it also hasn’t happened because I don’t feel like I have many recipes to share.

Most things that we eat for dinner (and then for leftovers for lunch for the following days) are sugarless anyway. I have to avoid anything that has ketchup as an ingredient or barbeque sauce (which makes me really sad). And we can’t eat any store-bought salad dressings, at least not any that I’ve found.

But just to give you an example, here’s what I might eat on a ‘normal’ day:

Breakfast – Sugarless baked oatmeal is my favorite breakfast right now. (We also have a granola recipe that uses Stevia powder that I really like. But I’ve read a few more controversial things about Stevia recently, so I don’t eat that everyday.) And coffee with cream. I haven’t given up on my coffee. But it’s usually half-caff.

Snack – If I’m home, I’ll make a pot of tea, usually decaf Earl Grey, and slowly drink my way through that with a handful of raw almonds. If I’m at work, I usually don’t think to eat a snack.

Lunch – Leftovers. I try to incorporate lots of vegetables into our main dishes and lots of fat. I used to take an apple or other piece of fruit as a side dish for lunch. Now I take vegetables of some kind. Sometimes we have some delicious vegetable dish prepared at home, but sometimes – I’m not going to lie – I just shake about a cup of frozen peas into a container and put that in my lunch bag to heat up at work.

Snack – If I’m home, probably more tea or homemade hot chocolate. No one else seems to like this hot chocolate but me: it’s basically hot milk that I mix cocoa powder into  and then add some hot water. It’s not sweet, but I still like it a lot. Could just be that I’m craving chocolate and will take it any way I can get it. Who knows? Either way, it satisfies me. If I’m home, I may also choose peanut butter on a sourdough English muffin if we have some of those made. If I’m at work, maybe I’ll eat more nuts. Maybe pickles. (I’ve developed a weird pickle fetish in the last month or two.)

Supper – More vegetable-laden mostly-vegetarian dishes. Lots of quinoa recently. And then some kind of vegetable side dish. Sometimes we’re creative and sometimes not.

Dessert/After-supper Snack – No dessert. And I don’t usually get cravings for dessert anymore anyway, except right before my period. Then I really do and I want to cry because I can’t eat a brownie or some gingerbread with real whipped cream. Instead, we might have a snack of homemade popcorn. Or corn chips with salsa or guacamole (if avocados are on sale). Or we might just have a cup of herbal tea.

So, that’s it. That’s what I normally eat. Mark’s diet is a little more American, since he’s a cook and does some of his eating at work. We both figure that this diet is for me anyway, so if he can be supportive at home and not bring Oreos into the house and waft the open bag in front of my nose, then he’s doing his part.

So, that’s all great, and it sounds really healthy, but have I noticed any differences in my health since starting this sugarless diet? The short answer is yes!

I’ve noticed, happily, that my energy levels are much more stable since I’ve been off of sugar. I used to feel a major dive in energy about mid-morning and then especially mid-afternoon. Usually about 3:00 I would begin to feel exhausted and eat a piece of chocolate or two or three conveniently located in a bowl in our office to bring my energy back up. Now I can go all morning and all afternoon without a snack and I don’t notice any shift in energy. (As noted above, I often do eat a little snack, but this has more to do with hunger rumbles in my stomach and an interest in maintaining body weight than it does with a need for energy.) Honestly, it feels great and I didn’t realize that I could feel this great at 3:00 in the afternoon.

I’ve also noticed that I don’t get episodes of the shakes anymore. When I was really hungry I would often get shaking too and mumble to myself, “Oh, it’s just my hypoglycemia acting up again!” And maybe that was true. (Is hypoglycemia something that can go away if you don’t eat sugar? I don’t know.) But I don’t shake anymore. That’s nice.

I also don’t get headaches as often. That’s nice too! I never would have attributed my headaches to sugar or sugar deficiency but now that my body’s not relying on the sugar throughout the day I don’t get the headaches. Lovely.

