Make it EASY For Me

I want it to be easy. Everyone wants it to be easy.

For the last few weeks, I've fallen back on easy - I've been eating more microwave meals, fast food, and creamsicles, which is odd since I've barely ever bought icecream to keep at home, but I guess the heat got to me. I experienced a power outage, about 9 hours, and if I'd followed the recommendations of the FDA's website, I'd have discarded everything in my refrigerator/freezer, which held a significant (for me) amount of meat, eggs, and dairy - a good two weeks' worth. So while I considered the contradicting testimonies on the forums populated by regular folk (if it doesn't smell bad, eat it), I dined on meals from Taco Bell and Wendy's. The weather forecasts have been full of warnings and watches about possible storms, which could lead to more power outages, and my logic told me that the preservatives in microwave meals would leave them much less likely to spoil during an outage.

So I gained a couple of pounds. I'm still 10 pounds ahead (that is, lighter than when I started), but the scale can sure bring a person down.

In the meantime, I found out about this book, Wheat Belly.

The public library has a few copies, but they're all checked out, and when I requested it, there were 24 requests ahead of mine. So I bought it.

It's not really a difficult read, and it's not actually as repetitive as other weight-loss books I've read. I'm glad I bought it, though, because everything didn't sink in on the first read, so I'll need to reference it, at least until I get myself wheat-free.

Sometimes, especially in the weight-loss area, things are too good to be true. But Dr. Davis has me believing, if he hasn't completely won me over, because in looking back at what I was eating in the first 12 weeks since I decided to eat "healthier," a whole lot of what I'd reduced in my diet was wheat. I did not plan this.

I'd been grossed out at the thought of eating breads after reading about a dough conditioner, L-cysteine; depending on who you believe, the majority of the world's supply of L-cysteine may or may not be derived from human hair, as some sources claim it's usually created with duck feathers. Mom used to say that if you thought about where everything came from, you'd starve to death, but something about L-cysteine really turned me against most breads, and I'd even toyed with the idea of baking my own. But it's summer, and baking would make the house too hot, so I'd shopped for breadmakers yet wasn't satisfied with enough of the reviews to actually purchase a cheap one. I had just mostly quit bread, although I occasionally bought a store-baked loaf that didn't list the dreaded ingredient on its label.

I had also greatly reduced my pasta intake by decreasing my reliance on microwave meals. Those things really are mostly pasta, but until reading Dr. Davis' book, I hadn't realized that even without the pasta, one of the many additives in processed food is wheat. Wheat is pervasive. It is in canned creamy soups. It is added to a variety of products to add fiber, or fortify it with "whole grains."

I'm still not clear on a lot of this stuff. While reading the book, I was reminded of the Atkins (aka FATkins) Diet, and while I know there are differences, I don't have those down yet. I found a comparison here: http://diet.pikimal.com/vs/atkins-diet/wheat-belly-diet#side-by-side-comparison
I'm having a particularly tough time with the gluten-free versus wheat-free aspects.

One thing I've learned is that Budweiser beer is wheat-free. http://www.wheat-free.org/is-budweiser-beer-wheat-free.html Apparently, Budweiser briefly offered a wheat beer, but decided that such a "craft" beer wasn't in line with their marketing of their products as fun (http://adage.com/article/news/bud-light-killed-golden-wheat-created-platinum-lime-a-rita/234582/) Beer is an important food group for me.

It really can't hurt to try it, can it? I know Atkins was criticized when its creator suffered a heart attack, but really, he was 72 years old.

Now, I must shop for nuts.

Summer...It Turns Me Upside Down

Summer, summer, summer... it's like a merry-go-round.

The video for this classic Cars tune can be found here: http://youtu.be/-hHTpoqYsaE

Ric Ocasek has never had to worry about having a fatass.

Summer has really messed with my plans. Temperatures in the 100's in June is some crazy shit. My part of the country is typically hot and unbearably humid in July and August, but not normally in June. Maybe it's indicative of a climate shift, where autumn might start in August; I can only hope, because I don't believe I can afford the utility bills with the a/c cranked up like this.

I cooked bean soup a couple of weeks ago, and having the range on for several hours heated up half my tiny little house to the point I was dripping with sweat well into the evening hours. So, for the most part, I haven't been cooking anything that can't be cooked in the microwave. On the fourth of July, I had hoped my kindly neighbors would come over and invite me to their cookout -- but just for the food part, because I sure as hell didn't want to sit outside for any length of time. I guess it was Memorial Day when I had something cooking and one of the kids from next door knocked and asked if I wanted to "come over and fix a plate," since they had a lot of leftovers. I hoped for that situation to repeat itself on the Fourth. I planned on it. However, I ultimately spent the afternoon with a couple visiting their daughter at her newly acquired condo, and on the return trip, a stop was made at the Rally's next to a gas station. If I haven't sworn it enough, let me swear it again: if there is such a thing as the Devil, fast food is Satan incarnate. I said I didn't want anything, because if I'm going to eat fast food, it's gonna be Taco Hell. But there I was, handed a box containing bacon cheddar fries. It was a huge mound of french fries, topped with melted cheese and a ton of bacon bits. Yes, I ate it all, and it was delicious, but a bit too salty for my tastes. But seriously, deep-fried potatoes (I've been mostly avoiding potatoes) covered with Rachel Ray's lover and bacon. They should just call it "express lane to the fatass." I think these fries are supposed to be a side item, as in, you're supposed to add a bacon cheeseburger or fried chicken and a shake and make a meal out of this. My arteries harden further just thinking about it. A Rally's meal probably has the US Recommended Daily Allowance of fat and calories of 25,000%.

The sad thing is, I completely understand if people eat more fast food in the summer, because it's too hot to cook. I went to Kroger, and they had a container of romaine lettuce on manager special for $1.54 (regular price: $2.99). I bought it, knowing I'd have to use it up within a couple of days, so I made bigass salads. They weren't healthy salads. I threw in grape tomatoes, hard boiled egg, some carrots, and some bottled spicy ranch dressing (the ingredients of which I refuse to think about for a second). Remember, I'm not trying to diet, I'm trying to eat healthier than I was before.

I've also been eating a lot of fruit, because it doesn't need cooking, of course. Fruit has a lot of sugar, so for the past couple months I thought if I ate vegetables I could avoid fruit. However, I've had some foot and leg cramps, so I bought a bunch of bananas for the potassium. I've also been eating some pink grapefruit in the morning because it's too hot to drink coffee and the grapefruit makes up for the lack of coffee. When you're eating bananas, you have to counteract it with something so you can take a morning constitutional.

I think tomorrow will be a tuna salad day. I am so off-track. Summer, summer, summer....

Who's your (fat)daddy?

Yahoo's home page today included a story from Canadian news organization CTV. 


Obese dad plans hunger strike after kids ordered adopted | CTV News

I can't figure out how to embed the video that accompanies this story, so here's a still. The video isn't really useful, anyway, since the law in Ottawa prohibits his identity from being revealed, I suppose because it would result in effectively revealing the identity of his children. Eh, all the video really shows is the guy from this angle talking to a reporter, and some clips of him with his face pixellated out moving down some stairs and using some exercise equipment.

