Birthday Cake

Since I don’t often get food cravings in connection to specific times or events – for instance, while turkey is nice on Thanksgiving, it’s not a must-have for me –my recent desire for birthday cake caught me by surprise.

As of this writing, my birthday is in two days. It’s not a major one – nothing ending in 0 or 5, or allowing me to vote or drink alcohol – but still, a birthday. I started the celebration early, getting together with my family 10 days beforehand (primarily so we could incorporate seeing Star Trek: Into Darkness on opening weekend), and as part of the gathering we had a picnic lunch.

Now, normally birthdays with my family include cake made by my dad, specifically black midnight chocolate cake with creamy vanilla frosting. Unfortunately, as I’ve discussedpreviously, I am now avoiding gluten and eggs and being better about avoiding dairy (among other things). This means that my dad’s cake doesn’t work for me.

I briefly considered making cake myself, since I have all the ingredients, but I was resistant to that idea. After all, it was my birthday, a time when I expect to be more on the receiving end than giving. On the other hand, I didn’t feel like I could ask anyone to make gluten-free vegan cake for me, since no one else in my family has done baking like that. In the end, the sort of compromise was that my aunt was kind enough to make black bean brownies for me (though with eggs). They were yummy, but I couldn’t deny the obvious: they weren’t birthday cake.

In the days since, I’ve been obsessing about cake. Have you ever experienced that, where if you really want something and don’t let yourself have it (for whatever reason), even if you have good food you still want the first thing? I quickly realized this was one of those occasions for me. I also reminded myself that much as I wanted someone to make it for me, I like baking.

Given all that, what was the point of feeling petulant about making my own cake? Had it not been my birthday, I wouldn’t have thought twice about making what I wanted.

So this weekend I treated myself. I made mini chocolate cupcakes with vanilla icing, and I’ll have plenty to share with a friend after we have dinner on my birthday itself. And if I run into this next year, I’ll remember that giving myself what I want on my birthday is one of the best gifts I can get.

Balancing Eating and Exercise

Note: Am I Hungry? is a mindful eating program – to learn more, visit www.AmIHungry.com or my website.

Some years ago I worked with a man who both ate and exercised a lot. Eventually someone else asked him, “Do you eat so much because you exercise, or do you exercise so you can eat?”

He replied, “Mostly I exercise to eat.”

I couldn’t help thinking about this recently when, while visiting friends in Ireland, I noticed how my eating was changing due to increased exercise. It’s not that I’m particularly inactive at home – I often get some type of exercise or activity for at least an hour a day – but I’m certainly not in the league of my Irish friends. They’re both runners, for one, and they were also training for a 50-mile walk. Although I wasn’t up for anything of quite that magnitude, I did agree to a 14-mile walk one day, followed by 7.8 miles the next.

Consequently, I was eating quite a bit more than my norm. And oddly enough, the one day when I did almost no walking (due to rain and blisters) was perhaps my hungriest; I simply felt I had to keep eating because I was never satisfied.

In some ways this was fun, because it meant that I wasn’t overly concerned with all the eating out we were doing. On the other hand, it meant more money spent on food, which was okay for vacation but not something I want to do all the time. Plus, the bottomless pit feeling is always disconcerting.

My bigger concern, though, was adjusting back to my normal routine, where I’m only walking 2-4 miles on an average day. When I mentioned this to one of my Irish friends, he commented, “If I don’t exercise as much, I simply wouldn’t eat as much because I wouldn’t be hungry.”

It reminded me of the difference between someone who has always, in Am I Hungry? terminology, been an instinctive eater, versus someone like me, who’s had to relearn that ability. While it’s true that I can fairly easily go back to eating smaller amounts with reduced exercise, I do worry about it, not because I feel like I need the food, but simply because once I start getting used to having more, part of me thinks, “I ate so much the other day and it was fine, so why not today?” So the first few days after something like this I pay a little extra attention to my hunger and fullness cues, and what the little voices in my head are saying.

Still, at least I can do this now, and it’s something for which I am continually grateful. And I find I am also grateful that, much as I like eating and sometimes increasing my intake based on exercise, I do not feel the need to artificially inflate my appetite on a regular basis. I simply take what I need when I need it, however little or much it may be, and enjoy it.

Potato Musings

I hadn’t given any real thought to my recent potato consumption until I visited my friends in Ireland last week. Only when seeing how frequently spuds appeared in their meals, both at home and at restaurants, did I realize that I had been unconsciously avoiding them, having somehow internalized by osmosis the idea that potatoes are bad.

Why they’re bad, of course, is subject to interpretation. Certain Buddhist sects wouldn’t eat them because they’re a root vegetable and would do too much harm to the plant. They fail for any low-carb diet because of their high starch content. For those on the Paleo diet, potatoes are a bit controversial because they weren’t available in primitive times, but some say they’re okay with minimal processing.

