Coffee heat rising

Health care

Gin and Ginger and Serious Heat

by

It’s only 112 degrees on the back porch just now. Balmy, yet. They say it will reach 118 today. This gives the local Play-Nooz nabobs something to write about, and an excuse to pepper their copy with exclamation points!!!

LOL! What foolishness. Every time the weather breaks 105 degrees, we get another hysterical EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING!!!!! As though this weren’t a desert. As though we were all basking in a Midwestern summer with mosquitoes as big as F16s. WTF? What part of “deserts are hot in the summer and warm in the winter” needs repeated explanation to the stump-dumb public?

Oh well.

Here at the Funny Farm, the human and the dogs laid on extra water come dawn, knowing the potted plants will fry by midday unless they get at least one dose of water. Most of them will need to be watered twice today, actually. So about 45 minutes ago I set the watering system to come on a second time, which should up the chances that most of the plants in the front courtyard will live. Under the supervision of the Queen of the Universe, who is feeling preoccupied with having to herd Charlie the Golden Retriever around while coaxing the human to play with Ball, I deep-watered all the citrus, ran extra water on the roses, and manually watered the front flowerbeds.

This month’s water bill should be interesting.

All this heaving around comes at a cost: excruciating pain. The accursed back hurts so much I can barely limp up the hallway — and limp is the operative term. I can’t walk normally unless I consciously force myself to do so, and then it hurts even more. Driving is highly problematic, since I can’t easily shift my foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal.

This has gone so far as to detach me from my usual science-based thinking and push me to call a chiropractor, whom I intend to visit on Monday. He was on his way out of the Inferno when I reached him this morning and so couldn’t see me today.

In the interim, we’re medicating ourself with a new analgesic. Sorry not to have a photo…that would entail limping into the back room to get the camera.

I’m sure I’ve written about the pain-relieving effect of ginger, which can be steeped in water or tea to make a tisane or even soaked into olive oil to create a topical ointment. But to reprise, here’s how you make a ginger tea:

Take a good-sized chunk of fresh ginger. (The one I used for today’s batch was about three or four inches long). Trim off any crusty or mildewed parts. Wash. Do not bother to peel (puh-LEEZE!). Cut it into several small pieces, about 1/2 thick, more or less. Just chop it up, remembering that the cut surfaces will leach ginger juice into the water you’re about to pour over them.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Place the pieces of ginger into a teapot or other heatproof serving vessel. If you want to drink the tisane straight and are not on a diet, pour a bunch of honey or sugar in there with the ginger chunks. For today’s effort, I added no sweetener.

When the water comes to a rolling boil, pour it over the ginger, to fill the teapot. Let this steep for upwards of 20 minutes (the longer the better). You can store it in the refrigerator after it cools enough to safely set it on a fridge shelf.

Now for the ultimate analgesic:

Get yourself a fine bottle of gin. Scare up a cucumber and some fresh mint.

Slice off three or four thin disks of cucumber. Punch them with a fork or knife to sort of macerate them.

Place some ice in a favorite tall drinking glass.

Pour enough ginger tea in there to fill it about a quarter of the way. Add more ice if need be. Toss in the cucumber slices.

Add a jigger of gin. Stir the mix around to macerate the cuke a little and blend the ginger tea with the booze. Fill to the top with club soda. Add a few macerated leaves of fresh mint.

Consume.

Very palliative.

Mijito and his band of friends are convening in Chicago as we scribble. I understand the weather’s a bit problematic in the Windy City, but whatever is going on there, barring a tornado it will be a welcome break from the low desert’s July heat. In the meantime, Charley the Golden Retriever is hanging out at my house.

Charley has grown into a mellow sort of golden retriever. Not real bright, in human terms, but laid-back and easy enough to have around. This thing, whatever it is, is not a German shepherd. Not a corgi, either.

