balmagowry

I could tell you... but then I'd have to shoot you. Or you'd have to shoot me, I'm not sure which. On second thought, maybe I have no idea.

Done! whaddo I win? Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm Meanwhile, your friend's report is making me waver....

I tasted something nasty in the woodshed! I was thinking the same thing!!! Great minds think alike Haw! Ditto (or is it thritto?)! Haven't seen the movie - was afraid to because I'm fond of the book. Same with I Capture the Castle. Don't know what kind of personality that makes me, or how it combines with my yearnings for hot and sour soup, or buttered noodles, or moules mariniere, or bacon sandwiches on buttered rye toast, or sour cream and radishes, or (maybe most comforting of all) cold cotletkis. Cold! Oh no, don't tell me I'm starting to conform to a stereotype at this late date! oh dear, now I'm really getting all muddled. Maybe I'd better head back to the woodshed.

Any thoughts? I don't know about Maggie (actually, chances are I do, after reading her recent posts), but I sure have a thought: WAAAAAHHHHH! I have a feeling you'll have a lot of women climbing on this bandwagon (just look at the PMS Cravings Thread if there's the slightest doubt!) - as in, where can I get me some of that no-pain no-pain action? Seriously - what we'll do about the OT-ness of this tangent I don't know - doubly OT in that it's neither foody (well... pills count, right???? ) nor directly related to the thread itself, but I for one would be extremely interested in a discussion of the pros and cons of this approach, if there's a way to do it without ruffling feathers. I've struggled with this all my life - the extreme pain and the emotional stuff mostly, more than the cravings (though to legitimate the tangent I'll be glad to invent some extra cravings... why yes, I believe I feel a need for potato chips and dulce de leche coming on right NOW); but it took me until perimenopause to discover what it really means to add insult to injury. Cramps and hot flashes at the same time??? I know they said life wasn't fair, but this is ridiculous! (And they ask me why I insist that God can't possibly be female. Hmph. I guarantee you, no female deity would have designed this system! ) Have spoken to my GYN about the continuous approach, and I think she'd be amenable if I insisted, but I got the impression she hasn't yet tried it with any of her own patients and was understandably unwilling to use me as a guinea pig. So would really welcome the opportunity to discuss with someone who's actually been doing it.

Yes! Besides, the small ones are so delicate, it seems silly to do anything with them but eat them raw. Well, maybe steam them in a little white wine.... Actually, I tend to go to the other end of the spectrum entirely. We generally dispense with the formal size classifications, dividing any catch into two batches, Eaters and Chowders. Eaters are anything up to, say 2" across (maybe 3" if my father is at table), and unless they're being kept for a "display" dish - paella, cioppino, etc., or one of the baked things like casino - straight to the "raw bar" they go. Everything above that size, and on up to 7" across is a Chowder: those get steamed open, shucked and chopped; those that don't go straight into chowder or sauce get frozen in 1- and 2-dozen increments. (Anything above 7" is classified as a Military Weapon.) Same with the juice: it is strained through a fine filter and whatever isn't needed immediately gets frozen in pint containers (so that at the end of the winter I can wonder what the hell I'm going to do with it all!). One nice thing in summer is that you never know when you may suddenly find yourself having clam sauce. This is because whenever I'm not on an actual mission (as in, we've lured guests with the promise of steamers and chowders, so I have to plan for the tide, go to the serious clam flats and deliver) my clamming is kind of aleatory, an unintended consequence of a different activity. At the end of a long day in the garden I'll meet my neighbor for a swim and be wading into the bay when - ooooops! suddenly there's that unmistakable lump underfoot. Next thing you know I'm pulling them up and stuffing them into my suit and hunching over trying not to look too lumpily pregnant as the pile of clams of all sizes keeps growing. I just... can't help it. Step on a clam, I gotta pull it up. My neighbor grinds her teeth with frustration; unlike me, she doesn't have the hereditary Magic Toes. But she doesn't lose by these episodes, because as often as not I hand over the entire catch. Whereupon she invites me to dinner. Or if I keep the haul I invite her. So it all comes out in the wash. Clam sauce over linguini or over the very thin spaghetti, the kind almost as fine as capelli d'angelo. Quick, someone, run out to the garden and pick some things for a salad. Oh oh oh oh... is it summer yet?

