mizducky

My mom checked out the Hamburger Helper stuff shortly after it came out, decided it was a ripoff, and concocted her own version, which was quite yummy. We prompted dubbed the creation "Hamburger Thing," and it became a regular star of our family dinners when I was growing up. As an adult, I tried the Hamburger Helper style mixes a few times, discovered they had enough sodium in them to turn me into a dirigible, and promptly dropped them. I will buy bagged salad greens on the (rare) occasions I'm in the mood for a green salad. Once in a very blue moon will I do the prepackaged mac-and-cheese. But that's about it for me and the kits. They just don't inspire me very much--even their organo-groovy natural-foodstore counterparts. I did try a felafel mix a while back just to see how it tasted. Answer: just not very good.

I realize it is small consolation, but you can at least be glad the birds are eating the fruit fresh off the plants, as opposed to windfall fruit that's had time to ferment. We had a few incidents with the windfall off the mulberry trees in my family's yard--there is nothing quite so bizarre as the sound and spectacle of drunken bluejays. Oh yeah, and our bluejays, drunk or sober, could care less about the presence of the neighbors' cat, even though she was a determined hunter--in fact, I witnessed them mobbing and dive-bombing the poor kitty a couple of times. Real houligan birds, these were.

I don't know much about the gas ovens on RVs (the only time a bunch of friends and I rented a similarly-equipped RV, we just never wound up using its oven). But I did grow up with nothing but all-gas ranges in my family's house, and in those there'd be a separate broiler drawer underneath the main oven, so that it would also be underneath the oven's main heating element for top-down broiling purposes. In fact, the first few all-electric ranges I ever encountered in friends' houses confused the crap out of me, because I'd see they had a drawer under the oven too, only it was just a drawer (usually filled with my friends' excess pots and pans)--so where the heck did one broil on the danged thing? That one episode of renting an RV with friends, by the way, definitely convinced me that such a beast would be a lot of fun to have. I used to go tent-camping all the time, but my days of sleeping on the ground are Over. There was a lovely couple of summers several years back in which I owned and made extensive use of a 1979 VW Westphalia camper-van--alas, not outfitted with the full-fledged kitchenette with propane stove and fridge. But a Coleman two-burner camp stove plus careful management of coolers and ice allowed me to do some pretty nice camp cookery--can't remember any highlights, it's been so long, but the doing made for some fun times.

A couple of my personal "danger, Will Robinson!" restaurant warning signs: --If the bar is considerably busier than the dining room, even at the height of dinner hour (i.e. no regular actually *eats* there) --If the patrons are several orders of magnitude more trendy-looking or beautiful-people-ish than I'll ever be in this lifetime (i.e. people are there to be seen rather than to eat) --If the hostess or maitre'd recites a rote "wecoming" phrase while his/her face, voice, and body language all scream boredom --If the decor is way over-cutesy--especially if it overworks a theme of any sort, especially if said theme bears no relation to the restaurant's geographical location (i.e. a fishing-net-and-bouy-bestrewn Rusty Scupper Cafe in the middle of East Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas) --If the menu is way over-cutesy--especially if every over-cutesy entree name is followed with a "TM" or "R-in-a-circle" trademark bug --If it purports to be an ethnic restaurant, and there is no visible staff of that ethnicity to be seen anywhere on the premises. --If it purports to be an ethnic restaurant, and there are no visible customers of that ethnicity to be seen anywhere in the dining room. --Anyplace that decorates their dining room with tons of taxidermy (cue "Deliverance" banjo theme) Sometimes I've ignored these warning signs, and had a perfectly acceptable meal. But not often.

I had several people--including my pharmacist!--highly recommend cherries and/or cherry juice for fighting off an acute gout attack. It isn't a cure, but it really does help. Whenever I get a miserably sick flu/cold/stomach bug thing, I eat nothing but plain white rice for a day or so. I dunno if it cures anything, but it's a comforting easily-digestible food. Sometimes I will also make some kind of "healing soup" concoction--more like a kind of tea consisting of a ton of garlic and ginger simmered in plain water. Very soothing. When my sinuses are badly congested, a bowl of really good spicy hot-and-sour soup will give me at least some temporary relief. By the time I reach the bottom of the bowl, I'll have had to blow my nose several times because *everything* has broken loose and started to flow! Alas, shortly after I finish the soup, the sinuss start to fill again and I'm soon as blocked up as I was previously ... but at least I had about an hour of being able to breathe normally. Oh, and for getting other things flowing, there's no beating good ol' fashioned prunes. (In fact, they work almost too well...) Meanwhile, for my paying job I am in the process of writing a whole article on the many medical conditions that can be improved by intake of omega-3 fatty acids, long-chain polyunsaturated fat molecules most often found in certain species of deep-sea fish and in certain plant sources such as flaxseed (the omega-3s in fish are more easily processed by the human body than the ones from flaxseed, by the way). At this point, there's research supporting the efficacy of omega-3s not only against heart disease and hypertension, but also against autoimmune/inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, neurological/mental issues such as schizophrenia, ADHD, depression, and dementia/Alzheimer's, and more. Alas, the deep-ocean fatty fish that are richest in omega-3s are often the same species that concentrate mercury and other toxins in their fat, making it hazardous to intake large amounts of omega-3s just through eating fish, so most health pundits recommend fish oil supplements that have been purified to remove any such toxins. But one can still certainly help one's health along with a couple of goodly servings of fish weekly. Oh yeah, and as high heat tends to destroy omega-3s, best to have that fish gently poached rather than deep-fried ... or even better, go for sushi or sashimi.

