Effort vs. Ease + Savory Bread Pudding

I had an epiphany today. Well, I guess I should say a growing hunch that finally “epiphanized”, if you will – is that a word? I was at a wonderful yoga class I attend every week and as usual, I was pushing myself harder than I should have. It’s pathetic that I do this because as with everywhere I go in the Berkshires, I was easily 20 years younger than everyone else in the room. Meaning there was really no contest flexibility-wise. Not that it’s supposed to be a contest at all, this is just another example of my immature, competitive, Western brain struggling to grow up and fully embrace higher-order Eastern philosophy. But I digress.

So I was in this class, sweating way more than I should have been, and at some point the instructor said, very gently, “Yoga is about trying to find a balance between effort and ease.” It's possible that she says this every single week, but for some reason I never heard it before. Today those words hit me like a ton of yoga bricks. Strike that - yoga bricks are made of foam. Let's just say it made a big impression on me.

I started thinking and realized that for a long time I’ve been making such an effort in my life. Trying hard to be good at everything, especially the things that are least natural to me. Trying to please everyone and make them all like me (even people that I don’t really like, how sick is that?) Very often those efforts have resulted in me being disappointed (don’t other people appreciate my effort?) or resentful (if they don’t appreciate it, then phooey on them) or at the very least, exhausted (it’s rather tiring trying to be perfect).


A perfect example of expending too much effort - Class moms were stressed about making sure each May Day crown had the right amount of flowers, but did it matter? Not one bit!

I don’t think I’m completely alone in this situation. In this country, we place such a high value on orchestrating every detail of our lives. I mean, we invented the self-help book industry, for God’s sake! And especially for women and mothers - we have so many forces lined up against us, but we also cling to the expectation that nothing should stand in our way. Trying to control everything often seems like the only means to get what we want. The trouble with that approach is that we’re damned if it doesn’t work, but we’re also we’re damned if it does - because how long can that kind of effort be sustained?

 

Here is balanced effort and ease - kids having fun and creating a beautiful result.

Even if we can agree that too much effort is not a good thing, there is still the question of how much ease is too much ease? How do I decide where to push hard and where to relax? In some cases, the answer is obvious. For example, every vacation that I’ve ever planned has pretty much blown up in my face. Even when everyone is satisfied with the accommodations, the activities, the weather, etc., I invest so much in the planning that I become extremely defensive at the slightest whiff of disappointment or annoyance from anyone on the trip. Which then snowballs until nobody is having a good time. So after enough bad experiences, I’ve learned not to get involved at all – just take it easy and enjoy whatever my husband has planned. (He’s much better at ignoring my complaints.)

The finished May Pole!

 As for the more complicated areas, such as relationships, mothering, work, etc., I clearly have a lot more pondering to do. Too much ease and relationships end up dying a slow death, children grow up not getting what they need, careers stagnate. Too much effort and we lose the joy in our lives; it all becomes one chore after another. Finding balance is indeed the challenge. Of course it's quite unlikely I’m saying anything that hasn’t already been covered by numerous special issues of Oprah magazine. But as with all revelations, this one feels important because it came to me personally. I look forward to asking for advice from my wise friends and family as I look for the middle way forward. And maybe I'll even crack open a self-help book or two on the subject.

Today’s recipe for Savory Bread Pudding is one attempt at balancing effort and ease. The “effort” is saving heels of bread in a ziplock bag in your freezer and resisting the urge to toss your broccoli stalks. (C’mon, you know you feel guilty throwing them out, anyway.) The “ease” is dumping bread cubes and sauteed veggies into a dish with milk, egg and cheese and ending up with something the whole family will devour. As with every recipe I post, feel free to substitute all over the place – different kinds of cheese or tofu, bread, veggies, herbs, soymilk, egg replacer, etc.)

And if you're feeling about five pounds underweight, be sure to instead make Emeril's version of this dish, found here. I swear, after just reading his recipe my pants already feel tight...

Apologies for the gross picture - not only was it too dark for natural light, but the bread pudding disappeared
so fast, I didn't have a chance to photograph the whole dish!

Savory Bread Pudding with Broccoli and Goat Cheese

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped fine
• 2 cloves garlic, pressed
• 2 cups chopped broccoli stalks, tough outer peel discarded (or florets if you prefer)
• 1 whole roasted red pepper (e.g. from a jar), chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt

In a medium skillet, saute the onion for several minutes, then add the garlic and  broccoli. Turn the heat down a bit and cover, stirring occasionally, until broccoli pieces are completely tender. Stir in red pepper.