So the story goes something like this: fat guy previously weighed over 500 pounds; he has lost over 100 pounds recently and is down to 360. He has two sons, aged 5 and 6, who lived with their mother (his ex-wife) until a year ago, when the mother was hospitalized for a mental breakdown and suspected drug overdose.  The boys were placed in foster care, pending an investigation regarding their return to a parent's custody. An agency that is responsible for such things evaluated fatman to assess his fitness as a parent, and concluded that the children should not be placed with him. As a result, a judge ruled earlier this week that the boys should be placed for adoption.


The story purports that their decision was based on his weight. The CTV article cites a report from the evaluating clinic that states that the father's history of struggling with obesity would impact his ability to keep up with the children. Apparently, no one on the government's side was allowed to discuss the case. For his part, fatman claims his weight was one of the reasons he was denied custody; he apparently has had some brushes with the law, but claims he has taken anger management classes and given up marijuana, so those things shouldn't be a problem now.

In the interview, the guy says that he is a stress-eater. However, he planned a hunger strike to protest the ruling.

I read some of the "related stories," and it sounds like this man, at least at one point during the evaluation process, could barely walk a few steps without huffing and puffing. His breasts appear to be about a C cup, even now, but maybe he doesn't lose weight in his bust first as many women do.

The big question is, can a person be too fat to parent? Additionally, how fat is too fat? Is obesity an issue because it impairs the parent physically, or because it represents the parent's inability to keep themselves healthy and thus presumes they will inflict their dietary and exercise shortfalls on the children?

One thing that struck me was if this guy can barely get around, he surely can't be out there committing too many crimes, and if he was, he could reasonably be expected to be apprehended by the law without much difficulty.

And that makes me wonder if the guy has a job.

I don't know how Canadian law is, but there are certainly people in the U.S. who get a government check for their obesity disability. I know, because my neighbor's daughter's boyfriend does. I wondered the other day if I should look into this, because I am one of those fatasses that leans on their cart while shopping. I did this the other day when I went to Meijer for some shit, and I leaned on that buggy all the way back out to the parking lot until I loaded my stuff into the car and then scanned the receipt because the total seemed higher than I thought it should be. And damn, if they hadn't charged me $48.80 plus tax for my carton of Marlboro "Special Blends." I've been smoking the SB's for several months now, since a cashier at Circle K told me they were $8-$10 cheaper than the non-SB's. So I marched my ass, sans cart, back into the store with the cigs and the receipt, and maybe it was the 95-degree heat and humidity, maybe it was my fatass, maybe it was both, but I was sweating and breathless by the time I got to the service desk. Oh, maybe my cig-damaged lungs played a part, too. Anyhow, I told the young woman at the desk this HAD TO BE WRONG, since just 9 days before I'd paid $30.98 plus tax for these at Circle K, and I showed her the Circle K receipt. She scanned the fucking carton and said, "yes, that is the correct price," and I said, "duh, that's what scans, but it has to be wrong." She told me they didn't refund cigarettes, so I asked for the store manager. He looked at my receipt, checked the time, said, "go ahead and give her the refund." And then I had to stop at Circle K for cigs, a trip a couple miles out of the way that I'd wanted to avoid, to get cigs. They were $32.85 including tax. It was worth it to save almost $19.

Boss- da plan! da plan!

I have bitched here before about microwave meals. I guess one can never bitch too much about them, so I might as well bitch some more.

Most microwave meals, whether "diet/low-fat" or not, are either pasta or rice based. I am not lying. The rest of them are things like meatloaf or salisbury steak, and those often taste like what I imagine dog food tastes like. And even the salisbury steak meals usually have a side of macaroni and cheese with them. For years, microwave meals were my supper almost every evening; the other evenings, my supper was fast food, because microwave meals are monotonous. They're cheap, though; I usually bought Stouffers (tm) (I'm not sure whether or not to use a comma, since on their own website, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't - http://www.stouffers.com/products.aspx) or Boston Market (tm), and they could be bought for $2.50 - $3.00.

So, I've backed off microwave meals significantly in the last couple of months. And I have been losing weight. However, I don't know if that's because of the sodium or whatever content in the meals, or because pasta and rice are just not conducive to losing weight, at least for me.

Today, I fell back on what has become a once-a-week-or-nine-days deal for me: chicken and rice with vegetables. Ever since my sister gave me Natalia's fool-proof method for making rice, it's just so easy. When using frozen vegetables, I nuke them for about half the recommended time, and throw them in with the rice just as I'm about to clamp a lid on the rice for 20 minutes. If I cooked the chicken the day before and refrigerated it, I throw the chicken in then, too, otherwise I just throw the chicken in the pot after the rice is done. Chicken and rice is so easy, and while I know the combo that works for me is 1 chicken breast + 2 cups veggies + 2/3 cup of uncooked rice, it still makes 3 or more bowls of the stuff, so I eat it over a couple of days --- or like today, when I didn't have breakfast, I had it for brunch and dinner plus Jeopardy! snack. I think it's a lot of rice. I hear Kiefer Sutherland, as David in The Lost Boys, saying, "What, you don't like rice? Tell me Michael, how could a billion Chinese people be wrong?" And I think, yeah, for me, rice or pasta can't happen more than once a week.

So this evening, since I have been contemplating sopes for about 2 weeks now but I don't have any lettuce, I thought that if I am going to the grocery tomorrow, I should plan some meals, for a week in advance. So what meals can I make? These:

1. Chicken and rice with vegetables
2. Parmesan chicken, aka crack chicken
3. chili
4. white chili
5. spaghetti
6. lasagna
7. halushki

Four out of those 7 contain rice or pasta. Actually, 1 contains rice and 3 contain pasta. I can't plan a week's worth of meals, since I can't cook a week's worth of meals. So my mission this week is to collect recipes of meals that sound good to me, but that do not contain rice or pasta. I have a feeling this will be quite a challenge.

The Biggest Loser - Safe, Effective, Fair?

Since only my sister reads this blog, and she doesn't watch tv, I am going to begin by explaining what "The Biggest Loser," ("TBL") is. TBL is a reality show/contest, whose contestants vie for the titular title and cash prizes by a combination of losing weight and manipulating the other contestants. The show is hosted by actress Allison Sweeney, best known for portraying Samantha Brady on the soap, Days of Our Lives; Ms. Sweeney was at one time a bit on the chunky side, and I suppose after her own dramatic weight loss, NBC decided she'd make a good host for TBL (since I don't think she was the original host).

So people send in their home videos of themselves engaging in lardporn - that is, in varying states of undress, revealing their massive fat rolls, and eating in the most disgustingly gluttonous manner. Sometimes contestants arrive in pairs, such as siblings, mother & daughter, father & son, and variations on these combinations. They gather at TBL ranch, which I guess is somewhere in the Los Angeles area. And they are divided into teams. Now, I have only watched the show for about a year, I guess 2 seasons, so I'm not absolutely sure that what I've seen is representative of all of the seasons, but sometimes they split up the teams that arrived together. Anything for the drama.

