My Health Journey

I always liked feta cheese with slices of cucumber, so was surprised when a friend of mine served it with avocados instead. I loved it, and that flavor has since grown on me. Quick and easy breakfast meal. Feta cheese and avocado, with arugula and dried (Moroccan) black olives.

My mother's recipe, and a favorite of my daughter. Needs no baking. The idea is to arrange layers of tea biscuits (known as petit beurre , which can be found in Middle Eastern grocery stores, among others), with alternate layers of custard and chocolate pudding in between. Instead of custard, which is hard to find nowadays, I substitute any kind of pudding I like. Layer cake with chocolate, tapioca, and custard. Shown below is my latest with layers of Kozy Shack chocolate and tapioca puddings, and a powder pudding mix that I combine with milk over heat, like custard. I skipped the eggs on the last one, to give it more of a custard consistency that hardens when cooled. Depending on the shape of your baking tray, you may need to cut out parts of some of the biscuits. I used a 9"x9" tray. I also recommend putting the chocolate pudding at the bottom since it's thicker and will hold the consistency better. Once the layers are arranged, cover the tray with foi...

These pizzettas are easy and quick to prepare, and are a sure hit with my daughter. For a crust, you can use slices of any kind of bread you have.  For a cheese, hard cheeses that melt nicely are preferred, like Gruyere. I personally like yellow Balkan cheeses like Kashkeval (Bulgarian) and Kefalograveira (Greek), which you can obtain from Middle Eastern and Balkan grocery stores. For toppings, mushrooms, bell peppers, pitted and halved kalamata olives, and grape tomatoes go well. You can add coarsely chopped garlic if you wish. Bake at 400-425 F for about 10-12 min, until the cheese starts to brown. Top with baby arugula if you like. Pizzettas with Kashkeval cheese on whole wheat sourdough, topped with bell peppers, mushrooms, kalamata olives, garlic, and baby arugula. Hint: If using mushrooms, don't chop them too small and don't bake for too long, or their water will seep out and make the bread soggy.

Last weekend, in between a 5-mile run and a 5-mile hike on consecutive days, I needed a high-carb meal to keep me going. I didn't have much food at home and didn't want to shop on the weekend, so concocted this healthy outtake on Canadian food: my vegan poutine. Healthy Vegan Canadian Poutine I found some potatoes, onions, and carrots.  Instead of deep-frying anything, I opted to drizzle the ingredients with olive oil (after first rubbing the potato slices with salt, black pepper, and paprika), then bake-fry. Baked 25 min. at 425F, then arranged and topped with fresh baby arugula and baby spinach.

Feta cheese and (pita) bread, served alongside olives, pickles, and whatever raw veggies are available, makes a common breakfast in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rather than the traditional sandwich, or mezza (small dishes), this morning I combined my veggies (cucumber, tomatoes, avocado, and arugula) and chunks of feta into a salad, dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, served alongside a bit of bread and feta. This helps my wheat allergy by reducing the ratio of bread in my meal. Eastern Mediterranean Breakfast Salad

One of my inventions, fusing Middle Eastern flavors with an East Asian vegan staple. Simple to prepare, simple to clean up after, filling, and protein-packed. Tofu Kebab served with rice and avocado. I use the extra-firm tofu when I can.  Before I cube it, I squeeze it for a few minutes between two large plates, using a saucepan as a weight, then draining the water. This reduces the sogginess and helps it remain intact.  I use whatever non-root vegetables are available.  Bell peppers, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, and onions all go well. For a dressing, I can go Middle Eastern with olive oil and lemon juice (and salt and pepper), or East Asian with soy sauce and sesame oil. The skewers can be grilled like vegetables on an outdoor grill. If using the oven, I usually set it to bake at 425F for 10 min, while turning it often, to dry out the tofu even more. Then I set it to Broil at 535F for another 10 min, rotating frequently.   ...

As a vegetarian, I don't frequent Cuban restaurants much because of limited food choices. So I decided to make my own Vegan Cuban dish. Black beans and green lentils with brown rice and sauteed plantains. I stuck to simple ingredients. Lightly sauteed the plantains with nothing else added but olive oil. Make sure to let the plantains ripen long enough (until its skin yellowed and darkened) before using. I seasoned the black beans with cumin and Korean hot peppers and a squeeze of lime. The lentils and rice only had salt. Simple, but a delicious and protein-packed meal. Idea for leftovers: I stir-fried the beans with cumin and paprika, adding baby spinach for a minute, then topping with baby arugula to give it a fresh taste.