P1010041 The corgi has no problem lording it over poor ole Charley, despite the fact that he’s about four or five times her size. He doesn’t seem to mind being herded around. But on the other hand, he waits for his opportunities and visibly rejoices whenever he gets a chance to grab a toy, scarf down some extra food, or distract the human’s attention his way. Cassie has to work to maintain her sovereignty when Charley is around, whereas with only the human to cope with, she’s unarguably the Queen of the Universe.

Well, it looks like the pain is down to about a 4 now, on the famous scale of 1 to 10. So I believe the cold pack can return to its place in the freezer and I can retire to the bed, where I’ve spent most of the past three or four days, thereinat to bake the chilled back on a heating pad.

 

Diet News, E-book News

by

So I’ve diddled away the whole day in front of the computer. Not quite the whole day, actually: feeling poorly after another five-hour night, I went back to bed following a short exercise junket and slept until almost 10 a.m. Then it was back to the office to work on the new e-book, whose manuscript I just finished and sent off for a designer’s review. The working title is Slave Labor: The New Story of American Higher Education. And I’m feeling mighty smug about it.

Watch this space! As soon as it’s published, I’ll run a give-away, so you’ll have a chance to grab it for free before the ravening hordes descend on Amazon. 😉

After this one is launched, I intend to do two e-cookbooks. One will present some of the surprisingly delicious low-fat, low salt, sugar-free diet recipes I’ve concocted over the past month. And another will be a collection of the recipes I’ve published over the years at Funny about Money, plus quite a few others.

The diet is going surprisingly well.

This morning I was down 11.8 pounds(!!) from my ponderous starting weight of a month ago.

Wow! That leaves only 9.5 pounds of flab to kill off before I reach my goal!

I can’t believe this. Already I look only two months pregnant instead of three — the toxic belly fat seems to be what’s coming off the fastest.

It’s astonishing to see the fat melt away this fast. Really, I think I’m losing faster than I did on the Atkins diet. But then I didn’t make the effort to put in all that exercise — my car was parked a mile from the office and up three flights of steps, and I had to walk up another two flights to get into our building, so I figured enough was enough.

It looks like what’s doing the trick is three and a half miles of brisk walking or jogging plus a half-mile of swimming. To get those street miles in before one is likely to expire of heat exhaustion, I have to start exactly at dawn. Any later than the first graying of the sky and by the time the jaunt ends it will be so ungodly hot as to be downright homicidal. But the swimming in the evening is refreshing and a nice way to end the day.

The quasi-vegetarian diet is probably helping to peel off the pounds, but I can’t imagine it provides adequate nutrition. Lately I’ve been feeling a little green around the gills: fatigued all day and kind of weak in the knees.

Saturday M’hijito, bless his heart, came over with Charley the Golden Retriever to hang out and prime the pool’s filter with dog hair. Since he was still here at dinnertime, I broke out a couple of steaks and we had a decent dinner of beef, corn, salad, and the two spectacular artichokes he brought with him.

Truly I felt awful on Friday and Saturday, but after a decent meal and a halfway decent night’s sleep, on Sunday I felt great again.

So I concluded that I probably need not cut the meat almost completely out of the diet. Sliced up the leftover steak and stir-fried that with some greens and curry, which stretched it out a long way and has provided a couple of meals (with one to go!) since then.

At any rate, clearly the big challenge will not be to lose the next nine and a half pounds but to find a way to keep all 22 pounds off permanently.

The exercise is making me feel so much better that now I can’t imagine doing without it. Though…hmmm… I’d sure like to find some more interesting places to perform these tricks. Walking around and around the park gets pretty boring, no matter how entertaining the local fauna.

Same is true of trotting up and down the mountain park trails, although at some times of year, especially the spring, it’s a little more interesting than the neighborhood. The canals go a very, very long way — in theory I could walk or bicycle all the way to Tempe and almost out to Sun City from here. On the other hand, the canals are probably not very safe — a few years ago, a serial killer nabbed a woman who was in the habit of bicycling along the canal. Beheaded her and threw her headless body in the water. So…that does give one pause.

