Friends for Life? It Takes Time. And Effort.

L to R, the Wimer Women: Linda, Nona, Annie, Jeanne, ,JoAnne, Margaret, Michele, Betty 

I enjoyed a spirit-renewing weekend recently with eight "old" girlfriends. By "old" I mean women with whom I've been friends since when PK and I, in our twenties, landed in Southern Oregon. I met the first of them early on when we were both substitute teachers and carelessly disguised hippies in a conservative logging community. We recognized a kindred spirit when we saw her!

During the next five-or-so years, the others drifted into our shared geography—coming from California, mostly.  We all lived near Wimer, just a dot on the map eight miles east of I-5. It was in the 1970s, and is now, a loosely organized community of old-time farming and ranching families and newcomers on their five-acres of Southern Oregon paradise. Most of us lived on small acreages in the boonies, five to 15 miles from the nearest town. We had gardens, and chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, cattle, and goats were not uncommon. Neither were outhouses, propane stoves, wood heat, and long, rutted dirt driveways. PK and I lived closer to Rogue River in a burnt out trailer. The trailer is gone, but we haven't budged from the land.

Most of us built homes and live now exactly where we landed, or not far away. Many of us still heat with wood and get our water from wells. We share, or have shared, country life in a beautiful part of the world never more than a half hour from wilderness. That says something about how and why we connected. We love digging in the dirt, walking in the woods, hunting herbs, wildflowers and mushrooms, rafting rivers, and gazing at the night sky from a wilderness camp—or our own backyards. We ain't city people.

So much happened over the next nearly 40 years. Nothing unusual, really. We had children—some gave joy; others pain equal with pleasure. Some husbands philandered. One treasured child died. (Still makes my heart skip and stomach plummet.) Divorce and disease took their tolls. A dear friend died.

We partied, celebrated and grieved as families. As "just women," we did wilderness hiking trips and impromptu walks on Super Bowl Sundays. Later, it was wild and scenic whitewater rafting on the Rogue River. We shared so much, including some of our best years as young adults.

Then we drifted apart. The demands of jobs, kids, husbands, and other obligations created distance, even though all but a few of us still live in the same telephone prefix. We made other friends connected to work, church, whatever. We grew in different directions. We got too busy. Two of us moved away. (One could not make it to the gathering.) The other was the catalyst for this remarkable weekend of gut-level reconnection.

Her name is JoAnne, and she knows how to make friends and keep them. Keep us.

JoAnne on the Rogue River trail.

She moved out of this area in 1982—30 years ago! First it was Alaska, then Seattle, now Port Townsend, WA. Most people who relocate make new friends, get a new life, and leave the past behind. Not JoAnne.

Periodically throughout the years, she's made the effort to DRIVE here from wherever to reconnect. Each time she has skipped from friend to friend to spend an afternoon or a night or just meet for a chat over coffee or wine. We've had group dinners and a hike or two.  She repeatedly made the effort. It was not small.

Hiking the Rogue River trail with the Wimer Women.

It's taken me awhile to recognize what she's done, and this past weekend, I appreciated her more than I can express. She contacted me months ago saying she wanted to visit in April and this time, she would love to spend a weekend with everybody all at once rather than piecemeal. Could I help put something together? She listed the people she wanted to include. I hadn't seen some of these women since the last time JoAnne visited, and although I had mixed feelings about a whole weekend,  I booked a vacation rental on the river not far from Grants Pass.

We hiked (on the only nice day in two weeks!) to Whiskey Creek
on the Rogue River trail.

JoAnne's vision for our time together didn't end with us arriving at the same place at the same time and just letting the chips fall. She asked that we all do a "check in" to report our individual  emotional, spiritual, and practical status. Without going into detail that might violate extravagant and wonderfully shocking secrets, the weekend was a peak experience and a lesson in the joy of long-standing yet still-developing friendships.

Nona and Margaret enjoy the Limpy Creek Botanical Area not far
from our weekend retreat.

Without a high-paid facilitator or an agenda, we explored our shared and individual territories with humor, insight, compassion, and love. This took HOURS. Hours that flew like the years that have disappeared since we all met so many years ago. Our  vacation rental lacked media. We weren't distracted by computers, phones, TV, radio or music. We were unplugged from the outside world but connected on deep levels of shared memories, common values. We drew strength from the well of the past—and the power of the future.

See the blue phone? That represents Cat, the woman who couldn't make it.
She did a "check-in" from Northeastern Oregon.

The point is that without someone initiating this remarkable weekend, it wouldn't have happened. Those of us who still live just miles from one another would have continued on our mostly separate paths in ever-widening circles away from the centering value of our friendships.

Keeping friendship alive takes effort. Thank you, JoAnne. And for so many beloved friends from long-ago and the more recent past, expect to hear from me soon. I've been reminded of how much you mean to me.

Low carb. No wheat! Spinach/Pesto Frittata

Two eggs, tons of fresh spinach,  a little feta and pesto. Yum! Good for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

I'm reading a book that's pushing me beyond low-carb nutrition toward life without wheat. (I know that some friends who have endured my ravings about carbs will now be girding their loins against coming assaults on wheat. Don't worry. I'm low on the learning curve, but it IS looking like wheat-free reinforces all the low carb premises—and promises. And then some.*)


The book is Wheat Belly by cardiologist William Davis, MD and published by Rodale. It was a NY Times bestseller in 2011, but it escaped my attention. Now, however, it has me seriously thinking. There's a lot of obnoxious hype on some sites trying to sell this book. It is, after all, promising weight loss. I'm a lot more interested in the longterm health implications*, although, of course, I could stand to lose a few pounds. 


