Texas

What a great weekend. A huge family reunion in the form of my adorable nephew's bar mitzva. First of all, he did a fantastic job and had such poise. Second of all, heading to Texas really was a fun culture shock. It was amazing to see all the 13 yr old girls in their flowey spaghetti strap dresses with cowboy boots. We're not on the East Coast any more!

I loved seeing my cousins, and spending lots of time with them. Of course eveyone said I looked great, which was nice, but no one was over the top, thank goodness. There was a lot of other stuff to talk about! I only have a few grainy photos from my iphone. Mainly I was too busy talking or asking where my children were and my brother kept handing me his camera - so there should be some good ones on his...

We also saw former neighbors from MD who moved to Dallas. We spent the night and then then we went jogging in the morning. How fun! It was great to be able to do something like that as an activity - we killed 3 birds with one stone - a time for the moms to chat, a tour of the neighborhood and morning exercise. I also took a jog with Dave earlier in the weekend, and let my cousin serve as personal trainer another day. It was fun, even though he said I was squirming like a stuck pig when trying to do bench presses. I'm used to my girly workouts with the 8 lb dumbbells. Traditional bench presses with 55 lbs are hard! As much as I eschew gyms, it was kind of fun to have all the choices of equipment and general gym atmosphere. But most days are way too busy for gym workouts.

I definitely ate too much, but I didn't go crazy or anything. Although I did notice that my willpower wore off as the long weekend and endless temptations continued. And now I'm so tired that I have completed about 20 minutes of exercise a day. Not enough for me any more.

I kind of want to get back into a routine but first Alex has a fever, Natasha is exhausted and I'm leaving again for a wedding on Saturday!

Pumpkin

I love pumpkin season for so many reasons.

But one big one is that I love pumpkin and squash of all varieties, and it's such a versatile, filling, low-calorie, nutritious food. In fact it's listed as a "superfood" although I find that designation a bit hokey. Regardless, today I was home in the afternoon, for a long period of time so I roasted a whole pumpkin, a whole cabbage but cut up, a bag of broccoli tips, and sauteed 3 bags of mushrooms and some pesto chicken. I made individual pizzas for my family, and put the chicken on Dave's. The pumpkin pictured is a "peanut pumpkin" as it looks like it has peanuts growing all over it.

Two hours later of roasting on 400, I have a huge bowl of pumpkin, and must figure out things to do with it. I did find this interesting web site....although I haven't tried any recipes yet. It seems like a great vegetarian resource.

So far I have eaten it "sliced" and with a tad of cinnamon, salt and the tiniest drizzle of real

maple syrup, as pictured, and added it to oatmeal. I love it plain and fibrous, or in my opinion al dente, although I realize the more traditional thing to do is puree it into baby-food consistency and add it to soups, stews, sauces, pancakes, muffins. I have about 10 cups so I should be able to do all of the above.

I can't get my kids to like it as pictured so I'll have to get creative.

I should be able to make some pumpkin muffins or pancakes pretty easily.

I will also freeze some, because even though there isn't much to making pumpkin aside from needing a good 2 hours of oven time, it is nice to have it all ready to go, especially for when pumpkins aren't so plentiful.

Chopped frozen spinach

Just a quick pitch for this versatile freezer staple. While it would be nice to always eat fresh vegetables, we all end up low on food, with a missed trip to the store sometimes and frozen veggies and beans can be extremely handy. I also have some of that frozen cooked brown rice around for emergencies too.

I especially like frozen chopped spinach. The kind that is all in chunks and you can pour, not the huge brick of ice. I microwave the spinach for a few minutes, squeeze out the water and then add it to pizza, sauces, wheat berry type salads, pasta dishes, under fried eggs - whatever. It's always good with feta. It will make whatever you are eating twice the size and only add heft, nutrients and fiber, no calories. So you get to eat a nice mound of food, not just a small scoop, so to speak.