While the vegetables are cooking, mix together:

• 2-1/2 cups lowfat milk
• 2 eggs
• dash salt

In a 9"x12" casserole dish, pour the milk mixture over:

• 8 bread ends from whole grain loaves, cut into roughly 1/2 inch cubes (about 6 cups)

Press down as you stir so that all the bread becomes moist. Once the veggies are ready, add them to the bread mixture. Gently fold in:

• 6 oz. goat cheese, crumbled

Cover the dish with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Prepare to watch it disappear. (Unless my kids truly are weird eaters, which I'm beginning to suspect...)

Wishing you a day of balanced effort and ease, and offering you a hug for encouragement.

Don't mind the grimace - she's a really good hugger.

Eyes Wide Shut: Kids' Lunches

Last week I had the chance to eat lunch with my daughter's preschool class. It may sound dramatic, but I'm still processing what I witnessed. Out of those cute insulated boxes and bags came the most astonishing products. (I'm not going to call them food because I'm skeptical about how much could actually be considered nutritive.) Here was one little girl's lunch, along with the key ingredients that concerned me so much that I used up all my internet bandwith today looking them up:

• 1 minutemaid juice box (16 grams sugar)
• 1 package cheezits (230 milligrams sodium)
• 1 gogurt (10 grams sugar)
• 1 package sliced apples with caramel dip (12 grams sugar)
• 1 lunchables jr. (540 milligrams sodium)

For a grand total of 38 grams of sugar and 770 grams of sodium, just in one meal! And this sweet little girl, who at 4 years old is still quite slim and healthy looking, ate the entire contents of her lunch, by the way.

In case you're wondering, the recommended daily allowance of sugar for children is a mere 12 grams. We're talking per day, folks. And for adults, it's just 20 grams for women and 36 grams for men (no fair). Back in the real world, the average American consumes around 90 grams of sugar daily, so clearly we're all way off here. But it's no wonder when you consider that our kids begin their lives eating so much of it!

What about sodium? The recommended daily allowance of sodium for children between 3 and 5 is currently around 1,000 milligrams. We all know that salt is in practically everything we eat, so if in one meal that child is already getting at least 770 grams, chances are she's probably eating about twice as much sodium every day. And for the record, 1,000 mgs is really too much for a child, just like the RDA of 2,300 for adults is also much higher than it should be. Strangely, I can't find anything about this on the Internet now, but I remember that during my last year of grad school (2005), the public health community was all excited because the USDA was preparing to announce a new sodium RDA of 1,200 for adults. Ultimately the agency backed down after extensive (and expensive) lobbying by Big Food. Hmm, Big Surprise.

The really sad thing is, you can easily imagine mom or dad packing that little girl's lunch and thinking, "okay, we've got fruit (apples w/caramel dip + juicebox), we've got protein (lunchables jr. + gogurt), we've got carbs (cheezits + crackers), all the important food groups are covered!" And the child isn't complaining, so tomorrow she gets the same lunch again.

But you know, it wasn't just the contents of the other children's lunches that disturbed me. It was also the way they ate their food. Plastic wrappers, containers and foil packaging flying all over the place. The lunchroom trash can was overflowing by the end of the meal. And how fast they ate! I never thought about it, but whole food really does take quite a bit more chewing and therefore more time to eat than processed  food. The giveaway should have been the word processed, I know.

1st day of kindergarten lunch. Note the (3) candy corns! And the cheese sticks I've finally gotten them away from...

So there's my kid, eating her homemade whole wheat bread, her apple slices, her cheddar cheese, her rice cake spread with sunflower seed butter and homemade jam, her carrot sticks. (I include homemade to indicate that I control how much salt and sugar goes into these items.) She's chewing and crunching away. Opening up her water bottle periodically for a gulp. And all around her, the other kids are sipping juice through straws, slurping down gogurt, gobbling crackers and bite-sized pieces of processed ham and american cheese, licking caramel dip off their fingers. It should not have surprised me that she was the last one still at the table, and even then she didn't have time to finish before recess.

At age 3, she's still clueless that her lunch is not like the others...

Just for the record, there is no judgement here. I am concerned for the future health of these children, but I have a great deal of empathy and understanding for their busy, unaware parents, and a vast reservoir of frustration for the food conglomerates that make these products and market them so heavily. Until now, I had only a vague notion that these things even existed, and no idea that they were so popular. If you don't watch t.v. and you shop the grocery store like I do, sticking to the edges of the store and only venturing into the canned goods and baking sections, then you just don't see this stuff. But I know I am a minority in that regard.

