The Art of Losing Winter Weight (draft version)

T.S. Eliot was right: Spring's a bitch.  (He didn't really use those words.)  Northeastern late March weather will tease us with 60 degree days, so we'll all start putting away our snowshovels, and then it will hit us upside the head with a "late-season snowstorm."  We know if Spring is nigh, so is summer, and all of a sudden, the next season's merchandise hits the store windows, the Lands' End swimsuit catalog comes through the mail slot, and I start wondering if I should be shaving my legs more often.

And then I ask myself the same question I ask myself every March: how will I try to lose the seven- pound (or more) winter coat before I have to start trying on lycra/spandex?  How has my body--my metabolism--my self-image changed this year?

Eliot may have measured out his life in coffeespoons, but I've measured mine out in ounces, tablespoons, and calories.  I don't mean literally, of course--really, if there's any measure of one's life, I hope it's in kisses and belly laughs, roadtrips and campfires, concerts and confidants.  Every spring, though, here I am again, carefully doling out the half-and-half into my coffee cup so that I don't feel guilty, later in the day, about having a little treat before bed.

In my flannel pajamas, I'll flip through the Lands' End swimsuit catalog, which is sitting on my counter, while I enjoy an ice-cream sandwich and a cup of tea.  I don't know how I ever wound up on the LE mailing list but I haven't bothered to take myself off of it, maybe because I find browsing the swimsuits so hilarious.  Lands' End has done everything in their power to make you believe that no matter what your shape or size, there's a suit here for you.  They do so by showing a bunch of models--who may at one time had been Models, and by the look of their belly buttons, they've had kids, and so they're curvy, but their cellulite has been airbrushed--in a variety of styles with words like "minimizer" and "control" in the descriptions.  When you're drinking tea in flannel jammies, it's hard to imagine that you're going to need to squeeze into a piece (or two pieces) of lycra/spandex, let alone in front of other people.

The first time I stepped into a Weight Watchers meeting was with my friend and her mother in the late 1970's.  The meeting was in a church basement, and there were lots of silver-haired ladies in polyester vests making women take off their shoes and get on scales.  Then they'd write the weight down in a little booklet, and the women, putting their shoes back on, would murmur to each other knowingly about their struggles that week.

I had no idea what was really going on, until the group leader asked for a show of hands: how many of us cheated this week?  Everyone's hand went up, as I remember it.  I thought the meeting was for adults who had been bad, behaved badly, shouldn't be around kids--hell, what were they doing out of jail?  This was my introduction to the never-ending struggle so many of us have between eating for pleasure and feeling guilty about it.

Eventually, almost every grown woman I knew was on the WW diet.  The language of Weight Watchers seeped into our vernacular ("portion control," "points") so that every so often, when we  indulged in a decadent dessert, someone would kill the ecstacy of the moment by wondering how many points she'd just ingested, and we'd leave the table feeling more guilty than satisfied.

It's taken me nearly 30 years and four WW memberships to understand that these are the rules of occupancy in my body:

1.) I have a functioning body for which I am thankful;
2.) No matter how tight or loose my clothing is during any given season, I will always be somewhat self-conscious, a by-product of growing up slightly chubby and being mocked in grade school (even though I now understand how mean girls can be when they lack confidence in themselves);
3.) No matter what my weight, regular exercise makes me feel more alert, more strong, and more rested;
4.) No matter how I eat and exercise in any given season, my weight will fluctuate seven to ten pounds between winter and summer and winter again;
5.) I eat on autopilot when I am lost in emotion; the vicious cycle of sad (i.e., missing my father), eating without thinking, and guilt/more sadness is itself consuming and its immediate remedy is only found in the company of people I love and who love me.  To that end, there's also a correlation between how I eat and how I feel, so when I'm in the doldrums, be they winter or spring doldrums, I need to be honest about what I've been eating--snacks, nibbles, Devi's leftovers, whatever--and rather than plague myself with guilt, change my behavior;
6.) No matter how much I measure in tablespoons and ounces what I've eaten, at the end of the day, I have a love affair with food and a love affair with putting good, real food into my body; gnawing on celery stalks and rice cakes all day is just as self-torturing as beating myself up about the half-bag of coconut hershey's kisses I managed to mindlessly blow through during the Israeli version of Life of Brian.