The way of eating proposed by Dr. Davis differs from the low-carb life I adopted almost 10 years ago in that it is WAY more low-carb. In my "maintenance" state, I've fudged on grains by eating low-carb tortillas made from oat fiber, wheat, soy, almond meal and sesame flour.  Only 4 net carbs and 7 grams of fiber. Virtuous! They've been a mainstay. I have also become accustomed to toasted organic sprouted grain bread, net 13 carbs, a few times a week. Although I adopted numerous other breakfasts, I never quite got over toast slathered with peanut butter and cream cheese.  I'm going to have to get over it after reading this damn book. A dear friend, recently reconnected via Facebook, turned me on to "no wheat" and essentially no grains. She wrote:

Turns out the oats and oat bran I was eating every morning (1/2 cup) were the carb that was causing me to have huge blood sugar spikes resulting in debilitating episodes of hypoglycemia every day for the past 20 years. No oats=no spikes. I don't eat any grains anymore, either. After reading 'Wheat Belly' I will never eat wheat again. Coming from someone who was a pastry chef and avid baker of things wheat for 40 years, that's saying a mouthful.

A super-creative cook, Grace also mentioned some of the great creations she uses to replace the oats. I'm hoping she'll share recipes to pass along. How about that homemade sausage using garden herbs, Grace? And the egg cups lined with prosciutto  and filled with asparagus, cream and goat cheese? We're waiting.


In the meantime, the Wheat Belly book sparked an idea for something easy and delicious using frozen pesto cubes,* which happen to be in abundance in my freezer.  This recipe is for one person. Adjust for however many you're feeding.


If you're using pesto with cheese already in it, don't add it until the spinach is wilted and the eggs are nearly cooked. Directions for using prepared pesto are in red.

Spinach, Pesto and Feta Frittata

1 pesto cube* without cheese, thawed, or a tablespoon of prepared pesto 
2-3 eggs
2-3 generous handfuls of fresh spinach
feta cheese to taste
1 tbsp olive oil (if using pesto with cheese)


Over medium heat in a nonstick skillet, add the spinach and cover until wilted. If using a pesto cube,  mix with the wilted spinach.
If using pesto with cheese already in it, add olive oil to the spinach and mix.
Crack eggs over the spinach/pesto and break yolks. Season with salt and pepper. Stir gently  to cook the eggs. 
When eggs are nearly done, add prepared pesto, if using, and mix gently.
 Sprinkle feta over the egg, spinach, pesto mix and cover. Remove from heat until feta is warmed through. It never hurts to add a sprinkle of hot pepper flakes and a dash of smoked paprika. 


*Health benefits of wheat-free diet 

*Making pesto cubes at home

Taking Stock. Making Soup.

Creamy soup made with last summer's canned  tomatoes,  a pesto "cube" etc.
Simple and delicious recipe below.

I had a reality check recently as my dwindling list of rainy-day activities led me to take stock of what remains from the 2011 harvest. In a word: plenty. We have a small chest freezer, and its bottom quarter has not seen daylight for months. Ditto the pantry, where home-canned and dried goods are stashed, along with a box of still-perfect onions (!) a few heads of deteriorating garlic, and bags and boxes of fragrant richly colored dried peppers. More than enough. Ridiculous excess!

In a world with so much hunger and need, this is embarrassing. Two people—it seems we could feed the world, or at least the neighborhood. We need to share more and also get a grip on garden quantity, unless we decide to supply our larger community. In the meantime, we are loaded with everything tomato and enough beets to supply an army of borscht-starved Ukrainians. Thus I developed a menu plan to plumb the depths of our stores during the coming weeks (days?) when the Adventuring Son will be home for a visit. I shall strive to replenish any caloric deficit that he may have developed during his four months in Africa and a couple weeks in Brazil.

I think he goes to sleep hungry sometimes, not that that would be unusual for the native people in the far-away and exotic and sometimes dangerous places he finds himself. (Do you know anybody who has illegally camped, unprotected, on a river beach in a tiger reserve in India alongside huge paw prints? I do.)
Chris and his exploring/adventuring/risk-taking pals sometimes go for days with only what they can carry in their kayaks, and villages along the waterways don't always have food to share or sell. I know he's gotten by on candy bars and skinny dried fish, full of bones. So big mama here enjoys cooking up a storm when he occasionally alights on home turf.

Coming soon, all including remains of the 2011 harvest:

• Jambalaya
• Chili
• Lasagne
• Eggplant Parmesan
• Rama Shower - Thai curry dish, which uses a huge amount of spinach plus the peanut sauce in the freezer
• Borscht (beets, beets, beets!)

Then: young beets happy in the sun and soil.
Now: frozen beets wondering what the hell?
And there I go again, anthropomorphizing food!

I'm sure I'll revisit the simple tomato soup I made in a big hurry after I discovered how many canned tomatoes we have! I'd call it tomato bisque, but I've learned that "bisque" applies primarily to fish-based creamy soups. (Dang it, Wikipedia!) So instead, let's call this—ta da!


Creamy Tomato Delight Soup
1 quart canned whole tomatoes, preferably home-grown
1 medium onion, cut into quarters
1 large celery stalk, cut into 2-inch lengths
4 ounces cream cheese or sour cream (or more)
1 heaping Tbsp pesto (one pesto cube)*
salt and pepper to taste
ground pepper flakes to taste
Top with grated Parmesan cheese or dollop of sour cream, if desired.

Liquify the canned tomatoes in food processor and dump into a sauce pan. Add cut-up onion and celery. Cover, bring to a boil, then simmer for 30-45 minutes til onion and celery are soft. With a slotted spoon, remove onion and celery. Reduce the soup if it seems too watery. Add the basil cube, or pesto. Add the cream cheese. (May substitute sour cream). Mix with an immersion blender til smooth. Do not boil after cream cheese or pesto is added, if the pesto includes cheese.
Season. Serve with grated cheese and pepper flakes.

*About pesto cubes below.

The low-carb breakfast? No Problem!

Berries, cream, instant flax/almond cereal, and Stevia—breakfast with a low-carb count.

