Pink Soup

Pink Soup
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

This week, I made the pink soup. It's a fall treat I make every year that's basically a root vegetable soup that becomes pink because beets are among the root vegetables. This year's concoction came completely from organic roots sourced from both the South Shore and the West Allis Farmers' markets. If you only care about organic vegetables in a passing way, well, if you don't insist on organic on anything else, you want organic root vegetables: onions, potatoes, carrots. And I wish I liked radishes. Lots of people don't like my pink soup because, as pretty as it is, they can't stand beets. Well, as pretty as they are, I can't stand radishes. (I do, however, enjoy horseradish). I was at the 'Stallis Farmer's market last week, and this one organic farmer had the most beautiful radishes in a variety of colors. He emphasized that some of them weren't as harsh as regular radishes. I asked if I could buy just one though, and he would only sell as a set. Oy.

But my pink soup is based on a root vegetable soup in SallySchneider's A New Way To Cook. Following her basic lead, here's what I did:

• Went to the market and bought some fresh leeks, onions, garlic, celery root, a bunch of gorgeous parsnips, potatoes and of course, beets.
• Cut up the leeks and a few onions and sauteed them in some Wisconsin butter. (This is truly a locavore recipe).
• Peeled and cut up the celery root, two small potatoes (one red and one yellow), and the parsnips and the beets and dumped them in and sauteed a bit just to get a bit of carmelized flavor
• Dumped in about 4 cups of chicken stock (that I had in the freezer, made of course, with chicken carcasses and vegetable scraps from local sources)
• let this cook for 2 hours until the vegetables were all soft
• Grabbed my handy stick blender (as Steve Albini asks, how did people make soup before stick blenders?) and pureed it down.
• Stirred in about a cup of skim milk to lighten the color a bit.
• Garnished and plated my completed pink soup.

This came in at about 150 calories for a bowl. And I came in a pound down this week.

I continue to eat well (locally)

The Oats lady is back!
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

The relative ease of being a relative locavore continues. Blueberries are gone, but Michigan peaches are still about, and the melons are coming in with a venegance and they are actually good for smoothies. There's a wonderful cheesemaker who makes some really good cheese. I was buying a wedge of her really nice cheddar, and raving about how good it is stirred into steel cut oats. And whaddaya know, the oat lady was finally around with bags of steel-cut and other oats! Yum. Now I can make this wonderful recipe that my online friend Mimi turned me onto with ((except for the sea salt and the really good Olive Oil) completely local ingredients. It's called Sexed Up Oatmeal.

Like the recipe says, this works wonderfully but you really have to use top ingredients. Do NOT use pre-shredded Kraft cheese. You will need too much to get the flavor, and everything that is good and wonderful and wholesome about this will go kaput in a haze of over-cheesing. No, you want really good, flavorful, sharp (and i've used parmesan or some good stinky cheese made by my favorite cheese lady) cheddar for this. You also want excellent olive oil for this. You want to taste the fruityness of the olives. This is not the big ol bottle of cheap olive oil you use for cooking or salad dressing. This is the tiny bottle that just smells amazing when you open it. And that's the thing about eating this way. Cheese and oil are not ingredients, they are flavor agents.

So I loaded up this morning with this savory oatmeal which kept me really happy most of the morning, and finished it off with a peach. Had grass-fed beef burgers over the weekend and I dropped a pound this week. Half the battle I've learned over the years is enjoying, really enjoying your foodinstead of just slamming it down. That's easier to do when you feel good about it on a number of levels.

Holding stead this week, no gains, no losses.

Jumping back on to the (local) bandwagon

OK, fine, I admit it. I've fallen severely off the wagon and I'm not admitting just how much until I've climbed comfortably back on. Let's just say at least I dropped some 10 pounds over the summer, but I have some ways to go before I get back to where I was on a roll. I've decided to start writing again, on weight and body issues, mostly to keep myself going.

