mizducky

Okay, I'm off to dim sum! Y'all have a good time till I get back, hear?

Thank you, judiu! I don't recall trying La Croix, but I do love the various brands of flavored seltzers I've tried. Schweppes has some great ones, and there's a Pacific Northwest brand I became very fond of when I lived in Seattle called Talking Rain. And recently the local Trader Joe's has been carrying flavored sparkling waters from Crystal Geyser which are really tasty. I've discovered to my chagrin that carbonated beverages don't work all that well for my hydration purposes, because all the bubbles take up so much room in my tummy that they limit how much of the stuff I can drink. But the flavored waters do work as a great occasional beverage for me.

Good morning all! I'm up way earlier than my usual, enjoying a really light breakfast of coffee and a bowl of my beansprout banchan, mainly because I'm preparing myself for a much higher-impact brunch--dim sum at one of San Diego's known dim sum places, Emerald in Kearny Mesa. I'll be declaring this meal an "official" splurge so that I don't have to worry about counting every danged dumpling that goes by . . . but having done this kind of thing before, I bet I don't go too far overboard. Over a year of re-training my habits has at least made some inroads in my tendency to Lizard out. And then the fun continues this evening . . . remember, somewhere earlier in the blog, I was hinting that the Rockola guys might yet wind up making an appearance? Well, their appearance is tonight, at Humphrey's Backstage Lounge, so I'll be appearing there too! And this visit will be killing two birds with one, erm, rock, as I also intend to do my weekly Eats.It writeup on the bar menu at Humphrey's, which I've had ample Rockola gigs to sample and enjoy. So--busy day ahead! We'll see how well the knee holds up--so far this morning it seems to be cooperating. In the meantime, I'm relaxing with my coffee and listening to my favorite weekend-morning wakeup companion: Melinda Lee's cookery talk show on Los Angeles-based radio station KNX-AM. (I believe there's a link on Melinda's website that will allow you all to listen to her show live over the Internet). And I'm catching up with a couple of posts: Cool! When you send your husband hunting in the San Diego 99 Ranch, tell him to look in the chiller case in which they also keep all the tofu products -- if I'm remembering correctly, the konnyaku products are towards the middle-right of that long case, adjacent to the takuan and other pickled items. Or PM me when you get close to sending him on this expedition, and I'll remember to check so I can tell you more exactly. MizDucky - my husband shares the same ailment you have, the bum knee. You described how it feels perfectly. He also finds a way to snap it into place and keep off it as much as he can. Going back to your scrumptious ban chans, I never thought it would be great to have them solely as the main dish for a meal. Although I have been known to graze on the ban chans of our grilled korean barbeque meal, leaving the meat to my men while I stuff my face with the various veggie dishes. ← Yeah--knees are definitely weird joints, aren't they? I've deduced that part of what I've got going on is a meniscus tear in my left knee joint--when the knee gets a little too stressed, some little flap of meniscus cartilage gets folded the wrong way, interfering with the joint, until things calm down enough in the surrounding tissues for the flap to slip back into proper alignment again. I don't know if the "click" sensation when that flap moves about is audible, but everytime it does that, it sure feels "loud" to me! Re: the banchan--Yeah, I'm totally grooving on having them on their own, witness my breakfast this morning. It's like a whole new little universe of vegetable cooking to explore!

Hi Kathy-- I feel that shirataki and other konnyaku products have great possibilities as substitutes for high carb foods. It's just that you have to get the hang of them. They essentially have no flavor of their own, and a bouncy rubbery texture that it took some time for me to get used to, though some brands are softer than other. And there are also some varieties of shirataki that are made with some tofu mixed in, so that they're more nearly pasta-like in texture--and also opaque white, so that they look more pasta-like too. I usually get the traditional translucent non-tofu stuff though, and have discovered that if you braise it in a flavorful broth, it both softens a bit and absorbs the flavors. The other oddity about konnyaku products is that, fresh out of the package, they can have an odd odor that some find off-putting. There are a few strategies I've seen to get rid of the odor, usually involving rinsing it in hot or boiling water, which also helps soften it up a little. I find the stuff most reliably at 99 Ranch market, and less frequently at other Asian markets in town; very occasionally I see the tofu shirataki turn up in health-food stores in packaging aimed at non-Asians who are doing the low-carb approach. I'm not specifically doing low carb, but I do eat a relatively modest amount of complex carbs daily, and sometimes when I get to the end of a day and I've used up my carb allotment, shirataki is a nice way to still have some noodles for my soup. I too took notice when Ah Leung mentioned he and his wife do low-carb--now that's dedication, Ah Leung, cutting down on rice! I do love to cook with tofu too, though I have to count it against my protein allotment. But I can certainly see it working as a carb substitute in a low-carb plan. There are so many different tofu products to play with, also! I especially like fermented tofu, baked/pressed tofu, and bean curd skin, each of which have fascinating flavor or texture properties that are fun to play with. Bean curd skin, by the way, is another useful substitute for noodles--if you get the dried stuff, you have to give it a good soaking to soften it; then slice it up into whatever shape you'd like. Edited to add: This link will take you to a long-running topic on konnyaku.