Forget the corn flakes, the Wheaties, the typical oatmeal-based granola and the toast and jam. Avoid the pancake-pushing restaurants and the carb-clown muffins. Instead, bring on the eggs, the sausage, the bacon, the cheese—the real goods. You're not counting calories now, but carbs, so just get over it about the fat, ok? But when you tire of eggs and breakfast meats, consider these tasty and easy alternatives. Most require advance prep, but are so good! They also work for vegetarians. They include:

• Instant dry flax/almond cereal to reconstitute with boiling water
• Low-carb granola heavy on nuts and seeds—and great taste
• Low-carb tortillas with melted cheese and/or eggs etc. etc.
• Sprouted-grain bread with nut butter and/or cream cheese (maintenance program)

Half and half is good, but you could also use plain yogurt in the
flax/almond cereal with berries..

Flax/Almond Hot Cereal

From Dana Carpender's 500 Low-Carb Recipes 
Did you used to love cooked oatmeal and cinnamon? Try this. It actually tastes better, and contains lots of protein and healthy fat. 


Ingredients
1 cup ground flaxseeds (pre-ground or grind your own)
1 cup ground almonds (I use my Cuisinart. Any food processor will do. It's noisy but effective.)
1/2 cup oat bran
1 1/2 cups wheat bran
1/2 cup vanilla flavored whey protein powder
2 tsp cinnamon


I grind flaxseeds in a dedicated coffee grinder, but they can be purchased pre-ground. I process whole raw almonds in my Cuisinart and stop short of pulverizing to mealy. This mix should be refrigerated due to the ground flaxseeds and almonds.
To prepare:  Boil a cup of water, add as needed to 1/3 to 3/4 cup dry cereal mix. Leave room to add some cream and berries sweetened with Stevia or Splenda. (I'm moving toward Stevia as sweetener of choice, although it doesn't work for baking.) 

Sorry this is blurry. My hands tremble when I'm near
this stuff—flax granola!

Flax granola

Adapted from Dana Carpender’s Every Calorie Counts cookbook.

This granola is high in fiber, protein, and healthy fat, but low in carbs. It is great with fruit and yogurt, sprinkled atop cottage cheese, or eaten alone as a healthy snack. It has a lot of ingredients and takes a couple hours to make, (mostly baking time) but a little bit goes a long way. Not at all like oatmeal-based carb-heavy granolas.

Ingredients

2 cups flax seed meal (I buy seeds in bulk and grind them in a dedicated coffee grinder, store in the refrigerator.)

’1/2 cup oat bran

3/4 cup vanilla whey protein powder

1/2 c Splenda

1/2 cup sesame seeds

3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1 tsp, cinnamon

pinch of salt

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted (it’s expensive! Use unrefined. It tastes way better than refined.)

1/3 cup real maple syrup (or sugar-free pancake syrup for lower-cal, lower-carb.)

1/4 cup water

1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts) 

3/4 cup sunflower seeds

1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

1/2 cup pumpkin seeds, roasted (or not. Doesn’t seem to matter.)

1/2 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 250

In large bowl combine flax meal, oat bran, protein powder, Splenda, sesame seeds, shredded coconut,  cinnamon, and salt. Mix well.

Melt the coconut oil and stir together with the syrup and water. Pour this mixture over the stuff in the mixing bowl and mix until it’s evenly dampened.

Spray a big roasting pan or jelly roll pan with cooking spray, or rub with coconut oil,  and turn the flax mixture into it. Press it gently into an even layer. Bake for an hour.

Pull it from oven  and after loosening with a spatula, break the mix into bite-sized clumps. Then stir the pecans, sunflower seeds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and sliced almonds into the clumps. Return the whole thing back to the oven  for another 40 – 60 minutes, stirring once or twice, It should be lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool. Break up larger clumps. Store in a tightly lidded container in a cool place.


Sprouted grain products include bread, tortillas, English muffins, and who knows what else! The theory goes that since the grains are sprouted, they will hit the bloodstream more slowly than refined grains. Also, these products are generally higher fiber, and fiber also slows the glucose effect. One slice of Alvarado St. Bakery sprouted multi-grain bread has 13 net g carbs (after counting 2 g of fiber). This is OK for maintenance, but take it easy if you're in weight-loss mode. The low-carb tortillas are a lot better if you are being super strict about carbs.


Several brands of low-carb tortillas are available. I like Tumaros Gourmet Tortillas, 5 g net carbs and 6 g fiber. Use them like any tortilla, and expect an adjustment period if you're keen on those white gummy flour tortillas that torpedo many a Mexican meal. 

Hitting the Slopes with Diehards

This is Steve, grand poohbah of our recent ski trip to the Grand Tetons and powder-snow maniac in chief. He's the one who says. "Visibility is way over-rated," and "You can just let your skis go and feel your way down the mountain." Which is what HE does. Me?  Not. I was the odd-person-out in my group because I believe in seeing with skiing,  and visibility was iffy most of the time. 

If you ask any of my five companions about our recent five-day ski vacation at the wonderful Grand Targhee ski resort in western Wyoming, each would enthuse, "It was great!!!!"
Ask me? I would say I had a good time but was disappointed. Why? The weather sucked. The visibility, except for day one, was, uh, compromised. Snow and wind blasted atop the peaks, and clouds slouched upon the crests. What is wrong with these people? PK and two other couples, people I love and admire, chose to ignore these facts.  

Here's what was right behind our resort lodging. The magnificent Teton Mountains.
I copied this photo from the Internet. We never saw this scene. 

Grand Targhee is incredible. I hope to go back, even though weather could wreck another trip for me.
But not for THEM! The weather-and-visibility deniers. Unfortunately, their rosy attitude
wasn't contagious enough to liberate me from vision dependance. 

The morning view from our slope-side lodging.
Sadly, this is what we saw much of the time. Well, sadly for ME.
The visibility situation didn't seem to matter in the least to my companions. Nor did the wind or the blowing snow. Steve, grand leader LIKED that snow was falling because that meant POWDER, light fluffy stuff you see in all those incredible ski photos. I didn't take any photos on the mountain as I didn't want to expose my camera to the elements. 

Wow. This looks great! Deep powder and blue sky! I could get into this big time. I copied this photo from the
Grand Targhee website.  I only skied powder up to my thighs, as I mostly stuck to "groomed" runs and lower elevations.  THEY had it flowing over their heads! And loved it, loved it. Even though they couldn't see it.