Anyway, everyone is immediately immersed in tough workouts, led by whichever trainers are working on the show. The first season I watched had Bob Harper, Dolvett Quince, and tennis player Anna Kournikova as trainers. They're mean-ass meanies, pushing the contestants to the point that they all end up using the puke buckets placed in the gym. (Good fucking grief, who has to clean those fuckers?) Each week, contestants are subjected to a weigh-in, whereby the person who has lost the most weight, relative to their weight from the week before, is immune from being voted off of the ranch. The team which has the collectively lowest weight loss for the week has to vote someone off - but it's not necessarily the person whose weight loss was smallest. That's where it becomes a popularity contest. In the middle of this there's lots of crying by the contestants about how they didn't realize how fucking fat they'd become, and they beg their teammates not to vote them off because they are "single mothers" or whatever and think they "need" to stay on the ranch longer for whatever reason. And challenges are held, in which rewards of some sort are given for the winner, such as a 2-lb advantage at the weigh in, or 6 months of Biggest Loser (tm) meals. Often, there's some sort of contest which requires contestants to gorge themselves on their favorite food for some advantage. It's all somewhat sick, in a way, and from what I've read on the internet, a lot of people watch this show while eating pizza or having drinking games that involve chugging or taking a shot every time someone uses the word, "journey."

These contestants, more often than not, post HUGE fucking numbers. I understand that they're pretty large to start, but most of the men seem to hit double digits in terms of weight loss in a single week - and sometimes some women are right up there with the men.

Ten, twelve, fifteen pounds in a week? Really? The show has doctors on the staff, who are mostly seen informing the contestants in the early episodes that they are (pre-)diabetic or have other issues, and sometimes some contestants aren't "cleared" to participate in some of the physical challenges, but most often the restrictions on participation seem to be related to an injury as opposed to heart or sugar concerns.

I liked watching this shit, seeing how the contestants changed in appearance from week to week. But the most recent season sucked; the winner was still a fatass, his sister was a total bitch, and there were several quitters who were fucking crybabies. It was a mess, and I couldn't root for any of them. I hope they ALL gain back the weight.

Often, a contestant has either ganed a couple of pounds or not lost what they thought was commensurate with their work for the week. Most of the time, these are women. I've never heard anyone on the show mention anything about their periods, but some of these damn women must be having them. I have never had a period where I didn't gain at least 4 pounds, and I've seen women whose asses seem to have exploded over night due to their periods. The show always seems to write it off as reaching a plateau. 

Historically, most of the contestants have gained at least some weight back after the show, even if only a couple of pounds in contrast to losing 100. Some of them have done quite well at maintaining, and look damn healthy. But I think I feel for some of those who gained back weight, because the show is all about dramatic weight loss in a relatively short period of time. The winner of each season gets about $250k, and probably the chance to make more in endorsements. Money is a motivator, so I can see how some people can do it for the money and then go to shit afterwards. I've seen some episodes where they bitch about having had nothing to eat but chicken, and I understand that.

But I don't think most people can adhere to a diet where every food that they love is a never-again food.  I certainly don't plan to have never-again foods, except in cases of allergies (mine is strawberries; and I may have a lactose intolerance or some gluten issues, I don't know). I've been blogging and making slight changes for about 7 weeks now. Things I have given up: diet soft drinks. Things I have cut back on: microwave meals (this is the big one); fast food; beer; bread. I haven't been exercising, but there is probably some calorie-burning in standing at the counter to cut things up and cook them, and getting up to check on them, and washing the dishes. Net weight loss as of this morning: 8 lbs.

But I'm on my period.

Looks can be deceiving.

They really can be.

The above is a frittata I made. I'm not much of a photographer, just as I am not much of a cook. This looks like a total mess, doesn't it? Well, it was delicious. Awesomely so.

The last time I made a frittata, I made it with turkey sausage (which sucks, I can never stress that enough), egg substitute, cheese, and mushrooms from a jar. I was terribly disappointed with the results. There was water in the bottom of the pan, and it just wasn't all that. So this time, I took a few suggestions from a comment made by Jesse'sMom, and well, I didn't really follow it completely, but I tried to come close.

I don't normally buy potatoes. I've bought small bags before, and I usually end up throwing away half of them because they have sprouted and/or become soft. Potatoes are work. You have to peel them. I know that sounds stupid, but I'm a little phobic about using sharp implements. Mom had a big, old, dull-looking knife that she used for peeling potatoes, and I honestly don't know how she managed to keep all her fingers. I have a lovely vegetable peeler, that I sharpen with a paring knife before use, like in this video.

Note the clean fingernails. Yum, this guy cooks food for people for a living. Ok, so maybe that's potato grunge.

Anyhow, so I didn't have potatoes, but I had some frozen tater tots in the freezer. I put 5 of them in the oven, since I was going to heat the kitchen up with the broiler, anyway. I also didn't have fresh onion, since when I pulled the half of one I had in the fridge out, it was growing something out of the middle. I took 2 (regular) eggs, added a little salt and pepper, a few sprinkles of dried chopped onion, a sprinkle of dried garlic (because I thought an entire clove might be too much) and about 2 teaspoons of shredded cheddar/jack cheese, and beat it all together. It looked a little slight to me, so I slopped in a little bit of milk, probably a quarter cup, and forked it again pretty briskly, then poured it into a hot skillet and added about a quarter cup of diced ham and about a quarter cup of mushrooms. I let it cook until it set up, then scooped it into an oven-safe aluminum pan, over top of the tater tots. I sprinkled about a tablespoon of the cheese on top, and put it under the broiler for about 6 minutes, and I got what is shown in the picture above.

And I ate all of it, by myself, even though it looked like it was at least 2 servings worth.

Calorie count:
Tater tots (the package says 9 tots are a serving [wtf?], @160 cal per serving X 5 tots used = 89
Eggs, 2 scrambled, 199
cheese - the package says 1/4 cup is a serving; an online calculator says 4 tablespoons equals 1/4 cup, and while I think I used closer to just 2 tablespoons, I'll go with the full quarter cup = 110 calories
Ham, cooked, 2 oz = 70
Mushrooms, 1/4 cup = 10
Total calories, not counting "spicers" = 478, and that's for the entire frittata.

Rough calculation of sodium: ham, 650 mg (27%DV); cheese, 160mg (7%), mushrooms from a jar, 195mg (8%), added less than 1/8 teaspoon of table salt, 288mg(12%); total = 1293/less than 60% DV.

This was not the healthiest meal in the world, but it kept me from making a run for the border.

The Science of Fattitude

This one might just be far too much information for anyone but myself.

Sometimes, I perform experiments. Some of these experiments involve cooking, but since I am usually hungry like the wolf, I try not to veer too far off the tried-and-true.

Sometimes, I just experiment on myself, as I have this week.