And the verdict is still tentatively out on this last notable change: my cycles. For the last two years since I went off of birth control my cycles have been about 50-60 days long. NOT NORMAL. And so frustrating to know when you’re trying to conceive that you have roughly about half the chances egg-wise to conceive that a ‘normal’ body has. But, since I’ve stopped eating sugar, my last two cycles have been about 33 days. Big difference! I almost didn’t believe my thermometer the first time my thermal shift happened at day 22 instead of day 45.

Side note – I just read this book called What Alice Forgot about this woman who smacks her head really hard and forgets ten years of her life. She’s 39 but when she wakes up from her concussion she thinks she’s 29 and pregnant. That book really got me thinking about what about my current life would surprise me if I woke up and thought I was 16 again. And I’ve realized – all the biology I’ve voluntarily learned about my body – the cycles, the eggs, the PCOS – that would surprise me. And the fact that I have temperature charting lingo that I use when I blog about my body’s cycles: all that would surprise me too. Maybe disturb me a little.

So, as I was saying, my last two cycles since leaving sugar behind me have been pretty much normal. Could it be coincidence? Maybe. Could I be less stressed? Maybe. Well, no, probably not. And I haven’t changed much else about my lifestyle in the last two months except that I stopped exercising.

Mark and I came to the conclusion that 20 minutes of walking – to and from work – was probably enough exercise for me since I’m barely hanging onto a healthy body weight. So I gave up Jillian Michaels and dumbbells. But I don’t think that would have miraculously sparked normal cycles. That seems kind of counter-intuitive to me. Only time will tell!

Smelling Sourdough in the Morning

Last week Monday Mark and I ate delicious sourdough English muffins for breakfast. Mmmmmm. I started a sourdough starter last Sunday afternoon. I had wanted to for a while, but I’d been afraid that I’d mix up the flour and water and nothing would happen. But, happily, after a day or two of mixing and adding flour and water, I began to see bubbles, and now within twelve hours the little yeasty creepy-crawlies have had time to gorge themselves on the simple sugars found in the wheat and the starter has nearly doubled in size.

I’m really very excited. ‘Victorious’ is a good word to describe how I feel about the fermentation I’ve created.

From what I’ve read, a sourdough starter should be allowed to mature for a week before you use it in a recipe. Sunday was my starter’s one week birthday, so I decided to celebrate by trying this sourdough English muffin recipe.

The funny thing about using a sourdough starter that I’m not really used to is that when you want to make, say, English muffins, you have to think about it at least a day ahead of time. You need to allow time to build up your starter, by adding a little more flour and water, because you don’t want to entirely use up your starter in the baked good you make, or you’ll have to grow your starter all over again. And when you have properly built up your starter and then pulled out what you need for your muffins, you mix up your dough and then let it set, usually overnight, to allow the dough to ‘sour’ all the way through. Then, in the morning, you can form your dough into muffins and fry on the griddle.

Sourdough English muffins on the griddle.

Again, sourdough English muffins on the griddle.

Then, this is the tricky part for me, if that baked good will satisfy your family for a few days, what do you do with your starter in the meantime? If you leave it out on your counter, the yeast will continue to multiply and you’ll need to keep feeding it and making it bigger. But you don’t necessarily want a bigger starter unless you’re doing lots of baking. So, the obvious way to slow the yeasties down is to put the starter in the fridge. But I just don’t trust my starter yet. Probably an unfounded worry, but I’m afraid that if I stick my starter in the fridge it will just die. And then I will be sad, wistfully thinking about all of the delicious sourdough baked goods I could have made if I had just kept my starter alive on the counter.

Thankfully, I don’t have to address this irrational fear yet because I am planning to do some extensive baking in the next week. So instead of putting my starter away in the fridge, I’m letting it grow on the counter. See? It already needs two containers:

Starter has just been stirred.

See the bubbles! Starter is happily feeding!

See the bubbles CLOSER.

Sourdough bread, here we come!