Aha! Doddie, you must have been reading my mind while I was writing my previous post! Thanks for confirming that I was learning the proper way. Yeah, with the mushrooms I decided to not emulate any specific Asian cooking method, even though I was using some Asian ingredients (like the shirataki). I really love the flavor of lamb, so I wanted to do minimal flavoring to let the lamb broth do its thing. What wound up happening, though, is that the onions and garlic really caramelized like crazy during the long cooking, so the dish mostly tastes of that--not where I was planning to go with that dish, but a happy accident nonetheless.

Hi Bruce--thanks for your kind words. I've actually succeeded in getting my knee to snap out of its weird state, so I figure that, after staying off of it as much as possible this evening, I should be good to go by tomorrow morning. Actually, the main reason I did the sprouts and greens that way is because the several recipes I'd reviewed on the web for Korean banchan such as kong namul (bean sprout salad) all specified blanching and shocking the veg rather than stir-frying or sauteing, so I just went with that. Admittedly, though, I'm a rank novice at Korean cooking. Perhaps Doddie or other eGulleteers more experienced in that cuisine could weigh in here with an opinion on preferred traditional cooking methods for these dishes. But it's also true that doing the veggies that way does demonstrate one of my favorite strategies for wise use of fats: save up those fat calories for small amounts of highly-flavored fats applied at the very end, and beforehand either use non-fat cooking methods, or break out the non-stick cooking spray for such utilitarian tasks as saute lubrication (where you'd want to use a neutral-flavored saute agent anyway). Remember I split the sesame-oil dressing I made between the greens and the sprouts? The salads wound up with about two tablespoons worth of oil each. This is a reasonable amount of fat as far as my food plan is concerned--and I've found that dark sesame oil is much better used for flavoring than sauteing anyway.

Oh dear. In the bad old/good old days, before I made my commitment to healthy eating, I had a frequent practice of buying one of those supermarket rotisserie chickens, bringing it home, and then systematically demolishing it. I had a set order in my demolition: first went all the skin. All of it. Next was the pope's nose. Next after that, the little oysters from the small of its back. Then all the rest of the dark meat. I usually didn't even bother with the white meat until the next day, and then only after chopping it up for chicken salad. But if money had been no object and I could have gotten over my deeply ingrained horror of wasting food, I definitely would have bought something like three rotisserie chickens at a shot, eaten the skin off of all of 'em first thing, then devoured pope's noses and oysters ... and then fed the rest to the cat, or something. And don't even get me started about gribenes. Oh. My. God. P.S. That savory chicken-skin cannoli concept sounds fabulous. Heart-attack on a platter, fer shure ... but fabulous, none the less.

Following a suggestion I got last night from my fellow Eats.It writer Candice, I made my way back down to Barrio Logan, to an establishment just a couple of blocks down the street from Chicano Park: El Siete Mares (The Seven Seas), as the name implies, is a restaurant dedicated to Mexican style seafood dishes. Remember my comment the other day about looking for places the way Linus used to look for the sincerest-looking pumpkin patch? To my eyes, this place just radiates sincerity--bright blue paint job and barred windows and all. Inside, the place is decorated in anticipation of Easter. The TV is blaring a Spanish-language game show, and it sounds like somebody back in the kitchen is very enthustically scrubbing pots and pans. Some family/friends of the restaurant management hang out with their kids at a corner table. The friendly waitress greets me in excellent English, and brings me chips and a really firey non-gringo salsa. The place being called "Siete Mares," I figure I should go ahead and order the namesake dish, the caldo de siete mares (a mixed seafood soup): In the chile-laced tomato-based broth is a generous helping of assorted seafood: shrimp, scallops, very tender slices of octopus, firm chunks of fish, and even a small piece of lobster in the shell. Way in back on the left you see the partitioned yellow dish of add-ins that comes with the soup: finely chopped onions, chopped cilantro, chunks of lime, and a squeeze bottle of extremely hot sauce. A clutch of other bottled sauces is also available at every table. The soup also comes with three corn tortillas. This was already plenty enough food that I knew I wouldn't also have room for a fish taco, but I did kinda "roll my own" by fishing some seafood out of my soup, placing it in a tortilla, and decorating it with some chopped onion and cilantro. All in all, a great meal. It was as I was climbing back into my car that I felt that telltale "click!" in my left knee, so I was frustrated in my desire to show you all some more of the Barrio Logan/Logan Heights area. But I did manage to snap a couple of pics from my car without getting hit by anyone driving behind me: I have yet to go into this dulceria (candy shop) on Imperial Blvd., but I always notice their colorful display. This store, also located on Imperial, I have been in--it's a full-service store with a meat department, lots of produce, and assorted other groceries. And that's it for this afternoon's adventure!