Here are the poor-visibility and bad-weather deniers. One of them exclaimed "Carpe Diem" several times a day.
 I am so with her! Seize the day, dammit. But for me and skiing, it's carpe diem the day you don't have to intuit your way down the mountain. I have lots of friends who would be with me on this. They just didn't happen to be there.

On the other hand, we drove almost 1,800 miles roundtrip. You can't gamble that you'll be able to see where you're going, or that the weather will be good. You're there and you just go. If powder snow is the objective, as it was, that is the best attitude. I know this was their thinking, and, I admire it. I just couldn't muster it.
I'm not saying I didn't have a good time. I did, even though I spent maybe only a total of eight hours in four days headed downhill on my new Dynastar skies, guaranteed to pump me up to the next level.

The first day was cloudy but not socked in, and I joined a guided tour-the-mountain trip and met a bunch of people with a Road Scholar group. Thanks to this, I saw and skied much of Grand Targhee.

The next day, which was blizzard-like, I took a lesson and ended up in a group of four frisky skiers with whom I'd toured the mountain the day before when visibility was decent and the snow was inches deep rather than thigh high. (My companions, meanwhile, were blasting through powder pockets in ungroomed terrain.) The frisky guys encouraged me to join them with the understanding that we were the "top dogs." I liked the top-dog idea, and foolishly fell into this ego trap. However, with limited visibility and my first experience skiing in deep powder, I floundered. I was right on their heels the day before, but was holding them back today, and I dropped out of the group.

That was good. For the next hour, I had to myself a 23-year-old instructor, Corey, who I followed like a baby ducky through the thick ridge-top fog. I could make out his yellow jacket 10 feet ahead as we slipped and turned  on a steep slope through the wonderful fluff. He taught me how to handle the deep powder—not really all that difficult, as it's virtually weightless. I fantasized about a clear day. I longed for it.

But conditions deteriorated. The next morning lifts were delayed opening because the chairs were encased with ice. Visibility was worse than ever. Winds howled. Snow swirled. I didn't even buy a lift ticket. As usual, the gang hit the slopes with good cheer. By unspoken agreement, comments on how ugly it was were not uttered, although I did hear a few remarks later in the day indicating conditions were less than ideal. I kept my mouth shut.

This has been a tough post to write. I was a wuss—and also the least skilled skier/boarder in our group. The experience provides insight into the angst of the slowest person on a bike ride, the dancer who can't feel the rhythm, or the runner who comes in last.  Is it wrong to want to see to ski? Am I really a loser? And then I think of how fortunate I am to have been there to do what I could do. My bruised little ego can just go to hell. Carpe diem. Next time. Maybe.

Bad Cat? Or Sad Cat?

Koko on his back porch throne. It's warmish and dry there, and he has a cat door to come and go as he pleases.  

But he much prefers to be inside lounging in

front of the wood fire or the gas stove or snuggling with PK or me. The problem? 

He's taken to marking his territory, which includes inside our house. 

Koko is not really our cat. We started caring for him part time a few years ago when his "other mother" goes away for a week or two, which she often does. Like me, she has an elderly mom to tend to. We'd noticed him skulking around, and thinking he was feral, put out a cardboard box lined with warm stuff and tucked it under the eaves hoping he'd shelter. He did. We quickly learned he was friendly and needy and we invited him in. Eventually we learned that he had another home.

He wasn't really other mother's cat either, but "belonged"to neighbors who apparently mistreated him. Other mother reports that he plastered himself against a wall behind a bush, ears back and eyes narrowed, whenever he saw the mean-neighbor's truck heading down the driveway. (To their credit, the mean neighbors had him neutered and presumably immunized.)

Other mother adopted him, but he fended for himself when she had to leave. Then he found us. We've had a back-and-forth relationship with him and other mother ever since.

Koko loves the hunt, and he is most often successful.

He prefers other mother. He sleeps in her bed and loves to lick her hair and face, which she apparently enjoys. She also gets up several times a night (no cat door) to let him in or out and indulge his predatory night behavior.

Koko's food dish is always supplied, but he prefers his natural rodent diet, plentiful most months of the year.
Of course, he also prefers to devour his prey in the safety of our porch, sullying the mat on a regular basis.
He usually leaves the gall bladder for our viewing pleasure. 

At our house, he sleeps in the closeed-off heated living room in cold months, and during warm weather, in the back porch. We're not into cat catering at night, although I do admit to preparing chicken to augment his diet of mice and Meow Mix. When other mother's times away coincide with ours, we pay somebody to look in on him and make sure he's fed.
When we're away, and he's here alone, the cat door is always open to give him access to food, water, and warmth. Trouble is, other critters also enjoy the chow. We know that a feral cat comes in to dine and probably to spray. Either way, the stress of nobody home and the other cat are likely what's been causing the trouble.

Koko is proud when he kills a rat, but he never eats them.
A few times, he killed rats that had slipped into the house, chalking up big brownie points. 

Koko is the only cat that comes into the house, where we have lately found cat spray on many vertical surfaces. We've also scoured cat piss from walls and cupboards on the back porch. Not fun.

As I write, Koko is curled up on my office armchair, sound asleep. He looked so pitiful peering through the glass door in the chilly porch. I caved. I've closed the cat door to keep feral cat out and will try making Koko feel safe and loved and see what happens. Hopefully, no spraying.
If you've had a cat-spraying problem and resolved it, please advise.

365 Days of Low-Carb Living - 1

The lovely stuff that makes Outrageous Snapper outrageous. Just make sure your snapper is FRESH!
Starting from the bottom left: Greek olives,  garlic, cilantro, fresh lemon, sliced bell peppers, diced sun-dried tomatoes.

Outrageous!

That's how I described the red snapper in a dinner I cooked in January 2005, the year I kept track of everything I ate. That's right. Nearly 365 days of methodically recording breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. I stopped a couple weeks short of a year, which may be testament to my sanity. Am I really that boring? Sheesh.