I have digestive issues. I know everyone gets them, but it seems to me that when I was growing up, I didn't know a single person with peanut allergies, lactose intolerance, or celiac disease; however, maybe people just died in the olden days when I was a kid, and maybe medical science is just identifying things that everyone seems to have in order to prolong our lives so that we can die of something else, smelling of Old Person Smell. Anyhow, I first noticed that I had a problem with iceberg lettuce about 15 years ago. At that time, I was trying to eat salads pretty often, thinking they were healthy, but I'd get the severe shits (sorry) within an hour of consumption. Within a short time after I noticed this, I'd also get severe abdominal pain, and since I'm not a fan, I eliminated the iceberg variety from my diet forthwith. Within the last couple of years, I've noticed a similar problem with raw broccoli, which I used to add to my romaine. I've read that this is not uncommon in people in middle age, so I now only eat broccoli that's been cooked in some fashion, and while it still makes me fart, the pain no longer accompanies the acoustic and aromatic signs of my consumption.

For the most part, I've figured that some of the flatulence and poo issues involve my consumption of beer. I like beer.




But I've been skipping beer during the week, and haven't been seeing/feeling a difference. So this week, I skipped my usual cereal with milk for breakfast and smidgen of milk in my coffee. Tada! I thought, this must mean I am lactose intolerant, but after googling the symptoms, I'm not so sure that's the case. So I looked up celiac disease, and it sounds somewhat related to the dairy thing.


Webmd has some info here: Celiac Disease Symptoms. Very interesting stuff, especially the part that says celiac disease is associated with autoimmune thyroid disease. Hmmm... maybe too much information isn't such a good thing.

The Fruitlessness of Expert Ideas for Weight Loss

Recently, I read about a study that indicated that repetitive eating can lead to weight loss (How Repetitive Foods Can Mean Weight Loss).

What a total crock.

First of all, macaroni and cheese? Really? It doesn't even matter if it was Kraft Mac 'n Cheese or someone's deliciously crusty homemade version, I would be bored after the second helping in 2 days. I would probably be more bored with the Kraft version, but is there a food in the world that is less interesting than macaroni and cheese?

According to the article in the link, people have a threshold for tolerance of the same thing over and over again, be it a popular song getting too much radio airplay, a shitcom episode rerun too many times, or food, and the article claims that " [i]t’s not even necessary that the repetitive food be boring: you’ll habituate to pizza almost as easily as you do to boiled chicken."

I know I complain that, cooking for just myself, I end up having to eat the same thing for 2 or more days in a row. However, this study claims that people who had the mac and cheese every day got tired of it and decreased their portions, while the people who had it only once a week consumed more of it over time. I'm sure the full study was written up in the journal this article mentioned, but in the article there were a few salient points that never got mentioned, such as what were these bitches eating at home? What time of the day did they report to the study site? And the most significant question, in my opinion: When they were growing up, were they often told, '"This is not a restaurant," and/or, "if you're hungry, you'll eat what I cooked"?

Because those things matter.

You Can't Stuff Turkey Sausage

As I blogged earlier, I purchased a package of Jimmy Dean turkey sausage patties and found them wanting - as in wanting some flavor. The package included 8 patties, and I'd only used 2 in my watery sausage-egg-and-cheese fritatta, so here I was, left with 6 patties.

You know what? The only way to make awful food delicious is to make it fattening.

Hello, biscuits and sausage gravy!

It had been a long time since I'd had biscuits and gravy, mainly because there really isn't a way to make it other than as a batch of biscuits and gravy. I don't know if I typed it here or just in an email to my sister, but in the last month or so, I attempted to make biscuits with Bisquik and failed miserably; the batter/dough just stuck to everything, no matter how much more of the floury mix I tried to throw on it. I decided thereafter to stick to the canned bitches. But I'm really new to this grocery shopping thing (not really, but yes I am inexperienced at many foods that aren't microwaveable, fryable, or boilable). My local Meijer recently had Pillsbury buttermilk canned biscuits on sale, for the low-low price of 2 cans for $2.69, and since the generic cans were $2.39 each, I thought this was a great deal.

For some reason, I thought these things would be like canned soup, with an expiration date a year or two down the road. Nooooo. I noticed, after getting home, of course, that these cans are stamped "USE BEFORE 02JUN12." I really, honestly, wondered if I could freeze them, and no, I would never consider throwing a can in the freezer, because I'm sure it would explode. I'll have to ask my sister what she thinks (although she would probably tell me to just make fresh, since she CAN make them from scratch).

In the meantime, I had to prepare at least one of the cans in its entirety. I followed the instructions, tearing off the entire label (but preserving the heating instructions so I wouldn't have to bother pulling the other can out of the fridge), and pressing the handle of a spoon against a seam. After trying several spots, it finally popped. These were pretty big biscuits. For some reason I thought they'd be much smaller. Anyhow, into the oven.

So I put 4 sausage patties in a skillet. Honestly, these things produce no grease whatsoever. None. I vaguely wondered if they had been treated with some of that RainX shit, that is supposed to repel water from your car windshield. What to do, what to do? Paula Deen would probably say, "Put some butter on it, y'awwwl," so I did. I melted the butter, sprinkled a few teaspoons of flour into that mess and cooked it up. I added about a cup of milk, a bunch of pepper, a few shakes of salt,  brought it to a boil, stirred it around a little.

I probably should have used more milk, or at least had a lower ratio of sausage. The crappy sausage taste still came through, and I had to eat that shit for brunch and dinner on Saturday. The gravy helped a lot.

I should probably do the math on it, because I think the turkey sausage kept this mess from being a fraction as fattening as regular biscuits and gravy. No, the butter didn't help, but the butter most likely wasn't as bad as regular sausage. I don't know.

But I still had 4 biscuits left. Yeah, I know that two biscuits + gravy is a huge portion. When my cats sniffed around, I decided to break up a biscuit and see if they really wanted to eat it. They didn't, but I don't consider that wasting, because after they stuck their noses in it, their noses which they regularly stick into their own and eachother's asses, that biscuit was unsanitary, so throwing it out was more of a safety issue than a wasting one. I put the other biscuits in Tupperware.

On Sunday, I made gravy again, this time with only 2 sausages. Thank goodness that's the last of that sausage. I used more milk and more pepper. The gravy was thinner, but it really tasted much better. Earlier, I googled a recipe for turkey sausage gravy, but the author used mustard (I think dried?) and Worcestershire sauce, and that didn't appeal to me. But now I know -- other people use gross turkey sausage to make an unfuckinghealthy meal.

I don't feel terrible about it. If I hadn't made this, I might have resorted to microwaving some pasta-based meal, not been filled up, and so had another pasta- or rice-based meal.

Sausage and Meatballs; There is No Hidden Meaning

Pretty much all food is fattening, or it can be easily made fattening (think Rachel Ray and her pounds of CHEESE all over everything). I remember reading something somewhere, probably back in the 1990's, about how when the U.S. got into a "low-fat" food pushing mode in the 80's, in order to keep food palatable, fat was removed and replaced with sugars - probably high-fructose corn syrup, since it's the cheapest sweetener out there. By the 90's, the food industry wised up, and instead started using fat substitutes in food that the human body was not capable of digesting, such as Olestra ("warning: may cause anal leakage," thank you, Jesse).