Well, the good news is that I had a really lovely late lunch, and got a few great photos to show you all. The not-so-good news is that I did finally manage to put my knee out. It's not hurting right at the moment, but when I put my weight on it I can tell it is not happy with me. So I'm back home, with plans to spend this evening off my feet as much as possible to give the knee a chance to calm down and eventually pop back into place. Before I get to posting my photos of my lunch, a few more responses: Thank you! ... hmmm, I should clarify that in a normal week I don't usually buy quite this much vegetation all in one go. What with the blog and all, at some point I kind of started getting carried away with the veg purchases. And so I did need to cook a bunch of it before things started wilting--it lasts longer, and takes up a hell of a lot less space, when cooked. That said, though ... yeah, I guess I really do plow through a lot of vegetables in a given week, don't I? Now what are "tanos"? That's not an item I've run across yet. Always looking to learn more stuff ...

Okay, I'm heading out the door--see you all in a few hours ...

My weekend is going to be very busy both from a food/blogging standpoint and a life-in-general standpoint, so I'm planning to take it relatively easy today. But I do have on tap taking a little afternnon trip into Barrio Logan/Logan Heights in search of mariscos (seafood). Off to get ready ...

So here's what happened when I called on a bunch of vegetables yesterday afternoon: Some of the raw ingredients awaiting their turn: Spinach, beets, mung bean sprouts, and king oyster mushrooms. In the repurposed yogurt container is about a pint of broth left over from a lamb stew I made last week. My game plan is to roast the beet roots; blanch and shock the beet greens and spinach together, and the bean sprouts separately, and dress them with a sesame oil/soy sauce dressing for a Korean banchan-inspired effect; and to braise the mushrooms in the lamb broth along with some shirataki noodles. Washing the greens and sprouts: Beets ready to go--notice the green cellophane-wrapped package of shirataki noodle knots on the counter beyond: Sprouts blanching: They go from just right to unpleasantly limp in the blink of an eye, so I keep close watch. Onion, shrooms mise-en-place: King oyster mushrooms are much sturdier than other shrooms--not only do they stand up to hours of braising, they really need long cooking to get super-tender. Konnyaku products such as my shirataki knots also benefit from a good long braise to pick up flavors, so they'll match well with these shrooms. The onion is going in the braise, along with a bunch of whole peeled garlic cloves. The greens blanching: I love the magic trick of piling tons of greens into a pot of boiling water--it looks like they'll never all fit, but they keep shrinking down as you pile them in, so eventually I got that whole strainer-ful into my old battered soup pot. The shrooms simmering: Eventually I transferred this braise to my crock pot, and let it go all evening while I was out at dinner. And this is where my camera's batteries started giving up the ghost, so I'll just have to describe to you the dressing I made: 1/4 cup dark sesame oil; 1/4 cup Chinese light soy sauce; 2 tablespoons Japanese rice vinegar; a bunch of minced garlic; two dried red chiles, crumbled (I used chiles de arbol). After the greens and the sprouts were properly shocked and drained, I used half the dressing each on the greens and the sprouts. I was able to squeeze out one last photo before my batteries totally gave up the ghost: Here is my late lunch yesterday of dressed greens and bean sprouts. There is plenty more of each in the fridge right now; they probably taste even better today after marinating overnight. The roasted and peeled beets, as well as the finished mushroom/shirataki braise, also await in the fridge. And there's leftover sinigang in there too! I better not buy any more food until I've made a dent in all these leftovers!