In the post "How I Lost 50 Pounds and Kept Them Off" , I discussed the changes I took over the course of the last few years to gradually lose the weight. The main idea is to lose weight gradually enough, while keeping the focus on building healthy eating and exercise habits, so that by the time you reach your desired weight, those habits are so ingrained that you would keep staying active and eating healthy.  In all those years, for instance, I counted calories for only 4 or 5 days. That's all I needed to get an idea of portion sizes and see how what I'm eating measures up against my caloric needs. Beyond that, counting calories felt like a waste of time. As I saw from my own results, it was unnecessary, as long as I eat nutritious whole foods and stop eating when I'm full. What I left out of that earlier post, is how I got myself to instill each of those habits in me. The book No Meat Athlete has excellent sections about habit-forming. For me it meant ...

I found that alternating between hard workouts and "negative exercise" reduces injuries and helps promote recovery. By "negative exercise", I mean yoga, stretching, foam rolling, massage, deep relaxation, or the like. Rather than having strength and muscle-building as the main focus, these negative workouts build flexibility and balance. Nowadays I do some form of physical activity daily.  I reserve hard workouts like runs longer than 2 miles and weight training to every other day.  I find that 10 min of basic yoga poses (neck and shoulder rolls, side bends, cat/cow, ...)  before  a weight training session helps reduce the soreness afterwards. A few hours after the hard workout, once I start feeling soreness, I follow up with a 20-min yoga session. The yoga poses help me survey my body, identify mis-alignments and soreness, and begin working sore spots for recovery. The next day, I follow up with a more comprehensive yoga and/or foam-rollin...

Cleaning my closet, I decided to discard the first pairs of jeans I bought after I started losing weight five years ago. They were a trim size 38, way slimmer than the unspeakable size 40 I was wearing. I loved them. But now I cannot bear to wear them anymore. They feel heavy, baggy, and without a belt, can slip down my hips zipped and buttoned. Meanwhile, even the size 34s that I had gotten more recently feel big. Moreover, I managed to get into size 33 jeans I had saved from 1995 !  So now, the size 38s are out of commission. (I only kept wearing them so long for sentimental reasons that no longer apply) So how did I do it? How did I lose some 50 lb., and over five sizes, and get to feel 25 years younger, in five and half years? Discarding my first "weight loss" jeans from 5 years and more than 5 sizes ago. There is no magic potion. The way I did it was through small changes in my lifestyle, introduced gradually, one at a time, until each change was embraced and beca...

Carrot, celery, bell pepper, and tomato sauce, with beets, served on ancient grain penne. Recently, I cooked a Chinese stir fry with carrots, celery, mushrooms, and grilled tofu. I loved the flavor combination and wanted to do it again, but was tired of rice and stir fries, so decided to make it into a pasta sauce. I had bell peppers instead of mushrooms, which probably works better with the tomatoes I also wanted to add.   I grilled the tofu separately, as before. For the sauce, I used the wok to stir fry the garlic, onion, and beets, then added the carrots, celery, and peppers in that order, a few minutes apart. I added the tomatoes last, enough to steam. The flavor worked well, with the celery blending well into the tomato sauce, and the tofu not changing the flavor much.

The land adjacent to my CSA farm, up for redevelopment as a residential area. I paid the down payment for my Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership for 2019.  I If you are wondering what a CSA is, I discuss it here .  Basically, over the last three years, I found it to be a great deal, getting organic, in-season, food weekly fresh from the farm.  It was a good factor in improving my health and keeping my shape.  The reasons to join a CSA are many, but I highlight the sign I saw this summer on a land adjacent to my CSA farm.  What used to be a cornfield for feeding a dairy farm is now up for a residential project.  More congestion, pollution, and runoff. Ugh! My CSA membership, and that of the many of my neighbors who chose to join is what's keeping that piece of land for use as an organic farm, a welcome swathe of green in a suburban jungle.

The key to coming up with dishes like these is to not be afraid to experiment and substitute.  Use whatever ingredients available, as long as the flavors go together.  It takes trial and error, but if you cook often, you'll get the hang of it. Eggplant and enoki mushroom with carrots and bulb onion. Puffy tofu with Shanghai cabbage and bean sprouts, over rice. Puffy tofu and eggplant over soba noodles. Preparation for Xian noodles and cabbage One of my favs: Xi'an noodles and cabbage in hot oil. A recipe from the ancient capital of China.  Preparation for a silken tofu salad.  Since I'm allergic to soybean and sesame (the main traditional garnish), I add a lot of vegetables to reduce the amount of allergens I'm eating. Silken tofu salad, with soy sauce and sesame oil, plus whatever veggies you want to add.