There there - goodness, no reason to get so upset. It's a perfectly fine study for a superficial and limited population.

Yes, I know the connection is nothing new - and neither is the treatment with SSRIs (I always forget that first S because I forget what it stands for - Oh! Selective, right?). What is relatively new, as I understand it, is the use of SSRIs for PMS, and that was what got me all excited: I was hoping to find some tighter correlation between the natures of the cravings and their causes. Looks like, as usual, I was trying to oversimplify the universe. Boy, I really wish the universe would cooperate, just once in a while. Oh! I'd forgottenb about those things. Yes, they are pretty terrific. Also - I discovered them because I was using the bigger ones for muscle pain on my back; and of course they're exactly the same thing, just cut in a different shape... but the big ones work out to be a good bit cheaper. I've stopped using them because I always have my wonderful moist-heat pad at the ready, and for a couple days a month my back just takes, you should pardon the expression, a back seat to my groaning gut. Oh I hate you now you've made me want some too! And I still haven't been to CVS for those stupid marshmallow things, so now I have to decide which I want most urgently. Well, Himself is on way home tonight, so maybe this time I will burst into tears. Sounds like a plan.

Oh well, so much for my hope that I'd stumbled onto a magic bullet theory. Shoulda known nothing would be quite that straightforward - these are human beings we're talking about, after all! Doesn't mean the theory doesn't have its little patch of validity, of course; just that if so it's still only one of many factors that can combine to make one's life hell in this addictive world of ours. I was just over on the comfort foods thread, where I thrilled to your suggestion of throwing red meat to the inner woman, and of course it hit me that that too is part of this same animal. Looked up the studies behind it, and sure enough they're sull of stuff about the compounds in chocolate that can make it [A] satisfying in the face of certain cravings and addictive, goddammit. Though the list of comfort foods studied is so limited it does overlap heavily with the cravings discussed up-thread, and the study suggests additional reasons for why those comfort foods are comforting. No scientist I, so I can't be dure of this, but it does look like some of the jargon there about hormones and cortico-somethings was just fancier jargon for the serotonin-precursor effect. But of course there's more to it than that. Damn, isn't there always. How interesting that your friend has been tackling her problem generically as addictive behavior rather than specifically as overeating. My only perspective on this is the vicarious one I mentioned via OA - actually, that isn't true, I'd done a different kind of semi-vicarious stint before that, at Al-Anon - and it struck me that being in OA has got to be, in one sense, harder than any other 12-step program. For the simple reason that in theory you can give up any other behavior cold turkey - but you can't do that with eating! Makes the 12-step model really tricky, because if the problem is alcohol or drugs you don't have to be able to make subtle distinctions: the enemy is the enemy and that's that, and the whole premise is No! I can't have Just One! But food can't be exclusively the enemy or you gonna DIE, so you have to imbue it with a kind of split personality, make certain arbitrary distinctions and adhere to them rigidly no matter how little sense they seem to make at the time. And throughout it all you gotta go on eating and being with other people who also eat. It's the only application of 12-step that has grey areas, that necessarily cultivates moderation rather than absolutes. I don't say it's necessarily harder, but it's gotta be more complicated - just at the time when you most need something simple to hang onto. Which is probably why the 12-step model does work so well for a lot of overeaters: because it's designed for long-term maintenance and encouragement and support. Anyway, I wouldn't go assuming that the others in the program are necessarily worse off - they are in a sense, in that the substances they're fighting are more overtly dangerous. But they're not struggling any harder or any less desperately.

