Snowdays, The Hunger Habit- A Book Summary

Life came to a standstill for a day and a half as we had a snowstorm here. What would be trivial weather up North cripples life in the South as we are unaccustomed to it, plus the thawing and refreezing of snow results in icy, treacherous roads. 

I was quite happy to be housebound for a couple of days and hibernated on a corner of the couch while we ate down leftovers and made simple meals when we had to. After a gap of a couple of years, I cast on a new sweater and knitted for hours until the nerves in my hands were tingling. 

Sweater in the making

Instant noodles with everything
from the crisper

* * *

While browsing through the new books section of the public library a week or two ago, I came across the book The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We're Not Hungry and How to Stop by Judson Brewer, published about a year ago. This post is a summary of the book, along with thoughts on books on similar topics that I've read over the years.

It is one of the many paradoxes of mankind today that a proportion of humanity struggles- in the face of poverty, war, displacement, famine- to obtain enough food to eat, while at the same time another category of humans- mostly affluent, but also sometimes those living in poverty (in food deserts) in the developed world- struggle with an overabundance of food that threatens their health and well-being. There are countless books on dieting and weight loss and controlling hunger as people often spend their entire adult lives trying to deal with this obesogenic food environment. There are other innovations too, like the class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, recent game-changers for some people in reducing appetite and "food noise" and controlling weight and blood sugar. 

I've always been interested in these issues from both a biology and public health perspective, and from the very personal perspective of being annoyed at why I give in to cravings and overeat certain foods, fried snacks, for example. The feeling of being out of control around food, even occasionally, is frustrating. I've read several books on the subject of managing hunger over the years and it was interesting to go back and compare and contrast them. 

In 2014, I wrote a post here summarizing some practical advice from Mindless Eating (2006) by Brian Wansink. He emphasizes the food environment and food psychology. It is important to note that since then Wansink's research has come under fire for statistical misconduct- here's a good article on that whole story. Still, the major findings are reasonable- setting up your food environment for success and establishing some useful habits. 

In 2019, I read The Hungry Brain (2017) by Stephan Guyenet and posted a summary on Goodreads. This well-researched book is a deep-dive on how the brain controls hunger and eating behavior. Among other things, it covers how modern food is highly rewarding and entertaining and how that drives craving and overeating. Not many of us want to eat a bland, repetitive diet by choice, but it may be possible to find a middle ground and eat simpler foods some or most of the time. 

Soon after, during my pandemic reading in 2020, I read The End of Overeating (2009) by David Kessler, summarized in this post. He makes the point that weight gain is primarily due to overeating and again blames the highly palatable, stimulating, rewarding foods we are surrounded with. He has many tips for responding to this environment we live in, including seeing food as nourishment and not reward, and planning our eating. 

It was interesting to go back and read my summaries of these books. Taking notes is honestly the only way I can retain valuable information that I glean from books. Also, the posts have insightful comments from readers sharing their own experience with these issues. A couple of the wise comments mentioned "awareness" and "mindfulness" being the keys to not overeating, and that's exactly the theme of the book I read this month, The Hunger Habit (2023) by Judson Brewer. I've posted a summary of the book on Goodreads. 

Brewer's book is similar to the other books above in the sense that it tries to explain why we behave the way we do, and how to use it to our advantage, working with ourselves instead of fighting against ourselves. This book is not suitable for people with a history of or currently suffering from eating disorders, or with people who are overeating as a response to trauma- those require different types of specialized help. It assumes that we are satisfying our hunger well, and offers advice for those cravings or habitual pangs that arise when we are clearly well-fed and not hungry. 

The way I interpreted it, the central premise of the book is that we overeat because it is rewarding- we are programmed to chase calories, plus satisfying a craving feels good and soothing in the moment. The only way to change the habit is to be mindful and learn through practice, introspection, and trial and error that overeating is in fact not rewarding. (This whole exercise actually goes for any habit and not just overeating. It could just as easily apply to a smoking addiction or a shopping addiction.) It is fine to say, eat mindfully, be aware, but what does that really mean in practice? The book has many practical tips for this. 