However, I was then, and am now, a carb-conscious gal, and that's basically what this one-year food diary was all about. I also reported highlights of daily life, random thoughts etc., as well as recipes. (Kinda like my blog, huh?)

Nobody else was privy to my observations then, however, and I was not shy in rating the snapper meal a multi-cultural melange, a totally accidental gourmet dinner, and super good! Outrageous!

I've recently revisited these odd notebooks and am amazed and puzzled at what I wrote. I've decided to try to re-create some of the dishes I described with superlatives, such as the outrageous snapper,  and also to revisit a few of my thoughts. One never knows whether one's thoughts are worthy until revisiting them. Even then, it's dicey, which is a also good cooking word.

Ok, so one recent evening, because of wanting to recreate some of the 2005 recipes, I was really groovin' in the kitchen. Tunes were pulsating on our new sound system, my notebook was opened like a  cookbook next to the stove, and I was chopping and sauteing and dancing around. I think it was the Subdudes. Or maybe Ghostland Observatory.

Passing through the kitchen,  PK noted my excitement. What was so I doing? he asked.
I am trying to recreate THIS! I said. And I pressed into his hands the notebook turned to the page with the Outrageous snapper. Super Good! recipe.

He read the two pages and solemnly put the notebook on the kitchen counter.
Then he said, Can I tell you something? You're not going to like it. 
This is PK's way of being subtle and preparing me for a bomb.


Ok, say it! I got ready. Bristling just a little.


Ok. I will. You shouldn't be praising your own cooking!

I love this. PK would never praise anything he did,  except maybe that he fathered and helped raise two unbelievably great young men. (There I go again with my superlatives! Totally deserved, of course.) So for me to praise my own cooking in my private food diary was offensive. That's just how he is.

I love him anyway. I remember when he grew the best apples I have ever tasted, no exaggeration, and when people came to buy them, he said things like, Oh, don't take that one. It's probably got water core. Or,  Oh, the apples picked last week were a lot better.  Or,  You'd do better just to go to over to the supermarket and buy your apples. 
As a salesman, PK fails.

And so it embarrasses him that I would comment even to myself about the virtues of something I've cooked or created. I admire his humility, a trait he passed along to our aforementioned utterly amazing
two sons. I don't think of myself as a braggart, but I can't imagine suggesting a recipe (or a whole way of eating) that I didn't think was at least good, at best, great.

What I'm going to do is try to ignore him and tell you how to re-create some successful low-carb cooking experiences. To be honest, the outrageous snapper I made recently did not rate the superlatives I gave it seven years ago. But! I believe that has totally to do with the fact that I did not use fresh fish as specified by the recipe.

The weak link in my recent snapper dinner—the snapper!
It looks good, but not fresh and unworthy of the rest of the ingredients.

BTW, I had NO recollection of cooking this meal, so I was forced to follow my own directions. I commiserate, therefore, with those who have requested further direction on certain other recipes. I defend my position that altering recipes here and there matters little. You don't run to the store if you're lacking an ingredient. (Unless you're baking,which low-carbers do very little of)

However, when a recipe calls for fresh fish, use fresh fish! Not previously frozen and kinda grey looking—and the only snapper left in the case—as I did the second time around. Grrr. I should know better.

Here are recipes for the snapper and the cabbage.

An unlikely, but delicious, accompaniment: curried caramelized cabbage.

I'm not taking credit for either. The Indian curried cabbage came from Fran McCullough's book, the Low-Carb Cookbook, a great resource. The snapper may be credited to another low-carb author, Dana Carpender, as I have relied on her books a lot through the years. Or maybe I snagged it from the Internet. I'm pretty sure I wasn't smart enough to come up with combining the salty Greek olives with sweet dried tomatoes.

Outrageous Red Snapper
1 - 2 T olive oil, halved
3 fillets of fresh (!!!) snapper
1/3 cup chopped sundried tomatoes
1 medium green bell pepper, sliced into strips
1/2 large lemon
1-2 T minced garlic
1/2 cup coarsely chopped pitted Greek olives
1/2 bunch of cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Lightly saute garlic and peppers in half the oil, two minutes max
Add tomatoes and olives and squeeze in half a lemon
Heat the mixture through and remove from pan. Set aside.
Add remaining oil (if you need it) and fry the fish in the same pan. You want the fish to be just barely cooked through. Squeeze remaining lemon on and season fish with salt and pepper.
Return the veggie/olive mix to the pan and gently settle around the fish. Heat through and serve with curried cabbage. If you don't care about carbs, serve with brown rice.

Curried cabbage
Melt a couple T of butter in a large non-stick skillet and stir in a little curry powder.
Thinly slice half of a large head of cabbage and mix into the butter and curry. Cover and cook on medium heat until wilted, stirring occasionally. Uncover and cook, stirring frequently, for about a half hour or until cabbage begins to caramelize. Add more curry and/or butter to taste, and salt and pepper.

Firsts on the Mountain

This is Mt. Thielson, a photo taken en route to Mt. Bachelor where the "firsts on the mountain" occurred.
 I didn't carry my camera while skiing, but this shows the type of weather and scenery we enjoyed.
 Just imagine the people, OK?

The post title sounds like I maybe did something daring in the outdoors following the path of son Chris. But no, all I did was show up at Mt. Bachelor on a recent glorious day, ski in my intermediate fashion, and pry into the lives of innocent strangers trapped with me on the chairlift. Some conversations were as remarkable as the perfect bluebird day. I did not impose upon these people my inclination to photograph, hence a few descriptive words must suffice. They were:

A man in his early 80s who had traveled to Mt Bachelor from farther east in Oregon to get in his skiing ya yas for maybe the last time. 
PK and I rode the chairlift with him and his wife. During chairlift chit chat he divulged that at this higher elevation and a greater exertion level, he had to go into Bend to have his pacemaker turned up. His wife commented that he could just drop dead out here any minute!
Yes! he said, And I can't think of a better way to go! Or a better place to do it!
Later, I saw this guy ripping it down a narrow curvy run. He zipped  past me with a big grin on his face and snow spraying behind. You GO! I yelled.