Oh, Beans, no - you gotta get back up on the horse - even if you weren't on the horse before. I absolutely swear by my pressure cooker. Of course, I don't know if I trust them new-fangled ones or them ancient scary ones; but mine (its identical replacement, that is ) is the Presto 6-quart from the mid 70s or so and it may well be the single most useful pot I own. Of course, it is certainly a good idea to check the gasket a trifle more often than every decade or so - but that's not a particularly onerous requirement. And that is the only trouble I ever had with one, and it was entirely my fault. In fact, I even had a replacement gasket handy - I just hadn't gotten around to putting it in. So doubly my fault.

I think it says something I was thinking too: not only that I am apparently a man, but that the study seems to be based on a somewhat limited range of comfort foods - especially for this crowd!

There's also a variant on this phenomenon which substitutes "Spiderman" (the TV show, of course, not the movie) for "Mannix." --- lg does whatever a spider can

...which had begun the evening as striped pants, I bet. Zowie, what a story! Good for you for keeping your cool. Not many would have had the presence of mind.

I use neither - don't like cilantro. Fresh thyme, and lots of it. I'm blessed to live where I can dig my own clams and have them on the table within the hour, so I make clam sauce often. Often enough that I vary it according to the whim of the moment - but I always start with EVOO and garlic; always use fresh (or flash-frozen frezh) clams, coarsely chopped, and a little of their juice; always fresh-ground tellicherry pepper, always fresh thyme. Sometimes, if the fancy takes me, a little dry vermouth. Sometimes (latest fad, learned from a neighbor who clams with me) I "finish" the sauce with a lemon, quartered and the quarters cut into thickish slices; squeeze them gently over the sauce, then plop them in and give it a stir or two. It adds a nice clean ping to the sauce - and then I always end up eating the deliciously clam-imbued lemon slices (and everyone else's too) down to the rind. Or including the rind. Mmmmmm... perfect summer meal, over thin spaghetti. Can't wait for clam season; we've used up the freezer stash. Whose idea was all this snow?

Oh, the ironies. I've got quarts and quarts of clam juice in the freezer, and who knows when they'll ever get used, since I mostly use the juice for chowder and such, but of course when making chowder there is always the fresh juice from the clams being used, so just why exactly do I freeze all this extra clam juice? I wish I knew. (Yes, of course, one reason is, you freeze the juice when you freeze the clams, so that you'll be able to make chowder in the winter. But then winter comes, and behold everyone suddenly has a Jones for pasta with clam sauce... so the next thing you know you've used up all those dozens of clams and none of the clam juice. But do I ever learn? Of course not. Clamming season will soon be upon us, and after gorging on the first few batches it will be time to start freezing them again. And someone will say, look at all this beautiful clam juice, we can't throw it away, let's freeze it... and the whole dratted business will begin all over again. Oy, what a life.)

