Christmas Eve Dinner!

Another dinner party. Very similar menu as Thanksgiving.

The menu. Unless noted, recipes from The New Best Recipe:

Standing Rib Roast (Prime Rib), p405
Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes, http://www.evernote.com/Home.action?login=true#Note/9f460dd5-7a88-425a-8cf4-b7448d4f1260

Garlic Butter Green Beans, p136 (recipe sans bread crumbs)
Individual Yorkshire Pudding, p411
Orange Liquor Cranberry Sauce, p373
Deviled Eggs, Family Recipe

The secret is timing.

More Nutrition

From another Josh contact, two posts. The first I heartily agree with, as crazy as some of it sounds. The Omnivore's Dilemma is obviously a huge influencer.

Here's what I've learned from Michael Pollan's two books this year (The Omnivore's Dilema and In Defense of Food). If we want to avoid "western Diseases" (heart disease, cancer, strokes diabetes) we have to get off the American/Western diet plan and adopt a different cultural way of eating. Its not only what and how much we eat, it is also important to focus on how and why we eat. The "culture" of our eating is as important to understand and to change as well.

Here are the new rules of engagement:

1. We are committed to eating as much organic, pasture raised meat and dairy and produce as possible.

2. talk to a nutrionist about whole milk vs skim. Skim may lack some key micronutrients and the fat thing is a big controversy now.

3. We will not buy for consumption in our house ANYTHING that has more than 5 ingredients, or that has any ingredients that are unrecognizable or unpronounceable.

3. We will completely eliminate partially hydrogeneated fats and high fructose corn syrup from our in house diets. They are both toxins and no amount of consumption of them is safe or permissable

4. We will increase the amount of "whole" foods in all our diets and avoid highly processed foods, especially white flour, sugar and white rice.

5. We will avoid corn amd soy based products which are the new monoculture that predominate most ingredients and are completely taking over the food supply. Soy is especially scarry for girls.
(We have to find alternative vegtable oils that are not soy based to cook with!)

6. We will all increase the natural sources of Omega 3's in our diet and find ways to reduce the omega 6 sources from our diets. (.more leaves, less seeds, more fish, less meat, less animals that eat seeds, more animals that eat leaves).

7. Don't eat anything our great grandmothers would not recognize as food! (Including smart balance and any "new" healthier products). Go back to olive oil and butter!

8. Avoid foods that make health claims.

9. Shop the perimeter of the supermarket and stay out of the middle!

10. Buy local, organic, sustainable food from markets wherever possible and avoid supermarket food altogether.

11. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.

12. You are what you eat eats!! Animals' diet matters as much as the animal you are eating. Eat wild, organic all natural animals only.

13. Buy a freezer and stock the right kind of food

14. Eat like an omnivore. Find new species, not just new foods to add to your diet.

15. Eat well grown food from healthy soils. Processed organic food is little better than other highly processed food (organic oreos?!)

16. Eat wild food whenever possible. Higher in omega-3s

17. Live a healthy life and be the kind of person who takes supplements, but don't take any of them other than one multivitamin a day for older adults.

18. Eat more like a "culture". French, italian, greek, or mediterennean. Find a food culture to adopt and follow. Look to long histrical based food traditions and cooking methods as a guide. They are time tested.

19. Regard nontraditional foods with severe skeptisism. Novel, health, innovative, engineered food is dangerouis!!

20. Eat less. Pay more. Choose quality over quantity

21. Find a way to eat less: no seconds rule of the French: eat till you are 80 percent full: leave something on your plate: use smaller serving dishes: don't keep the food out on the table or nearby: don't snack: don't keep food in your office: don't drink your calories. Read the book "Mindless Eating: Why we eat more than we think" by Wansink.

22. Eat Meals: three a day. Less to no snacking/grazing. Try not to eat alone. Don't eat while watching TV. Eat all together and make it a cultural event as well. Try not to eat in your car.

23. Eat Slowly: slow food movement. Cook. Relish. Plant a garden.


Bottom line:

"Eat FOOD, not so much, mostly plants"!

Is everybody with me!!!!!!!!?????

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This diet is insane and not healthy! When you are done with this sicko, go on the Gary Korn diet plan. I'll give you the same phone and email support, no dandelions required. All you have to do is follow the following rules for guaranteed success:

1. 30 minutes a day of some kind of exercise. Anything that gets you sweating counts. Minimum of 4 times a week.... Trainer, treadmill, take a walk outside, walk 18 holes. If we can't move that min amount each week-we really have no reason to be alive.