At this point, I'm wondering: How long before my kids figure out the score and start protesting? Will I be able to convince them that it's important to protect their health and longevity by getting the most they can from the food they eat? Will they revolt as teenagers and young adults by eating all the junk food they can get their hands on? And I ask myself, Once this brief phase of being a stay-at-home mom is over, will I feel compelled to buy pre-packaged lunch items just to save a little time each day? Because it's not just making the food, it's also washing the lunch box each day, shopping more often to buy fresh produce, etc. And unless we win the lottery, we probably won't be able to afford the organic, low-salt, low-sugar version of all these foods...


Hey Kraft, Nestle, General Foods and PepsiCo: you can kiss my you-know-what!!!

To close, here is a link to one of our household lunch staples: squash muffins. I published it a couple years ago in this blog and think it deserves another viewing. For the record, when I make these I throw in whatever is in season, whether carrots, beets, kale, even canned pumpkin if there's nothing else lying around. I also add a handful of chocolate chips to keep the kids interested. They are always tasty and despite it being kind of a pain to make them every couple of weeks, I feel good knowing that there is always a healthy snack like this around. FYI, they also keep very well in the freezer.

Heat Wave = Pad Thai

It's been awfully warm the last couple of days, and that makes me want only one thing come dinnertime: cold noodles. There are several dishes I like and make frequently, but nothing ever sounds so good to me as Pad Thai. For some reason, until today I had never even considered making it. I guess I just assumed it had too many unusual ingredients or something. Instead, I've always relied on the iffy offerings at whatever Thai restaurant was in my neighborhood to satisfy my craving, and been disappointed more often than not. No longer.

The recipe below is a combination of several that I found on the internet, plus my own additions of broccoli and carrot to boost the vitamin content. It manages to achieve the sweet/sour/crunchy/smooth/spicy balance I always look for but rarely find, and yet does not include tamarind pulp/paste, a traditional ingredient that I just didn't have the patience to track down in this heat. It does include garlic chili sauce, which not everyone will have in their fridge but if you like heat at all, this condiment is worth keeping around to spice up your pasta sauce, eggs, veggie burgers, etc. The Sriracha brand can be found in the Asian foods section of most large grocery stores.

As a note, the ingredients list and the directions may seem long, but the results are well worth it. Also, if you prep the veggies, etc. first, the actual cooking will come together very quickly and you'll have time to let it cool before serving. Tonight I found out that a Dark and Stormy (ginger beer + dark rum + lime) is a wonderful accompaniment, especially when served outdoors on our first day at the lake this year!





Pad Thai

Main:

• 1 8oz pkg rice noodles
• 1 15oz pkg extra firm tofu, cut into 1/2" cubes
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Veggies:

• 1 onion, cut in half and then cut into crescent slivers
• 3 cloves garlic, pressed
• 1 crown broccoli, cut into bite-size pieces
• 1 carrot, peeled and then shaved into long peelings with a potato peeler
• 3 scallions, cut into diagonal slices
• 2 cups bean sprouts

Sauce:

• 1/2 cup Braggs liquid aminos or low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 limes, 1 juiced and 1 cut into wedges for garnish (bring to room temp and roll/press onto the counter with the palm of your hand before juicing for maximum juiciness)
• 2-3 tablespoons Sriracha or other garlic chili sauce

Finish:

• 1/2 cup peanuts, chopped
• 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped roughly

Directions:

1. Fill a medium pot with water and bring to boil, then cook rice noodles for about 4 minutes or until nearly done. Drain and rinse with cold water until cool. Set aside.
2. Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
3. Heat 2 T canola or peanut oil on med-high heat in a large wok, nonstick or cast iron skillet. Add the tofu and cook about 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Transfer the tofu to a large serving bowl.
4. Pour 2 T more oil to the wok and stir-fry onion, garlic and broccoli for several minutes.
5. Add the carrot, scallions and bean sprouts. Cook for several more minutes, then add the egg, stirring to scramble.
6. Add the tofu and noodles to the dish, and pour over the sauce over the vegetables. Add the peanuts and cilantro, using tongs to combine everything.
7. Transfer to serving bowl and serve at room temperature or refrigerate before serving. Pass the lime wedges.

Last year's pic, but one of my favorites. Hurrah for Lake Garfield!

Comfort Zones + Miso Noodle Soup

For some time now, I’ve been mulling over a theory about why life has seemed so hard to me since we moved to western Mass. On the surface, it looks like daily life should be easier and far more enjoyable. After all, only one of us works full-time these days, we now have two cars so no more strenuous bicycle commuting across town with children in tow, and we’ve simplified our lifestyle by cutting back on extra-curricular activities for the kids, weekly date nights for us, regular clothes shopping, out-of-town trips, etc. Plus the scenery around us is absolutely gorgeous, with mountains (well, hills really), rivers and ponds everywhere you turn. Yet even with life stripped down near to the basics, we still often feel too stressed to really enjoy our lovely rural surroundings.