First things first. Count me as a salt-fat-grease-redmeat type, mostly - potato chips, rare steak with lots of fat, bacon sandwich on generously buttered rye toast (serious YUM), and so on. Rarely chocolate - but when it is chocolate it had better be bitter as death (well, bittersweet as death!) and black as the ace of spades and... can't think of any other original similes off-hand. Then again, I tend to want those things most of the time - just more so when it's That Time. And it's getting to be That Time now, so unfortunately the other craving is kicking in - the Craving For Whatever Idiotic Thing Was Mentioned Last, even if I wouldn't normally consider it at all. In this case it's those damn toasted-coconut-covered marshmallow things (see Peeps thread... also Incredibly Strange Cravings thread... also...). Damn - now I have to decide whether I want 'em badly enough to get off my ass and go to CVS. Inertia? Cravings? Decisions, decisions. No - I know, much better idea than either of those: I'll sit here and burst into tears! Only - Himself ain't home to reap the benefit, so why bother? This is getting very confusing. But speaking of very confusing - second things second. Maggie, I've been reading (and wallowing in) your marvelous article about PMS - which probably has a thread of its own on which I should be cross-posting this, but if I'm too lazy to go to CVS to satisfy my own cravings you KNOW I'm too lazy to hunt it up... or down... and besides it doesn't not belong here... STOP DITHERING! :slaps self in face: Anyway - and seriously - I was thinking about the research into serotonin-related foods, and it struck me that there's another field where all that may well apply, and where it may even be being handled right, but quite possibly for the wrong reasons. OK, let me see if I can get this into logical sequence: You don't mention this in your article, probably because it's such a recent development that it wasn't really even happening yet when you wrote: the fact that doctors are now using a re-packaged version of Prozac to treat PMS and dysmenorrhea - Prozac being, of course, an SRI (Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) drug. Correlates directly (and I didn't understand this at all until I read your piece) with the cravings you chronicle for serotonin-precursor foods. Also correlates with the way the emotional symptoms of PMS mimic those of anxiety-type depression, for which the treatment of choice, these days, is - you guessed it - SRIs. <begin explanatory digression which isn't really a digression> For those who know even less about this than I do (and please, someone, jump in and correct me if you know more and if I'm getting it muddled), the significance of the reuptake thing is this: serotonin is one of the neurotransmitters that keep the brain on an even keel. A lot of different forms of depression and anxiety are caused at least partly by the brain being unable to get hold of as much of this stuff as it needs to keep itself happy - but... oddly enough the brain is usually mistaken in perceiving itself as having a serotonin deficiency. Most people make plenty of serotonin; the problem is that in people with certain types of depression the serotonin is being reabsorbed by some bit of the nervous system (the name of which I can't call to mind at the moment) faster than the brain can latch onto it to make use of it. Typically, we counteract this in one of two ways: instinctively, by trying to create more serotonin - which is counterproductive because it's attacking the wrong part of the problem, and that too will just get absorbed, though yes it does temporarily raise the level somewhat - or more recently, medically, by taking drugs which inhibit the re-absorption (=reuptake) of the plentiful serotonoin we already have. How does one create more serotonin? Damned if I know, but the raw materials include the kinds of foods which are serotonin-precursors: the kinds of foods described in the article, the kinds of foods we crave at That Time: chocolate, red meat, etc. There are also herbal supplements which provide serotonin precursors, but I think we've drifted far enough away from our animal instincts and ancient knowledge that we aren't going to crave these; like the SRI drugs we are only going to take them if we know about them and can get them. <end explanatory digression which isn't really a digression> (I haven't gotten to the point yet, but I'm almost there, I think.) OK, so both your research and the new treatment suggest the same thing: that the emotional aspect of PMS perfectly mimics the type of depression/anxiety which is caused by an apparent serotonin deficiency, and that it can be successfully treated (or at least mitigated) by the same approaches used for said depression. So far so good. I would also hazard a guess that one reason there's such a wide range of different emotional manifestations of PMS is that some women suffer from depression to begin with and others don't (or do, but to different degrees) - obviously the effects of changing hormone and neurotransmitter levels will vary greatly according to baseline conditions... but now I am digressing, to a degree, so I will wrench myself back toward the point. Which is this: Here's a population that has similar experiences: compulsive overeaters. Excluding, for purposes of this theory, the extreme/overlapping subsets (anorexics, bulimics, etc.), your basic out-of-control overeater typically has these things in common with a woman going through PMS: cravings for various rich foods which we now know to be serotonin precursors, and a tendency toward depression. Back when I first knew anything at all about compulsive overeating (a close friend asked me to come with her to a couple of OA meetings for extra moral support) I knew not the first thing about serotonin, chronic depression, hormones, neurotransmitters, nothin'. And this was a good 25 years ago, so SRIs weren't even out there yet, or not in the variety and profusion they are now. And PMS was still the Mysterious Ailment That Dared Not Speak Its Name. And if somewhere along the line I somehow consciously picked up on a statistical correlation between chronic overeating and clinical depression, that's about as sophisticated as my thinking got. But now! O brave new world, that hath such drugs and such refinements in't! OK, so here at last is what I'm wondering, and I'm raising it here in the hope that you may have learned something about it while you were researching the PMS piece: is anyone studying the correlation between overeating and depression in the same light? IOW, now that I've already made a long story long, is anyone exploring the possibility that compulsive overeating may be almost exactly the same thing as full-time 24/7 PMS? If that sounds obvious in light of the foregoing, I can only tell you that it struck me like a bolt from the blue. Here you have a population that powerfully craves food, with an emphasis on certain types of foods that are generally considered naughty when consumed in great abundance; these people are compelled to eat what they eat by some force they don't understand; typically they are also terribly depressed. The traditional response to this combination is to view it as an emotional vicious cycle which can only be broken through therapy; whatever the root emotional cause, goes this thinking, you overeat because you are depressed and you are depressed because you can't control your overeating. So that emotional root cause must be rooted out, and the vicious cycle broken. BUT WHAT IF THERE IS NO EMOTIONAL ROOT CAUSE? Or what if there is one, but that is only part of what's really going on? What if the primary mechanism operating here is the same one that has been identified with PMS - a lack of serotonin causing the depression, and cravings for the kinds of foods which will enhance serotonin production and thereby alleviate the depression? IOW, you might think you're depressed because you overeat, when in actual fact you're depressed because your body is neurochemically programmed for depression and the overeating is really the tool you're using to fight that programming. I suspect that a lot of compulsive overeaters today are having their depression/anxiety treated with SRIs, and are discovering incidentally that their cravings are being miraculously reduced - what I don't know, and would love to find out, is whether or not that's... a coincidence. Variations on a theme of Food and the Body, I guess. Any inklings, anyone? Oh... sorry, didn't mean to wake you.