2. Eat mostly whatever you want. Stop worrying so much about what you eat (with the exeptions of number 3 below) and start focusing on how you eat. "Mindless" eating is what causes weight gain. "Mindful" eating causes weight loss. The difference between gaining 5-10 pounds a year and losing or maintaining weight is the difference in how you eat and think about food. To "mindfully" eat-focus mostly on portion control. Never eat out of the fridge or out of containers. Always "see" how much you are going to eat before you start. "Decide" what your portion size is for every meal and snack. When you eat, always plate your food or meal and then take it to the table (away from the serving dishes) and eat. In restaurants, dont let the plate they put in front of you dictate your portion size. Look at it, decide how hungry you really are. Set aside a portion of it and eat the rest. Its like a game. Eat 1/3 or so less of everything and see if you are still hungry. When you start doing it you'll realize that 9 out of 10 times, after eating half as much as before, you are not really hungry. Your mantra here is "not so much!". In restaurants and at home, always try and leave something left over on the plate. Also, eat slower. Put the fork down between bites.

3. No fried food. No white flour, highly processed foods. Whole grains. Less red meat, more fish, fruit, nuts and vegetables. Less dairy. Try and eat way more plants. Instead of protein being the "star" of every meal, make it a supporting cast character and make 2/3 of the plate veggies, plants, slad etc with protein as the garnish or side dish instead of the other way around. Challenge yourself to not eat protein at every single meal (this is harder than it sounds!). You'll feel better, live longer and lose weight if youi eat this way.

4. Specifically for weight loss in the short term only-reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. No sugar, candy cake cookies etc. Don't eat bread at meals (get rid of the bread basket). You can bring all this back slowly and "mindfully" once the weight starts coming off. Just eat it the same way subject to portion control etc.

5. Eat a big breakfast. Nice sized lunch and smaller dinners. Snack if you are hungry, but don't graze. In weight loss stage, don't snack on carbs like bread, crackers, etc of any kind and dont eat much after dinner (unless you are up really late and are hungry). Snack on fruit, nuts, lean protein only. Portion control concept on snacks is the key as most "mindless" eating happens with snacks. Are you really hungry or just bored? Are you grabbing that snack because you are hungry or because you see it and are in the kitchen? Put out to "see" healthy snack food. Hide the stuff you dont want to eat. If you dont see it, you'll eat less of it. You'll eat more of what you see (I keep "out" fresh and dried fruit and nuts from whole foods, everything else is in the pantry).

Nutrition

Here's another set of rules for healthy eating, courtesy of my friend and mentor Josh:

I spoke to you recently about my “high energy, feel awesome” diet. It is simple, easy, and you will feel 100% better in like three days. The big idea is not letting yourself get too hungry or too full. Keeping your glucose levels “in the zone”. Here’s the gig:

1) Eat EVERY three hours no matter what. Plan out some healthy, low glycemic snacks. Keep them small (under 150 calories). Examples: ∏ power bar, apple, handful of nuts, cheese stick, carrots with peanut butter, low-fat beef jerky, etc. Also, make sure to eat something within one hour of waking up, and stop eating after 9pm.

2) Have three meals a day. Using your hand as a measure, think about what you could scoop up with a slightly overflowing handful. You want to eat FIVE of these handfuls of food for every meal. Eat 2 scoops of grains, 2 scoops of fruits or veggies, and 1 scoop of protein. Think in your mind about eating to accomplish “not being hungry” rather than eating to be “full”. Also remember that you only need enough to last you three hours until your next intake. If you consume “other” stuff like sweets, alcohol, fries, chips, etc count them against your “grains”.

3) Drink lots of water.


That’s it. Simple. Easy. No big deal (other than throwing some healthy snacks in your bag or desk).

Try doing it for like 4-5 days and tell me how much more energy and vitality you have…. If you don’t feel a 100% increase, I will buy you a box of doughnuts.

Dancing with Balloons

Look at the joy on that face. Dancing in the snow with balloons. Does life get better than that?

Health and Nutrition

I've been working out several times a week for a couple months. I can feel my strength increasing. Problem is, that strength is trapped beneath inches of insulating fat. 

I realize that exercise without a change in diet is going to be marginally effective. Worse, exercise while continuing to shovel high calorie, high fat, fried, salty, disgusting food into my maw is like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But I'm not a dieter.

I don't count calories. I don't calculate the weight of what I'm eating. I don't have the time or interest in scrutinizing every meal in-depth for its nutritional impact. What's worked for me in the past, and what I'm going to institute again, are a set of rules or heuristics that govern my eating. I can follow discrete, simple, easy rules. So, here we go:

1) No deep fried. This is a biggie, as it eliminates a ton of really shitty restaurant foods. Exclusions are anything I cook at home. Since I don't have a deep fryer, that's not as big an exclusion as it may first seem.

