The Longer the Whiskers, the Fatter the Cat – Eat Your Weight!

Thinking about marketing and stuff on the Southcoast, MA – FOOD.  FUEL.  NOSH.  SNACK.  TREAT. DINE.  COOK. PREPARE.  HEAT & SERVE.  CHEW & SCREW.  READY TO EAT - A report was released on April 13, 2011 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose mission is to, “promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.”  According to the report, “Americans spend the least time cooking each day (30 minutes) and Turks spend the most (74 minutes)”  When I first heard this on the evening news broadcast, I was astounded.  Then I heard that, according to this same report, “Americans also spend relatively low amounts of time eating, a habit that correlates with higher obesity rates.”

What the hell are we doing to ourselves?  If we are what we eat; we’re dead!  Yet, in spite of all of the evidence and reports and studies, we keep killing ourselves.  Obesity is rising and along with it diabetes.  Kids don’t know the difference between a snack, a treat and a meal.  How often does a family eat at the same time and at the table?

It’s not just what we’re eating.  It’s also how and when we eat.  I’ve heard many people I know who returned from a trip to Europe say that the Europeans take way too long for lunch – two hours!  What’s wrong with them?  Well?  Out of the two-hours they allot for lunch, they also sit, talk and relax.  They take their time to eat. 

Here, in the States, many employees only have a half-hour for lunch.  If they haven’t packed their lunch, it’ll take that long just to pick a food category, the restaurant, get there or call in the order or order it there and, either eat it there or return to work to eat it at our desks.  Even an hour isn’t enough.  Eating with your eye on the clock isn’t conducive for good digestion.

Eating on the run, whether in our cars, standing up or at our desks is no way to treat ourselves.  The insanity is supported by the amount of money people spend on diets, diet food and diet books.  What’s even worse is the amount of food that we throw out.  We do not respect food.  If we don’t respect food, we don’t respect our health.  Why does shortened eating times correlate with gaining weight and higher obesity rates?   

It takes your brain awhile to catch up with your stomach.  In other words, the faster you eat, the more you eat.  But, your brain takes awhile to register or notify you that you’re full so you end up overeating.  Take time to eat.  You’ll get (or your brain tells you) be full in a shorter amount of time and, be less prone to overeat.    

So, all of this leads to the phenomena of the fatter the cat, the longer the whiskers.  Cats use their whiskers to feel their way around their environment.  If a cat can fit their whiskers through an escape hole, the rest of them will follow.  In humans, our belts are like the cat’s whiskers.  If the belt doesn’t fit, we get a bigger one.  Our comfort overrides our attention to our expanding girth.  If you want to lose weight don’t loosen your belt.  Being uncomfortable make you more conscious of your weight.

Here are a couple of observations or tips or whatever to help you be more conscious of your weight.  In case you’re wondering, I weigh less than I did my junior year of high school and I’m still within ten pounds of my lowest weight of 165.  Easy?  No!  I’ve had to be more aware of what I’m doing in order to be a skinny guy.  The result of this is being in my late fifties with a good weight, normal blood pressure and cholesterol – no age appropriate meds.   Look I’m not an expert.  Your weight is what it is by nature or by nurture. I also feel I could stand to lose ten more pounds.  It's not a vanity thing - it's a comfort thing.  I've been there.  I know what it feels like and I want to get back there.  Being sedentary for a month because of an old back injury wasn't as much a cause of the weight gain as was the boredom and stress of being sedentary.   

The three squares a day myth – If you want to lose weight, don’t skip breakfast especially if your getting older.  Don’t eat your breakfast on the run.  Eat good stuff.  Have a snack around ten when most of us have a drop in blood sugar.  Dr. Pepper was one of the early mass produced carbonated beverages in the United States.  During World War Two, the company was facing sugar rationing.  They convinced the Government that, according to a research study most people had an energy slump at 10, 2 and 4.  Having something to eat, or drink like a Dr. Pepper, at those times was helpful in avoiding the slump.  So, have your three squares and a little something at 10 AM, 2 and 4 PM.        

The big guy is a strong guy myth – Um, the big guy is a fat guy and not a really healthy guy.  My dad was a real honest to goodness Canadian Lumberjack.  They ate massive amounts of high calorie foods but quickly burned them off working.  Strong – yes.  Fat – no. 