Well, if you've checked RecipeGullet you've probably seen my borscht recipe already, but just in case you didn't, here's the link. I enjoy this one both cold and hot, by the way.

I think my single biggest goof was when I volunteered to be in charge of the annual celebratory dinner for the community chorus I used to sing with in Seattle. For prior dinners, people had basically hit Costco for frozen pre-packaged lasagnas and the like, accompanied by store-bought breads and home-made salads. Even from Costco, those lasagnas were an expensive way to feed an 80-person group, so they would get just barely enough for everyone to have one small serving--result, a not-all-that-celebratory-feeling dinner. So I was bound and determined to come up with a more interesting way to feed everybody, that was cheaper and didn't rely so heavily on prepackaged stuff. I had access to the big industrial-duty kitchen of the church social hall where this chorus met, so I thought "Ah-hah! I can bake off a whole bunch of potatoes, and then we can do a Gourmet Baked Potato Bar with a bunch of different toppings and stuff." Only problem was, as a novice to large-scale cooking I had not taken into account how much longer it takes to bake a huge ovenful of potatoes than it does only a few--even if one's using a restaurant-style humongo-oven instead of a home-style oven. Fortunately, as an anal-compulsive type I had arrived really early to start the potatoes. As I realized my mistake, I cranked the oven temperature up like crazy, and that, along with my extra lead time, meant that dinner was eventually served only a few minutes later than originally planned. The chorus members definitely enjoyed the dinner, but I was a nervous wreck. I definitely learned a new appreciation of the complexities of large-volume cooking. However, apparently so did the folks in my chorus, as in subsequent years people went back to the Costco lasagnas since nobody wanted to work quite that hard.

I seem to recall a whole lotta Top Ramen happening ... either in the trusty coffeemaker, or for the slightly better equipped, in a saucepan on a hotplate. Speaking of that hot plate--if your dorm does not have student-accessible kitchens, do not despair. You too can make like a SRO hotel resident and create your own makeshift kitchen with assorted small electrical appliances (allowing for your school's rules on having such things in dorms--I vaguely recall that some dorms ban many cooking gizmos as fire hazards). With some assortment of hotplate, toaster oven, little George Foreman-type grill, microwave, and small fridge you can make an amazing amount of actual for-real food (i.e. not just Top Ramen). Omelettes are pretty straighforward with the hotplate and an inexpensive non-stick skillet. The grill or toaster-oven can let you do burgers, chops, and other small meat items; you can do baked potatoes in microwave or toaster oven; the toaster oven even gives you access to (relatively smallish) baked goods. If you can only pick one appliance, go for a good-quality toaster oven--IMO they're the most versatile gizmo.

What a great idea! This could be the Cook-Off XIII ← Okay, I just scared myself by imagining a Big Bite Hot Dog Frittata and a Slurpee Margarita. I suppose these are cousins to the world famous Zircon-encrusted tweezers? ← I'm glad to see someone else picked up this reference while I was out of town yesterday. Another highly enjoyable blog. And Dave, your wrassling with sub-par kitchen gear is actually making me feel a little bolder about volunteering to do a blog myself sometime, as I'd say that the majority of my regular everyday cooking gear can best be described as sub-par (and that's putting it kindly).

Here and there I've seen some additional anthropological theories concerning the origin of certain tenets of Kashrut. For instance, apparently anthropologists have found a variety of taboos around blood in a number of tribal peoples -- blood being regarded as a powerful mythic life-containing substance that must be handled with care, that "care" expressing itself in a variety of ritual ways. Thus it's theorized that some similar taboo among the ancient Israelites got transformed over the centuries, eventually getting incorporated into and given new meaning in the more formalized Israelite faith. I also recall reading a theory that the ancient Israelites spent some time among non-Israelite peoples who held the pig sacred to their gods as a sacrificial as well as food animal, and thus the Israelites religious leaders began to teach abstension from pork as it was so associated with proscribed idol worship. In other words, by this theory it was not only about differentiating the Israelite people from their neighbors, but their religion from the other people's religion. By the way, I don't see any of these theories as mutually exclusive with any of the others--I think they all could have been mutually reinforcing. As to what these practices mean now to their adherents, and those adherents' motivations in observing them, I get the impression that there's a component of this that Buddhist teachers might call "mindfulness" -- raising everday acts from the level of the rote mundane to that of spiritual practice. So preparing and eating food in a manner acceptable to one's religion imbues the whole act of cooking and eating with spiritual significance. I see an echo of this in Zen teachings in which the role of monastery cook, the tenzo, is seen as having deep spiritual significance, as in the thirteenth-century Zen text Instructions to the cook. Certainly, though, specific religious food practices can lose their meaning for individuals for any number of reasons, which can leave said practices looking pretty arbitrary and uninspiring.