Good morning, all! Boy, did I crash hard last night! This blogging stuff is hard work! First off--a bazillion thanks to everybody for their kind words regarding my physique. It really does my heart good! While I also try my best to stay detached from the whole "looks" issue involved in weight loss--that dynamic really messed with my head when I was a younger frustrated dieter--I will not deny that looking better, and being able to fit into more attractive clothes, does make me feel goooooood. I am currently out of yogurt, so today's breakfast is a couple of wedges of that Laughing Cow Light cheese in half of a whole wheat pita, along with a cup of coffee. (I love writing "half a whole wheat pita" -- reminds me of an old Firesign Theater routine in which they're doing a mock radio commercial for a rather odd-sounding food establishment: "...and inside, it's delicious! That's Arnie's Whole Beef Halves--we deliver!" ) I still have photos from yesterday's veg-cooking frenzy to post, but first, let me catch up with some more responses to posts: Right, yes, you did look up and find that those were preserved kumquats. I confess that in the flurry of passsing around dishes for tastes, I neglected to get a taste of the kumquats on that plate. But I do want to note that, as you may have noticed, The Linkery does lavish a lot of care on its sides and garnishes as well as its mains. The braised greens accompanying the link sampler plate were also standouts. The scary thing, Sandy, is that I think I understand exactly what you mean! I decided early on that, rather than battle my inner Lizard on that one, that I'd come up with healthy ways to do late night snacking. I haven't managed to photograph every single bite of food I've consumed this week, but what usually happens is that I save a few low-impact items from my food plan every day to consume in the evening when I get the bulk of my heavy computer work done. Sometimes that'll be a batch of low-fat microwave popcorn (one of my other little concessions to manufactured diet foods); sometimes it'll be a piece of fruit; often it'll be raw veggies; occasionally it'll be stuff like those seasoned nori strips I bought early this week--I've gotta watch it with those, though, as they're way salty and tend to make my bod retain water and bloat uncomfortably. This is an example of another one of my over-riding strategies: it's easier to re-direct the Lizard Brain into a healthier direction than to do a head-to-head thwarting of its will. A lot like re-directing a small child's attention to a different toy rather than just flat out saying "No you can't play with that other one, it's your sister's ..." Yeah, the supermarket/hypermart format does have its advantages. Though I do also like puttering around in the various smaller specialty markets around town. And while I've lived in other US cities where one could manage just fine without a car--in fact, in our Northeast cities like New York and Boston, dealing with a car can be such a pain in the butt that it's better to go without--these Southern California cities are so sprawling that I couldn't imagine surviving long without a car. Maybe if I lived in one of San Diego's more urban walkable neighborhoods, like Hillcrest, I could manage without a car; there's also a branch of the Flexcar car-sharing organization here in San Diego, a service I used with great effect when I used to live in Seattle. But where I'm living right now, there are no Flexcars, and while there are bus and trolley stops near me, the service is not quite frequent enough to be a car-substitute ... so I guess I'm stuck burning dead dinosaurs--at over three bucks a gallon right now. Aren't orange tabbies great? Now what does the name Flabbletje translate as? It sure looks entertaining to this non-Dutch speaker! I too have wondered about the popularity of naming urban streets after Euclid. There's one in Brooklyn too, if memory serves. Anybody got a clue about this? ← There's one in Irvine too. Maybe its a convenient "E" for streets running in alphabetical series? I have a hard time imagining city planners coming up with a series of mathematican or philosopher-named streets. "The Golden Arches, iat the intersection of Archimedes and Nietsche." Heh. That reminds me--I really love the neighborhoods here in San Diego with amusing alphabet street naming schemes. For non-San Diegans: Around Balboa Park, the streets are named alphabetically for various plants, shrubs, and trees. In Mission Hills, it's bird names. But my favorite is the scheme in Ocean Beach, where streets are named after famous writers and philosophers--for instance, the organic food co-op is on Voltaire Street. Nice! Ah--I need to thank my boss at Eats.It, Doug, for those photos--he has a much better camera and better technique than I, and is also a bit more bold about using his flash in restaurants, so I asked him to shoot that meal. The purple item is a potato salad--I have no idea how the kitchen managed to preserve that great purple color, as when I've cooked purple spuds I too have had them fade to pale lavendar. And I confess that in the low lighting at The Linkery, the purple color wasn't so noticeable. But the flash reveals all!

So--here I am, doing my big "reveal" in front of the entrance to The Linkery: You will notice that, at 220 pounds on a 5'3" frame, I'm still definitely on the Rubenesque side. But I'm definitely a helluva lot better off than I was before! (Hmmmm ... full-length "before" pictures seem to be a bit scarce, somehow. I'll have to do a little digging...) I already knew what today's specials were because I'm on The Linkery's email list. I had my eye on that mushroom pie ... though the terrine also sounded really tempting ... There were a total of five of us at dinner--I was joined by Doug, proprietor of SanDiego.Eats.It, plus fellow Eats.It writers Candice and Rebecca, and Rebecca's boyfriend Ken. Dedicated foodies all, we were inclined to make sure we each ordered something different so we could get a taste of as many items as possible. We started with the three-link sampler plate: As I think I mentioned before, The Linkery makes all their own sausages. The varieties du jour: a very hot and spicy Italian; a mild Polish; and an even milder Chicken Provencal (which several in the party thought a little too mild and dry, but which I really liked). The mushroom pie: A little mountain of delicious shrooms of all different sorts, piled on a square of puff pastry that had been slathered with a jam whose slight sweetness played well with the savory shrooms. The pressed pork terrine: I believe the consensus was that this dish was the winner of the evening. The smoky flavor of the bacon pervaded the whole slab of porky goodness. Salad of grilled asparagus, frisee, and house-made lardons: Smoked kasekraner sandwich: Yes, witticisms about "food porn" were made. Sausage tacos: One of The Linkery's signature dishes, and a great light meal in which to sample one of the sausages of the day. The roast lamb: I loved the wonderful gamey flavor of this lamb. And the potato gratin almost upstaged the meat, it was so good. To drink with my mushroom pie, I had the Alpine Beer Co. Captain Stout, which was on tap. Candice had a bottle of Stone Brewing's Old Guardian. Rebecca and Ken split a bottle of Coppola "Director's Cut" Pinot Noir. Oy--I forgot to write down what Doug was drinking! I'll have to follow up on that ... Desserts: Going clockwise from high noon we have carrot cake from Bread on Market in downtown San Diego; house-made grilled pound cake; strawberry/rhubarb soup with house-made olive oil gelato; and house-made Oaxacan chocolate ice cream with cacao nibs. We voted the carrot cake respectable, the other desserts flat-out outstanding. With dessert, Ken and I each had a glass of a Broadbent port. What a fun, inventive meal! (Full details of all these dishes can be found on The Linkery's very detailed website.) Edited to add: Doug informs me that he had their cask beer-- the Port Brewing Company Palapa Pale Ale. (He usually gets whatever they have on cask.)