At first I thought maybe we were taking things too far to the extreme, so I began to schedule regular play dates for the girls, attending a couple weeknight activities myself, and organized daytrips to give us something to look forward to each weekend. It was fun at first, but then actually getting out to do these things started feeling like one more chore. Also, we were living in a large, old house that was very difficult to keep clean and expensive to heat, so we moved to a newer home that is much more space and energy-efficient, but unfortunately, we have still found ourselves struggling to appreciate our improved living quarters, and there seems to be just as much tension in the house as before.

I was beginning to think that perhaps we were just spoiled, or extremely change-resistant, or maybe both. However, on a recent visit to the Boston area, I was negotiating busy traffic and maneuvering into a tight parking spot when it suddenly occurred to me that I felt very happy in that moment. It wasn’t the kind of external happiness that a beautiful day on top of a mountain might offer, but rather a subtle, internally-driven happiness that I was finally able to identify as the satisfaction of being proficient at something for a change.

Now I wouldn’t call myself a city girl, but I’ve lived in urban environments for nearly all of my adulthood. Over time, I have developed attributes such as having enough street smarts to avoid being mugged or attacked, the ability to navigate a car or bicycle in traffic, a mindset for maximizing time by clustering errands in a given neighborhood, even an instinct for the likeliest places to get change for the meter and which Vietnamese restaurant will have the most authentic pho – these are all things that over the years, I have become quite good at. And every single one of them is completely useless out here in the country.

Where we live now, it would serve me much better to know things like how to light a proper fire and keep it going in a woodstove, what the correct term is for when a goat gives birth, how to use an axe, and where to find aged chicken manure that’s actually been aged. Every single day, I discover something I wish I knew. And then I have to track down someone who knows about submersible well pumps, or septic systems, or driveway material, or building a chicken coop, remember whatever I am able to learn from them, and try to apply it the next time something needs addressing. Out here, it doesn’t matter that I can greet someone and thank them in 10 different languages, dance in high heels, discuss international politics and perform multiple linear regression analysis on a large data set without missing a beat. Nobody here could give two you-know-what’s about that stuff.

Have you ever experienced something this? I remember it happening when I joined the Peace Corps and moved to a small village in Ghana, West Africa. But that was completely to be expected, so I was well-prepared for it. Before now, I think the closest to what I’ve been experiencing lately was when I moved from downtown DC to suburban Northern Virginia. Goodbye walking to work, hello daily commutes on the 405. The stress I felt wasn’t really about being in traffic, though; it was more about having to suddenly think through every aspect of my day. Having to consciously decide to turn right or left out of our apartment complex to head toward the grocery store, having to read the overhead signs in the unfamiliar grocery store to find what I needed, having to navigate the parking lot, instead of simply walking down the sidewalk, in order to leave the store and head home. These and a hundred more small actions requiring my active attention; even more demanding, the almost constant need to search out new information, such as where was the DMV, what time did the laundromat close, and could we still wear jeans when attending our new church. Every night I would sink onto the couch, exhausted from what looked on the surface to be a fairly routine day. Nothing was routine anymore.

Of course, recognizing that what’s been going on here is largely a comfort zone issue doesn’t change much. I still spend most days feeling like a total rube – a city rube, that is – doing my best not to seem too ignorant as I ask questions of those in the know. The main problem, I think, is that I am curious, interested, and I do want to remedy my own ignorance. It would be one thing if I just stayed home, tended to my little family and minded my own business. But that sounds awfully boring to me. I’d rather explore, expand my horizons, push the envelope. So sometimes I do things like drive around aimlessly trying to learn the lay of the land, which might mean accidentally bumbling onto someone’s driveway under the assumption that it was a fork in the road. (Of course, now I know that the small number nailed to the tree is a tipoff that it’s someone’s private property, which they will kindly inform me after chasing me off the road and yelling what the hell was I doing there.)

One of these days, months or years, I hope to feel a bit more at home. And maybe someday, I might even experience an odd sensation when I drive into the city: perhaps a feeling of disorientation, maybe even incompetence. Then I’ll know that my comfort zone has finally changed.

For now, I'm turning to food as a source of comfort, and nothing is more comfortable than noodle soup. This recipe is fool-proof, it's delicious, and it will give you a good reason to not order takeout, since it's ready in under 20 minutes. If you like seaweed (our family doesn't), add it when you add the pasta to cook.