This brings up an interesting side issue--tolerance/acceptance of stinky foods does vary widely. I actually enjoy the smell of lots of foods that other people find objectionably stinky. I never quite understood what various housemates, landlords, etc. found so objectionable about the cooking smells of things like fish, cabbage, organ meats, etc. -- I mean, I respected their dislikes and all, and tried to plan my cooking accordingly; but I could never quite get my brain wrapped around *why* the smells disturbed them so, as they seemed perfectly acceptable to me.

Certainly I like my food to look pretty, but there's also a number of beloved foods I can think of that, if one were to go solely on appearance, would send most people running away screaming. Take chopped liver, for instance. I adore the stuff, but nobody can convince me it looks particularly aesthetic (nomatter what shape your bubbe molded it into ). And remember that old saying about how it must have been a brave person who dared to first eat an oyster? So, I can eliminate the visual from my list of senses essential to my food enjoyment. Now that I think about it, I've been known to eat with gusto even while in the throes of a blithering head-congested cold, when both my hearing and sense of smell were considerably restricted. I've also managed to enjoy food--carefully!--right after a dentist's appointment, with novocaine still making major parts of my mouth feel like pieces of somebody else's body. So I can apparently make do without the tactile sense. So, I really do think I've legitimately narrowed down my essential food-enjoying sense to that of taste. Not that I don't thoroughly enjoy the other sensory aspects of eating, when available and functioning properly ...

If cholesterol were not an issue in my life, I think I could eat an omelette for breakfast every day for the rest of my life and never get bored of 'em. There's just so many bazillions of things you can do to an omelette. And it wasn't until I moved down here to Southern California that I discovered that divine meat-and-eggs concoction known as machaca con huevos. Heart attack on a platter, no doubt, but I still refuse to give it up (as an occasional indulgence, at any rate).

Many thanks for that affirmation! All this writing and thinking about health, diet, and taste has definitely stoked my creativity in a new way. As I'm typing, I've got beside me a bowl of a cucumber/scallion/yogurt salad I just concocted--kind of a little like a raita, but with only a little yogurt and a lot of cuke. The other night I made a big bowl of coleslaw, only instead of a standard mayonnaise/sour cream-type slaw dressing I mixed up a very mustardy vinaigrette for it. Right now the excessive heat and lack of air conditioning is keeping me away from more involved cooking, but when it cools off a bit I am definitely going to give barley risottos a go (I like barley, and I love risottos, so playing with those is sounding pretty intriguing). And I've only just begun to play!

Bravo!

Once again, I want to thank everyone for their thoughtful replies. So far, this has been a very helpful exercise for me, for concrete suggestions, questions that helped me refine my goals, and just general support. That fitday.com site is turning out to be a very helpful tool. I've been plugging my past few days' eating into it, and it really helps to see where all the nutrients are stacking up. It's one thing to understand that animal protein packs a significant amount of saturated fat and cholesterol, but a whole other matter to see just how much of a bite out of my recommended daily saturated-fat and cholesterol allotment even that proverbial broiled boneless/skinless chicken breast takes. Similarly, it's one thing to realize a fast-food burger is "bad" for you, but a total mind-blower to see how much saturated fat as well as sodium even a "healthy" fast-food entree packs. All I can say is, I've got a follow-up appointment with my primary-care physician tomorrow, and she's just gonna love it when I start burbling about my new-found motivation in getting the saturated fat, cholesterol, and excess sodium out of my life. I've also been encouraged in my long slow crawl back to regular exercise. So far I've been to three physical therapy reconditioning classes. Twenty-four hours after the first one, I was almost immobilized by pain. I am now 24 hours past the third one and am feeling pretty darn good (other than my left hip, which is only twinging slightly). Interestingly, one of the PTs totally agreed with me, from her own experience, about not making weight loss the focus. For some of us, just climbing on that scale once can turn into an OCD nightmare, and the next thing we know we're compulsively weighing ourselves eight or nine times a day to try and find that optimum (lightest) moment. I will observe, with gentle amusement, that despite my numerous previous statements that weight loss was *not* going to be my primary emphasis (and my careful wording of the topic subject to emphasize "healthy" eating with *no* mention of weight-loss dieting), that many posters immediately jumped in with weight-loss tips anyway. This is by no means a criticism nor a show of ingratitude--more an observation concerning the impact of the national obsession with weight loss to, at least IMO, the detriment of other health-oriented goals. Why is "weight loss" and "slenderness" so single-mindedly the first thing that comes to many people's minds when they see the words "healthy eating?" Surely a person can be skinny but still be setting themselves up for heart disease, diabetes, and ghod knows what else through an unbalanced diet loaded with tons of over-refined carbohydrates, cholesterol and saturated fats, and devoid of anything resembling a fresh vegetable or fruit. I'm not saying that body weight *isn't* a factor--but I am saying that the myopic focus on body weight alone as the prime measure of healthy eating is IMO seriously oversimplistic.