I think that when I was growing up, I and my siblings probably had a lower-fat diet than a lot of our peers. By sheer dint of having a large number of children and grandchildren to cook for on a daily basis - there were 10 of us living at home by the time I was 8 - and a limited budget, Mom took pains to stretch the most important part of the meal, the meat. To this day, I cannot eat gawumpky (cabbage rolls) that other people make, because my mother used a much higher ratio of rice to beef than a typical recipe suggests. Mom also made the best meatballs, and she probably got 25-30 out of a pound of beef. I miss those meatballs; when we had spaghetti, I used to save the meatballs for "dessert."

A few months ago, my yahoo news page featured a video for making the "perfect" Italian meatballs, hosted by Fabio Viviani of the "Chow Ciao" feature. http://screen.yahoo.com/women/chow-ciao/ I eventually tried Fabio's method, because hell, he's cute, but I didn't like the results. It involved cooking the meatballs in sauce, with water added to the top. I just didn't care for the mushy texture; Mom's meatballs were browned first, which made them firm, and she probably drained the grease.

Mom used the broiler pan a LOT. I remember having to wash the dishes and clean that shit up. She made hamburgers with onions and bread crumbs and eggs, cooked on the broiler pan, and the grease dripped away from the burgers. She cooked her meatloaf on a broiler pan; I remember in later years, she lamented the availability of good ground beef, stating that when she used to make meatloaf (on the broiler pan) she could dip her finger in the runoff, and it tasted good, but these days, it was just gross grease.

Mom used to make Italian sausage, which I loved. She cooked it forever, for like an hour in a tomato sauce with onions, and then served it like hotdogs on these excellent hard rolls that didn't get too soft with the sauce. I remember her telling me a story about cooking for her brother-in-law Pete, for some reason, sausage with onions and peppers (no sauce) on a big grill, I suppose state-fair style.

Sausage is so damn fatty. However, since this past week I had such a disappointing experience with turkey breakfast sausage, I decided to let sausage redeem itself as delicious in my eyes/in my stomach. Plus, Italian sausage was on sale for $2.49.

I've always been a dumbass about freezing meat, but I'm getting better. I wrapped up 3 of the 5 links and put them in the freezer. The other 2 I cooked today. I used a small saucepan, filled it about 2/3 with water, added the sausage, and cranked up the heat to get it started. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying close attention and the water came to a boil. Let me tell you, it was gross. A thick layer of foamy fat formed on top of the water. I removed it from the heat, skimmed off the fat - it was so weird - and put the pan back on the burner at a medium-low heat. I let it simmer for about 45 minutes, then drained the water, which had an orangey tint which means I probably lost significant spices, but the water was greasy-looking, so I probably dumped out some more fat. I poured about a third of a jar of Newman's Own spag sauce on it, and heated that for about 15 minutes while I boiled some thin spaghetti.

I have to say, it was pretty damn good. I know it wasn't low-fat, but with a significantly smaller portion of pasta than what I might normally eat, one sausage and the spaghetti was pretty filling, especially since I'm still having bread issues so I didn't have any bread with it. I will have the leftovers tomorrow. It's probably still just as healthy as a microwave meal, and I'm sure it's much healthier than fast food. My sister could make this even healthier with her homemade pasta sauce made with fresh tomatoes.

Turkey, turkey, turkey

I have been neglectful this week. I had some people from my past turn my life into a turmoil, but hopefully, that is all behind me now.

So, I made the parm cheese chicken, using smaller pieces of chicken, egg to coat it, then I cooked it on top of the stove for several minutes before putting it in the oven. It worked! At least in terms of the breading sticking to the chicken. I still left it in the oven for 20 minutes, so it might have been overcooked. I don't know if the stove-top cooking it in a little oil makes it any less fried than baked, but since the original recipe called for baking it in oil, I just don't know. Maybe it's just as well to cook it in a frying pan?

The chicken was  a few days ago. Today I decided on a frittata, with turkey sausage. Turkey sausage tastes like shit - or at least the Jimmy Dean brand tastes like shit. I cooked the sausage, and took a taste, and I thought, "whose bright idea was it to make sausage taste like eating dirty socks?" It is pretty gross. Let me make this clear: I don't like all the grease in regular sausage. When I cook it, I squeeze the cooked patties between paper towels to get some of the grease out, and there's a LOT of grease that squeezes out of regular sausage. The turkey sausage didn't have anywhere near that mess, but it isn't worth eating.

I've never had so much difficulty making a frittata. I used about a half cup of egg sub, which was supposed to approximate 2 eggs. I cut up 2 turkey sausage patties, ate most of one just to taste it, and added the rest to my eggs.  I added some jarred mushroom slices, dried onion, salt, pepper, and once the eggs were solidifying, I sprinkled shredded cheddar on top and put it under the broiler for about 6 minutes, until the cheese started browning. This was the worst frittata I've ever made. It tasted okay, but there was liquid in the bottom of the pan, and that didn't happen when I made this in the past. Maybe because I've made it with ham and the salt in that draws the water. I don't know.

At any rate, the sausage frittata isn't something I will try again. I probably should have just scrambled the eggs with the sausage and threw some cheese on top and microwaved it in a burrito or something. I do not recommend shoe-leather turkey sausage. Then again, I'm not a fan of turkey, so that might be a clue.

Eggs

At some point this week, probably today, I am going to redo the parmesan cheese chicken recipe, with tips from JessesMom, using egg to coat the chicken before the breading.

Eggs are a pain in the ass for a single human household. There are 12 eggs in a regular carton, and the expiration date is about 10 days after the date of purchase. I kinda think an egg a day is probably not healthy. I could be wrong, since there was this whole outrage about hamburger leading to cancer a decade or two back, and then whoever published that shit backed down. Still.

One day, when I was in the grocery store, I reached for the half-carton of eggs. Some nosy-ass woman pointed out to me that a dozen eggs were 99 cents, while the half-dozen was $1.69. I told her I didn't want to waste them, instead of telling her to mind her own business, but she said I could just freeze them. Freeze eggs? Apparently, you break the eggs and freeze them, either in icecube trays or freezer bags. I have yet to try this.

So this week, I bought the meijer brand egg substitute. The carton was $1.50, and it claims to contain 8 eggs. Since regular eggs were $1.79, I don't think I got screwed on the deal.

For breakfast, I like Cheerios, so I'm not big on eggs for breakfast. But breakfast food for lunch or dinner works for me.   I mean, the chicken recipe probably won't need more than an egg or 2, so I have to do something with the rest.

Unfortunately, I'm still grossed out from the l-cysteine in most bread, so I'm not up for eggy in the basket. But a nice fritatta might be good. I bought some turkey sausage, because I didn't realize how much of a difference there was in turkey sausage versus pork sausage until I stood in the store comparing nutritional values. I would probably choke on turkey sausage. So I'll be trying a frittata with turkey sausage later this week. First, the chicken.

Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit

I like beans. I really like beans. Not necessarily green beans, because I only like those when they are fresh. But I like butter beans and lima beans. I like chili with beans (I don't understand the weirdos who think chili is simply meat soup and don't put beans in it).