I also like sweet corn and peas, which I don't count nearly as accurately as I should, and frozen baby lima or soy beans. These can be thrown into or on anything for added protein, fiber and nutrients. These do add a certain amount of fat, carbs and calories but they are quite filling. I use them to make a vegetarian entrée more of a meal.

As for the whole fresh versus frozen debate, I just split the difference by eating both. The debate is about which are more nutritious. Nutrients degrade over time so the question is do you eat fresh and local, or frozen, which is frozen immediately before the nutrients have time to degrade. There is also info about how some veggies retain their nutrients more in raw form, while others release the nutrients more easily when cooked. It's all so overwhelming and indecisive that I just eat a variety and assume the best.

Week night family dinner goals

I would say my goals for week night meals are as follows, not in order.

1. serve the entire family a healthy meal, using as few processed foods as possible.
2. make dinner in less than 20 minutes
3. eat together
4. reduce whining about what is eaten
5. don't make entire kitchen dirty
6. make one meal for everyone

This week is a bit odd as I'm deep into "use up food before going on vacation" mode even though we're only leaving for 4 days. So one night the boys were out late at karate and I made Alex and Dave individual pizzas, using already cooked ground beef for Dave. Alex got his own plain pizza and was so excited. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me before to break up the mound of dough I buy each week. Natasha was at a friend's house and I kind of used up various bits leftovers, eating standing up in a very unsatisfying way. But making the pizzas with the already browned beef was fast and not messy.

Last night called Dave and asked him to make rice in the rice cooker, which took a full 5 minutes, much to the amusement of my next door work neighbor. When I got home I heated up the tofu-veggie mix in the microwave. I also warmed up some frozen corn and pre-made TJs chicken meatballs. So we all ate the corn and rice and the kids ate the meatballs (well Dave ate a few too) and Dave and I ate the tofu-veggies. I count this as making 1.5 meals. So this was an admitted defeat of sorts. The chicken meatballs were undoubtedly in the processed category, even though TJs doesn't use a lot of preservatives and junk. I actually bought them for this very purpose - which is to feed to the kids when I feel like making something un-kid friendly for me and Dave, such as tofu, or something really spicy.

Tonight Dave and are eating at a neighbor's, and I'll have to scrape something up for the kids. They'll probably get sandwiches or eggs in a tortilla. Thursday will really be scraping the bottom of the barrel and then we leave Friday mid-day.

So I realize that we're still all eating too many processed foods, such as chicken sausage for the adults or turkey meatballs for the kids. I had kind of let the relative normal sounding list of ingredients on TJs frozen foods lull me into denying that they are still processed foods. I mean at one level, if the ingredients really are, "chicken, bread crumbs, salt" that's not so bad. But of course they use all sorts of junk I'm sure, even within those foods. Actually, I'm sure the fresh chicken sausage at Whole Foods is much healthier than anything frozen and in shrink-wrap, but I don't shop at Whole Foods much. And while I don't want to feed my kids frozen meatballs every night I also really don't like the idea of being overly ideological, ie crazy, about what "processed" means. I mean you could argue that whole wheat flour is "processed" as opposed to wheat berries. But that's just silly.

I should note that my mother and sister-in-law both make home made meat balls often - with my sister-in-law even grinding the meat herself. I have always found this to be very labor intensive and messy, and the kids don't notice the difference between frozen and home made. But Dave does. Perhaps I'll try making a huge batch one weekend and freezing them myself. I guess I've never done this because I don't really like meatballs or meatloaf. Perhaps this is a bad reason.

I kind of abide by the Dr. Oz rule, which is to not eat anything with more that 5 ingredients listed on the package. I should clarify, I think that is a rational goal, I don't always abide by it, but I try. But sometimes goals 2,4 and 5 beat out goal 1.