I have many takeaways from this book, noted below: 

Introduction and general ideas from this book

• Aim of this book: help you change your relationship with food. Some common types of bad relationships with food- we cannot tell if we are hungry or eating our emotions, can’t stop eating once we start, mindless eating, strict food rules (food jail)
• How did we end up in this mess? We don’t even know if we are hungry. Cravings that come from very different spaces and places all converge on one place- the urge to eat. Convenience, food engineering and emotions add up to make it really easy to get locked into poor eating habits.
• How food habits form: Our behaviors are dictated by reinforcement learning. 
• Positive reinforcement: finding food sources, remembering and going back for more- trigger/cue, behavior, result/reward
• Negative reinforcement: avoiding unpleasant or unsafe experiences
• The only way to change behavior is to change its position in the reward hierarchy. This can happen randomly like when getting food poisoning turns you off a favorite food. Or it can happen on purpose, which is based on one simple and critical ingredient: awareness.
• Why diets and measuring don’t work: They focus on willpower to lose weight, which has one fatal flaw- that’s now how our brains work. We are wired to prefer a smaller reward now over a bigger reward later. Willpower runs out sooner or later.

On hunger and cravings

• Identifying your urges- hunger or something else? Craving is different from hunger. Hunger focuses on getting calories in (fuel for the body) while craving is centered around the desire for something in particular. Unless we regain bodily awareness, it can be challenging to understand the difference between hunger and craving.
• Reconnect with your body: The body scan can be a helpful and simple and powerful way to start reinhabiting your own body. Over time, you will begin to distinguish cravings from homeostatic hunger.
• Get to know your pleasure plateaus: The pleasure plateau can let you know when you’ve had enough- is this bite more pleasurable, the same, or less pleasurable than the last one? Don’t fall for the “clean plate club”- stop eating when you’ve had enough.
• Craving tool- Go ahead and eat whatever you’re craving but pay careful attention to what you’re getting from it. You may find that it isn't quite as satisfying or fun as you thought it would be. 
• “What do I get from this?”
• Another craving tool: Notice when you have a craving for food, imagine eating it in all its glory, then imagine the results in great detail, how it felt in your body. The urge might pass or lose its power (disenchantment) or it may get stronger in which case you can eat the food with awareness and record in your mind how it makes you feel.

Food habit loops

• The first step is to map your food habit loops
• Why you eat- craving, stress, boredom, habit are all different from true hunger
• What you eat- Food high in sugar or simple carbs affect the brain differently
• How you eat- quickly and mindlessly or mindfully
• Mapping out your habit loops of {{trigger -> behavior -> result/reward}} is like flipping a light switch to see your behavior and where you are tripping up
• Interrupting habit loops with awareness
• If you pay attention and experience that something is better than expected, you get a positive prediction error and that behavior is reinforced.
• If you pay attention and experience that something is worse than expected- the salty bag of potato chips gave me a headache- you get a negative prediction error in your brain and that behavior isn’t reinforced.
• If you don’t pay attention, you can’t get a positive or a negative prediction error. You just keep the old habit going.
• Practically speaking, for most unhelpful behaviors, the more we pay attention, the more disenchanted we get, they appear less and less magical because we’re seeing and feeling clearly that they are not rewarding.
• Build your disenchantment databank, a store of memories where satisfying a craving didn't actually make you feel better. When you have enough data of this type, your cravings don’t have the same pull that they used to.
• The question “what am I getting from this?” is set up to help you right now. Move from overindulgence and automatic eating to being content now.
• A choice freely chosen will be embraced more deeply and more consistently than one which is dictated from on high
• Step 1 is awareness of old habit loops
• Step 2 is awareness of how unrewarding the old habit loops are
• Step 3 is an unforced freedom of choice
• When it comes to changing habits- whether letting go of old ones or developing new ones- the brain follows one path and one path only- changing reward value.
• Eating mindfully has a higher reward value than perpetuating unhelpful habit loops.