One of my gripes about cooking is that it is so difficult to cook for one person, unless you plan on eating the same meal for 3 days. Chili -- or probably the correct terminology is chili con carne -- is one of the worst offenders. I have never seen a chili recipe that didn't feed at least 10 people. I've seen some recipes that use 3 lbs of meat -- like 1 1/2 of ground beef and another pound or more of ground lamb or pork or something. I would never make that sort of chili, because I grew up with a mother who always cooked for 10 with about a pound of ground beef. Mom never really adjusted to cooking for 2, but that's another story.

Personally, I like my chili with a lot higher bean to meat ratio than most recipes call for. When I've made white chili, I used 3 cans of northern beans instead of 2, because I like it that way. I have only recently (this week) learned to appreciate dried beans.

I learned that with dried beans, you can reduce a recipe for chili pretty drastically.

The last time I bought meat was a couple of weeks ago. I had this big family pack of chicken breasts that I had divvied up and frozen, and since chicken all the time is boring, I bought a pound of ground sirloin, because it was the same price as chuck and I figured I wouldn't have to rinse that shit with the lower fat content. I split it into roughly quarter-pound pieces, and froze 3/4 of it (because I used 1/4 lb to make burritos).

So, this week, I figured I could make chili for one with 1/4 lb of meat. I started with about 2/3 of a cup of dried beans, since that looks like a very small amount of beans. I did the quick-cook thing, boiling them for a few minutes and leaving them to soak afterward for an hour. They still seemed a bit firm for me, so after draining and rinsing, I simmered them in fresh water for about an hour. I browned the beef with about a handful of chopped onion, drained off the grease, then added the beef & onions to the drained beans, added a can of tomato sauce, sprinkled in some oregano, chili powder (I threw that canister out afterwards, because it must've been 10 years old), smooshed a clove of garlic in it, and I think I threw some cumin there, too. I STILL had to eat it 2 days in a row. Rachel Ray (fuck her, I'm not giving her the extra "a", ala Michael K) often cooks shit using tomato paste from a tube. Maybe there's a way to use tomato paste instead of tomato sauce? Because with these ingredients, the consistency of the chili was more soupy than I wanted it, so if I reduced the beans and meat, it would have been much worse with that entire can of tomato sauce. I've seen little cans of tomato paste, but neither my local Meijer nor Kroger carry tubes of tomato paste. It figures, though, that Rachel buys gourmet tomato paste to make her cheapass beefaroni recipes.

The point of this is that I think mixing beans with meat or poultry goes a long way towards making a person satisfied with the meal, while making it less fatty. I don't know. Beans seem pretty healthy to me, but what do I know? Last week, I cooked a quarter cup of northern beans, and managed to make 3 bigass burritos for lunch, dinner, lunch with the beans and 1/2 a chicken breast. I don't know why Taco Hell isn't pairing chicken with northern beans for cheap ass burritos. I should probably suggest it. Maybe they would put me in commercials, like that woman who makes "gourmet" bowls of mixed shit for them.

ANyhow, my cooking hasn't freaked out my cats. Here they are, sharing the chair next to my computer chair in the kitchen.

We Like to See You...fat

Why is fast food so damn fattening?

I see why people patronize fast food restaurants, and I've certainly been guilty of doing so.  It's quick, kids love that shit, and when you're finished, even if you got it to go and took it home, cleanup consists of wadding up the wrappers and bags and throwing them in the rubbish. But does it really taste good?

I had an experience a couple of months ago. What the hell, I'm not doing anything, might as well relate it for the existential crackhead incident it was. So, there's this woman that lives in a small apartment complex about 1/8 of a mile from my house. Let's call her "Kathy." She knew my neighbors, socialized with them quite a bit at one point, and then the neighbor woman ran her off after getting the impression Kathy was hitting on the husband while neighbor woman was at work.

Kathy's dad lives in this same neighborhood; in fact, Kathy passes my house on her many walking trips to her father's house, and I've occasionally waved to her and her very bratty daughter, aged somewhere between 8 - 11.

One day, about noon, someone knocked the hell out of my front door. It was Kathy, and she was practically crying because she had an awful toothache, her ride to the dentist had backed out, today was the last appointment she could get because she'd had to cancel a couple of times, etc, would I please take her to the dentist? It was only a few miles away, so I thought I'd be a nice person (and I learned my lesson).

Now, Kathy is rotund. From the thighs down, she isn't big at all -- and maybe this is because she walks to her dad's house a million times a day (good for her, maybe).  Kathy was so grateful for the ride, she offered to treat me to lunch with one of her free "sammich" coupons from McDonald's. Um, after about an hour and a half to two hours at her dentist, she exited with a mouth full of gauze (they'd pulled the offending tooth, which looked to be about a cuspid, fairly close to the front), and doing that spitting sort of thing people do when they've just been to the dentist. She wanted to stop at MickeyD's on the return trip, but I had, quite frankly, no desire to eat a meal with this woman and her "look at my toof - is it still bleeding?" mouth. I tried the diplomatic route, that it would be inconsiderate for me to eat when she wouldn't be able to due to the extraction. But hell no, she wanted to eat. So we pulled into the lot, to find the drive-thru was closed for construction. I insisted I wanted nothing, and Kathy went into the place, then came out with a couple of bags and a tray with a large soda and some sort of shake with a dome lid.

Then Kathy asked me to stop at Meijer, so she could get her antibiotic prescription filled for free. OK, it was on the way. I'm so fucking nice. After waiting about 30 minutes, Kathy informed me it was taking too long and asked me to take her down the street to CVS for their 15-minute express pharmacy or whatever. Ok, get in the car. Um, first, she wanted to pick up a couple of things there at Meijer. So I waited in the car. We went to CVS, and I guess it was within the time, but at this point, it was 4 fucking 30 and I was tired of her ass. I dropped her off at her apartment, where bratty daughter was waiting outside, as her bus had dropped her off 10 minutes earlier. Bye!

But wait. Around 7 that evening, Kathy showed up at my door.  Her prescription at Meijer -- wtf? what was CVS about?  -- was ready, and some church friend of hers was unable to pick it up for her. Oh, part of the deal with the dentist appointment was that a local church had written a check to that dentist for Kathy's dental work, because she's poor. This is why she had to go to that dentist. So Kathy begged me to take her to Meijer again, and I didn't want this fucking drama in my life. But then her friend called, and he had the prescription and was waiting in front of her apartment, and Kathy still wanted to buy me a sammich with her coupons (how many did she have?) and when I tried to beg off she wanted to do it tomorrow, so I thought, what the hell, get it over with.

This time we went to the McD's closest to my house. Kathy wanted to do an electronic application for employment, but after trying to help her dumb ass with that for 10 minutes, I told her the computer was broken, that the error (she couldn't type in her fucking email address) indicated a network error. I'm not going to hell because I don't believe in hell. So she moseys over to the counter -- there was no line at this time -- and starts quizzing the employees as to what she can get with her coupon.

And I thought, what the hell, where's the damn sandwiches? Kathy had "sammich" coupons, so I had assumed McD's had something like ham sandwiches (I guess those are Arby's commercials) but all they were good for was fucking burgers. It had been years since I'd been to a McDonald's, so I just said I'd take a Big Mac, because those are delicious, aren't they? Kathy just kept sliding the upper part of her body down and back on the stainless steel counter, and a fucking line formed behind her, to which she was oblivious. She'd already been to one McD's... Finally, she ordered whatever, plus fries and a drink. The tab was about $3. Good for her. But no, I did not want to share her fries after seeing her grubby hands fingering them. Plus, I was trying not to look at her face with her fucked up teeth.