Will PK and I be cruising mountains when (if) we reach 80? Will zest for life prevail? We can only hope.

A young ER nurse who recently relocated to Bend, Oregon, from Indiana to escape overweight people who, she says, have overrun her state and imperiled her health.
So many patients there are 250 pounds or more, she told us. Being grossly overweight is the norm. I know an imaging tech who ruined his back positioning a 400-pound man. He can't even work now. I routinely had to move patients who weigh twice what I weigh. I'm not willing to risk my health to do it. Look around here, she says, encompassing the great Oregon outdoors. I can't believe that so many people here are healthy! 

Well, maybe she's never been to the Bend Wal Mart? But seriously. What a comment on the national condition that a young healthcare professional would relocate based on the menacing corpulence of her home-state population.

A 52-year-old handsome man in a relationship crisis who dumped his entire load on us after a chairlift conversation during which we learned he was skiing for the first time in 20-some years.

He was alone on the  mountain, we were headed for a beer at the ski lodge. I invited him to join us. Over a bottle of Sessions, he soon got down to business, which was unburdening himself of a shitload of pain.

Why hadn't he skied in  20 years, I asked? That opened the floodgate. His wife of 23 years was a warm-weather person. He grew up skiing and loved it, but they lived in the cool wet Northwest, and took winter vacations south.

And, oh, by the way, his wife met a guy on Facebook and now she wants a divorce and he had to move out because she doesn't want him there and it really hurts to live where you're not wanted and his teenage daughter told him he should divorce her mother but he's a Christian and wants to do everything and anything to save the marriage and show his 3 children that marriage is a commitment and you can't just walk away because your wife has gone crazy because you helped her through breast cancer and your raised 3 kids together and you love her and maybe it's menopause and she'll come to her senses soon. 

Thirty minutes later, PK and I said goodbye and good luck. We looked at each other.
Not so bad. Not so bad at all.


My take-aways for the day. Everybody has a story, and you never know who you're talking with until you ask. Also, I'm pretty damn lucky to have PK.

Curry Extravaganza-What Low-Carb Looks Like

The makings for a quick beef and veggie curry. Lots of red and green sweet peppers,  cilantro, a bit of top sirloin , sliced onions, garlic, and super fresh shitake mushrooms  cultivated by Montana from my yoga class. In the center, a mound of red curry paste and, out of the photo, canned coconut milk.

When people with weight to spare adopt a low-calorie, low-fat, grain-centered diet, they often can't hack it. They end up giving up because their stomachs growl, they're overcome by cravings, and as they cave to the cravings and frustration, the weight they lost piles back on....and then some. Been there, done that. I think that the low-cal, low-fat diet is pretty much a loser except for the most dedicated and disciplined types—or people who don't really care about food, which is certainly not me! Low-carb is different.


If you read this recent post, you know that 10 years ago I lost 15 pounds when I went into septic shock with a life-threatening infection. Through a series of circumstances (keep reading), I went low-carb, which I've been, more or less, ever since. I'm into a carb "correction"right now, which means I went astray over the holidays, gained a few, and it's time to get back to reality: Carbs, especially refined ones in bread or sweets or those delicious ones in baked potatoes, make me fat. If you're interested in how I learned this, the tale follows.

The veggie/beef curry goes atop wilted spinach for me. Rice is off the table for low-carbers,
  but super-slender PK enjoys his with organic brown basmati rice AND spinach.

When my strength returned after my illness, I really wanted to keep those 15 pounds off, and I thought I knew just how to do it. I munched granola and other “healthy” cereals with skim milk, and ate lots of fruit and veggies, fat-free dairy products, brown rice, homemade whole wheat bread, baked potatoes with cottage cheese,  limited meat, and almost zero fat.
 I bought fat-free everything! Half and half, sour cream. cottage cheese, skim milk, even fat-free bakery products.(What a joke!)  I was addicted to Junior Mints, which were fat-free so harmless, I believed, but I did limit myself to one box daily.
 I thought I was right on top of it, but the number on my scale kept creeping up. One year later, I had regained nearly five pounds eating what I thought was a healthy, well-balanced diet and exercising like crazy. I did not like the trend; in a couple years, I'd be back to where I was before I got sick. 

Peanut sauce! OMG! Recipes below.

By Exercising Like Crazy I Mean
I have been a nut-case exerciser since age 31 when I chucked cigarettes and replaced a killer habit with one that enhances life.  For the past 35 years, including all the time I was gaining a pound or two a year, regular exercise was a priority. Even when I was at top weight—I was the captain of a racewalking team, for crying out loud—the ounces kept accumulating.  I walked 20 to 30 miles a week, many of them with the hip-rolling, feet-blurring manner of racewalking. I was hot-footing my 165+ bulk at a 12-13 minute-mile pace. If you think it is easy to walk a mile of rolling hills in 13 minutes, give it a try. I knew that without vigorous aerobic exercise, I would be a blimp. Oh yes, I did strength training too, and a killer spinning class at the gym. I had an athlete’s resting heart rate of 50 beats per minute. 

Ok. So I almost died. Lost weight as a result. Adopted a low-fat diet to keep it off. Exercised like crazy, and was slowly regaining weight! What the hell?

What Happened Next?
I accidentally got educated about low-carb nutrition. In 2002 I started working with a nurse practitioner

Here's the curry all put together in about a half hour, excluding the peanut sauce.
Delicious! High in protein, all the fiber, vitamins and minerals of veggies,  and packed with flavor.
But  but looowwww in carbs. Recipe below.

who was passionate about women's hormone health and well being and was death on sugar, refined grains, and processed foods. Editing one book for her and being the "with" author on another, was a crash course that changed how I viewed food and fed my family.

Over the course of several months, I learned how to live without bread, rice, Junior Mints etc. etc. PK, the metabolic animal, lost 20 pounds without realizing he was on a diet. He was so worried that he had a hidden cancer, that he saw his doctor!  Weight hoarder that I am, I lost about eight pounds, putting me back on track. I've held more-or-less steady, give or take a few, for the past decade, keeping up the exercising, of course.  My experience made me. for a time, a low-carb proselytiser that induced one of my friends to cover her ears and chant "lalalalalala" when I got on the subject. Now I know that low carb works for me—but not for everybody. More about that in another post. For now, here's how to make a killer curry in a hurry!