Right now, it's kind of easy to eat well. It's September in Wisconsin, and the farmer's markets are bursting with excellent fresh fruit and vegetables. I've even been able to pretty much eat ~80% local. I just made a wonderful potato leek soup with ingredients I got from the farmer's market, and even the chicken stock was made with carcasses I had from local chickens I roasted by putting them over cans of locally-brewed beer. We've had a lot of meals like this lately. Pizza on the grill made with fresh, not even cooked, tomato sauce, and topped with veggies I picked up at the market. Pasta covered with a pile of sauteed vegetables. Stir fries made with those same sauteed veggies, augmented with some locally-raised, grass fed beef, topped with a touch of shredded, local cheese. (There's this one cheesmaker that makes a wedge called Saxony that I've been all over lately.) Breakfast made with free-range chicken eggs, with uncured bacon on the side.

Just yesterday I picked up some fresh broccoli, and not in heads, either. The farmer had already picked off stalks, because it's the second picking and that main shoot that comes off a broccoli head just divides up into several smaller shoots that come later in the season. And she was right: this broccoli was actually sweet and -- get this -- juicy. We had it lightly steamed as a side dish for dinner last night. And I just snacked on these wonderful grape tomatoes that were incredibly flavorful -- almost salty without the added salt. I went to Woodman's for my weekly grocery run, and I pretty much skipped the produce section because I loaded up direct from the farmers the day before. And that's saying a lot, because Woodman's produce section rocks. I'm pretty much a Woodman's fan all around -- they *do* have a lot of fairly local brands, and lots of independent producers are there on weekends handing out free samples of their stuff. The only place that beats Woodman's is of course, our locally-owned and operated natural foods co-op, the Outpost. But like most of those natural foods co-ops, they can get pricey -- they don't have the economy of scale that a larger place such as Woodman's, enjoys.

But yes, it's easy to eat well and wonderful this time of year, which makes this a good time of year to get back on the wagon. It's a good time to develop a taste for fruits and veggies, when they're at their best, so that when winter kicks in and the tomatoes are once again tasteless and mealy and not quite ripe, you still find uses for them. (I found a recipe for oven roasted tomatoes in A New Way To Cook that really does make nasty, mealy greenhouse romas worthwhile -- just slow roast them in the oven for about 4 hours and use 'em in a soup.) Being a locavore means I'm eating a lot less crap, and crap is what really puts on the pounds, those pounds I'm not admitting  to quite yet. So that's my gocal for this month: really stick with being a locavore and developing a taste (and the time) to keep an eye out for making good food.

 Oh, and dropping another four or five pounds would be good, too.

Climbing down and then back up

We climbed down and
back UP this cliff
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Well, it's been awhile. I've admittedly been dark. And I have no good reason, just the excuse of stress, which is starting to lay off a bit. However, I did gain all the weight I lost back, and now I've had to work up the guts to admit this to the world. I was unemployed for a year, and underemployed for some of it. I'm on a contract job now, and I'm at a point when I can concentrate on weight loss.

Oh, and I can do without the lecture about how, while I was stressed out, I should have been taking care of myself. Well, I kind of was. I was anesthetising myself with comfort food. And whatever they say about how stress raises your cortisol levels (and subsequently lowers your metabolism), I'm ready to believe. I wasn't stuffing myself, but I was gaining weight, even with exercising, and even trying to keep an eye on what I was eating. But still, I purposely wasn't paying hard attention until even my fat clothes were starting to feel tight. Ugh.

So, here's this picture. Last week, the kids and I went for a hike and we saw this giant cliff down to the beach, and the kids really wanted to climb down. And i knew that we'd need to climb back UP. It's something I would have done without hesitation five years ago, but right now, I was actually afraid of going down that cliff, as overweight and out of shape I am, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to climb back up.

"Puh-LEASE?" the kids begged. I couldn't say no. "We'll help you climb back up!" Yeah right. You and your 11 and 6 year old bodies are gonna haul my 200+ ass up a giant cliff. But, I went down. And climbing back up wasn't easy. At one point, I kind of got stuck. I could feel my calves burning while trying to figure out how to get past this one spot. Stella offered her hand, and I didn't want to pull her down, so I took it for the split second it took me to get to the next root in the ground. And I did it. I can't be afraid of this anymore, and I can't be afraid of going online anymore.