How beautiful! I'm surprised it lasted even that long. Next time give us a little warning, and we'll all invite ourselves to dinner.

Well, sure - unless you happen to need it NOW, TONIGHT... B.B. (Before Bedtime)! IAC, I happily undertake to make it fresh whenever I can reasonably expect to want it tomorrow (that'll be every day, right?); but I also reserve the right to freeze a small batch against last-minute emergencies. That way everybody will be happy - especially everyone who's eating the confit.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! Half for the story itself, and maybe a little more than half for the punch line. Holy slicer-blades, Batman! I can fall vastly short of topping that, with a slightly gruesome episode involving a stand-mixer and a couple of fingers and a pushing of the wrong button (intending to release the beaters, not start them!) and a failure to unplug and... well, see, it was a Mixmaster and it was a much less antediluvian one than mine at home which dates back to the 50s and doesn't have an On/Off button, only the rheostat action, so when it's off it's off and when it's on it has to go through Very Slow before it runs Very Fast, and the only button it has is the release button, so really it was a perfectly understandable mistake to make.... Anyway, I was way way luckier than Mrs. Mayhaw, especially given that there's nothing mysterious about how fingers might encounter beaters set on high and get between them at exactly the wrong moment. Once I got over the initial shock I was hugely relieved to discover that all of me was in one piece, which was more than could be said of the bowl of egg whites. Also fortunately, both of the latter (bowl and eggs) were replaceable, and ultimately the nut roll I was making came together beautifully and was a tremendous success - and I kinda kept the bandaged hand under the table and let someone else do the slicing for once. But I got one hell of a good scare, and had to be very tender with that hand for some weeks. Whew. I didn't even do anything that required surgery, but oooh the faintness and wobbliness and unreality... shock can be a wonderful thing.