Hello! I'm back ... and I'm a bit buzzed! And I only had a pint of beer and a small glass of port, too, along with a reasonably-sized dinner, yet. Just another wrinkle to this whole weight-loss business ... time was when I could drink guys twice my size under the table without blinking an eye. But now that I have a lot less mass to soak up the alcohol, I've become a much cheaper date. Once again, I've got some photos to upload, but before I scurry away to do that, let me respond to a couple more posts: Wow. Yes. I had forgotten all of this........how the SoCal grocery scene has changed over the past 20 years. Is everywhere like this? (Best to the B. Tedde and the Rockola guys ) ← I only have anecdotal bits and pieces, but my sense is that there's been a bunch of supermarket comings and goings all over in the past few decades. Reading this Wikipedia article on the once-dominating A&P supermarket chain gives me further glimpses of the ever-changing fortunes, closeouts, and consolidations that have been going on in the supermarket biz. (I may yet wind up giving your regards to the Rockola guys in person before this blog is over ... stay tuned for further developments! ) Ahhhh ... at the risk of really getting "Fish Heads" stuck in your head, let me point you to yet another Wikipedia article, this one about the creators of "Fish Heads," a duo known as Barnes and Barnes (one of whom was Bill Mumy, of "Lost in Space" fame). And to really grind it into everyone's brain, here is a YouTube clip of the video for "Fish Heads," a truly bizarre piece of film. Heh. I was going to suggest some other song to get "Fish Heads" out of your head, but I can't think of any at the moment because now the Fish Heads are stuck in my head too. I too have wondered about the popularity of naming urban streets after Euclid. There's one in Brooklyn too, if memory serves. Anybody got a clue about this? Show and eat more fish, check. I'm working on it. Re: my shopping patterns--because I eat a whole lot more produce than I used to, I've had to learn how to pace myself--I've discovered to my chagrin that if I, cooking just for myself, buy a whole bunch of veggies, I have to really watch it or I'll wind up throwing out veg that I just wasn't able to get to before they spoiled. Fortunately, with my freelancer's schedule it's fairly easy to work in a shopping trip every couple of days or so. (When I used to put in 60-hour work weeks for large corporations, I'd wind up grocery shopping once a week, usually late at night, buying lots of frozen stuff ... or just saying hell with it and eating fast food crap.)

Okay, I'm off again! (Like that's any big secret. ) See you all later this evening!

If memory serves, that would be from Sweeney Todd. Sure sounds like a Sondheim lyric. ← You got it! A wonderful musical, especially for anyone with food-geek tendencies (not to mention a warped sense of humor). And yeah, Sondheim got off some memorable lines in that one. That whole "song" (given the almost operatic format of that musical, it's kind of hard to call them songs, but I don't know what else to call them) from which the quote comes is a riot of dark humor. I can still hear Angela Lansbury in my head singing "Have a little priest ..." Len Cariou: "Is it very fat?" Angela: "Only where it sat!" Or something like that--quoting from memory here... ← You realize that song's gonna be stuck in my head for days now... gee, thanks! ← Oh dear! I seem to be batting a thousand with the earworms, huh? Guess I'll have to quote some more obscure songs! Speaking of which, I just pitched a vegetable-cooking frenzy in the kitchen in the past hour that had me singing "Call Any Vegetable" under my breath ad nauseum. I do have photos--even though my camera batteries attempted to die in mid-frenzy--but they'll have to wait until this evening, as now I have to rush to get ready for our early dinner date. Plus now I have to stop for batteries en route (why the hell I didn't stop to buy batteries yesterday--or for that matter, stock up before the blog started--I have no idea ...). Anyway, I'll try to stick my head in here before I head out. Keep those comments and questions coming!

If memory serves, that would be from Sweeney Todd. Sure sounds like a Sondheim lyric. ← You got it! A wonderful musical, especially for anyone with food-geek tendencies (not to mention a warped sense of humor). And yeah, Sondheim got off some memorable lines in that one. That whole "song" (given the almost operatic format of that musical, it's kind of hard to call them songs, but I don't know what else to call them) from which the quote comes is a riot of dark humor. I can still hear Angela Lansbury in my head singing "Have a little priest ..." Len Cariou: "Is it very fat?" Angela: "Only where it sat!" Or something like that--quoting from memory here...