2) No drive throughs. Drive throughs exist at the worst places to eat, and drive throughs indicate a mad dash to eat. I find that mad dashes to eat mean I'll convince myself that I'm in so much of a hurry, I can't be bothered to watch what I eat.

3) No eating after 10PM. This should probably move to 8 or 9PM, but I stay up until midnight or later on a normal night, so that's at least 3 hours before bedtime.

4) 3 meals and 1 snack a day, minimum. No skipping breakfast or lunch (and gorging later on).

5) No restaurant desserts. We're moving into the holiday season, and cutting all dessert will just create a rule I'm not willing to keep always, but I can cut out restaurant sweets of all kinds. This includes a donut on the way in to work - Dunkin' Donuts is a restaurant, and a donut is a dessert.

6) Snack on cheese, nuts, and fruits. Don't snack on chips, candy, or cookies.

That should be a good start. 

Thanksgiving Redux II

So I decided to have another Thanksgiving, and invite a few friends over to celebrate. Mostly I wanted to prepare a big meal for others and enjoy that act of cooking as giving.

The menu:

Standing Rib Roast (Prime Rib)
Garlic Redskin Stovetop Potatoes
Garlic Butter Green Beans
Yorkshire Pudding
Orange Liquor Cranberry Sauce
Deviled Eggs
Spiced Pecans

And a couple drinks: Cranberry Martinis and Gingerbread Men (Moscow Mules with Vanilla Vodka instead of... real Vodka).

I invited a small group of friends - two couples from work, and two couples that are friends. One never got the invite (SPAM filter, hmmmm....), one was travelling up from Chicago, and the others came. Which was perfect, dinner with more than 7 adults at our house can be a problem.

Everything came together well. I spent the day cooking, the day before preparing and timing, and everything finished at about the right time. While serving we discovered that we don't have half as many dishes as we thought we had (used to have) - kids breakage has taken a toll. So there was a merry assortment of plates.

Emerson had her idea, this time a little more planned, and this time there wasn't any hesitation and everyone came up with things they are thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Redux I

Thanksgiving this year was a good/bad deal.

On the good front, we went to the Detroit Thanksgiving Day Parade. This was my first time ever, my wife Janet used to go as a kid but hadn't been for many years. With our two little girls in tow we trecked out to enjoy it.

Like most family events, this was a Janet-driven idea. I'm always reluctant to put the initial effort in for new things. This is crazy, because invariably I love the outcome and enjoy the event. This is a great example of that. Here's some pics from our parade day:

http://flickr.com/photos/nathanhughes/sets/72157610363717832/

On the bad side was the actual dinner event. Last year was a tough time for Janet's side of the family, and we took care of dinner. By take care I mean we ordered a fully catered Thanksgiving dinner from Pronto. It was delicious and I think the right choice for the time. But this year the family decided to cater again from a different restaurant, and that decision sucked a lot of the joy and soul out of the evening. This is a family that already has a hard time connecting and having fun together over a meal; without the camaraderie and shared experiences around preparing a holiday dinner, there wasn't much else pulling the event together.

For me, icing on the event was when Emerson announced (unprompted) right before digging in that she had an idea. Her thought - "everyone should say what they are thankful for!" She went first ("her whole family"), Janet said something, Janet's dad said something, I said something, and then we opened it to the rest of the family.

*chirp* *chirp* *chirp*

No one else had a single thing to share. After a few silent and uncomfortable seconds we glossed over it, Janet and I made a fuss over Emerson, and sat down to eat.

We ate at the side table - just Janet, me, and the two kids. Everyone else sat at the other table and there was no movement or even pretending anyone else would join the Republic of Hughes. At one point I was sitting alone at this foldup chair while Averie wandered about elsewhere and Emerson and Janet were in the bathroom or something, and that was the point when it struck me how sad and cold this Thanksgiving was for me.

Before pie I'd already decided that Thanksgiving Redux I was in order. I started planning...

Why Life Planning?

I know how to make things work, at work. You have a few goals, you put together your high level strategy, you survey the landscape, you figure out what you have to work with, and what you need to make happen, and what you need to acquire, you put together a rough timeframe when things happen, and you go to work. You set yourself up with a few key people to get the thing done, you make sure everyone knows what you're doing, why, and by when, and then you get your hands dirty. You plan a month, a week, a day, you put together the specific things you want to accomplish to move you towards the task, you figure out what you are going to measure and what you are going to observe when the thing you are trying to do is getting done. You do the work, and compare the outcome to what you wanted to happen and make adjustments along the way. And at the end, you have achieved something. Finally you take a look at what you've done, and start the whole thing over again.