Several small courses are better than one – We have some penchant for portions in this country.  People mainly rate their restaurant experience on how big or how small the portions were.  It’s no wonder that the waitstaff has to push desert – there’s no room for it!  Soup, salad and entree offers more variety and leaves some room for desert, which is, the gustatory way for shutting down your appetite.  Try ordering a large salad and several appetizers and graze off of them the next time you go out to eat.

Vanity sizing – Yeah, blame it on marketing!  If you once wore a large and now fit into a medium, it’s more than likely because of vanity sizing.  Large isn’t large, it’s really an extra large and so on.  The odd thing is that the Hip-Hop culture has crept into our clothing decisions and most people wear their casual clothes, especially t-shirts, way too big.  Stop fooling yourself and start taking care of yourself.  

Eat slower – Enjoy your food.  It’s not fuel.  Slow Food is an international organization that promotes, better eating according to their website, “Slow Food was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”   

The two hands on the table diet – Step One: Take time to select, prepare and eat your food.  Step Two: Eat slowly and savor your food and the conversation of table mates.  Step Three: When you begin to feel full, place both of your hands on the edge of the table and push.  Leave the table.  It’s as simple as that.

Discover and explore Ayurveda – If you have any Indian restaurants nearby, see if they offer ayurvedic foods.  There’s nothing exotic to the food at all.  What makes it different?  Ayurveda is perhaps one of the oldest of the healing sciences.  It is a holistic approach to health that is designed to help you live a long, healthy, and well-balanced life.   Ayurveda has been practiced in India for at least 5,000 years.  It is about preventing and treating illness, maintaining balance in the body, mind, and consciousness.

Snacks, treats and eating – Children don’t know the difference between snacks (in between meals), treats (stuff that’s not really good for you on a regular basis) and eating (the meals where you get the vitamins and nutrition you need to live healthy.  Snacks that are beneficial to you are great for the 10/2/4 energy slump of the day.  Treats are about indulging in chips or ice cream or soda once in a great while – not as part of a regular diet.  If you give your kids treats all the time they’re no longer treats.

So, shorten up the whiskers by thinning out the cat with fresh, local if possible, food.  Remember single or less than five ingredient foods are better for you.  Prepare the best way possible to enhance the flavor, aroma and nutrition.  Don’t eat alone.  Eat with other people whenever possible.  Eat slowly and enjoy those sitting at the table with you. Eat smaller portions but more courses.  Eat more than the traditional three times per day.  Ben Franklin said, “In general, mankind, since the improvement in cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.”  

Mac ‘n Cheese – I’ve been Bitten!

PROLOGUE: I continue to evolve – hopefully – and explore and pursue my passions; art, food/wine (sustainability) and marketing all in one blog: In Search of a Personal Stability Zone…

NEWEST POST: Why is my first official food-focused blog on Mac ‘n Cheese? I’ve been bitten. I had my first taste of Mac ‘n Cheese at the tender age of 58 and ever since then, it’s rolled around in the recesses of my mind. Why so late? My cultural background never introduced or indoctrinated me to this culinary phenomenon. Yes, I’m a late Mac ‘n Cheese bloomer because of the orange stuff in the blue package that, even though it’s been around since 1937, was not tolerated or allowed in my mother’s kitchen.

No packaged foods in my mom’s pantry! And, even though, later in life, I had the occasion to sample the orange stuff, I could see my mother’s reason for not buying it. It tasted, in my opinion like, well, crap. Same goes for the Ramen Noodles. Now this from a guy who was brought up on traditional Portuguese dishes like Cacoila; a stew of all of the parts of a pig most people, regardless of the current economy, wouldn’t touch, buy or use. These pig parts needed to be stewed because long and slow cooking was required to make the “meat” tender enough to eat.

Residents of this part of southeastern Massachusetts who think they know what Cacoila [ka-soil-uh] is are shocked, when after asking me if I like it, they quickly find out that my memories of it are quite different from their current experiences. You see, this is a dish of the very poor and was traditionally prepared right after the annual slaughter around harvest time. It contains the pig’s heart, lungs, liver, ears, snout, and tail and, I’ll stop there. What is offered today is the same recipe only with a better cut of pork (butt or shoulder). It is now more commonly served as a sandwich in a Portuguese bread roll. It’s been referred to as Portuguese Pulled Pork.