Anyway, I'm back, and true to the title, This Time For Sure. Like Jane at the Fatslayer Chronicles said, something to the tune of, ya fall down seven times, well, ya get up eight. And speaking of her, it's nice to see she's back. I'd just begun to follow her when she went dark for awhile, and was sad when she did. Now I understand. Whatever it was, she had stuff going on in her life (which she explained before she went dark) and needed to concentrate on that. I can totally relate.

I think it was PastaQueen (who's also still blogging -- she's met her goal and now maintaining, and dealing with dreadful constant chronic headaches to boot, but she still has her magnificent sense of humor) who'd posted a while back about seeing various bloggers come and go, partially because many didn't necessarily give up on weight loss, but gave up on blogging. It's HARD to come up with something new and interesting when you've been doing it awhile. (Pasta Queen still manages to!) But also, she pointed out (wish I could find the post) that now that we have Fadcebook and Twitter, a tweet or FB status is all many of us have time to do. Rebecca is still going Durch Dick und Duenn, Amy is still wondering if this font makes her look fat,

Anyway, I ran down my blogroll and cleaned it out of people who seem to have gone dark permanently. Some aren't blogging about weightloss, but they're still a good read and I discovered them via weightloss blogging. Case in point: Big Ass Belle, who has decided she's happy with what she's got but still has a lot of things to say. The Angry Fat Girls have moved and published a book (which I should probably read, since I was a fan of their blog).

I'm gonna miss:

• Big Blonde Bombshell and her acerbic comebacks to people who hassled her
  
• Anonymous Fat Woman and her brilliant posts (I know her in real life now, and she's still brilliant and I'm glad I know how to find her elsewhere on the web.... she's still anonymous...)
  
• Dumbell in a Home Gym, a motivating blogger who'd come back from about where I am now....
  
• Fat Girl Camp, which appears to have closed for the season
  
• Anne, who had WLS and went on to bigger and better writing escapades
  
• Renee getting fit and
  
• The unbearable fatness of being Coco

OK, I'm still not where I was last time I blogged, and I'm too chickenshit to give you a Wednesday Weigh In yet. Let's just say I climbed up that cliff and beyond that, lemme get back on track first. Suffice to say, I've dropped five pounds in the past month. And I'm back. This Time For Sure.

I wanna job

OK, this video pretty much illustrates why I haven't been posting a whole lot lately. I've been busy looking for work, and you'd be amazed (or maybe not) at just how exhausting -- both emotionally and physically -- being unemployed is. So much so that I'm here to tell you that this whole Maslow's hierarchy thing has a lot to it. My big worries these days are not "What is my BMI?" or "How much has my fat percentage decreased over time. " However, I do have to watch my weight so that I can fit in a darn interview suit.

You'd be amazed how fattening stress is. I've gained all the weight back that I lost when I started this blog. I'm up to 248. This sucks. I'm stress eating, and ugh. However, lately, I've been making an effort to exercise every day. I go for bike rides that help take my mind off this. It's the end of he summer, so good healthy food is plentiful and cheap. I'm going to try to start writing again, but by top priority is summarized in this song. So there you go.

Little Victories in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Wednesday Weigh In (even though it's Thursday), 249.1, so only down a half pound. Still, I was quote unquote, good. Writing down everything. Working out every day. It's those times you have to remember that the a victory isn't always reflected on the scale.

And it wasn't just the writing down of EVERYTHING that was a victory. The kids are on this "trying new foods" kick and you best be sure I'm capitalizing on it. Just the other day, Sammy noticed one of my favorite cookbooks, Mollie Katzen's "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" and he's been begging to make that recipe. (The fact that I have a 5 year old boy who loves broccoli is celebratory enough.)

As you can see, our version of it bears little resemblance to Chef Katzen's version. But Stella, who loves red peppers, said that this forest needed some people, and the red peppers could be the people. (If a broccoli tree falls, and there are no people to hear it.....).