5k

I signed up for my first ever sporting event that requires a registration. This was not really a goal of mine, but I have to say that when my friend asked if I was interested in doing a very low-key family/pet-friendly Thanksgiving morning 5k it did feel good to want to say yes, and not get agitated and nervous. Of course if it were even 5 miles I would have said no, and the friend will be 3 months past her second c-section (baby was 10lbs/23 inches!) at Thanksgiving so it' s not really a scary challenge for me. She'll be happy to walk 5k and I don't blame her. I'm pretty impressed that she's interested at all. If only I had been so determined after my second child was born!

Still, the idea of getting a "number" and t-shirt is very exciting to me! I plan on running all 5k (3 mi) even though I still walk parts of my 2 mi daily runs. I'm hoping the adrenaline of the group run gets me going. I have heard that picking a discernible goal, such as running a 5k or hiking up a mountain is a good way to start a diet program. I didn't do that - my goal was getting into a healthy bmi range, which translated into 25 lbs. I guess a 5k is a nice goal in retrospect - but really, I'm not a competitor and never will be. I just like feeling fit and healthy. I hope I make it!

What I bought this week...

Sunday I tried an experiment. I had a few kids at the house, and was kind of stuck hanging around so I tried cooking anything I could. Normally if I cook on the weekend it's big complicated things, not simple sautées I can do after work. I thought I'd get ahead for the week.

I made tofu with sautéed spring onions and mushrooms, and a soy/sesame sauce. I roasted zucchini spears, peppers, turnips (not together, the turnips were just like chips that I ate. Yum!). I sautéed ground white meat turkey and super-fatty but organic grass-fed ground beef, a new offering at TJ's. It's actually too rich for me to even eat. I also had a whole tub of whole wheat pasta already cooked in the fridge.

Well by the time dinner was over on Sunday, we had eaten all the roasted veggies, most of the pasta, all the ground turkey and broken into the ground beef. I kind of put it all together for Dave and I, minus the beef, and gave N some beef as she really likes it. So much for getting ahead. Then like a dummy I took apart the bits and separated them on the plate for the kids. They don't like all their food glopped together so I should know better than to do that.

I do have more ground beef, which will go on my now at least once weekly home made whole wheat pizza, I have the tofu dinner, but unfortunately I'm out of the nice sticky rice from the Asian market. We're also going to neighbors' homes at least twice this week and Friday are leaving for Texas, so we better get eating. As of now I have no plan for tonight! Maybe we'll eat the pizza.

We'll see if I saved us any hassle this week at dinner time.

I also over-bought lunch options, so we may have sandwiches one evening. I had a spicy chicken sandwich for breakfast today! I have enough sliced cheese to feed us for a month. One of the perils of not shopping with a list. Luckily for me since the airlines don't serve food I'm making a huge picnic of sandwiches to take on the plane. Just like my Czech exchange family did back in the 1990s - except they would pack all their food for a week's holiday!

Get Ready Ladies!

New Jackie Video!

To all my fellow Jackie disciples who have been touting her prowess lately: good news....the new Jackie Warner video will be available in November.

I may even pre-order, I'm such a dork.

I have also been doing lots of Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper of The Biggest Loser, as well as some of the exercisetv in-house trainers.

All the workouts I do use a circuit system of a few minutes of weights and then a minute or so of cardio, with the intention of burning out muscles to almost complete fatigue. Jackie likes to focus on single muscle groups more, she feels that the mind-body connection leads to better concentration, performance and form. The Biggest Loser trainers do more multi-muscle-group exercises, which they say produce maximum calorie burn. So they do various types of squats combined with arm weight exercises. The Jillian Shred video has a method of 3-2-1 which is circuits of 3 minutes of weights, 2 minutes of cardio and 1 minute of core. Keeps things changing for sure.

Personally I like both the combined idea or the singular muscle method, and switch them out based on mood. Generally if I run I do one Jackie routine and if I don't run I do a more comprehensive-type exercise.

All these videos are kind of focused on becoming strong and building a healthy body, but more than that the trainers seem unabashedly focused on creating a body that looks cut. It's so California and so strange, but it works like a charm!