As I think I said earlier, the main thing on tap for today is dinner at The Linkery. While this is a place where it is indeed possible to put together a light and healthy meal (Jay has some excellent vegetarian and vegetable offerings on his menu), I do want to allow for at least a little splurge to enjoy some of this place's great sausages and other meat offerings, as well as a pint of one of their cask-conditioned beers on tap. Fortunately, I'll be dining with several friends, so it'll be possible to do a shared plate or two so I don't have to tempt the Lizard Brain with a whole meat entree to myself! Plus, I'm aiming to make the rest of today's food intake real low-impact, so as to save calories for the evening. That doesn't mean fasting all day, though--now that would really set up a Lizard Brain disaster! No, instead I'll be partying on the vegetables again, plus some other items I turn to at times like this. Stay tuned for further info ...

Good morning, world! Actually, I've been up for a while already, loading the dishwasher and making coffee. Breakfast was another cup each of plain yogurt and of coffee--when I'm not going out for bun bo hue, my breakfasts tend to be pretty utilitarian. Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. It really helps me tremendously--positive feedback is great fuel for the healthy-eating motivation. Plus, hey, it feels goooooood. A few responses to various posts: Congrats on your weight loss! And on finding a food plan that works great for your situation. A piece of advice I forgot to mention previously is that it's crucial to find a food plan that fits well with one's personal habits and preferences. Technically, I guess I too am usually eating the bulk of my calories early on in my day--it's just that, night owl that I am, my "day" both starts and ends later. For that matter, many diet pundits discourage eating/snacking while doing work, but computer geek that I am, I usually find myself eating while at the keyboard late into the night--but I make those snacks vegetables and fruit and similar low-impact items, so it works for me. The bottom line is: do what works. Bummer about the shellfish allergy! That can definitely be tricky with many Asian cuisines. However, since a lot of those cuisines have Buddhist-inspired vegetarian cookery traditions, it's often possible to find vegetarian (i.e. shellfish-free) versions of many ingredients--and because these food traditions have had centuries over which to perfect their techniques, their vegetarian substitute ingredients are a helluva lot more tasty and satisfying than some modern Western mock-meat products I've sampled. Cool! I didn't dare ask, because it isn't food related, but I hoped you'd show us Chicano Park. There's an inspiring documentary about it that I show my class on multiculturalism and art. So, um, on topic. Fish tacos? ← I adore Barrio Logan/Logan Heights--its culture, its history, and last but far from least, its food! Time and my energy level willing, I want to make another visit to that neighborhood; if I don't find a decent fish taco, I'll at least show y'all some other local eats from there, plus more slices of local culture. (For the time being, I'll leave aside the often-lively discussion as to the level of authenticity of the San Diego fish taco, partly because I don't know enough to comment intelligently, and partly because I confess I tend to like offal tacos--tripas, lengua, cabeza, etc.--more.) Playing amateur armchair cultural/culinary anthropologist is another hobby/obsession of mine, right along with all the food-geekery. Getting this part-time gig as a food writer has been a marvelous justification/excuse for me to amplify my practice of gallivanting around town, exploring neighborhoods and scoping likely eateries to check out. Food is a fabulous tool by which to understand a community--it's a microcosm of that community's history, culture, and values, and a mirror of the politics and economics that influence that community. To quote one of my favorite musicals, "the history of the world, my sweet, is who gets eaten and who gets to eat!" (six points for anyone who guesses the reference ) Yeah, confronting that midlife weight gain is its own unique challenge, especially for those people with no prior history of overweight issues. Those of us who have been fighting it all our lives at least have some experience with how damn difficult it can be. Whereas folks in your situation often struggle with "how come the way I've been eating my entire life so far used to work just fine, but is suddenly not working for me anymore?" Alas, the human metabolism does seem to shift gears somewhere in our forties, and for a whole lot of us it's a gearshift down. It helps to attack the problem at both ends--both managing the food intake (calories in) and revving the metabolism back up a few gears by increasing physical activity (calories out). And I think it does also help simply to be aware of the metabolism shift--there's a reason things that used to work don't work anymore.