Being home a lot these days (I'm looking for work) is giving the opportunity to cook from scratch a lot more, which means I have more control into what goes into my food. That's a victory in itself, too.

Wups -- accidentally deleted last week's post

For the record, weekly weigh in was at 249.6, and I had nothing really profound to say. so it's not like we missed anything here, friends.

I'm back! And I'm annoyed.

No really, I am. I've been admittedly lax. I've been stressed, I've had a lot going on in my life, and I gained all the weight back that I lost. And I'm not happy about that, not one little bit. In fact, I'm a bit over the line. I'm at 250. So I finally said, this has got to stop, and I'm back on the wagon. Part it it was realizing, "I really don't want to have to do the Danskin Triathlon carrying an extra 25 pounds. I just don't. It's bad enough I slowed down in the run this year." I was training in the pool this weekend thinking, "I really don't want to have to buy a new tri suit."

So get this: the Danskin for the Chicagoland area (because even when it's in Wisconsin, it's still Chicagoland!) is TBD this year. It's usually the weekend after July 4, and that's fairly convenient. I'm wondering why they haven't published this yet and I just learned the answer today: the Trek Women's Triathlon is that weekend in Kenosha. I was actually quite happy to see such a thing -- so somebody besides Danskin is sponsoring a women's series. Cool!

Except for one thing.

See, on of the reasons I felt totally at home at the Danskin was that, as a large woman, I wasn't called out. We're separated by age and that's it. There's one more wave that's called out (besides elite competitors, which is standard for any race), and that's the Survivor wave, and that seems to be more of an honor than an advantage/disadvantage. They get to go first (after the elite racers) after all. But as a large woman, I'm in a heat with other women my age, we're all together, and, as I posted after my first Danskin Tri we're all considered athletes.

But the folks at Trek seem to have missed this very important point. There's age and elite and survivor designations, but there's also "Athena." Do I need to tell you what "Athena" means? Neither did Trek. C'mon, everybody knows that when you use any ancient western goddess besides Aphrodite, it's code for "the fatties." (Note to Trek -- it's usually Juno/Hera that gets designated for the "large/mature" woman. )

That in itself wouldn't as bad (yes it would but I'm saving the best for last), guess what the cutoff weight is to be eligible to compete as an "Athena." 150 pounds! What, if we weigh more than 150 pounds, we couldn't possibly have a chance against the other athletes in our age category? Because, Trek, consider this -- in the bike portion, yes that's YOUR main product, I've finished in the top 11 percent of all people in that category when I raced the Danskin the past two years. I went flying past plenty of women who were definitely under 150 pounds. I had younger and smaller women come up to me afterwards and say, "You are an awesome cyclist."

And, when I lose the weight (c'mon, I admit, I'm still trying to lose, but frankly, my goal is still above the 150 pound cutoff...) I'll still be "eligible" to compete as an "Athena." I have broad shoulders. I have thunder thighs. My goal of ~160-180s is appropriate for my age, build, and lifestyle. But according to Trek, the BMI scale, and a bazillion blowhards who have nothing to do but hate on women who don't meet ridiculous standards of weight, we're still "Athena." That's fat. As in, "too fat to compete with the real athletes." But really, if I drop 100 pounds from where I am today (at 250) you can bet my fat percentage is going to be way down. It's going to be way down, probably near the "Average" place if I hit 175, for chrissakes.

I'm glad that Trek (as well as other companies, such as woman-designed and woman-run Terry Bicycles>) makes bicycles with Women Specific Design. (Even though, with my relatively long torso, broad shoulders and relative long wingspan, WSD bikes solve problems I don't have!) I'm glad this whole industry has begun to notice that women love bicycling as much as men, and is catering to that market.

But Trek, if you're going to take the place of my beloved Danskin, a race I entered and enjoyed without being separated out because of my weight, you need to understand that one of the big points of a women's triathlon is to unite us all as athletes, to make us really believe that we all belong out there, that we are all participating in an athletic endeavor. At this point, I'm still waiting to find out where Danskin will end up having the "Chicagoland" race, cos frankly, I'm a little reluctant to do yours, and certainly I won't be registering as an "Athena." If I do the Trek (because Danskin Chicagoland is unavailable for me), I'm entering in the 45-50 age group.