I think you must be cursed with a TJ's with atypically bad produce, then. I've shopped TJ's in both Southern California and the Seattle area, and never had anything but good experiences with the quality. Admittedly, I don't usually make my major produce buys at my local TJ's, but that's more because produce is not one of their more "bargain" offerings. Plus I confess I do find their habit of bundling produce into multi-piece containers rather than letting me buy one or two pieces of an item rather a pain. No, the things I really make special trips to TJ's for is just about everything they carry *other than* the produce. Especially their cheeses, breads, dried fruit, canned and bottled goods, chocolates, flash-frozen seafoods, condiments, wines, vitamins and nutritional supplements, pastas, grains, etc. etc. etc. ... that's more than enough to make them a big deal to me, at any rate.

Actually, I did research the Montignac Method, partly prompted by Lucy's topic. My impression is that, alas, it still has too much emphasis on low-carb/high protein to be feasible for my gout. As I already said, I have absolutely sworn off ever doing anything even vaguely resembling a low carb diet ever again--I just do not want to risk another acute gout attack. Plus, like I said above, my emphasis is primarily *not* on losing weight, but on eating healthy for my health conditions, for which a low fat/low animal protein/high-complex-carb diet is therefore pretty much a given for me.

Well, when I was growing up, my family ate kasha varnishes as a side-dish starch with various classic American (expensive) hunks of animal protein, so that's not much help. But there's nothing saying one can't have the kasha as the main dish of a meal, by itself or along with anything one wants. Plus the way one usually makes the dish is with an egg worked into the dry kasha before one pan-toasts the grains; if I'm remembering the protein-combining rules correctly, even a small addition of a complete-protein food to an incomplete-protein grain kicks the whole dish over into complete-protein territory. (I'm sure someone will come along and correct me if I'm mistaken... )

As another data point in this discussion, I observe that Greater San Diego, an area whose foodie scene has been somewhat bemoaned by various parties, has a couple each of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. So it would seem that degree of community food-fanaticism is not the only factor that persuades some of these companies to set up outposts here. Things get even more interesting when one looks at the location of these TJs and WFs around San Diego. One each of the TJ's and Whole Foods is in the Hillcrest neighborhood--not only a nexus of a bunch of restaurants, but the gay/artsy demographic of this neighborhood suggests some intense interest in gourmet food. The other Whole Foods is in an area of La Jolla known as "The Golden Triangle" because of a significant concentration of corporate office towers and condo towers, as well as a major pretty-upscale shopping mall--in this case, it seems WF is going where the bucks are. But the second TJ's location may seem an enigma at first--it's in smack dab in the middle of the most congested part of Pacific Beach, the beach community most given to surfer/jock/fratboy party-goers, a demographic not usually known for gourmet aspirations. Mind you, there are more well-heeled and sedentary neighborhoods just a few blocks away from the madding crowd on Garnet Ave, PB's main drag and the location of this TJ's--maybe TJ's is after the folks there, but couldn't put the store there because of zoning or property costs or some such. But I also have seen this store doing a land-office business in foods that would appeal to the surfer/jock set--they've got the biggest display of nutritional/energy bars of any TJ's I've been in yet--plus they're almost exactly across the street from a branch of Henry's, a local natural foods grocery chain. So I think in this case TJ's is strategizing both their gourmet offerings and their more health-foody offerings. What annarborfoodie said about TJ's supply chain is illuminating too. There are probably whole other levels of logistical factors in the decisions made by these chains on where to place stores that we are not even privy to. P.S. Count me as another who thinks Dean and Deluca's is overpriced and overrated.

Heh. It's always majorly important to have food at a cocktail party--it helps to absorb some of the booze--but of course you also have to think about the booze! To figure out how much and what kinds of booze to have on hand, start with your guest list--not only the number of people attending, but their typical preferences and behaviors around alcohol. Some people just prefer wine or beer to hard liquor, even if the event is billed as a *cocktail* party. And it's nice to have non-alcoholic alternatives, not only for teetotalers but also for people who want to pace themselves. Decide how many drinks per person you want to provide (this not only has to do with your guests' drinking behavior, but on how soused you're prepared to let them get. ). I've seen some guides suggest having enough supplies to provide two cocktails per person; I'm a bit more generous and tend to have enough for three per (plus I'm of the nothing-succeeds-like-excess school of party provisioning--not only do I hate to run out of stuff, I also think it looks more like a party when there's the proverbial groaning board). Having a party theme is not only fun, it also helps narrow down your choices in both food and drink. It's much easier on the bartendress, especially if she's a newbie, to have a set "menu" of a relatively few cocktails rather than trying to set up a bar that can mix anything for anyone. Tiki-themed parties are lots of fun, definitely! Some of the cocktails typical of that theme can be a bit on the convoluted side, so you might consider pre-mixing a few pitchers-ful of one of the complex drinks, and then just pour and garnish when ready to serve. Pick your preferred cocktail recipes and provision accordingly--for a Tiki party, you will most likely be buying a bunch of different types of rum (light and dark), plus appropriate liqueurs. If you do go with the tiki theme, you can order a whole bunch of funny and silly cocktail/tiki decor and accessories cheap from Archie McPhee. Drinks and food that fit the tiki theme: basically anything ever served at a Trader Vic's (but impress your guests and mix the drinks from scratch rather than a mix, even if you make pitchers-ful in advance). At the very least, I feel ya just gotta have Mai Tais. I especially like these when the bartender puts a dark-rum float on top; you could mix up most of the ingredients by the pitcherful in advance, and add the float on each individual glass at the last minute. For more ideas on the Tiki party theme, check out this page from the old Hotwired "Cocktail" archive (even though this archive's no longer being updated, it's still my favorite on-line cocktail resource). "Cocktail" also has a Mai Tai recipe, but I actually like my Mai Tais kitschier and more convoluted than theirs. Hey, if you're gonna go tiki, you might as well go for the gusto!