The true art of losing the hibernation weight isn't--at least for me--about counting carbs.  It's remembering a promise I made to myself long ago; that I like to feel good (bathing suit or no bathing suit), I like how I feel when I'm exercising in fresh air, and I like how I feel when I eat right.  Spring is a time to reconnect with the outdoors and yourself, to set some new goals, to be realistic about them.

I'm not diving into summer with an image of myself in a bikini.  I hope to start a little garden, grow some good veggies, feed our family with them, and take our kids for walks more often.  I'm on WW now to help me shed some baby weight and remind me how to eat when I'm not eating for two.  I'm almost--almost--ready to go bathing suit shopping, even if it means coming to terms with how things have shifted around having had two babies, even if it feels like (write it, Gebell) disaster.

Lazy Sunday: Margherita Pizza

I'm trying to use up as many of my pantry items as possible before Passover so that I don't have to schlep them to another part of the house (usually the basement, and it's literally a pain).  Here's this week's thrown-together dinner which, as far as I'm concerned, involves veggies and proteins in some forms, so I don't feel too guilty about knocking down more than I should have.

What you need:

Pizza crusts (or sure, make your own, show-off)
tomato sauce (if you have the time, make that yourself too)
fresh basil
smoked mozzy
artichokes
balsamic onions

Margherita pizza is usually not much more fuss than a simple crust, sauce, mozzarella, and basil, the last few of those ingredients representing the Italian flag.  Happy lazy Sunday, and mangia!

Shampoo Log Cabin

Mayim Bialik--yes, you heard me--that Mayim Bialik--wrote a blog post recently addressing why it is that most dads don't wake up when the kids do.  Of course, every household and family is unique in their morning ritual, especially weekend mornings, when the alarm clock on the nightstand is manually turned off, but the biological alarm clocks in our little chickens keep right on ticking.  She wonders if women are more genetically programmed to get out of bed [before or] when the kids do, and if men are more predisposed to sleeping in.

I don't know anything about biological predispositions, especially since I have male friends who've told me how badly they want to have kids before they're 40 and female friends who don't want kids at all.  But I can tell you that the way my husband I do things around here is pretty different, and those differences might have a lot to do with our sexes.  I can hear an old professor of mine reading me the riot act about assigning gender to behaviors, but I'm going to try to spare her finger-wagging here--I think our differences have everything to do with our abilities to withstand environmental noise: chaos, loudness, messes.

Take, for example, how we each adjusted to the amount of crap that accompanies bringing a baby home (I needn't list it all, but if I did, my list would end with bouncy seats, Bumbos, Boppys, and Bjorns).  My once-orderly home now has a bunch of pint-sized furniture in it, and it all shifts around depending on what I needed to accomplish during any given hour.  Now that there's a second baby, there's even more pint-sized stuff around.  Let me say here that I couldn't be happier and feel more blessed to have a beautiful home and beautiful babes.  But my OCD goes mercurial when I've had to step around a play gym to sit down, and I sit on something that squeaks, only to realize that there's crayon on the floor (rather, the floor's been crayoned on).  Clean-up's a bitch when you have to do it every day, and maybe that's why all the STUFF gets to me.  My husband's response to the mess of every day?  You'll get used to it.  He says this because he isn't predisposed to cleaning.  Seeing a mess, sure--but taking care of it is a priority somewhere under watching the rest of March Madness in totality.

Last fall, I wanted to give my daughter a toy cabin--you've seen these in people's yards.  I loved the idea of a cabin--so rustic, so homey--and pint sized!  (The one pictured even has a "fireplace" in it.)  I got on Craigslist, found exactly the one I wanted, borrowed our aunt's big minivan, and drove 44 miles roundtrip to go get it.  I brought it back home in its parts, hoping that Heath would be moved to assemble it when the weekend came around.