Update: Since beginning this post, we have made sourdough bread. And I have worked up the courage to put my starter in the fridge. What I've noticed is that leaving my starter in the fridge for a week without feeding it makes it give whatever baked good I put it into a more sour flavor. (There's a scientific reason behind this, but I don't want to go into it now.) If I fed my starter and then used it immediately upon seeing bubbles throughout, the baked good would rise but it wouldn't taste much like sourdough, just like regular ol' bread. The bread pictured below had a delightfully sourdough flavor.

Happy happy loaf of sourdough bread.

Mark being artsy with the camera and making you all crave sourdough.

Mark's Baking Adventure

I just have to share pictures of Mark's baking adventure for the International Dinner Club that we're a part of. I can't write much more about it because I was busy teaching English and wasn't a part of the making or baking (sad!). But I just thought this Swedish Tea Ring turned out soooo lovely:

I don't get to be a part of the eating of this Tea Ring either, because of work conflicts, but I told him that at all costs he must save me at least one slice to try!

Malted Hot Chocolate Mix Recipe

Malted Hot Chocolate Mix

25.6 oz. pkg. powdered milk

6 c. mini marshmallows

16 oz pkg. instant chocolate milk mix

13 oz jar malted milk powder

1c. powdered sugar

6 oz. jar powdered non diary creamer

½ t. salt

Pour 1/e c. mix into a mug. Add ¾ c. boiling water and stir to dissolve.

Just to let you know—you need a really big bowl to mix this up. We wanted to double the recipe, but we ended up needing to make it in two batches. Even then, just mixing up one batch we had to use our two biggest bowls. We still ended up with powder on the floor.

Speaking of powder on the floor, do not dust your house before making this mix. Every surface in our kitchen and dining area ended up with a film of chocolaty powder over it by the time we were done mixing and pouring into jars.

One final editorial note: I'm not sure if we used the right malted milk powder. We used an Ovaltine Malted Chocolate Powder. The recipe didn't taste very malt-y, so I might try to find something a little more malt-flavored next time.

This recipe was taken from Gooseberry Patch Christmas 2010 magazine.

Leaves in Our Yard and Apples in Our House: A Continued Story

Almost a week ago I posted a picture of one of the trees in our front yard. If you remember, it was sporting some brilliant yellow tree plumage. This is the tree today:

And this is what I spent three hours doing on Saturday night:

Please notice how large those leaf piles are and the frequency with which they appear on our lawn. That tree meant business last week.

The two most prominent thoughts in my head while I was raking were, “This would be much more fun if we had some little toddlers running around,” and “From an ecological perspective, this is a colossal waste of time.” I am not comfortable with the American lawn ideal: the time and energy spent on growing and maintaining a perfect Kentucky bluegrass monoculture, the volume of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides poured onto lawns every year, and the carting away of grass clipping and leaves that in a ‘normal’ ecosystem would decompose right where they fell and fertilize the ground naturally. However, I haven’t done anything to change our lawn, and, frankly, I’m afraid of talking to our landlady about my feelings toward the lawn care required of us, so all my high and lofty thoughts are just that: thoughts.

In any case, despite the negative appearance of these leaf raking thoughts, my attitude while raking was pretty positive. I was enjoying the exercise after having sat in a conference all morning and afternoon, and I was hoping to have the whole yard raked and cleaned up before Husband came home, as a surprise. This was his weekend to work, which meant he only had one day off, which was Friday this week.

And on his one day off this week, his mind was also on fall-ish activities:

I was impressed. I’m still impressed, actually. And very, very excited to eat these or give them to other people so they can enjoy Husband’s superior pie-baking skills.

Because our freezer space is extremely limited, we called up an older couple in town that we have gotten to know and feel comfortable with to beg some freezer space from them. They were more than willing, so we walked over to their house on Saturday night to deliver our pies (after Husband got home from work and the leaf raking was done), and then sat and chatted for a while. This all made us feel very good about our community networking and friend-making skills.