Just beware that your typical canned soup has enough sodium in it to drop a bull moose dead in its tracks. There are some low-sodium versions of those cream-of-mumble soups available, though, so you can substitute those in the casseroles. Or you could make a white sauce from scratch, so you have ultimate control of the healthiness of its ingredients--though you might have to beware of that too, as some old-school eaters are so used to that canned-soup taste that a casserole made with a from-scratch sauce might actually taste "wrong" to them.

Again, thanks to everyone for their helpful and thoughtful posts. A few more random responses--forgive me for not quoting individual responses; I fear my already long-winded posts will turn into novels if I start trying to cross reference everything to everyone. Speaking of which, the post where I said about "downward dog" was already getting huge, so I kind of inadvertently left out that I wound up doing a *highly adapted* version of the Downward Dog, with my hands on a hip-high support. At this point I don't think I could do it the classic way, with my hands down on the floor along with my feet, without causing huge pain in my wrists. But I was just glad find I could do an even vaguely Dog-like move, let alone that one of my PTs knew about it. Y'all do bring up great points with yoga though. I am hoping that as my body allows (and also my finances, which are tight enough that I have to plan carefully to fit in things like exercise classes even at my local Y), I can pursue that some more. In fact, you've prompted me to make a point of ask that PT some more about her yogo knowledge when I see her tomorrow. I was too brain-fried from keeping up with that session to think of asking her last time--the session, even though adapted, was just at the very limit of what I could handle that particular day, and I wasn't quite thinking straight by the time we were done. You see, my body condition (like many people's with chronic pain conditions) is weird and unpredictable. On some days, even simple things hurt like the devil. And on some terrific days, I feel so good that I go "Hurrah! Let's go out and do a whole bunch of stuff!" -- and discover the next day that I let myself be suckered into way overdoing it so that I'm back in humongous pain again. Needless to say, as someone who used to be much more active, I have found all of this, especially the unpredictability and the tendency to have even slight overdoing blow up in my face, to be tremendously discouraging, not to mention downright depressing. The fact that I am at last mobilizing for concrete action at this high a level has taken literally months of working up my resolve. On getting more vegetables and fruits into my diet -- I actually do love lots of vegetables (other than my post-diet-trauma trip about lettuce-based salads ), but have to fight a tendency to "forget" about them. I also came to realize that when I'm in pain, or feeling either physically or mentally fatigued from pain, I've been way too easy on myself about letting the veggies slide--the prep-and-cooking work for fresh ones feels like such a bother when I get in that kind of mood. And frankly, there are very few frozen veggies that I find palatable (and I've tried a bunch). It helped to explore less labor-intensive ways of preparing vegetables--for instance, prior to my arthritis getting really bad, my absolute favorite way of cooking vegetables had been stir-frying. Well, I finally had to admit to myself that some days the simple task of stirfrying feels monumental. That's where learning to roast vegetables turned into such a godsend in so many ways--when I'm feeling poorly, I don't have to stand up and stir in my wok, I can just slide everything in the oven and let it do the work for me. Other suggestions for low-impact ways of cooking fresh vegetables, or even of perking up frozen vegetables so they don't taste so bleah, are heartily welcome! Alas, with fruits I am much pickier. Unless my taste buds have also gotten out of whack, it seems like a lot of store-bought fruit has gone down in quality since I was a kid. I keep buying 'em, hoping for the best, and even when shopping the natural-foods store I all too often find I've bought only vaugely fruit-flavored cellulose. I do adore dried fruit--but this time, it's the anti-high-triglycerides regimen that's biting me in the ass, warning me against highly concentrated sweets including dried fruit. There are farmer's markets in town; I just have to plan for the physical challenge of hiking around them to do my shopping. Likewise my food co-op, which for an organo-groovy enterprise has shown itself to be distressingly obtuse about making allowances for disabled members (even if they got an electric scooter, it wouldn't fit through the aisles; and they've also done goofy stuff like putting all the anti-arthritis supplements on the *lowest* shelf of a display!). Someone brought up about Omega-3 fatty acids. As a matter of fact, a number of fishes high in Omega-3s were among my favorites--but then that danged gout diet spooked me because a number of those same fishes turn out to be high in purines. Again, however, I am cautiously adding said fishes back into my diet, to the limit I can do so without awakening the danged gout. I had also at some point tried fish-oil capsules, but as I didn't notice any significant difference in my condition after going through a bottle or so I let 'em drop. In recent weeks, however, my doctor actually recommended fish oil, so off again I hied myself to the health food store to try and make sense of all the wildly-varying formulas and packaging. I found a likely one, and am giving 'em a go again. (aside on other supplements: I'm also taking a glucosamine supplement, again at my doctor's suggestion; and again I haven't noticed any specific improvement, but I'm staying with it for the time being. On my own I've tried a few of the other supplements touted for relief of inflammation, such as MSM and SAM-e, and just not noticed any improvement, so those got dropped. I find it really hard with supplements to get reliable info on how much to take and for how long to constitute giving them a fair trial.) As to other fats--I think prior (non-Atkins) diets I've been on were excessively harsh with the low-fat routine, which was hell on me as an animal-fat fiend. Now I'm trying to concentrate not so much on eliminating all fats as a combination of cutting down a bit on fats in general, and substituting healthier fats (olive oil, canola oil) for unhealthy ones (animal fat, butter) where such substitution won't compromise taste. A low-fat fanatic would still, I'm sure, freak out at even the moderate amount of olive oil I use on my roasted veggies, but I've decided not to care about that. I'm trying to stick with the occasional foray into deep-fried foods as a special-treat indulgence only.