But it rained that weekend, and no assembly.  The log cabin parts leaned against our deck, slick and sad looking.  On the first, crisp, sunny day I could, I went outside to see if I could do it myself, because I just couldn't stand the sight of the lump of plastic parts every time I looked out of my kitchen window.

My five-week-old infant son was asleep; my daughter and husband were out of the house, and out I traipsed with some dishrags to wipe off the plastic, Adirondack walls.  Good grief, those walls weigh a lot.

The first obstacle was trying to stand two walls, simultaneously, to fit the ends of one into the grooves of the other (see picture).  There was a fair amount of grunting and slipping on wet leaves.  And cursing, and broken nails.  For twenty minutes.

I went inside, a little defeated, nursed the baby, put him down again, and went back out.

Once I'd gotten two sides together (which took another 20 minutes), I had trouble getting the rest to fit.  More grunting, more cursing, more slipping.  I kept looking to see if the mailman was coming around, because I would have enlisted his help.  But no mailman, the neighbors were all at work--and so I did what any mother of a sleeping infant would do to get the pieces to "slip right together," as the cabin's former owner promised me would happen.

I got a bottle of shampoo.  I slicked up the plastic.  I wiped off my hands and tried and tried, more grunting, and swwwwwip!  The sides all fit together, presto-bango.

Shampoo?  Yes.  It's a logical choice.  Waxy, cheaper than olive oil, less messy and more fragrant than vaseline.  It's also a lot QUIETER than grunting and banging plastic together.

So the sides slipped together, but wouldn't really lock.  It was about then I heard someone hammering something down the street.  I ducked into the house, grabbed Heath's hammer, and at the risk of making too much noise, banged that log cabin together like Charles Ingalls.  I had a bona-fide structure.

I was just putting the roof on when I heard the baby waking up, and voila!  Six broken nails, four wet, dirty dishrags, one tiny log cabin that smelled like Herbal Essences.

It was dusk when my husband came home from work with Devi in tow.  He eyed it, gave me a knowing glance, and remarked that it couldn't have been easy to do--unless I used a hammer.

Maybe it's my inner caveman who's sleeping in.

Three Simple Tomato Suppers that Saved My *ss

I'm not proud of these primitively, thrown-together meals, but I was pretty happy that they are three meals I put on the table without being able to run out to the grocery store.  So here are three reasons to always have a pantry stocked with various forms of canned tomatoes, especially when getting to a grocery store is a remote possibility.  (For more help organizing your kitchen and learning how to get a meal on the table without too much trouble, go to http://marriedwithdinner.com/2010/05/26/cooking-without-recipes).

1.) Chicken with diced tomatoes (yep--the canned stuff with basil, preferably the organic can).  Pressed for time--a baby who wouldn't nap, a toddler who needed me to dance with her to every song on her Laurie Berkner Band cd-- I put the chicken in the pan, poured the tomatoes on top, let it simmer for about a half an hour, flipping occassionally and getting the chicks nice and brown.  If you really want to go crazy, put some sliced black olives on top before serving.  Salad, potatoes.  Presto, bango, done.




2.) Orzo with fresh, chopped tomatoes on the vine (use canned ones if you don't have fresh) and artichoke, Greek meatballs (called keftedes), and stuffed grape leaves.  Don't make this if you don't have a ton of time, but a decent recipe for the keftedes is here--just make sure the recipe you choose includes mint, or you're missing the point of keftedes; orzo is a small, ovate pasta that doesn't have much taste unless you give it some pep.  I was in the mood for fresh lemon, so squeezed it all over my plate, and the tastes all sort of popped.

3.) Accidental mac & cheese: whatever pasta you have in the pantry (spaghetti/linguine won't work for this), cooked al dente; throw it in a casserole dish.  Separately, mix some ricotta cheese with some egg, fresh garlic, onions, spinach or broccoli, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes (optional).  Fold it into the casserole dish with the pasta, tomato sauce on top, a little fresh mozzy if you like, and bake for 30-45 minutes.  It's not quite lasagna and not quite mac & cheese, but your two-year-old will eat this.