So what does this have to do with Mac ‘n Cheese? To me, the same thing - people who know what real Mac ‘n Cheese is might understand my knowing what real Cacoila is. As the old Motown tune used to go: ain’t nothing like the real thing baby. Well, maybe more so in the case of Mac ‘n Cheese. With all of this in mind, I moved on to looking up a suitable recipe for Mac ‘n Cheese. Something told me not to follow it to the letter but I did. I was right about being wrong! My granddaughter wanted me to make her some so I did (from that recipe) and she said it was okay. She was being wonderfully nice. I loved that kid from the first time I set eyes on her!

My next attempt, using the same recipe, but eliminating one ingredient (egg that’s what set off my radar), received a much better response and the admission that the previous batch was really not as good as she claimed. My next attempt really hit the nail on the head. It’s a keeper and it’ll enter my repertoire. There’s more about my still developing Mac ‘n Cheese adventure and I’ll get into that in a follow-up blog along with the idea of a Mac ‘n Cheese cook-off for charity.

The one thing that my mind couldn’t let go of as I got into all things Mac ‘n Cheese was how is Mac ‘n Cheese connected to African-American culture? And this is where it got interesting for me. Many of my non-Cape Verdean (Black Portuguese-Americans) friends, especially around the New Year, would go on and on about the food served during this time of the year, especially the Black Eye Peas and the Mac ‘n Cheese dishes. I can understand the going on and on part since I’m easily distracted by the thought of food, cooking and eating. Good food, a nice bottle of wine and the Gypsy Kings pretty much rounds out a gastronomic experience for me.

I remember when I was in college in the Seventies; Soul Food was one of the big things. My friends of color invited me to a restaurant to share their culinary tradition, billed as Soul Food, with them. Well, we ordered, had a few beers and had some good table conversation going when someone asked me what I thought of the Soul Food. I said I didn’t know. I hadn’t had any yet. Everyone laughed. What did I think I was eating then? Well, I had Red Beans & Rice, Ham Hocks and Greens. Obviously, I didn’t have the real Mac ‘n Cheese.

At that point, however, I don’t know who was the more shocked; my table companions or me, when I said that this is what I ate at home. But, they said, “You’re not Black. Is your mom?” “No,” I said, “She’s Portuguese.” That moment has been with me ever since. It taught me that we are more connected than not. When it comes to our culinary cultures, the similarities are even more astounding. As a result of that event, I’ve been interested in culinary connections.

But, what does all this have to do with the Mac ‘n Cheese connection to African-American culture? Here’s the quick version. Mac ‘n Cheese has its origins in Thirteenth Century Italy – big surprise! It could also be considered a proto-type for Lasagna. Somehow, one of our founding fathers Thomas Jefferson brought a pasta machine to Virginia from one of his trips to Italy. His daughter Mary Randolph is credited by some food historians with inventing the dish. Makes perfect sense but how did it get on the African-American table and become a part of their culinary heritage? It’s so simple that the simplicity shocked me. I was especially shocked when I realized a sustainable similarity in French-Canadian and African-American “cuisines” because of one simple reason – hard work.

My dad was an authentic Canadian Lumberjack. He went into the woods in 1942 at the age of twelve. The food they served in the lumber camps is not only reflective of French-Canadian cooking as it had evolved from Old World France in New France. Hey, it’s cold up there! French-Canadian food is calorie-intensive! By today’s standards, it makes McDonald’s Supersize Menu seem wimpy. It’s, in short, working folk’s food. It’s cheap, plentiful and available. It’s also loaded with what it takes to keep you working. Working burns off the dreaded calories. End of story. Did I mention that most of these calorie laden dishes are also simple to prepare?

To wrap this up, this is what I’ve learned and have hopefully been successful in relating to you; we are related more through our ability to stave off hunger though hard work and creativity. Every culture has a culinary tradition of sustainability. Whether sustaining our bodies to deal with the harshness of the climate to assist us to endure our labors, we all share more than we imagine. Many of these lowly foods have been elevated to fine dining menu status or, labeled comfort food or have become a part of either our everyday lives or, of the rites, rituals and celebrations of our culture.

In many cases those foods have evolved and today satisfy needs other than their original purpose of fueling our stamina, stretching our budgets or filling our bellies. I’m already thinking of Mac ‘n Cheese variations. Just had some with hot peppers and boy it was a great remedy for my suffering sinuses! One more thing – there are more recipes for Mac ‘n Cheese than there are hairs on a dawg…