My Health Journey

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.

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

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...

One of my earliest goals when I started exercising was losing weight. Following the advice in No Meat Athlete , I wasn't counting calories or anything - just striving to eat healthy foods, including lots of fruits and veggies and whole grains, and to avoid processed foods. Then, more recently, I learned I had severe food allergies to nuts, and a moderate allergy to wheat.  Nuts I could give up, although they occur as ingredients in many a thing, from peanut butter, to marzipan, to almond soap and massage oil. Wheat is much harder to let go off.  We tend to eat wheat at almost every meal, and it enters many processed snack foods like cookies and crackers. I did some trials and found out I get less congested and can breathe and feel much better if I avoided those foods. However, given wheat's preponderance, I decided to cut down rather than eliminate it completely. To do this, I refined the two-step process I have relied on for the past few years. First, is the shopping li...

In Eating Healthy: CSA What? I talked about the Farm program to which I subscribe for fresh produce. Here, I illustrate how the program works with this week's plentiful harvest. Upon visiting the farm, I ended up getting over 11 lb. of tomatoes, lots of several kinds of peppers, a spaghetti squash, kale, and eggplant, and more. Had to decide how to split all that food across the week, especially that tomatoes are perishable. Decided to make a sauce out of the 4 lb. of plum tomatoes and store it in mason jars. The remaining tomatoes, I designated for salsas and salads. That would use up some of the peppers. This week's harvest of CSA tomatoes: Blonde salsa from CSA veggies (made three of these):   Tomato Pasta Sauce with Veggies:   Roasted veggie wheat-free sandwich, using the eggplant, sweet roasting peppers, poblano pepper, and a summer squash left over from last week's harvest:   Finally, I made both a kale pesto and a roasted tomato and vegg...

In Getting Enough Nutrition , I wrote about my increased interest in eating healthy. Fortunately, a year later, I heard from a friend about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Essentially, rather than getting their groceries from the supermarket, they contract with the local farm to deliver their produce. Pasta sauce from CSA farm vegetables The basil is also from the CSA farm It turns out this nice farm I pass along my way to work - a green oasis amid a growing suburban sprawl - has its own CSA program. For about $30 a week, I share in the produce of the farm, receiving a decent quantity of 10-12 different vegetables a week, all organic, in-season, and fresh from the earth. There are no guarantees as to what we get. We pay for our share at the beginning of the year, and receive whatever the earth gives, which bounty varies from year to year and depends on the weather. Thus we share the risks and rewards with the farmer, and the adventure of finding out what's in store...

Tofu Kebab, one of my culinary creations After starting exercise with weights, I worried about the adequacy of my nutrition. I am a lifelong vegetarian, and though I have lived healthy for decades on a vegetarian diet, I wasn't sure I was getting enough protein to build muscles. I got a few books on vegetarian nutrition. One was too technical and tedious, another a marketing ploy for nutritional products. Ultimately, however, one book really changed my life. No Meat Athlete by Matt Frazier was a curious but interesting and most practically useful guide. Half the book was about down to earth vegetarian nutritional advice, the other half about running. This is the book that got me started running, at age 41. I learned that my biggest concern with a vegetarian diet was not protein, but the dependence on processed food. I followed the book's advice and switched my diet nearly completely to whole foods, while eliminating much junk food. I ended up cooking more myse...