Wordless Wednesday: Adventures in Hamentaschen*

*Okay, a few words here, because let's face it: sometimes the pics don't totally speak for themselves.  My feeble attempts to recreate my mother's and grandmother's hamentaschen each year usually wind up with nothing much to show except some very crumbly, messy, and practically burned matter that should resemble a triangular cookie.  That said, this year's batch went pretty well, despite that I was juggling the babes.  Somehow I managed to get a walk outside with the kids, bathe the baby, make a decent batch of cookies and enjoy a friend's visit and--yes--even put dinner together (ok, it was frozen pizza and salad).

The first three cookies--which, as you'll see, are pretty disfigured--may be my toddler's doing, but I really shouldn't blame her.  The original dough was really dry and impossible to shape.  We ate those tonight.  The latter pics are the real deal, though--hamentaschen with cherry and nutella filling.  Just like the old country.

Click here to view these pictures larger

Making Up for Lost Cake: The Prime Rib Experience

As I've said here, I'm not much for red-meat consumption.  But my husband is, and for his birthday, I decided to cook him the Motherlode of Meat: prime rib.  Since I know nothing about cooking and grilling red meats, I looked into this recipe and that one, and the general consensus is that making prime rib goes something like this:

1.) You get a lot of meat from a few ribs' worth of a cut.
2.) Make sure your butcher ties the meat to the bones for you.  {yecch.}
3.) Season generously with salt and pepper, and make sure the meat is room temp before cooking.
4.) 15 min. in the oven per pound; preheat to really hot temps (450 degrees), cook for first 15 minutes, and then the rest of the time at 350 degrees.
5.) Let the meat rest for at least 10-15 minutes after it comes out of the oven.

I enjoy making rubs, so I used some olive oil, fresh garlic, fresh rosemary, and the salt/pepper, and made sure that the rub coated the meat while it became room temperature.  It smelled absolutely heavenly--and while I don't like the word "gristle," that is probably what made my whole house (and maybe part of this side of the neighborhood) smell like a proper steak house.  The overall consensus (mom, in-laws, husband, and even daughter) was that it was a can't-get-enough kind of taste.  As for cooking time: if you think your meat is too rare once you cut into it, don't fret: apparently you can just put your sliced rib roast right back into the gristly pan it cooked in, under the broiler for a few minutes (keep an eye on it), and you'll have an assortment of rare to well-done pieces.

Side dishes included an assortment of red, white, and purple potatoes with a homemade garlicky basting sauce, some asparagus and steamed pea pods and carrots, and of course, a rich, velvety, red wine.

Click here to view these pictures larger

As for the cake I dropped the other day, I was able to salvage most of it, and so used some frozen, halved lemon rinds to put in the lemon cake, topped with the vanilla pudding (had time allowed, I would have shaved a little lemon zest on top):

Who cared what it looked like?  Delicious, refreshing, and a little unique.  

Happy Birthday, Babe!

Wordless Wednesday: NOT HAPPY*.

(*Or, I dropped the amazing, lemony birthday cake that took me ALL DAY to make right on to the basement floor.)

Hard Days' Nights: On Naps

Our first child, oh, oh, she slept like a dream.

She slept in the car, in the carseat, in our arms, in the Ergo, in a pack-n-play, all night, in a hotel room in Cleveland at five months.  She slept for seven hours en route to Japan, at seven months, and then slept for us when we arrived in Tokyo.  (She did not sleep well at night there, but c'mon, we were all pretty blitzed on jet lag and there was a total night/day difference to account for.)  She slept through outdoor concerts, the latter innings of a baseball game, and in our house, all summer, with no air conditioning.

Our gal still takes amazing naps.  If napping were an Olympic sport, she'd not only win golds, but she'd set records.  She'd make the U.S. proud with her quiet dozing freestyle and wind up on a Wheaties box with her sweet little eyes closed, mouth agape with her thumb hanging on the bottom lip, snuggling her stuffed raccoon.  Sometimes I still cheer for her when she rounds the 3-hour mark during her afternoon nap.  We're looking into possible scholarships for such talent.

Then there is our second child.  Our little guy.  He does not sleep so much.