Oh my! I am wiping tears from my eyes from laughing so hard. But believe me they are empathetic tears and howls of laughter, as I have felt your pain myself in a similar situation that occurred with my grandparents and their pressure cooker. Tell - please tell! I do so love to meet a companion in misfortune. :snif: ... :giggle:

"Sir! Sir! The digesting machine has burst!" The pressure-cooker classic: old gasket, forgot to check it, forgot to check the vent. We're making scraps-&-bones stock for a tremendous raised pork pie and in a big big hurry to get the recipe written, racing a deadline etc. etc., so for once... careless. While waiting for the pressure to come up we trot upstairs to get the jump on writing the headnote. Suddenly there's a pop and a loud HISSSSSSSS from belowdecks. We look at each other and immediately know exactly what has happened. Scramble down the stairs and find the entire kitchen bathed in a thin film of pork fat. Track lights over stove - track had taken first direct hit from the geyser and immediately shorted, tripping circuit breaker. (Such a pleasure when things do what they're supposed to!) This is when I learn something about the anatomy of my kitchen. I have a 4-burner cooktop thingy (dating I think to the 30s), oven separate. Under the cooktop a lovely huge cabinet which is where my pots live. The door of this cabinet being very slightly ajar, I look inside and realize for the first time that the cabinet has no back: it's open to, and not-quite-perfectly-flush-against, the tile wall. The same tile wall which is behind the burner where the pressure cooker blew and which is dripping with pork grease... both above and below. I don't know quite enough about physics and aerodynamics and stuff to explain exactly how this happened, but the stuff has run down the wall into the back of the cabinet and somehow traveled forward, the result being that every pot and pan I own is coated with pork fat. At this point there is obviously only one thing to do. We do it. We fall against each other and crumple to the grease-covered floor, howling helplessly with laughter. Every time we think we've laughed ourselves out, we make the mistake of looking at the cabinet, or the stove, or each other... and it all starts up again. We finally manage to get up (not an easy proposition, because the floor is plenty slippery, and at this point so are we), though we give up on controlling the laughter. Hooting idiotically the while, we pull out my entire batterie de cuisine, armful by armful, and schlep it all into the adjoining bathroom, where we dump it all in the huge bathtub. Then comes the Catch-22 of trying to scrub down the kitchen: a losing battle at first because we are so greasy ourselves that we're making more mess than we're cleaning - it's one step forward, two steps back. I don't remember how long it took to get it all cleaned up and cleaned out, get the pots washed and put away, get the track lighting to the point where it was safe to use, and so on. Days. Weeks. I do know, however, that the top of the pressure cooker was irretrievably ruined (believe me, during the ensuing couple of years we consulted every genius, and tried every tool and every solvent, we could think of - those miserable bits of gasket were permanently fused to the metal); but that all was not lost, because once we managed to get the pot open we discovered that there was still just enough stock left inside it to enable us to finish the pie. We got off easy that time, I'd say.

You must be one of those Very Wise People who always plan ahead and never miss an opportunity to start a fresh batch when something is running low. I totally agree about making it fresh, but it does takes all night.... I'm picturing that moment that might occur on getting home late and whisking together an impromptu supper: "... and a little dollop of onion confit would be Just The Thing to add here and... you don't mind waiting a few hours, do you?"

Ooooh ooh ooooh... I wonder how well it would freeze...! Imagine having little bags or cubes of onion confit handy at all times, along with the frozen herbs and the frozen glace de viande and the frozen stock and one of my personal favorite staples, the frozen plum tomatoes... I think I'm going to have to try it. (Unless of course I discover down-thread that someone else has already Been There Done That Discarded the Result in Disgust.)

Peep jerky! I love it! Much much better than Jones Peeps. Thank you!

Uh-oh. I wish you hadn't said that. I don't have a special Peeps jones (or jones Peeps - isn't that a state park right near here? NO! STOP THAT! Down, girl), though I certainly do like them and can inhale them mindlessly.... But you've just reminded me of an equally seasonal offering that should be on the candy shelves right about now: those vaguely (very vaguely) egg-shaped marshmallows covered with toasted coconut. Oh lordy and here I had forgotten about those for I don't know how long. Must... go... to... CVS....

Or thought they liked the food....