I've had a few people PM me asking for my tips, tricks, suggestions, and observations about healthy reasonable weight loss for food-loving people. I've sort of been dropping them in randomly here and there, but here's a whole bunch of them at once off the top of my head: 1. The most fundamental thing for me is having my mental game in order. Motivation motivation motivation. I can't just think of it as a "diet" for a short period of time, that I'll then stop when I've reached goal. I have to think of it as a way of life I can comfortably and happily maintain for the duration--i.e. theoretically, for the rest of my life. In my case, the final kick in the pants was watching my dad die a few years ago, of kidney failure resulting from type 2 diabetes, after a lifetime of eating outrageously despite all his doctors' warnings. It was a miserable and totally preventable death, and for a long-lived family like ours it was way too soon, and it made me look really really hard at ways I had also been ignoring doctors' warnings, and my own body's distress signals, for years. It took me a year after Dad's death to get myself totally committed to doing something about that, but once I made up my mind, I bid fond farewell to the old way of eating and have (mostly) never looked back. 2. Second most fundamental thing: do not underestimate the degree of difficulty of this life change you'll be making. I was essentially attempting to reprogram myself after a lifetime of dysfunctional learned behaviors around food, including some major angst about overweight and food behavior (almost literally) beaten into my head from way early in childhood. This is major, and so I have given it the attention and resources appropriate to the humongous effort it requires. 3. Another part of my mental game: you may have noticed me occasionally joking here and there about The Lizard Brain. It's no joke, really: many brain scientists observe that we humans have a triune brain, consisting of three evolutionary layers: the neocortex, seat of rational thought and consciousness, is evolutionarily the newest; the limbic system, a.k.a. the "Dog Brain", is older, and tends to be involved in processing such emotional bonding behaviors as love and loyalty; and the oldest layer, the so-called Lizard Brain, is the seat of basic survival instincts such as lust, hunger, and territorial aggression. I love the way this article explains this, especially this quote: So--do NOT underestimate the Lizard Brain! 'Cause it'll gitcha when you're not paying attention! The best ways I've found to cope with it, is a combination of keeping close track of my food intake with all those lists and charts I mentioned previously, the better to prevent it convincing me to cheat; not letting myself get too hungry, tired, or emotionally upset--all conditions in which the rational brain is at a disadvantage and the Lizard Brain can rush in and say "ARRRRR! EATTTTT!!!"; and simply staying aware of my inner lizard, understanding its moods and its functions, so it can't sneak up on me. 4. Having said all that, there is indeed an important place for little tips and tricks, so that you'll be cheerful about eating this way for the rest of your life. My favorite tips: a. "You can have it all--you just can't have it all right now." As far as I'm concerned, there are NO foods that are absolutely verboten, no foods that are "bad". There are, however, foods that are so nutritionally dense or high in calories that it's best to have them only for very occasional splurges. So--treat them like the splurges they are, and make choices wisely. Yes, I can still enjoy my beloved red-cooked pork belly--but to keep from blowing my daily food allotment out of the water, I only have it occasionally and in small servings. Yes, if I really wanted to, I could have a fast-food burger and fries--but I'd have to make proper room for it in my food plan, and I early on resolved that if I was going to have a splurge, I damn well wasn't going to blow it on a crappy fast-food burger! Somehow, knowing that I could choose those foods if I really wanted them, but that I was choosing not to because I wanted to spend my splurges on worthier things, has successfully mollified my inner lizard's lust for fast food crap. Like I said, the majority of this game for me is mental. b. Party on the vegetables! Vegetables offer such huge variety in taste, texture, versatility ... it's a shame, really, how often even good restaurants, even in this day and age, still treat them as also-rans, or act as if the only way to make them interesting is to dump a lot of fat on them. (No, I'm not anti-fat--we need fat for health, after all--but even healthy fats are a big caloric hit and need to be used with care). I have really made an effort to improve my vegetable cookery and move beyond the "just add fat" solution. Roasting, broth braising, steaming, stir-frying; flavoring with high-flavor/low-calorie condiments such as soy sauces, mustards, hot sauces, vinegars, etc etc etc ... the possibilities are really endless. c. For those of us who, like me, were meat/fat addicts, maximizing the meatiness of non-meat foodstuffs is a great boon to happy healthy eating. That's another reason why I like roasting vegetables and flavoring them with soy sauces, both of which add lots of umami; roasting also contracts and evaporates moisture from vegetables, making their texture a little more meatlike. And cooking with meat-based broths obviously is adding meaty flavor with low caloric impact. Plus some vegetables are just naturally more meatlike--mushrooms, for instance, are great meat-simulators both in texture and in naturally-occuring glutamates. d. The Asian cuisines, in my opinion, are some of the friendliest to those who wish to lose weight. They tend to have some of the healthiest ratios of meat to carb to veg, plus they really have a way with those vegetables. eGulleteers who have lived in Vietnam for any length of time have commented that they lost weight almost effortlessly on a steady diet of pho and other such dishes; the first few months of my regimen, I ate pho for lunch almost every single day. Now obviously, if I ate big hunks of pork belly every day I wouldn't be faring so well! But I already covered that earlier, right? e. Spread your day's food across several small meals rather than two or three big ones; don't go more than five hours between meals. The human metabolism works more efficiently if its continually processing modest amounts of fuel rather than cycling up and down as it wades through one big chunk of fuel followed by several hours of nuthin'. And the blood sugar level stays more even, too--nothing wakes the Lizard Brain up in full effect like a low blood sugar hunger attack. f. Fluids, fluids, fluids. When you lose weight, that weight has to go somewhere, and that somewhere inevitably involves the kidneys and GI tract. Help your body do that processing efficiently by giving it plenty of fluids to help wash the weight loss byproducts away. g. Eating right is only part of the equation. Exercise is the other part. Not only does it burn calories outright, but it also revs up the basal metabolism so that it processes more efficiently; more efficient processing means easier weight loss. I confess I still have a long way to go with the exercise part of my program, but as my physical condition has improved, physical movement has become a whole lot more enjoyable. h. Wise use of selected diet-industry products. The vast majority of diet foods I find, frankly, disgusting. But there are a few I find benign to indispensible. The artificially-sweetened beverage powders, to make sure I get in my daily fluids. The non-stick cooking sprays--I saute with them, and then use small quanitities of high-quality fats for flavor. And we've already discussed the quest for lower-fat everyday cheese that actually taste good -- high quality high-fat cheeses are not banned, but they do fall in the "occasional splurge" category. I'm sure I'll think of more stuff, but that's probably plenty for right now!