Thai Vegetable Beef Red Curry with Spinach and Peanut Sauce
Curry ingredients
1 T vegetable oil (I use unrefined coconut oil)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 to 1 1/2 pounds sirloin tip or other tender steak, sliced (could also use chicken or tofu)
6-8 large mushrooms of your choice, sliced
1-2 T red curry paste (I use Mae Ploy Panang Curry Paste, which is a bit hot.) We like hot so I use more.
2 T soy sauce or Thai fish sauce
1 14-ounce can coconut milk
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 small/medium onion, sliced
1 serrano, jalapeno, or other pepper, minced
2 T fresh cilantro or basil

First get all the ingredients sliced and diced and ready to cook.
Heat the oil over high heat in a wok or large skillet.
Add the garlic and stir fry til fragrant, maybe 30 seconds.
Add the sirloin and stir fry for a couple minutes. Stir in the mushrooms and give the mixture another couple minutes over high heat. (Start with the mushrooms if you like them cooked through.)
Turn off the heat and remove meat and shrooms and set aside in a bowl. You don't want to overcook the steak.
Over medium heat, stir fry the curry paste about 30 seconds, then whisk in the fish sauce or soy sauce and the coconut milk. Fish sauce gives a more authentic Thai flavor.
Add the red bell pepper, onion, and chili. Simmer for for a few minutes, depending upon how crisp you prefer your veggies.
Add beef and mushrooms and accumulated juices. Mix and simmer long enough to heat the meat and shrooms. Serve with lightly steamed spinach (can substitute chard or mild kale) or, for those who are not counting carbs, steamed rice.
Top with heated peanut sauce and fresh basil or cilantro.

Peanut Sauce
Adapted from a recipe in "Authentic Thai Cooking" by Virginia C. Silpakit
1 cup coconut cream (I used coconut milk. Couldn't find coconut cream. I never buy "lite" coconut milk. Why bother?)
2 T red curry paste
2 T Thai fish sauce
2 T Golden Mountain soy sauce (or any soy sauce)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup sugar (I use stevia - not sugar. Non caloric stevia is made from the stevia plant. It comes in powder or liquid form, and is very concentrated. I used less than a teaspoon. Taste and adjust carefully. Splenda can be used in the same proportion as sugar, if you like a sweetener processed with chlorine!
2 T tamarind concentrate (Very important. Can be found in Asian food section of larger markets)
1 tsp lemon juice
4 T peanut butter, smooth or chunky
1 T vegetable oil (peanut or coconut)
1/4 cup water

Heat the oil in a saucepan and stir fry the curry paste til the aromas are released. Add the coconut cream (or milk), sweetener, fish sauce, lemon juice, tamarind, and water. Mix well and boil for about 10 minutes. (I think the boiling is to dissolve the sugar that you're not going to use.) Add the peanut butter and mix well. Taste and adjust seasonings. This would be when to add more sweetener. Simmer for about five minutes.
Peanut sauce can also be used with satay and many other curries. So good!

Ordinary Day, Ordinary Life

January 19, 2012
Awake to NPR's Morning Edition, as usual, around 6:30 a.m. More blah blah blah about the revolting GOP. Good to learn Perry has finally done something smart: drop out before another humiliating debate. Doze. Radio quits at 7:20 a.m. signaling it's time to rise.

Check weight. Moderate low-carb regime makes for about one pound a week loss with little sacrifice. Make decaf. Can't handle leaded. Brew as usual, freshly ground, boiling water passing through a filter into insulated cup. Put teapot on for PK.

Check news online. Historic storm floods, ices, buries-in-snow Washington, parts of Oregon. Look out window. See small-scale flooding in orchard. Rain falling.

 Garden trenches are moats  every winter during prolonged and/or heavy rains.
No big deal. But is problem if crops are planted out there. Only garlic this year.

Marooned trailer will be there for a few months.

Prepare low-carb breakfast. Drag out frozen blackberries. Dump handful into bowl. Microwave on high one minute. Mix in Greek yogurt and a couple shakes of stevia. Top with homemade low-carb flax granola. (recipe below) Check Facebook while eating. See that Chris has survived yet another death-defying day in Zambia. Or Zimbabwe? Somewhere in Africa. Lose track.

Gear up mentally for yoga.  Meet friend in town to carpool to the funky Wimer Grange 8 miles into the countryside where Shanti holds forth Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Not like the yoga person parodied in this viral video. Instead she says: You think this yoga shit is easy? Ha! (smirks)
Her students pant, perspire, suffer. Return for more.

Limp home. Change sweaty top for Rotary meeting, but don't change all-purpose black stretch pants, perfect morning through evening—dancing, dining. hiking, yoga. Keep it simple with limited wardrobe.

Check solarium plant life. Geranium lookin' good.

Check greens in cold frame. Need thinning soon. 

Talk with friend at Rotary who has taken on clients I bid adieu to during past seven months of my client-by-client retirement process. After Rotary, she meets with my former (and favorite) long-term client to plan annual publication. Sigh. Smile.

Pick up materials for volunteer gig on behalf of WCST this weekend. Confer with organizer about how to get stuff to event in rain.

Visit 96-year-old mother, LaVone, who, two days ago learned her 92-year-old sister had died, and young pastor Evan from the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, who will help her through grief and into acceptance of the inevitable. Feel warm and good. Better than meeting with former client.

Spy on PK, who is scooting a wood stove into position
in his garage/shop. Retired four years. Always busy.

Get email from daughter-in-law. Reno is on fire again - five square miles.
A young man they know lost his wife soon after childbirth, left hospital alone, with infant son. Recall daughter-in-law's dicey birthing experience. Happy ending, but without excellent intervention, could have been tragic. Feel warm about her, son Quinn, grandson Noah. Tear-up.