More surprising was realizing that for anyone such as myself interested in healthy eating, it’s easy to automatically rule out the potato because they so frequently show up only as chips or fries. For example, when I did a Google search for images of potatoes, fries were the first result. We’re even cautioned about baked potatoes, depending on how much dairy or other fat is added to them.

I was therefore fascinated to read Denis Cotter’s discourse on potatoes in his book For the Love of Food, in the section on “Mashes”. Here are a couple of excerpts.

“In Ireland, the potato is the only ingredient that garners serious analysis around the dinner table…. [The] Irish ideal of a good spud [is]… one with a dry, floury texture, good for mashing.” (p. 127)

“The potato probably last had a place as the main item of dinner when people had nothing else to eat. Maybe we’ve moved on far enough from that to give it another chance, and to rediscover the complex character and wide-ranging versatility of the formerly powerful but currently humble spud.” (p. 128)

He then proceeded to give a number of recipes to remind readers that potato mashes can include more than simply the potatoes, elevating them to a new level. The ones that intrigued me the most were:

• Roast garlic and fennel mash with lemon-braised chickpeas and aubergine (i..e, eggplant)
• Wild garlic mash with grilled asparagus and citrus tarragon-dressed Puy lentils
• Roast parsnip mash with sage-grilled Portobello and caramelized red onion
• Smoked mash with tomato and maple-braised Brussels sprouts

Or even if you don’t want to get that fancy, you could try your hand at colcannon, a very traditional Irish dish with potatoes, cabbage or kale, and green onions. Or mix mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower. Or simply roast them tossed with a little olive oil and rosemary or thyme. Or mash them with vegetable broth instead of milk, and reduce the amount of butter, if you’re trying for something familiar but healthier. Or go for a soup, such as potato and leek, or potato and fennel. The options are almost endless, and certainly more various than the fries and chips we normally see.

In thinking about this, I find myself agreeing with Cotter, that it’s a shame how much people are avoiding the potato simply because of certain associations, even though they really are nutritious and can be quite delicious. And, as he points out, they can also be the epitome of comfort food:

“I can hardly think the words ‘comfort food’… without thinking about potatoes…. [When] I ask the question [what is your comfort food,]… I’m thinking of the dish that you would make for yourself when you’re feeling fragile, whether that be from excessive partying, disappointment or simply being under the weather and in need of self-administered pampering.” (p. 126)

I can personally attest to the appeal of this type of pampering based on my recent trip: after a morning of hiking almost 8 miles through gray, damp weather, with feet sore from blisters, sitting down to a heaping bowl of colcannon was a definite comfort.

So if you’re like me and haven’t been eating many potatoes, perhaps you could explore why that is. Then, if you discover that you don’t truly think that potatoes are a “bad” food, try an experiment of a new recipe to get the fuller experience and see if you, too, find potatoes comforting. 

Taking a Break

Note: I’m posting a little early because I’m headed to Ireland shortly and will be going offline during my vacation.

I recently saw a commercial for Cheetos, those lurid orange cheese-flavored curls, with the tagline, “Take abreak with Cheetos.” It reminded me of another commercial and jingle: “Give me a break, give me a break/ Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar.”

And it got me thinking. If I want to take a break, do I really want or need to take it with Cheetos or Kit-Kats? For that matter, do I need to take a break with any kind of food?

It made me realize how prevalent the association is between eating and taking a break in our society. For instance, at work, the only designated down time we get is for lunch, and even though it’s an hour, it seems that most people only pause long enough to eat. Which is why a few years ago it struck me when one of my co-workers would spend about half his break on lunch, and the other half reading. At work. He was perfectly entitled to the time, but it seemed like a bizarre concept because no one else did that.

Similarly, we have “break rooms,” but I don’t know how often people go into them for something other than food, especially since sometimes those rooms don’t have anything except snacks to recommend them.

For me, I know part of the difficulty is the constant feeling that I should be doing something. I blame this on my inherited Puritan work ethic, particularly prevalent on my mom’s side of the family, where the concept of just doing something for relaxation is a bit hard to put into practice. And if I’m eating, even if it may not be productive, at least it’s keeping my hands occupied.

But when I stop to think about it, I can come up with many other ways to take a break that don’t involve food. Read. Go for a walk. Stretch. Play with a pet. Listen to a favorite song. Meditate. Watch a favorite movie or TV show. These days, at least I’m more inclined to do one of these rather than eat simply for the sake of eating, but it’s still a strong association.

These are just some of my ideas for taking a break, but I’m sure others could add to the list. Sometimes this might involve food, but at least if you think about different options, it becomes your decision, not just an automatic response to fill the time, and you can also then choose to truly enjoy the food or whatever else best satisfies your desire for a break.