On the way out, she wanted to get a shake and something for her kid. So she ordered, they started making the shit, and her fucking debit card (or more likely, food stamp card) didn't have enough to cover it, so I gave her about $3. Whatever. I paid for my own Big Mac, and it didn't even taste very good. Kathy swore she'd pay me back. But then, she wanted to stop at Deal$ for ibuprofen. By this time, it was 10 o-fucking-clock, and I told her Deal$ was closed, so we went to the damn Dollar General behind McD. Kathy put the cashier there through hell getting her the best quantity for what ended up being MY money -- $2.06. And then this freak demanded I let her use my cell phone to call her 20-year-old daughter, who had taken the younger daughter to the mall for the evening. I informed her it was a prepay, and she'd be busting my dollar and racking up 10 cents a minute, but she huffed that she would pay me back, and at this point, I felt like I was in a David Lynch movie. She ran out of the store without even taking her Advil. When I caught up in the parking lot, she was SCFEAMING into the phone that CPS would take the kid away AGAIN. Sweet fucking tea, what did I get into here? Kathy said the girls were both at her dad's, the street down from mine, so we went there. On the way, Kathy stuffed her prescription bottle from her purse into my glove box and rambled about how no one needed to know it was there. Grandpa was outside when we got there, and started yelling "where the FUCK have you been? OUT BUYING DRUGS???!!!!" While I sat in the car, Kathy tried to sweet talk her dad, saying it was her birthday the next day, while he kept yelling at her not to set foot in his house. The older daughter said, "if her present is cash, you better not give it to her." Could this be any trashier? Her present ended up being a carton of cigs.

So while I was driving this trick home (I KNOW, I'm an idiot), Kathy coached the younger daughter as to what to say to the police and her dad when we got there.

The next day, this crazy pillhead pounded on my door again, and I told her I can't help her. She yelled that what the older daughter and dad said were lies, blah blah, but I just told her to leave and closed the door.

Moral of the story #1 - FUCK thinking you're helping people out. This bitch probably fucked her own tooth up to get pain pills. And I was too stupid to see what was happening. Probably her church was fucking stupid, too.

Moral of the story #2 - Mc Donald's LOVES fucking addicts. I was not impressed with that Big Mac at all. That was about 750 calories that I will never get back. And this bitch ate MickeyD's TWICE in one damn day. She deserves a heart attack, or 5. She certainly deserves to be a fatass.

 Like I said, I hadn't been to McDonald's in a long time before this incident. I'm inclined to think I will never eat there again.

Taco HELL is another story.

This week, I made burritos at home. I used about 1/4 lb of ground sirloin, cooked it with some onion and some tacobell seasoning I had bought for 30 cents at meijer. I made 2 burrito meals with that amount of burger, some shredded lettuce, beans, a sprinkle of cheese, and some hot salsa.  I didn't calculate the calories, but it was probably acceptable for a diet situation.  And since I don't go to the Rachel Ray school of cheese, I'm sure I used far less than my heroes at Taco Hell, but the burritos tasted pretty good, with stronger flavors.

Strawberry Fields For Never

I do so like to eat. I'm sure most people do. I know that any and all weight loss plans claim that the key is diet and exercise. But I am not able, at this time, to commit myself to a forever of never eating tasty food. I think moderation is the key.

Unfortunately, I am not much of a cook. I know that people say that all there is to it is following a recipe, but shit seems to happen to me in the kitchen. Plus, it's just me, because while I don't live alone, exactly, I am certain that human food is not good for the cats. As a result of my solitary humanoid existence, if and when I cook, I resign myself to the fact that that meal may be what I'm going to eat for a few days. Bor-ring.

For a long time, I've relied on single-portion microwave meals. I've tried the Weight Watchers (TM) and Lean Cuisine (TM), and they taste like lightly-seasoned cardboard. There doesn't look to be a big calorie difference between the "diet" microwave meals and the regular ones, so I usually get Stouffer's something or Marie Callendar's or whatever is on sale. Honestly, they only taste slightly better than the diet stuff, but still. It seems like most of the microwave meals -- including the diet ones -- are loaded with some sort of pasta. I'm sure it's because it's a cheap filler, meant to camouflage the sorry portions of meat and vegetables.

At times, I've thought, "I can make pasta. Surely, I can make pasta-based meals and freeze them myself." But really, should anyone be eating pasta more than once a week?

I decided to try to learn to cook by watching tv. Because I refuse to pay for cable, I'm limited in this area to Saturday PBS shows (and AVG tells me Lidia's website is infected), which only air on Saturdays, and the Monday through Friday Rachael Ray show.

I really tried to like Rachael. She's sweet and bubbly, right? She's irritating. When I started watching, she was about to go on hiatus and have throat surgery. I told my tv, "you know what, bitch, if you didn't shout all the damn time, maybe you wouldn't need surgery. Why do you shout? You have microphones. Tell the crew to turn them up if you don't think people living on ice stations in Antarctica  can hear you."

Aside from Rachael's voice, there's the format of her show to hate on. Why can't she just cook? Why does she have to have "guests" that have nothing to do with food, whose asses she kisses in the most embarrassing ways? The very worst are the audience/fan makeovers. Every time, Rachael drops her jaw in the MOST unsurprised fashion. OMG, I don't recognize you! I bet Taylor Swift took "surprised face" lessons from her, because TS's awards show expression is almost as patently fake.

There must be a good part to the Rachael Ray show, and it must be the cooking, right? WRONG! Four out of five days of the week, her main recipe features approximately 12 ounces of cheese per suggested serving. Three days a week she says that she and her husband John -- her very, very short husband John -- will eat the entire meal between themselves (with a bottle of wine to class it up).  Yes, because Shoney's doesn't serve wine. And once a week, Rachael cooks the BEST burger ever. Sometimes it has cheese on the inside. Sometimes it has macaroni and cheese on top. Sometimes Paula Deen is there and she laughs and says, "we're goin' to jail for this, y'all."

I swear, it would be healthier to eat fast food five days a week than to serve the "that's what's for dinner tonight!" recipe that Rachael serves up.  Honestly, Hamburger Helper does it cheaper.

OK, I'm finished with Rachael. On to me.

My very smart sister told me to buy meats, divvy them up, and freeze them. Last month, my local Meijer had fresh skinless boneless chicken breasts on sale for $1.99 a pound, the catch being that only the family pack size was on sale. I wrapped each piece (I guess each is a half-breast?) in saran wrap, then put them in a big freezer bag, and pushed as much air out of it as possible before zipping it up. I must have done that ok, because almost a month later, the two pieces I pulled out to defrost on Sunday night had no signs of freezer crystals on them.