Miso Noodle Soup

1 lb spaghetti, broken in half

1 large bunch bok choi, chopped

1 thumb of fresh ginger, grated

1 garlic clove, pressed
2 T low-sodium soy sauce or Braggs liquid aminos

1 package extra firm tofu, diced small

1 green onion, sliced

1/4 cup sesame seeds, toasted in a toaster oven or small skillet (don't let them burn!)

1/4 cup miso - light or dark, your preference

Set a medium pot full of 8 cups of water on high, bring to boil and add spaghetti. Cook until al dente, or about 7 minutes.

While the water heats, chop the bok choi, grate the ginger and press the garlic.

In a large pot, heat 1 T canola or sunflower oil on med-high. Add ginger and garlic, then quickly add bok choi and soy sauce/Braggs and stir to coat. Saute for about 5 minutes, then add tofu. Turn the heat down to med-low and cover, letting it finish cooking while the noodles cook.

Once spaghetti is ready, remove it from the cooking water using tongs and add it to the bok choi and tofu, mixing them together somewhat. Remove about 1 cup of cooking water and place it in a bowl. Stir in the miso, then add the mixture back into the pasta water, which should no longer be boiling hot.

Add the bok choi, tofu and pasta to the miso broth. Serve with green onion and sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

Quinoa-Veggie Soup + the Sickies

This soup just popped into my head while driving the other day, almost as if in a dream. I must have read a similar recipe somewhere at some point and tucked it away mentally. It turned out to be very tasty; much more delicious than these simple ingredients would suggest. In fact, this is a soup that I'd come back for if it was served in a restaurant. And most restaurant soups don't really impress me. Besides, there's no disputing its nutritional value.

Quinoa-Veggie Soup

In a large pot, heat 2 T canola oil on medium heat, then saute for about 5 min:

• 1 onion, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced

Stir in:

• 2 medium red potatoes, diced (if organic, leave skins on)
• 2 cups shredded kale
• 1 large clove garlic, pressed or minced

Add and bring to a boil:

• 1 can (15 oz) fire-roasted chopped tomatoes with juice (Hunts brand was recently rated #2 after Muir Glen by Cooks Illustrated magazine)
• 10 cups vegetable broth (Better Than Boullion is excellent)

Add and simmer for 15 minutes, covered:

• 1 cup quinoa, rinsed well under running water
• 2 cups frozen corn, organic (unless you prefer your corn genetically modified)

Stir in:

• juice of 1 lime
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Serve with tortilla chips on the side (we love Garden of Eatin' organic blue corn chips).

*********************

So, lately there's been a whole lotta hoopla at our house, including moving, no internet for a week, and personal illness, so I haven't blogged in a couple weeks. The moving chaos was pretty unavoidable, not much to say about that. The no internet for a week, well that's just part of living out here in the land of no broadband/no cellphone coverage, just have to live with things like that. The sickness part, that's been the tough one for me recently. There are some people, and you know exactly who you are, who kind of like being sick. The special attention from family members, visits to doctors, conversations with random strangers about your (and their) illness... it can be very gratifying.

Back when I was studying medical anthropology, I remember learning about how some people take on the identity of "patient" and may be reluctant to give it up, even to the point of psychosomatic illness in order to prolong that identity. Not me. Being sick is something I resent hugely. The time spent feeling lousy and not my usual energetic self, the struggle to keep doing what needs to be done, the missed opportunities for exercise and other fun activities - I hate it all. There is one aspect of being sick, though, that even I can see as compensatory. This is the clarity that sometimes come from stepping back from your usual busy life and engaging in self-reflection. This only happens as long as you don't fill up the void with something else diverting (like we do on vacation).

I've always been interested in liminal spaces - the in-between moments of life, when you're not this, but you're not that either - and the notion that special insights, experiences, and healing can take place there. Think of when people have a near-death experience, or fall into a trance. Afterward, they can't help but be changed. This is one reason why induced trances are so common across cultures and are considered so powerful. For me, lying in bed and on the couch hour after hour, unable to focus on reading or t.v., felt like a liminal space. Not yet dead, but certainly not alive in the way that I am accustomed to being. With nothing else to do, my attention eventually made its way toward my priorities and values, and whether they were well-aligned with my actions. As I considered the gap between my ideal and my reality, I made a resolution or two. Excellent timing, what with it being near the end of Lent and all.

Happily, I'm feeling much better now. Still recovering, but able to cook again with enthusiasm, exercise with caution, and play with the girls to their satisfaction. And I think, a bit healthier in spirit for the experience. Not that I'd have chosen sickness as a route towards self-enlightenment, nor that the path forward is an easy one... but as with everything, I'm grateful for the opportunity.

I'll leave you with this quote from Mahatma Ghandi:

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.