Fall-ish activities are abounding right now, and I am trying my best to savor every minute of them. (Although, I am glad that the tree has dropped all of its leaves and the raking is mostly done.)

Making Tiramasu

Making tiramisú actually occured before our weekend with Mom and Dad. However, we have been busy. Better late than never, though, especially when there are pictures of delicious desserts involved.

My husband and I like to cook for fun. Most of our 'cooking for fun' is limited to things that can be cooked on a small budget, but we are also part of an International Dinner Club through our church, which encourages us to branch out of our small budget repertoire. The menus for these dinners are all set. We just get the ingredients and follow the directions.

For an Italian-themed International Dinner Club meal, we were asked to make tiramisú.

Here's the recipe, in case our pictures look so mouth-watering that you want to try it yourself:

Tiramisú

This tiramisú has a pretty pronounced rum flavor; for a less potent rum flavor, halve the amount of rum added to the coffee mixture in step 1. Do not allow the mascarpone to warm to room temperature before using it; it has a tendency to break if allowed to do so. Be certain to use hard, not soft, ladyfingers.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups strong black coffee, room temperature

1 ½ tablespoons instant espresso powder

9 tablespoons dark rum

6 large egg yolks

2/3 cup sugar

¼ teaspoon table salt

1 ½ pounds mascarpone cheese

¾ cup heavy cream (cold)

14 oz. ladyfingers (42-60, depending on size)

3 ½ tablespoons cocoa, preferably Dutch-processed

¼ cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, grated (optional)

1. Stir coffee, espresso, and 5 tablespoons rum in wide bowl or baking dish until espresso dissolves; set aside.

2. In bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment, beat yolks at low speed until just combined. Add sugar and salt and beat at medium-high speed until pale yellow, 1 ½ - 2 minutes, scraping down bowl with rubber spatula once or twice. Add remaining 4 tablespoons rum and beat at medium speed until just combined, 20-30 seconds; scrape bowl. Add mascarpone and beat at medium speed until no lumps remain, 30-45 seconds, scraping down bowl once or twice. Transfer mixture to large bowl and set aside.

Here are our egg yolks in the bowl (all from local free-range chickens, I might add).

 Here's the massive amount of mascarpone cheese the recipe calls for. Tasty, but spendy.

 And the whole mess all mixed together.

3. In now-empty mixer bowl (no need to clean bowl), beat cream at medium speed until frothy, 1 – 1 ½ minutes. Increase speed to high and continue to beat until cream holds stiff peaks, 1 – 1 ½ minutes longer. Using rubber spatula, fold one-third of whipped cream into mascarpone mixture to lighten, then gently fold in remaining whipped cream until no white streaks remain. Set mascarpone mixture aside.

4. Working one at a time, drop half of ladyfingers into coffee mixture, roll, remove, and transfer to 13 x 9” glass or ceramic baking dish. (Do not submerge ladyfingers in coffee mixture; entire process should take no more than 2-3 seconds for each cookie.) Arrange soaked cookies in single layer in baking dish, breaking or trimming ladyfingers as needed to fit neatly into dish.

5. Spread half of mascarpone mixture over ladyfingers; use rubber spatula to spread mixture to sides and into corners o dish and smooth surface. Place 2 tablespoons cocoa in fine- mesh strainer and dust cocoa over mascarpone.

6. Repeat dipping and arrangement of ladyfingers; spread remaining mascarpone mixture over ladyfingers and dist with remaining 1 ½ tablespoons cocoa. Wipe edges of dish with dry paper towel. Cove r with plastic wrap and refrigerate 6 – 24 hours. Sprinkle with grated chocolate, if using; cut into pieces and serve chilled.

Our tiramisú commentary:

We enjoyed this recipe quite a bit. It reminded me a little bit of eating cheesecake, and it was about as rich. Since we had to make it for our International Dinner Club, we had excellent reasons to purchase these more expensive ingredients that we otherwise would not purchase.