Cook low-carb dinner: Thick pork chops in garlic/onion/vermouth/port/Creole mustard/cream sauce; steamed cauliflower with butter; green salad with chopped cabbage, peppers, avocados. Fried potatoes for PK. No suffering with low carb. But no potatoes, either.
Keep thinking about grieving young father and motherless child.

Best of the day to come, continue reading Cutting for Stone in cozy bed nest.

No pasta, no bread, no sugar. A low-carb life rededicated.

I've resisted NY resolutions, but they keep coming at me. All online and print venues scream with January weight-loss plans and exercise programs. Have I ever resolved to lose weight and exercise? Of course! Only for about 40 years. Maybe more. I'm always nibbling away at poundage and at the pledge to get strong, flexible, and balanced. This year I thought, I'm not going there. I already know how to eat, how to keep fit.

Typical low-carb dinner: Soup with onions, garlic, kale, a few  beans, chicken and chicken broth, roasted green chilies, chipotle peppers, topped with avocado and a dollop of sour cream. Low-carb doesn't mean low-fat. The quesadilla on the side is a bit of a splurge as most small corn tortillas have 12-15 carbs.

But somehow, after an especially tempting and delectable holiday baking season, I have rededicated to a low-carb regime that began a decade ago, and that has kept me at a reasonable weight and good health without too much suffering or deprivation.

Unless, of course, I count the suffering and deprivation during my near-death experience in October 2002 and the subsequent circumstances that set me on this dietary lifestyle. As I wrote in 2005:

In October 2002, I accidentally lost 15 pounds. It was easy, and I didn’t have to do a thing except nearly die. This is not a weight-loss method I recommend, but it ultimately changed my life and the way I look at food. So I guess that like a lot of bad things that happen to good people, my illness can be viewed as a blessing and perhaps the world’s strangest route to low-carbohydrate nutrition. 

 I had just returned from three weeks in Nepal, a spectacular but terrifying third world country with its feet in putrid refuse and its eyes on the shining mountaintops. I carried back with me an evil hitchhiker, a virulent bacteria that multiplied exponentially and dumped toxins into my blood by the bucket load. 

After a few days of beating back a 104 fever with OTC remedies,  I ended up in the ER, weak and miserable beyond description. After misdiagnosis (and treatment) for malaria ensued, an ER doctor declared in a voice that I later realized was a bit peppy for the occasion, You're septic!

I had no idea what septic meant, which was good, although I was too sick to be scared. I was admitted to the hospital and lost consciousness almost immediately. 

The first, and, fortunately, the only, organ to fail was my kidneys. My loved ones offer sobering accounts of watching me puff up like a blowfish. My primary care doctor then, Dan Moline, M.D., pulled in infectious disease specialists and knocked himself out to find an antibiotic that would work, but nothing did. Fluids continued to seep out of capillaries and into tissues contributing to the blowfish effect. 

Dr. Moline prepared my family for the worst, but he refused to give up on me. He later told me that he stayed with me until 2:30 a.m. on the night he expected I would die, and then remembered a simple now out-of- favor treatment for kidney disease or failure: albumin infusion. The next morning he expected to see an empty bed, but there I was, sitting up in bed staring at my hideous arms, which looked like clown balloons and were too heavy to lift.

My kidneys had kicked back in, my capillaries were beginning to behave, and the fluids that had been pumped into my tissues for days began to drain. I had gained 70 pounds of fluid in less than a week.

Relocated from the ICU to a regular hospital room, I used my strange heavy arms to lift food to my mouth for the first time in a week. Hospital food! Bleah! Right off the bat, I was offered Ensure, a thick, sweet, nauseating concoction that coats the tongue like milk of magnesia. The first two Ensure ingredients are water and sugar. One cup of Ensure has 50 grams — approximately 12.5 teaspoons of sugar. I wasn’t paying attention to sugar grams back then, but knew that Ensure and some of the other “meals” that appeared on my bed tray were not doing me any good. (This later led to an early ah ha! moment: Most hospital dietitians and too many doctors are stuck in the dark ages about alternative approaches to nutrition.) 

Note: As I update this post in May 2016, I concede that Ensure has benefits. It helped keep my mother alive until her demise at 98, and a friend's mom, approaching 103, is on an Ensure diet.

With the catheter out, my main exercise was shuffling back and forth to the latrine as the stored fluids made their way through my restored  kidneys. Back home, I remained a frequent flyer to the bathroom. Each morning for a couple weeks I was rewarded at the scale with a one-to-three-pound overnight weight loss. Fun! 

I'd wanted to lose 15 or 20 pounds for years, but not badly enough to suffer deprivation.  I’d had it with yo-yo dieting, always regaining the five to 20 pounds I managed to lose. 

I'd shoved aside the fact that I weighed almost as much as I had when I was nine months pregnant with my first child (170 pounds), and told myself that wearing big tops over elastic- waist pants wasn’t such a bad fashion statement for a woman in her fifties. My body mass index, which, I knew nothing about at the time, was 26.5, putting me solidly into the overweight category. Nobody, especially me, was describing me as obese, but more like “she could stand to lose a few pounds.” Boy, was I in denial.

When the weight loss (and multiple nocturnal bathroom visits) finally stopped, I settled at 155 pounds, down 15  from my pre-Nepal weight. Yahoo! I thought. Now if I can just manage to keep it off.

Keeping weight under control wasn't quite as easy as I thought. After my medical crisis passed, I was back to preparing family meals as usual: lots of veggies, brown rice, baked potatoes, salads, and low-fat meats. Bacon was banned, and so was butter. But not Junior Mints, which were fat free. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. Just ask all the people who gained weight and kept it on during decades of the low-fat nutrition craze, which still holds sway. Me? I'm a low-carb believer now, and have been known to proselytize.

All I need to do during the resolution time of year is to talk to myself about making a correction here and there.: Cut the bread, sugar, pasta, processed foods, cakes, cookies, and no sodas, ever.

So far, so good.

The low-carb burger. No bun, baby. Use a fork and a napkin.