I found this recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/baked-garlic-parmesan-chicken/detail.aspx to try. The page allowed me to change the number of servings to 2, and I followed those quantities except that I used an entire clove of garlic, and -- due to my aversion to commercial bread -- I used 12 smashed low-fat Club crackers instead of bread crumbs, and only 2 tablespoons (FU RR) of grated Parmesan (I used the kind that comes in a canister). I sprinkled a little cumin in there, too, since it just seemed like chicken should have cumin. My finished product looked less like the main recipe photo and more like this:

I'm paranoid about meats, so I left it in the oven an extra 6 minutes, and then cut one of the pieces open to verify that it was cooked through.

This was the most delicious chicken I have ever cooked. I expected it to be dry, but it was pretty damn moist for white meat. I ate a piece with a serving of microwave corn (I know). It was a pretty big portion, so I have to wonder if that calorie count of 281 is accurate.

My problems with the recipe have to do with the breading. It was a little soggy on the bottom. The recipe didn't call for flipping the chicken while baking, so I didn't, but I have to wonder if maybe I should have? I used cooking spray to grease my pan, and I really don't know if that means turning it would have led to sticking. Also, when i cut into it, the breading sort of fell off, so I forklifted breading with each bite. How do you keep the breading from falling off?

I figured I would save the second piece for the next day. However, later in the evening, it called to me, and I ate it cold from the fridge. I think I will file this recipe under Crack Chicken.

A History of Fatness

As I stated in my first post, I have a few ideas about how I became a fat person.

No, they're not excuses. I'm sure that to the perpetually thin people of the world, everything sounds like a fucking excuse. Hey, thin people: you're just metabolically lucky. I've been alive long enough to know that life isn't fair, and some people have to work harder and deny themselves more just to not be hugely fat. Yes, some people are pigs, but not every lardass you see on the street got that way from eating ice cream and 15 lbs of mashed potatoes and gravy every day.

So the story goes, that I was born prematurely; I'm not sure Mom was truthful about this. I was born 44 weeks after my sister, and I've heard that Mom arrived home from a doctor's appointment 6 weeks after my sister was born, in tears, because she was pregnant again. This was back in the 1960's, long before EPTs existed. Since Mom once told me her "due date" for me was June 14, and I was born on May 22, I wasn't born that prematurely.

Her doctor advised her to leave me in the hospital to gain a little weight. Mom said she took one look at the dirty nipples on the bottles said, "no thanks," and took me home. She was worried that I slept too much, so sometimes she woke me up to feed me. She found out, years after the fact, that while I was an infant, my father habitually came home from his nightshift job for lunch, would hear me fussing, change my diaper and give me a bottle and put me back to bed. She thought I was just a good baby, and probably didn't realize how worn out she was. How she missed my Dad's expert diapership, I don't know.

Within a few months, my dzia-dzia told Mom that I was the fattest baby he'd ever seen. This from a man who had 11 children and at least 20 grandchildren before I was born.

Thus, I started out with a fat disadvantage.

My family wasn't poor -- more like working-class -- but money was a bit tight, since the parents had 7 kids and ended up with a grandkid living with them, too, when their own youngest was 5. We didn't eat much fast food. Mom used to make meals that would stretch the expensive meats, such as chili with a high ratio of beans, or gawumpki with more rice than beef. She baked chicken, always. She cooked hamburgers in the oven, on a broiler pan, that were loaded with bread crumbs and onions and a lot of the fat got drained away. We had meatless meals. She made stews and pot pies. They weren't low-fat meals, but they weren't high-fat meals, and we got vegetables. Mom portioned meals onto plates and handed them out at dinner; there was no putting everything out on the table for the kids to help themselves. There weren't a lot of leftovers. Guess who was the only fat kid? My parents used to "set the buzzer" for the bad eaters, but that never happened with me -- not because I always ate everything on my plate, but because I was fat enough that they never made me finish what was on my plate. I probably usually did.

In my teens, I started walking a lot. Once my best friend, Lisa, dumped her boyfriend (she was way too young), she often joined me, and we walked at least a couple of miles a day. I slimmed down.

Lisa died, and I went to college. The campus wasn't exactly sprawling, but it was hilly, so I had lots of steps to traverse, up and down, several times a day. And I got to choose when, what, and if I would eat. This is the only time in my life I was thin. My freshman year, I was not healthy. After a very light period, and then missing one, I knew it was my diet since I wasn't sexually active. Sure enough, after gaining 10 pounds, my periods returned. Subsequently, I'd gain 10 - 12 pounds each school year, then lose it over the summers when I worked full-time at a pizza place.

After getting my degree, I started working desk jobs. I gained weight. When I worked as a tax auditor, I was required to travel I don't know, 10 - 12 weeks per year or something. Every time I went somewhere, I gained weight. A one-week trip meant I'd gain 4-5 pounds. I'd work on losing it, but it mostly accumulated. Once, I went on a 2-week trip to Ft Myers Beach with 3 co-workers. It was a good trip, in that we had full kitchens in our hotel rooms, and we cooked fresh seafood instead of eating at restaurants for all of our meals. The beach was great for walking on, because sand is much harder to walk on, and I think I got good exercise there. When we got back home, I had only gained 4 pounds on that trip, and I was fucking proud of that. Upon telling one of the guys from the trip, he asked me what the hell I was doing, eating candy bars in my room? He couldn't understand why I gained weight when I ate less than he and the other man and woman did, and got more exercise than they did. We drank a lot on that trip, too, so there's some beer to blame.

Somewhere around 1995 I had a job working as a cashier at a convenience store, on the 10pm to 6:30am shift. I never packed a lunch. On my breaks, I'd eat half or all of a $3 bag of Lay's or Ruffles, dipping them in queso. Because hell, with my on-the-clock discount, that would cost me about $2. In my first 3 months there, I lost 30 pounds. I was on my feet for the most part 8 hours at a time. Often paired with a fat slow co-worker, I ended up doing most of the parking lot sweeping and oil-drying.

So, what has my history taught me?

1 - I don't get enough exercise. THIS is my biggest problem.
2 - I can eat better.
3 - I can control what I eat. I do have willpower, but I'm often too lazy to exercise it.HA!

Love,
Suzy

I have fat ass and I can not lie...

I'm having a hard time getting started here. I think I first attempted this over a month ago, and maybe I was drunk, but I just trashed whatever I started and let it go.

So, I'm fat. And I have a few ideas how I got this way. I just can't seem to get myself going on a "weight loss journey," but I think that if I commit to it by blogging about it, even if no one else reads it, it will be out there, on the internet somewhere, and this might just be the foot up my ass I need.

My sister reminded me of this MadTV skit:

A few years ago, I needed some CPEs, so I took an at-home course about personal organization. The woman who wrote the book (whose name I can't recall) seemed very practical, but also understanding of how people's lives become so cluttered, and how difficult it is to just throw things away. One point she stressed was something like, "if you haven't used it/worn it/looked at it in the last 6 months, throw it away." Some of her advice must have sunk in with me, because when I got around to following it, I must have donated the book to Goodwill. This is unfortunate for me, because the book included a very handy template for a day planner, and I've recently decided that the best way for me to get my shit together is to start organizing and planning my life.

So, anyhow... I think if I examine my life and my historical fatness,  organize myself, incorporating some adjustments, I will have won half the battle.