Once again, thanks all for thoughtful replies. Some responses: 1. More on exercise: alas, I've got a lot of damage to undo here. There was a time in my life where I could walk or bikeride five miles without blinking. Now I literally cannot walk two city blocks without having to stop from pain and stiffness. That's why I finally requested physical therapy. It's going to take awhile before I can manage even a thirty-minute walk again--I'm going to have to sneak up on that one gradually. Yoga is definitely a great idea, but having once studied it when I was a lot healthier, I fear it's going to be awhile before I'm ready for that too. In fact, the PT class I'm taking does incorporate some intentionally yoga-like moves (one of the PTs actually called one move by its yoga nickname--"downward dog"). I'll get back there too, eventually. I used to love to swim too, and swimming would definitely be a great exercise for achey-jointed people like me. Right now, however, I confess the massive anxiety produced by the thought of appearing in front of others in a bathing suit is such that I just can't bring myself to do it. I mean, I've even driven over to municipal swimming pools, and turned around and driven home because I couldn't persuade myself to get out of the car. I realize this is totally psychological, but just telling myself to "get over it" has not worked. (It doesn't help that I have a whole childhood's worth of nightmare experiences of being taunted and bullied about my weight, especially in phys ed classes.) I finally realized this is another thing I'm going to need to sneak up on, to ease myself over what has in effect become a kind of phobia. My hope is that, as I continue to attend the physical therapy (which is a group class with people of all ages, sizes, and levels of health), I will gradually desensitize that "phobia" or whatever the hell it is, so that my eventual foray into public swimming pools will not feel quite so emotionally threatening. (You see the general overall strategy that I'm trying to develop here? Whenever a change of any sort feels like too much of a leap, I am trying to come up with ways to shorten that leap.) 2. Portion control--alas, this is definitely another issue for me. There is no denying I am addicted to that feeling of fullness. And I've been the gamut with that one, including compulsively weighing and measuring every single particle of food that went into my mouth--that was the strategy of a couple different food programs, and alas that strategy awoke a crazy anorectic streak I had no idea was in my psyche, with some really unpleasant results. I've also done the "fill up with 'free' foods strategy," but that tends to backfire too--filling up on celery does not seem to shut off the food-craving switch in my head. Soooooo ... I'm still working on ways to sneak up on this problem too. This brings us to ... 3. Whole grains and other complex carbohydrates. They would definitely help with the satiation issue that seems to bedevil my efforts at portion control--especially when cooked with small amounts of healthy fats (like olive oil) and umami'ed up a bit. But my doctor threw me a real curve-ball with the anti-gout diet--which specifically cites whole grains products like whole-wheat bread and brown rice as foods to AVOID! And to even substitute with refined carbs like white bread and white rice! Yep, whole grains are relatively rich in the amino acid purine, which is the metabolic predescessor of uric acid, the stuff that crystalizes in your joints to cause the painful gout attacks (yep, it's also the stuff that forms gallstones). As the first nasty acute gout attack finally came under control through meds and super-careful eating, I've been tentatively adding whole-grain foods back into my diet. So far, so good--especially if I continue to keep all the other gout-provoking foods relatively low. I should add that this is yet another example of my medical professionals handing me advice that contradicts other advice. I have also been handed a diet sheet to deal with the high triglycerides, which of course says to avoid refined carbs like white bread and white rice. When I pointed out the contradiction and asked, "so okay, which do I do? What do I do?" I essentially got a non-response--something like "well, do the best you can," followed by a quick change of subject. And unfortunately, all I can afford right now is this HMO, and I have one of the better doctors in it--this is yet another reason why I've been getting a lot more achtung on figuring stuff out for myself, as I simply cannot count on my doctors figuring this stuff out for me. 4. Cooking in vs. eating out/take-out. I love to cook. Too many times, though, pain and fatigue has made me not feel up to cooking, so I get take-out--which, yes, tends to be nowhere near as healthy as cooking where I control what goes into the food. Plus my meat/fat addiction has made burgers dangerously tempting. Plus I'm single; while I do have housemates, our food preferences and eating schedules are so different that shared meals are unworkable. The strategy I'm trying to implement here (and it's hard) is a combo of preparing food ahead during windows of opportunity when my bod is not feeling so cranky; allowing occasional indulgences in dining out/take-out so as to avoid feeling deprived; and trying to make most of those indulgences relatively healthy (like choosing Asian or Mexican food more often than burgers--hey, I know it's not *much* better, but depending on the Asian or Mexican place, it can be at least a little better). 5. Weight Watchers--I know it sounds dumb, but as WW was one of the groups I had a bad experience with way back when, I've been kinda functionally "phobic" about them too, even though I know they've changed a lot since I last went. What can I say except, I'm working on trying to get over that one too. More later ...