I don't approach life the same way. And in fact I've had conversations with my wife where her obvious frustration and confusion over my lazy mishandling of my non-work life bubbles over. "I don't know how you do what you do at work, but can't do this simple thing at home. It doesn't make sense!" "That's different" I'd object, "work is different. It's more concrete. It's simpler. It's straightforward. I know how to do things at work!"

I finally realized that's a load of crap.

So, life planning. Applying some of the same principles, strategies, and tactics to life that I do everyday at work. Taking the same kind of care with planning out the development of my relationship with my wife (of 11 years) that I take with the development of a new engineering intern. Working with our home finances in a similar way I might work with my software budgets. Seems obvious, in retrospect.

Possible Life Planning Headings

Things that could go into a Life Plan, courtesy of Josh L.:

1. Purpose / Vision / Mission Statement - I like the idea of a bunch of pictures for the vision representing what you want in life. The purpose or mission statement should be clear and concise.
2. List Core Values / Beliefs – list of a handful of what you believe / don’t believe. What do you want to stand for? What are your top organizing principles?
3. Heroes - List a few people you strongly admire and why you do so. This will serve as guideposts for your own progress.
4. Life Categories:
1. a. A brief mission statement for each category of life: career, family, creativity, spiritual, educational, giving back, health / fitness, etc.
2. b. Break each category into 20 year, 10 year, 5 year, 1 year, 6 months, and 90 day goals that are as specific and measurable as possible
5. SWOT Analysis – re-do yearly, and confront the brutal facts. Need to have an accurate picture of your starting point, so you can map your route to your destination point.
6. List your main “sabertooth tigers” – those things that are most likely to take you off your path. The more aware you are of them, the more you can avoid them. In addition to distractions, list your top fears.
7. More of / Less of list
8. Commitments (see Achieve! Spreadsheet). Breaking down your goals into specific, measurable, trackable behaviors
9. System for penalties and rewards – build in accountability mechanism
10. Daily affirmations / inspirations
11. Write your own Epitaph. They always say, “start with the end in mind”. This applies to life also.

My immediate thought on this was:

These are great sections. It would be easy to turn this from a valuable personal exercise in developing a life plan, into a mechanical exercise in developing a template for life planning. I suggest a buffet approach, where a series of possible areas or thought exercises are out there, and everyone chooses the areas that are most meaningful to them. I personally love the visual (picture) vision statement, affirmations for each life category, 5/1/90 day goals for each life category, weekly and monthly commitments, etc. and will be developing those specific areas out for my plan. I would expect overlap with someone else's plan, but not 100% conformity.

Life Planning week I

Life Planning is going pretty well. I played a little bit with the spreadsheet, but managed to not drop a ton of time fiddling with formulas, as much as I’d like to. 36% through goals as well, but I have a few once/week review things that I’m planning on tackling this weekend anyway, I think it’s looking strong.

I’m already rethinking and wanting to add add add more things to the list. I’m resisting for at least a couple weeks.

Went to spinning this morning, and it kicked my ass. It’d been about a week since my last class (did racquetball a few times and didn’t pick up my normal Thursday), which I think contributed, but I also ate a ton of TERRIBLE SHITTY FOOD yesterday, which was probably the bigger deal. I deserve the pain.

I’m reading this book that I can’t stop telling everyone about. I went on about the magic of corn for 30 minutes the other day with Gabe, and this might turn me into a full fledged vegetarian by the end. It’s called The Omnivores Dilemma, by this guy Michael Pollan:

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/

FASCINATING stuff, and I’m only through the first third or so. Take a peek, I think you’ll love it too. It’s equal parts genetics, history, economic policy, nutrition, and social studies. I read a little bit of his other book, In Defense of Food, and he just writes good stuff.

A guy I know online had a stroke a couple days ago. He’s mid-40s, and not unhealthy. His living together long enough to be called wife except by law partner is sending updates here:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010650.html

And lots of his online/offline friends are talking. What strikes me is 1) how out of the blue this happened, but more important 2) what Velma is going through because of this. I can’t not read her words and not realize how important it is to take ownership and care of myself, and how selfish it is, now, to go forth blindly. It hit me hard.

She also says this about him, which brought tears to my eyes it’s so beautiful:

I worry about sounding too sentimental, but the woman I have been since Soren chose me is ... just so much more than I think I would have been on my own. He is an amazing man, and my heart's favorite song.

My heart’s favorite song... Something to live up to, I think.