Someone from our church gave us the small amount of rum that we needed, however. Rum is otherwise quite expensive. I didn’t care for the rum taste very much. If I made this dessert again, I might very well leave out the rum.

We also used instant coffee, ground more finely, in place of espresso powder, which we did not have on hand.

When it came to sifting cocoa powder over the whole pan at the end, I do not have a fine sifter. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my mesh ball for loose leaf tea could be used in place of a larger sifter. I just scooped about two teaspoons of cocoa powder into the mesh ball and, leaving it open, shook it over the dessert. One less kitchen gadget that I need to invest in!

Sometimes It’s OK to Throw Food Away

Recently my mom gave me some white cucumbers.

They were supposed to be white. That was the weird part.

To me, green is a nice healthy color. It screams, “Eat me! I’ve got something your body needs!” White vegetables are fine—I’m fond of jicama and cauliflower, and russet potatoes are fine. But on a vegetable that I normally think of as green, white screams, “I’m dead! I’m decomposing! Don’t eat me!”

Despite my vegetable color inhibitions, I was willing to give the ghostly cucumbers a try.

The only problem was, I don’t really know how to use cucumbers. I enjoy the fresh taste of cucumbers on sandwiches, but one cucumber cut into slices goes a long way, and I not only had my mom’s two anemic-looking cucumbers, but I also had two healthier-looking green cucumbers.  And I only wanted to eat so many sandwiches.

Plus, these last few weeks have been incredibly busy for me and I didn’t anticipate having much time to cook in the near future.

I could picture what would happen: those white cucumbers would sit in the fridge, slowing getting rubbery and shriveled and all the while becoming even more unappetizing. Then my mom would call and want to know how I liked the cucumbers she sent me. Having grown these cucumbers by the sweat of her brow, picked them, cleaned them, and sent them with my dad all the way from Minnesota to Iowa would mean that my mom has affection for and pride in these pale vegetables that I just didn’t want to shatter.

I needed a quick fix for my cucumbers.

As luck would have it, when I was working at the library just one day later, a cookbook came in through our drop box that I happened to pick up and peruse.

That cookbook just happened to have a cucumber soup in it.

That cucumber soup just happened to call for 11 cucumbers.

I didn’t have 11 cucumbers, but I thought, “I’m an experienced enough cook, right? I can improvise a little bit, right?”

So, that’s just what I did. I added the vinegar and the honey to the chopped and peeled cucumber pieces. I let it marinate overnight. And then I pureed the whole mess with an avocado.

It was during the pureeing that I first began to notice how quiet my husband was.

It was when I set the big bowl of cold green soup on the table that I realized my husband’s silence had nothing to do with being tired from work.

Here is what my husband saw:

My husband, who for me will eat kidney beans and tofu instead of meat, who will calmly consume Brussels sprouts and cabbage, was turning his nose up at the cucumber soup.

His upturned nose proved to be a premonition because, as it turns out, neither of us could stand the texture like watery applesauce and the strong flavor of vinegar.

We had a whole big bowlful of cold cucumber soup.

What to do?

You guessed it: I threw it all away.

The whole bowl of soup poured into a Ziploc bag and dropped in the garbage.

I raged at myself inwardly for a few minutes—my inability to recognize a terrible recipe, my waste of a delicious avocado, my callous misuse of my mom’s hard-earned cucumbers.

But I finally decided to give myself some grace. As much of a perfectionist as I am, sometimes in my life, it really will be necessary to give up, throw out what I’ve been working on, and start over.

Of course, lessons can and should be learned, such as:

“Read through ingredients critically before you throw them together.”

And, “Make smaller batches when trying new recipes.”

Or, “Don’t make a chilled cucumber soup. Ever.”

I suppose my mom will eventually want to know what happened to her white cucumbers. I will be truthful. And when I share with her the picture of our chilled cucumber soup, I’m pretty sure she will agree that sometimes it’s OK to throw food away.