The first three months, I chalked up the poor naps (10-20 minutes) to his itchy skin condition, and when I finally found out how to treat that... well, the naps remained pretty crappy.  I wondered how much of this was a self-fulfilling prophecy, because somehow I knew that all those people who said that our first kid had spoiled us with the sleeping were totally right, but never wanted to admit it.  And maybe I could prove them wrong.

My sister-in-law says this: Good naps, good night.  Bad naps... you're shit outta luck.  She's totally right.  I know there's definitely a correlation between how well the daytime sleep goes and how long your kid will sleep from 7 pm onward.  So with every morsel of a nap Sol takes, I cannot help but think about how many times I'll be shuffling from my bed to his when the rest of the house, the neighborhood, the world is asleep.

A ten minute nap:  It's enough time to make a dentist appointment (consider the time you're on hold), take a fast shower and be dry (except for your hair) and dressed (badly and without socks), take out the trash and wash your hands, make lunch and eat half of it, pay some bills, stamp them, put your return address on them, and stick them in the mail slot, OR watch a few minutes of bad t.v. and a few more minutes of bad commercials.

At the twenty minute mark, oh boy--you don't know what to do with yourself!  Hallelujah, because now you can eat the other half of your lunch or even sort and start a couple loads of laundry!

Sol is still waking up several times a night, and I think it's my fault.  We haven't done much in the way of sleep training (as we did with Dev), mainly because I really can't concentrate on anything when he starts crying.  This was not the case with Devi.  I was determined to make a good sleeper out of her (though I think this comes naturally) from the get-go, and at three months, we all got a good night's rest.  With Sol, it's a Hard Day's Night: he and I are rendezvousing every three hours (still--and this, at six months!).  The most irrational part of my rushing to his crib?  I'm afraid he's going to wake up his Olympic sleeper of a sister.

More irrationally, I worry that this lack of sleep is going to affect him developmentally.  (I've done the research.  It won't.  Also, if Dev is a sleep Olympian, then Sol is on his way to the National Happiness Team, where the babies smile most of the day and coo in your ear and laugh when they sneeze in your hair.)

Every night, I VOW that THIS is the day I call the doc to talk about sleep patterns.  At 3 a.m., I'm growling at my husband about how ridiculous it is that the kid just cannot stay asleep--like it's Heath's fault.  (And every morning, I apologize for growling, and then kind of forget to call the doc, probably from lack of sleep.)  Heath tries so hard to sound supportive in the middle of the night, but he rolls over and takes most of the covers with him.  Once in a blue moon, I'll ask him to help with a night feeding, but he's the one who has to go to work in the morning, and I don't.  I'm okay with not making much sense when I try to formulate sentences to adults during the day, but I'm not okay with imposing this disaster on the current breadwinner, especially when he's rubbing shoulders with the bigwigs in his company on any given day.

So imagine my joy when Sol actually napped--without the aid of a lulling motor, car ride, shusshing, or swaddling--for TWO AND A HALF HOURS today.  Oh, people, it was amazing.  And because Heath had taken Devi out for the afternoon, I had a quiet (oh, so quiet) house to myself.

I read over a hundred pages of a novel I need to finish by Wednesday.  I closed my eyes for a few minutes.  I checked email.  I wrote a note to a friend on Facebook.  I started dinner.  I checked on the baby about 100 times.

When he finally started stirring, I threw my novel down and raced up to see him.  He was stretching, eyes closed, the sleep leaving his little body.  He blinked and smiled up at me, as if to tell me that we'd done something right and it wouldn't hurt to figure out what formula led to this amazing, nearly-Olympic-sized nap.  Was it introducing rice cereal into his otherwise liquid, milky diet?  Was it the small, silent prayer I said as I laid him in his crib (as I do every day)?  What ritual must I perform from here on to ensure that he gets his due rest--and I mine?

It's 11:30 pm.  I should be in bed myself.  If the correlative relationship between naps and night sleeping holds, I shouldn't be wakened until at least 5 or 6 a.m.  I'm due a whole night's shut-eye.  Finally.

But I'm so happy about our success today that I can't sleep.

Wordless Wednesday: Winter Needs to End Soon Because Mommy's Running Out of Ideas