Not beating myself up over not beating myself

238.2. Here I am again. I've done a LOT of bike riding, even more so because my car's in the shop, so those last few things I've done by car have succumbed to the bike, and days where I wouldn't have felt like riding I was forced to anyway. The car's out of the shop today; after work I go to pick it up.

But still, it was a good thing, in terms of this. It's forced me to re-evaluate how much i drive, how lazy i get, and how easily lazy I get. I've been cooking for myself, too -- not eating out has saved me money and pounds. But I'm still in a high stress time, and I still find myself eating to combat the stress. The answer isn't to wait until the high stress eases off. The answer is to deal with it better.

Still, my ego was bruised at the tri last weekend, and that's kind of a good thing. Yeah, I finished, but i didn't beat myself. That's the thing about things like Triathlons. My tri buddy Jen commented last week that i still beat her in time, but that's not what i was going for. As far as I'm concerned, she beat me, because she beat herself. I remember doing cross country running in high school (and track team people were the same about this): the ultimate opponent in any race is yourself. It doesn't matter if you were first or last: if you beat yourself, you've won, and if you didn't -- i don't want to say you've lost, but at the same time... ugh. That's what's getting me. I didn't beat myself. But I'm not beating myself up over it. I just didn't hit an unwritten goal.

So here I am, working out better after this race than before it. Go figure.

2nd Gig Blues: Free Your Mind

on the bus, after the race, quite pleased with myself
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

OK, numbers first --I'm still hovering around 240, so weightloss hasn't been a priority lately. I ran the Danskin Triathlon this weekend, and I finished almost exactly with the same time 1:47:20 as I did last year (1:46:51), but with improvements and disappointments.

Improvements and disappointments:

• I shaved off about 3 minutes from my transition time.
  
• I massively improved on the swim. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that we weren't swimming against the wind this year, but still. Still,I shaved 2 minutes off my time, putting my swim rank in the top 28% overall (up from being in the top half last year), and the top 20 percent of my age class. So, I really improved in the swim, and I think I'll attribute that to really concentrating on staying on course, and not starting off so hard that I poop out a quarter of the way through.
  
• On the record, I only improved my bike run by 10 seconds, but my chain fell while upshifting, and got stuck in the spot between the front chainring and the crank. That took about 1:30 to repair, plus about a half minute of regaining my momentum. So had this not happened, at the pace I was at, i would have improved greately. And I'm still a bicycling badass, in the top 11% overall and top 12% of my age class. In fact, at least a few women spotted me at the end and told me they though I was an awesome cyclist, which was a bit of a rush. So I bet I would have finished in the top 10% (which was my goal) if not for mechanical failure. I hope I inspired others, as we climbed hills together, as I told them, "Keep Pushing" or my favorite, "Uphill and against the wind! Are we loving this, girls?" There was one woman whose gear kept clicking clicking clicking and I learned by overhearing another telling her, "Downshift and then shift back up, you'll expend too much energy trying to pedal like that!" It was good advice, and the woman followed it. It was advice I was about to give myself, but I didn't want to come of f as too know it all. That advice giving woman taught me there's no such thing. Advice given with a true heart is not a bad idea-- the recipient can either take it or leave it.
  
• OK, all that gain in the transition and the swim was lost on the run. I was up by 3 1/2 minutes this year, but at least I still ran (if you want to call what I did running, OK) the whole thing, which was my goal. I did not walk a step. I have to figure when you weight 20 pounds more than you did the last time you did this, you're going to be slower on the run. But I still ran it.