It was quite nice, but ... not as garlicky as I was hoping (I adore garlic!). Looking at the amount of garlic you put in your garlic rice, I think I probably would have liked yours a lot better!

Reassessing the late hour, my big lunch, and my still-wavering energy level, I decided to forgo any major cooking projects this evening, and instead made a light supper of leftover sinigang soup (boy, did that fish head produce a well-gelling broth!). On tap for tomorrow: got that dinner at The Linkery planned. Before that ... well, I really need to get some more paid work in--my schedule's flexible, but not that flexible!-- but I'll also do some puttering about in the kitchen in between puttering around on the computer. Actually, I've been doing some work right along ... we've got several writers for Eats.It, and every night I get a new recommendation edited, uploaded to the site, and placed on its front page. Production, bay-bee! Even though I'm winding down, I'll be awake for a few more hours here, so if you have any questions or comments, fire away. I did get a PM or two with questions, so I'll start a separate post to address those.

Now how often do you see a supermarket with a statue out front honoring a national hero? David and I thought this was incredibly cool. (For more info on Jose Rizal, look here). Like I said, this place is huge. And so is the seafood department for which it is named. Look! Pocky! I couldn't leave after gallivanting all around this store without buying something, but mindful of the backlog of veg I still need to do something with, I restricted myself to a half-dozen salted duck eggs and a bag of bean sprouts. National City has a long and fascinating history, including a period in the late 1800s when it was bidding to be, and lost out on being, the major railroad terminus of Southern California. There are some lovely examples of 19th century architecture left, including this carefully preserved block of brick rowhouses that look like they'd been dropped in from some East Coast city: And speaking of history: remember yesterday when I talked about the Coronado Bridge? When it was first constructed, a bunch of the support structure on its mainland end obliterated several blocks of a Mexican-American neighborhood known as Barrio Logan. The residents protested, and the eventual upshot was that they claimed the land under the bridge as a people's park. Chicano Park is now a well-loved neighborhood park sporting some gorgeous mural art, mainly on themes of politics and cultural identity:

So today, my buddy David drove so I could take photos while we were en route. There are many ways to get from San Diego down to National City. If you simply jump on the freeway, provided it isn't rush hour, you can be there in fifteen minutes flat. But then you'd miss all sorts of slices of multicultural life. Instead, I directed David to take us down Euclid Avenue, a street the runs south from El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego all the way down through National City, passing through all sorts of neighborhoods and their eateries and groceries: A humble little neighborhood market The local Food-4-Less shows its cultural sensitivity There must be bazillions of taco stands all over San Diego that look something like this--I think of them as being equivalent to that really "sincere" pumpkin patch that Linus was always waiting for the Great Pumpkin in. This taco stand looked especially "sincere" to me--I need to check it out one of these days. Ditto this barbeque joint. Especially since it also advertises soul food. My buddy David hails from Texas, and while he doesn't feel qualified to judge soul food, he felt this place had the right look to possibly be a great BBQ joint. "What makes it look right?" I asked. "It's grundgy enough!" he answered. Finally, we started seeing signs that we were entering the Filipino neighborhood And here is our destination. In this shopping center is Seafood City, a huge supermarket catering to the Filipino community, plus ... Goldilocks, one of a half-dozen US branches of a restaurant chain based in the Phillipines. A Filipino friend recommended this place to me, so we're here to check it out. Awwwww ... I wanna teeshirt! (I'm sort of holding off on unnecessary clothing purchases until my size stabilizes a bit more, though...) Goldilocks is primarily a bakery, doing everything from simple bread and buns to these outrageous cakes. Fondant and airbrush city! But they also have table service with a full menu, which was what we were here for. Over David's shoulder you can see folks enjoying dessert drinks, plus a video screen that was running non-stop ads for various Goldilocks products. And here is what we ordered: Siumai (sp?) -- looked and tasted pretty similar to the Chinese dumplings of the similar name. After Doddie's demonstration of how to make garlic rice, of course I had to get some. Lechon paksiew (sp?), and a sauerkraut salad whose name I'm forgetting at the moment. Barbeque pork skewers--my Texan buddy approved! Cucumber salad. All of the above food, plus coffee for two, came to something like $27. Incredibly reasonable. To be continued...