There’s one of those Baptist megachurches on Central. It has a huge interior track where people can walk or run, plus a lot of other workout equipment. However, you have to buy a membership, and…well, I do object to helping fund (however indirectly) the Baptist church’s political agenda, which IMHO runs directly counter to the interests of women’s rights. No offense, dear Baptist readers…but you kind of have to be in Arizona to appreciate some of this stuff. 🙄

A couple of air-conditioned shopping centers open early so people can walk around and around inside the malls. But that also strikes me as mind-numbing boring. Why drive so you can walk around a boring track when you can walk around a perfectly fine park just a few yards down the streets?

One way or another, assuming I can keep up this level of exercising from now until I topple over into the grave, the other question is…how much and what can I eat to level off at the desired weight but not gain more weight back?

And how will I bear that?

I’ve cut out my very favorite food, pasta. And also bread. And also potatoes. Now, I could surely do without bread, which while pleasurable is not the center of my life. Potatoes I enjoy but don’t overindulge — and could cheerfully trade them in exchange for a flat belly.

Red_Wine_GlassBut no more spaghetti? No more penne? No more casarecce, no more gemilli, no more fettucine? Really???? THAT seems pretty extreme. And wine…will I have to do without the daily swiggle forever? Five ounces of wine packs a punch of calories. What else will I have to give up if I choose to go back to the supposedly healthful benefits of the daily glass of wine?

We do know that red meat jacks up the blood pressure (supposedly). So I’ll substitute salmon, tuna, ono, and other wild-caught fish for most the volumes of beef and pork I’ve been in the habit of scarfing up. And buy unadulterated chicken at Trader’s, Sprouts, and Whole Paycheck instead of the salt-soaked, antibiotic-laced flesh of tormented and mutilated birds available at other markets.

But it still looks like the landing-strip menu is going to have to comprise a lot more veggies and a lot  less starches and meats than I’ve been accustomed to eating.

Well. I’ll figure that out when I get there. Meanwhile, there’s almost ten more pounds to get rid of. Wouldn’t it be cool to be free of them by the end of the summer?

🙂

Celebrating!!!!

by

Yahoo! Since June 1, nine pounds have disappeared from my fat little body — I no longer look like I’m three months pregnant (only two months) — the blood pressure is down in the normal range, CardioDoc says I can have a couple cups of coffee in the mornings, and he doesn’t want to see me for another six months. w00t!

This morning I jogged a mile, walked (fast!) for a mile, and walked a half-mile to and from the park. Last night I swam thirty-three laps, which comes to a half-mile of breast strokes, back strokes, side strokes, and (mostly) Australian crawl. After that, the dog ran the human around her usual .66-mile course.

QTonic_So this evening I’m celebrating: breaking the vegetarian fast to have a nice little piece of steak swathed in (salt-free, MSG-free) adobo. And, by gawd, I’m having a swiggle: a nice gin and tonic, sloshed together with pricey but perfectly delicious Q Tonic Water. So, so  marvelously delicious and cold and refreshing and it’s 112 degrees out there!

Yes. And therein lies the reason why I deserve this gin and tonic so richly. By way of gearing up for said celebration (ohhh steak, ohhh brocolini, oh colorful little new potatoes said to push your blood pressure down, ohhh salad with verboten blue cheese on it), I went out to start the propane barbecue, which also has to hold a passel of cheap meat for the Queen of the Universe.

Starter switch was dead.

Okay. I know what that means: change the battery.

Go in the house, get new battery, install.

Nope.

Huh…

Try to light grill with butane fire-starter thing.

Uh uh.

Change the propane tank — it is low enough to maybe even be out.

Nope.

Noooooooo gas barbecue tonight!

Damn. This means I have to fire up the charcoal grill, which is, to say the least, a chore on the best of days and a species of penal hard labor on a 112-degree day.