OK, here it is. I just didn't train as hard for this year as I did for last year. For one thing, I've been super busy, and had the accompanying stress. Just this past week, I was considering blowing off the tri, dealing with a major financial setback (the transmissions on BOTH our cars went kaput this week) but ol DH said, no, you need to do this. And so I did and I'm glad, even though I didn't show an overall marked improvement. I had Second Gig Ever Curse. Last year, I used a band analogy to describe the waiting for the race to start, this year's band analogy will be used as an excuse for my performance. Let's face it, I did it last year, was quite pleased with myself, and didn't take the second gig as seriously. As a result, results were not as satisfactory. Those numbers posted in the run are the kick in the ass I need.
That's my problem with weightloss in general. I get a little success, I get cocky, and then I get lazy. Look at my photo this year -- I even know, on that bus, that this year I didn't deliver with my whole heart. Although, that last stretch of the run, my heart was the only thing that kept me going. In fact, God bless the women who had En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" blaring from a boombox at the last turnaround. I belted it out with em, using George Clinton's original lyrics -- Free your mind and your ass will follow.

A few other highlights, musically and otherwise:

• Every heat gets an inspirational word from Sally Edwards, that you should chant to yourself. This year, my heat's word was "The Best." As in, "I am The Best Swimmer." "I am The Best Cyclist." "I am The Best Runner." However, all I could think of was the scene in Men In Black, where Will Smith is being recruited, and he's in the room with all those military guys, and they're asked, "Do you know why you are here?" and they answer correctly, "Because we are The Best of The Best of The Best! Sir!" and Will Smith is laughing and going, "Yeah, these guys are cracking me up with all this best of the best of the best stuff and they don't even know why the heck they're here, really." And then i remembered that the reason Smith is ultimately chosen is that, in addition to being street smart, he also chased a major bug through Manhattan on foot, and that's what i had to imagine myself doing if I was going to finish this race. Yes, Sally, *I* am The Best of The Best of The Best! Sir! I laughed all the way to the finish line.
  
• My pals Jennifer and Peg improved on their times, and i was secretly jealous of them for that.
  
• This race, however, has got to figure out parking. Normally, everybody parks at Dairyland Greyhound Park (a few miles away, but can accomodate 5,000 racers and their families a lot better than the Kenosha Rec Plex, which is kind of a sad statistic), and then you catch a shuttle to the race, and then afterwards, you catch a shuttle back to Dairyland, and then drive your car to the Outlet Mall, catch a shuttle back to the Rec Plex, and then ride your bike the one mile to the mall. I know this sounds convoluted, but it worked. This year, they cut out the shuttles from the mall. So where were you supposed to park to get your bike out of transition? We ended up on the greass out in the country, and without instructions to tell me otherwise, I managed to flag down a sympathetic shuttle driver, because nobody else seemed to know what was going on. Not the Kenosha Police (and I have too many friends in the Kenosha Punk scene to have a fundamental respect for them to begin with, but I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and they once again have lived up to their reputation of cluelessness. One more strike, Kenosha Blue, and you're out.). Not even the guy in a van marked "Kenosha Rec Plex." WTH? Huge event at your facility and you know nothing? Whassup with that? And I will whine about the Kenosha hospitality industry on my other blog.
  
• The above is really sad, because it put a major damper on an otherwise wonderful event and day. OK, I didn't finish as well as I would have liked, but I still finished, i still did something practically everybody else I know drops their jaw over ("Half a Mile swim? I'd quit right there") and I still improved my times on some things, despite a 20 pound weight gain this year.
  
• Oh, please, for the love of all that's holy, please no horrid nu-country music or sappy R&B or worst of all, "Eye of the Tiger" while I'm crossing the finish line, and my prayers were answered. I got some unidentifiable, but unmistakably Gay Bar Music! Yes! 120 BPM, high energy, wailing female vocals, where's-my-amyl-nitrite, DANCE MUSIC! Yes! Followed by YMCA! Thank you Jesus!
  
• I will mention the wonderful Crocs shoe company, not because I love their shoes, but because they sponsor an ice bath foot soak for athletes, that pretty much ensured that my plantar fasciatis would not kick in so nasty the next day. God bless 'em. They pretty much justify their existence for that ice bath, and I was only happy to say so on video for them.

OK, so that's this year's tri. I'm glad it did it again, and I'm doing it next year. I will shake the 2nd Gig Blues, and I will Free My Mind, and my ass will indeed follow.