I registered for a 10-kilometer race in April.  It's good to have a goal to keep me motivated and on track. I ran a 10-miler last year and several half-marathon's earlier. A 10k is not a hard distance, but I haven't been running long runs since the summer. This race is in one direction, and is all downhill, so I should be able to get my fastest pace. My best 10k I finished in 57 min, which is better than my target of 1 hour. If I want to get down to 50 min, that's a target pace of almost 8 min/mile, which is a stretch to maintain, even downhill, but I can try. Moreover, all my previous races were before I knew about my allergies. My race breakfast was typically a nut-laden energy bar, and often I would carry almonds for the road. That, as I found out since, really impacted my sinuses and my breathing. Will be interesting to see how my performance improves after removing that contaminant, and also after the months of reshaping my glutes and stretching my hip flexors....

The following meals I made recently mostly use ingredients from my local farm CSA . Pasta with butternut squash and kale, with side of roast veggies and yams.  Tabbouleh Salad with parsley, bulgur, tomato, and leek. Pasta with chickpeas, roast carrots, kohlrabi, and onions. Stir fry with tofu, carrots, kale, and avocado, over brown rice. Spaghetti with roast farm veggies (carrots, kohlrabi, and beets). Wedge salad with red cabbage, carrots, leek, kohlrabi, baby broccoli, and watermelon radish, with yogurt/lemon dressing.

Almost Vegan Thanksgiving Dinner Menu Butternut Squash with Shiitake Mushrooms and Sage Mashed Yams and Beets (with milk and butter optional), dressed with Maple Syrup Braised Brussels Sprouts with Paprika (butter optional) Boiled Red, White, and Blue Baby Potatoes Cabbage Salad with Lemon Dressing Roast Leeks, Tomatoes, Carrots, and Garlic Ingredients Two-and-half hours later Ingredients The first eight ingredients are from my local  farm CSA , all seasonal and organic. Brussels Sprouts Yams Butternut Squash Carrots Beets Cabbage Garlic Leeks Baby Potatoes Shiitake Mushrooms Tomato Lemon Grated Kashkeval Cheese (optional) Butter and Milk (optional) Salt, Pepper, and Paprika Fresh Sage Olive Oil Maple Syrup

As the heat and humidity of summer abated, I am catching up on my steps. Good season to enjoy the outdoors. Scattered maple leaves

Butternut Squash Soup Ingredients: 1           Butternut squash 2-4         Peppers (Mix sweet and hot peppers. Jalapenos are good, but for a milder flavor, I used a red poblano pepper, with 2 banana peppers to give the flavor of Jalapenos) ½             Onion 1              Lime 1 can      Coconut Milk 2 cups     Apple Cider 2-3          Bay Leaves                Salt, Pepper, Turmeric, Soy Sauce, Olive Oil, Butter. For garnish:Scallions and Cilantro (Chopped) 1.       Preheat oven to 400 ° F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. 2.       Cut Butternut Squash in half. Scoop seeds out with a s...

For the last two months, the unbearable humidity stopped me running. Instead, I focused on the corrective exercises in the book  Anatomy for Runners . Those exercises aimed at strengthening my glutes while stretching my hip flexors, letting me swing my legs back further than I did. In other words, they aim to take out a lifetime of sitting postures out of my gait. The nice weather this week afforded me to test my (partially) corrected body on a couple of runs. My shadow running. The stance of the legs has improved. As can be seen from the shadow picture above, my legs project equally front and back from my hips. My upper body posture needs some work, but the key is the leg stance. Previously, I would run largely by thrusting my legs forward, one at a time. My legs extend too far to the front, causing me to hit my heel more, probably contributing to my recurring plantar faschitis. Further, only one leg's muscles are used at any one time, and my center of gravity (cg) wobbles a...

With the weather cooling down yesterday, I took my daughter out on a rowboat. It was a beautiful day. Not too hot, not too cold, not to cloudy, not too sunny, a few sprinkles of rain, ... Since my daughter is only 8 years old, I ended up doing all the rowing. I don't row much so found it much harder to move and control the rowboat compared to a paddle boat. My left arm was hurting until I realized that the oars had slipped through their rings and thus weren't of equal length. After correcting their alignment, the rowing became easier.  I ended up rowing steadily for 2 hours, with only two short breaks. That's the same length of time it takes me to run a half-marathon. I fully expected my back, chest, and upper arm muscles to be sore and hurting. Thankfully, that hasn't materialized (yet). After getting back home I was exhausted, energy-drained, and starving. Practiced yoga at night to ease the tension in my neck, accentuated by the need to constantly turn my head...