Gerardo’s underlings have rolled it a little too close to the massive hanging gardens of catclaw for comfort. Normally I would put the charcoal-lighting “chimney” on the smoker’s rack, but I’m afraid sparks from the mesquite, of which there are likely to be a-plenty, could set fire to said jungle plant. I can’t move the thing…it must weigh at least 100 pounds. So I have to dream up some way to start the chimney without defiling the landscape or initiating a 911 call.

Finally construct a platform from a cinderblock placed in an aluminum steam-tray liner (I use the steam trays to cook Cassie’s meat in the grill, when it’s working). Meanwhile I take the hose and soak the nine-foot-high cat’s-claw vines.

This considerably slows down the preparation of the proposed magnificent dinner.  And as we scribble, the accelerated imbibulation of the gin and tonic is greatly speeding up the intoxication of the human.

Oh well. Meat cooked over a real charcoal fire is infinitely tastier and juicier than meat zapped over propane.

At the corner of Tatum and Shea (lissen up, Abby!) is a gaggle of entertainingly upscale food purveyors: a Whole Foods; the jewel in the scabbard of Fry’s Sword of AJ’s & Whole Foods Destruction; a white-bread but well stocked Trader Joe’s; and (of all things) a Penzey‘s.

Bereft of salt in my annoying diet, I decided to use curry as a substitute. But…the scrumptious Madras curry I picked up from the local Asian supermarket is more salt than curry — one teaspoon whacks you with 13% of your sodium RDA. And I dispense it by the tablespoon. The generous tablespoon. After tablespoon after tablespoon. Who knows? Maybe even by the cup…

So I determined to make my own curry powder mix, something I used to do in my misspent youth as an idle corporate wife, to excellent effect. My spice stash was exceptionally stale — a decade or two old. So decided I’d better replace all that stuff.

This required the acquisition of a fresh new collection of exotica:

turmeric
cumin seeds
fenugreek
white peppercorns
coriander
dried ground ginger
whole cloves

The rest of the ingredients I had in the cabinet. Eventually I will disgorge a curry powder recipe. But not just this minnit. Watch this space!

After gathering about a half-million small jars of spices, I discovered Penzey’s has a salt-free curry. However, a sniff of the stuff suggested a less-than-exciting concoction. I can do better than that.  So the purchases stayed in the analog shopping cart.

To my delight, Penzey’s also has an adobo spice mix. And it’s sodium-free! Who’d’ve thunk it? The grocery-store adobo in my cabinet, by Durkee, is full of MSG:

Sal, ajo deshidratodo, oregano, glutamato monosodico, pimienta negra, fosfato tricalcico, aceite vegetal (de soyo de semillia de algodon), partialmente hidrogenado.

Lovely. That would be…

Salt (the main ingredient!!), dehydrated garlic, oregano, monosodium glutamate, black pepper, tricalcium phosphate, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean and/or cottonseed).

YUCK! At least Spanish speakers have the decency to refrain from the and/or monstrosity. But whatever language you put it in, this commercialized “adobo” is freakin’ poisonous. Penzey’s version would be helped by the addition of some turmeric, but it’s quite respectable as it is.

§ § §

The sun is going down, the dinner is cooked and consumed and was awesome, and now it’s time to clean up and chase the dog down into another neighborhood and back and fall face-first in the sack.

Biking as Exercise Shortcut

by

So I have to be at the doc’s office for a blood draw at  7:30 this morning. That doesn’t leave enough time to jog around the park and get cleaned up, so I decided to ride my bicycle instead. Four times around the park = four miles. Left the house at 5:10 a.m.

Bad idea. Too many morons with dogs off the leash. What IS it with these people? If you want to let your dog run loose, take it to a dog park! How hard is that? Several residents here have been bitten by large loose dogs as they (the residents) were jogging or running around the park. Dogs chase prey. That is their nature. When they see someone trotting along, they think the person is something to eat, and no amount of calling your overindulged “baby” pooch will call it off.

Also, at this hour the workmen laying train tracks up Nineteenth Avenue are arriving to park in the vacant lot the city has rented for them. This means you have loose dogs to the left of you and smelly cars driven by guys texting while drinking coffee to the right of you. Lovely.