Cool! We're off to a good start! A couple of additional points about my personal health situation: --Re: exercise--this has become vastly complicated in the past several years by extensive osteoarthritis, in addition to the gout (at least that's the current diagnosis; I'm in the process of making my MD test me for additional conditions, because this "osteoarthritis" is not at all behaving like the descriptions on medlineplus.gov). Anyway--yes, I used to love to shake it on the dance floor, but nowadays if I do that for one song's worth I often wind up having to spend the next day in bed in excruciating pain. And getting concrete suggestions out of my doctor on how to exercise without damaging myself that way has been an "exercise" in frustration. In fact, I have a whole parallel rant about how doctors and health people always say "go out and exercise," but leave you as much adrift without practical suggestions how to accomplish that as they do about sticking to that food plan. To follow that thread would definitely take us totally off-topic WRT eGullet, but suffice it to say I am also currently trying to come up with end-run strategies for sneaking up gently on the exercise thing--including seeing a physical therapist to find out how to exercise without causing myself even more pain than I'm in already. --Re: losing weight==burn more calories than one consumes: I have to add a "yes but" to that one too. Surely I can stand to eat less ... but past weight-loss dieting history has shown me that my body has become marvelously resistant to losing weight, stubbornly sticking on plateaus even back in my dieting heyday when I could and did spend four evenings a week in the gym while doing a 1200 calorie diet. I do believe, from my own experience and that of many friends I have observed, that some people's metabolisms are simply resistant that way. My theory is that it's an evolutionary adaptation against famines or some damn thing. In any case, one of the resolutions I've made for myself is that from here on in, weight loss as such is to be viewed as a possible happy byproduct of healthy eating, but NOT THE MAIN GOAL. If I'm eating in an optimally healthy way, with my cholesterol, blood pressure, and all those other blood chemistry thangs are all textbook-perfect, but the number on the scale still happens to be high according to some actuarial table, I am officially Not Going To Give A Damn Anymore. --And that gets down to my real goal in healthy eating: the blood pressure, the high triglycerides, the high cholesterol, the gout. Those are what are scaring me, not the number on the scale as such. I know, I know, doctors point to obesity as the cause of all those things. But I believe the pell-mell quest for lowering that number on the scale by any means necessary, no matter how extreme, is the one single thing that has most messed me up in my quest for genuine health. It's why I've done some extremely damaging diet behavior over the years--quasi-anoretic behavior, controlling hunger by smoking cigarettes, doing crash diets like Atkins and Stillman (anyone remember the Stillman Diet?)--often as not with my doctors looking the other way because they were so happy with that magic number on the scale. Nuh-uh. Never again on that stuff, either. Like I said: if some of the weight comes off, that's a lovely side benefit. But that's not gonna be my yardstick. Okay, on to an example of strategies I have figured out so far: 1. Dealing with gout means drastically decreasing the amount of gout-provoking foods I eat, the main culprits being animal protein. The typical gout diet prescribes a maximum of two 3-ounce servings of meat a day. That ain't a helluva lot. Even with anti-gout meds, I've discovered that if I go much over that on a given day, I can count on warning twinges in my feet and additional stiffness and pain throughout my bod for the next few days. So I'm on a pretty tight leash there. But totally cutting myself off on meat made me crazy with cravings. So the quest became to find healthy foods that satisfied me in ways similar to meat. I had to do a lot of thinking about exactly what it was about meat that turned me on in ways no salad or apple was capable of doing ... and on reflection I realized it was a combination of that dense, chewy, "meaty" texture, and that savory flavor now known by that incredibly-helpful label "umami." So: somebody above mentioned roasted vegetables--those have become some of my best weapons in substituting for the "umami" hit that meat gives me; to a certain extent, their density of texture kinda helps too. Mushrooms are also good that way--although ironically, it turns out they're gout-provoking too! (though not as profoundly so as meat). Eggplant cutlets help. And right when I was first diagnosed with the gout, I ate a ton of cheese (dairy protein doesn't provoke gout the way animal-flesh does). Dairy that's not low-fat, of course, has its own problems in terms of provoking the cholesterol level; still, the cheese was a useful tool in weaning me away from the ultra-danger foods on the way to less dangerous foods. (For those of you who are curious about the specific requirements of an anti-gout