And four miles of biking on the flat is really not enough exercise. It hardly raised a sweat.

At any rate, the other fauna are pretty interesting to watch. There’s a gaggle of older women who gather around 5:00. They don’t jog around the park. They don’t walk around the park. They amble. Very slowly. And they chat. Very busily. One of them, who must be having her aches and pains, appears on a motocross-type bicycle, but because she can’t go slow enough to keep pace with them, she pushes herself along with her feet on the ground. It’s a hoot.

There’s a walrus-shaped nerd — pure nerd, for sure — who seems to be walking for his health. He wears a bright orange T-shirt every day, and he, too, ambles along very, very slowly. He plugs himself into earphones from which tinny music emanates, loud enough to catch your attention way across the street. Must be blowing out his hearing.

Harriet walked by with her dog, who’s getting on in years now. She was surprised that I wasn’t on foot this morning. 😀

Several rather handsome, immaculately groomed middle-aged men, the types who look like they can afford those houses around the park, also jog at that hour. Scenic.

It’s supposed to reach 111 today, and so waiting until I get back from this morning’s moment of grand fun would not do. By 8:00 it will be too hot to throw oneself around outdoors.

And at 11:30 some friends are coming over for lunch and to lounge in the pool. I still have to vacuum the floors and clean the bathrooms and shock-treat the pool with a non-chlorine oxidizer and water all the outdoor plants before they get here.

In an Arizona summer, it’s too hot in the evenings, too, to charge around outside. I’ve been trying to do the roadwork in the early morning and then swim at sunset. Last night, got 30 laps in. One lap is only 80 feet…but according to my English-major math calculations, 33 laps would be half a mile. My goal is to get to 50 laps a day, by adding five laps every day or two. Very, very boring activity, but at least you don’t make yourself sick trying to exercise in the heat.

Made some bean soup last night with one of Sprouts’s 10-bean mixes. Result: less than optimal. Most of the beans are actually lentils, which is nice, except that lentils cook in a fraction of the time it takes for the pinto beans and black beans they’ve mixed in there. So by the time you get the larger legumes cooked, the lentils have melted into a thick, unappetizing mush. Also, without salt, it’s pretty bland. You’d need to dump a fair amount of salt in there to make it at all palatable. I added half a can of tomato sauce for flavor, but that stuff is way too full of salt. One-quarter cup socks you with 12% of your sodium RDA, a figure which itself is probably high. So that was disappointing.

Gotta get going! Have a tolerable Friday and a great weekend…

Less Meat…but Better Meat?

by

CowSomewhere during the past several weeks — don’t recall where, exactly — I came across some food pundit’s advice that if, as anyone with any conscience must, you feel the production of meat and chicken in this country is inhumane and unsafe but you can’t afford to eat grass-fed, hormone-free, humanely slaughtered critters every day of your life, you should use your monthly meat budget to buy the highest quality meat you can find, but less of it than you’re used to. Don’t eat meat every day, or else eat lots less of it per meal.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

One of my friends, who’s had a couple of heart attacks, a quadruple bypass, and a stroke, appears to be the picture of health. He attributes his amazing recovery  and present good health to a strict vegetarian diet.

We know that red meats and dark portions of poultry add cholesterol (thereby contributing to your hardening arteries) and raise your blood pressure. We know that vegetarians are much less likely to suffer hypertension and may be less prone to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). But…total, unrelenting vegetarianism is not my style. I like meat, I like cheese, and I’m not gonna quit eating them.

However, I’m open to compromise.

Why not eat a lot less meat — maybe only a couple of servings a week — and use the money you save with that strategy to buy better quality products?

Earlier this week I tried it with a pricey little whole chicken from Sprouts.

Chicken. It’s one of my pet peeves. Like tomatoes, chicken has been stripped of flavor over the past few decades. Factory-farmed chicken is as bland and blah as soggy cotton.

Believe it or not, folks, chicken is supposed to taste like something. And not like the onions and garlic and gravy you dump on it. No. Chicken is supposed to taste like chicken. Same is true of turkey, which is about as flavorless as anything you can buy from the shelves of the food deserts we in America call supermarkets. In some European and Asian countries, you still can find chicken that has a flavor; that’s how I know it’s not just that my taste buds have gone numb in old age.

No, indeed.

In the U.S., you can find chicken with a flavor at Sprouts and, to a much more pronounced degree, at Whole Foods. Splurge a little and buy yourself an organic, free-range, no-hormone, no-antibiotic, no-torture chicken at one of these markets. Sprinkle some herbs over the top of it and bake it in a 350-degree oven or over a slow barbecue grill for 45 minutes or an hour, until it’s done.

You will be amazed.

I also discovered, by serendipity, that humanely, cleanly raised pork available at Sprouts is pretty damn delicious, too.

Meat, chicken, and fish that taste better would make a fine treat, to be consumed on special occasions and with restraint in day-to-day life.

Never have thought I could afford the fancy humanely farmed beef at Whole Foods. But…if I weren’t scarfing a piece of beef a day, I sure could.

Right now the freezer is jammed with Costco rib-eye — I buy a package of the stuff and cut each steak into three pieces, providing enough for at least 12 or 15 servings. Cutting back on the number of servings per week will extend that supply to cover a month or month and a half. Or more.

But after that’s gone?

It’s off to Whole Foods.

CowHindu

Images: Swiss cow. Daniel Schwen. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Hindu cow. From “Ten Questions People Ask about Hinduism …and Ten Terrific Answers!” (p. 6). © Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

 

Life in the New (healthful, we hope) Regime

by

P1010572Believe it or not, I’ve lost ten pounds since the present healthcare nightmare started (as of May 23) and four pounds since officially beginning The Diet & Exercise Regime. I’ve consumed so many veggies and so many fruits that any day now I’m going to turn into a flowering plant. But what’s really making the difference is the exercise. Jogged 1.4 miles this morning; swam 20 laps of the backyard swimming pool this afternoon; will probably jog another .66 mile this evening if it gets cool enough for Cassie the Corgi to trot that far by around 9 p.m.

She couldn’t take it this morning because it was already bloody hot by 6 a.m., so I had to bring her back and go on my way alone — she’s so furry, the heat really does her in. My “jog” is her “slow lope,” but interestingly, she’s VERY hot to trot…now that she knows I can stumble along behind her, she’s become demanding. Very demanding.

It was a crisp 102 degrees here today. Not bad, for this time of year: June is summertime in the Valley of We-Do-Mean Sun. But the Cassowary is built for a climate zone where 80 degrees is a heat wave. This is, after all, a beast bred to chase sheep in Wales. To keep her safe in the heat, I have to drench her head with cool water before and after taking her out. Dogs are more susceptible to heat stroke than humans because they’re built for short sprints — not, like apes of the homo genus, for long steady runs across the veldt — and in a place like Arizona they succumb quickly to the effects of a 100-degree day.

Presumably the fast weight loss is the combined result of the blood pressure pills, which include a diuretic, and of getting off my butt for longer than it takes to limp from the computer to the refrigerator. No doubt within a few days this will slow down to a saner rate (I’ve lost four pounds just in the past three days). In the meantime, I’ve been having some great kitchen adventures cooking up edible diet-friendly dishes.

Here’s one to try, even if you’re not dieting.

Mango salad

Place some nice, tender salad greens on a plate. Peel a delicious ripe mango. Slice up the meat and arrange the slices appealingly over the greens.

Now add a handful of walnuts or pecans and a handful of lovely fresh blueberries. Chop a little green onion and sprinkle that over the top. Squeeze a little fresh lemon or lime over the top, and dribble some olive oil over that.

You say you’re not on a diet? Well, hell…run amok! Brown those nuts in some butter and sprinkle some Parmesan cheese over the top. But y’know, really: it’s not necessary.

😉