diet, here is a PDF of a typical one.) 2. Occasional splurges are officially okay, within reason. Every once in awhile, I still allow myself, say, a meal of spare-ribs or turkey, even if my feet will twinge for the next few days. It's the long-term average performance I'm after; and totally banning foods, I've discovered, will eventually tempt me into a total breakout binge with much worse consequences than if I did allow myself a moderate indulgence in the danger-food. 3. There are some foods that are the centerpieces of most healthy diets that I simply cannot stand--so I don't eat 'em. For instance--after decades of dieting, I've come to have a real ambivalence-to-hatred regarding the typical green salad. Once in a blue moon I'm in the mood for one, but generally they leave me unsatisfied, and even feeling "punished" the way I used to do when slaving under an old-school diet. But one day light dawned on Marblehead (as we used to say back in Bahston): If I didn't like green salads, I bloody well didn't have to eat 'em! Again, analyzing what aspects of foods turned me off or on, I realized I had a distinct preference for foods with a lot more density than your typical lettuces. So--why not make a non-lettuce-based salad, then? Since then, I've been happily making myself chopped salads of diced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions or scallions, bell peppers, and other "meatier" vegetables, dressed with a simply olive-oil-based vinaigrette, and been much more satisfied. 4. One of the biggest helps to me in figuring this stuff out has been the work of Annemarie Colbin, the natural-foods teacher and author. Like all such authors, I do take her work with a grain of salt (so to speak), but IMO she's got a lot on the ball. Taking a hint from her non-doctrinaire use of macrobiotic concepts, I came to realize that the common theme in the foods I liked most was that, in macrobiotic terms, they were all very "yang"--dense in texture as well as nutrition, flavors strong and concentrated. So, no wonder I don't care for salad greens--in macrobiotic terms, they're way the hell out on the yin end of the yin/yang continuum. Macrobiotics also holds that zipping madly back and forth between the extremes of yin and yang tends to leave one's system all jangled--that would be a good model for why going cold-turkey from my meat-heavy ways directly to an optimally healthy diet always seemed to backfire with me, so that I'd break off the diet with a messy binge. So, using that as my model, I am gently noodging myself down the continuum from the extreme yang of heavy meat consumption, to the lesser yang of smaller meat portions and non-meat foods with "meaty" qualities; and as that progresses okay, I will gradually noodge myself even further along, into less and less yang foods, until I'm at balance (and can look a green salad in the eye without feeling like I'm in dieter's jail). (A few further comments on macrobiotics: I'm not really wanting to get into a debate about its scientific underpinnings or lack thereof. I just know that its categories seem to have a lot of explanatory power for me. And oh yeah--macrobiotics does not equate to vegetarianism. All macrobiotic texts I've ever read, even the most extreme ones, allow for eating some animal protein; and they don't even outright ban any particular food, no matter how unnatural. All the system does is provide a ranking of foods according to how they play against each other in terms of leaving the body feeling satisfied and "in balance." I view it as a useful model for thinking about food. Nothing less, and nothing more.) 5. About the sodium thing: There has been some questioning out there as to whether it's totally necessary to nearly or totally eliminate all sodium whatsoever, which is what certain health pundits recommend. I should say here that, totally aside from any doctor's suggestion that I watch my sodium intake, I have noticed that high salt intake does affect me very drastically and very badly. A meal very heavy in sodium makes me retain water like a sponge, swelling up my feet and ankles so that it's nearly too painful to walk. HOWEVER--I neither want, nor actually need, to eliminate all sodium--the amount of salt, say, to make a pot of home-made soup taste properly seasoned does not affect me; it's the amount of salt in, say, a typical can of Campbell's soup that is more than enough to turn my feet into ouchy dirigibles. So--a little salt: OK; a lot of salt: no-go. I realize the above longwinded rant doesn't directly address a number of well-taken points of you previous posters, but I think most of 'em got indirectly addressed in there somewhere or other. What I'm mainly looking for at this point: --more feedback/responses as I "think aloud" about what I've figured out so far and what I'm trying to figure out next about this healthy eating thang; --further suggestions on food strategies to help me wean myself off my extreme meat/fat-loving ways into a more balanced way of eating (these can include general suggestions as well as specific recipes etc.) --really, pretty much anything else you wanna throw in that you think might be helpful to the topic at hand.