Mindful eating

• Mindfulness is awareness and curiosity. Eating with awareness means that you notice how food looks, smells, feels, tastes. Pay attention to your experience in 6 categories- seeing, hearing, feeling (body sensations), smelling, tasting, thinking.
• RAIN on the craving monster’s parade. We have a screaming toddler inside us but we can love ourselves and train ourselves to choose helpful behaviors at the same time.
• Recognize the craving (persistent desire for a specific food) and relax into it
• Allow and accept the experience with a smile- don’t distract or try to do anything about it
• Investigate the experience with curiosity- how does it feel in your body?
• Note the experience and name the sensations you’re experiencing- don’t identify with your thoughts, emotions, body sensations
• Noting: Noting is putting a frame around our experience. It inserts a bit of distance and you gain perspective. You are not as identified with your cravings and they lose power.
• Stay curious and open minded instead of getting stuck in habit loops of self-judgment and blame: What do I really want?
• Awareness helps you to become enchanted with (and therefore choose) foods that serve your health and well-being.
• Success in changing eating habits depends on curiosity and kindness.
• Kindness cools the brain regions that heat up with craving
• Practice genuine kindness to yourself: “You’re doing the best you can”
• It is human to slip up but by putting these experiences to good use, you can transform them from failure/shame into an impetus for progress.
• What can I learn from this?
• Instead of treating cravings as obstacles that we need to endure or fight we can think of them as teachers and lean in and learn from them.

So, yes, this book is valuable in going to the root cause of the craving and changing behavior in a sustainable way. In the end, we have to take all this knowledge from various books and other sources and use whatever applies to our particular lives and what makes sense to us. I'm trying to be more mindful in other areas of my life and therefore I think I found this book at the right time for me. Putting it into practice will be the work of a lifetime as it always is! 

* * *

Today's moment of fitness is some gentle myth-busting. Few people would disagree with this statement: "You lose weight though diet and exercise." However, it turns out that while exercise has incredible and wide-ranging benefits- the closest thing we have to a magic pill, I'd say- the one benefit it does not have is the one thing that people commonly use it for- weight loss. 

People who exercise primarily for weight loss can end up feeling frustrated and disillusioned. It is just not the right tool for the job. A better way to think about it is something I read on Reddit that stuck in my head- "Our physical activity controls our fitness but not our fatness. Our food intake controls our fatness but not our fitness." 

Why is exercise secondary to diet for weight loss? Here's a great article that explains this concept. 

• Exercise accounts for only a small portion of the calories we burn daily. 
• Weight loss is based on calorie deficit (burning more calories than we consume) and it is hard to create a significant calorie deficit through exercise. 
• Exercise can undermine weight loss in subtle ways, for instance, by making us hungrier.
• Exercise can lead to other physiological changes that help us conserve (rather than burn) energy- our bodies get more efficient. 

Exercise at any weight will make you fitter and stronger. And, interesting, studies show that people who exercise regularly maintain weight loss more than people who don't. But if fat loss or weight loss are your primary goals, implement sustainable changes in what and how much you eat and don't rely on exercise alone. 

The bottom line: You typically can’t exercise yourself thin. You definitely can’t diet yourself strong.

Happy 2025, Black eyed peas curry, Walking after meals

Happy new year! On New Year's Day, we followed Southern tradition and ate black eyed peas and greens for good luck. The beans were cooked in a mild onion and coconut sauce (recipe below) and I scrounged up the only greens I had on hand- a bunch of cilantro- and made cilantro rice to go with the curry. It was a delightful first lunch of the year. 

The black eyed peas curry is a riff on the Goan curry called tonak. I've posted a version of the recipe here before. 

Here is my simple version with common pantry ingredients:

1. Soak 1.5 cups black eyed peas for a few hours. Rinse and pressure cook until tender with some salt.

2. Make a masala paste- heat a bit of oil and fry 1-2 large onions until pink. Add 1/2 cup dried unsweetened coconut, peppercorns, curry leaves, coriander seeds, red chillies, turmeric, salt, a tomato. Fry the ingredients well, cool a bit and grind to a thick paste. 

3. Add the paste to the cooked black eyed peas along with some tamarind paste, bring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes. 

4. You can add a tempering of mustard seeds- I skipped this and it was just fine.

* * *

I make one-word resolutions most years. Last year, my word was "stretch" and I can truly say that it guided me to stretch beyond my comfort zone in many ways. I taught a cooking class for 18 people, gave a lecture on traditional and modern Indian cooking, hiked 10 miles of the Appalachian Trail, ran the Peachtree 10 K race and earned a personal trainer certification. Yesterday, I went to the local running store and replaced my worn running shoes, and realized with gratitude that I put an estimated 500 miles on my old pair of shoes in 2024. It is amazing how all those 30-45 minute jogs add up. 

My word for 2025 is "Upgrade". It is meaningful for me in different ways and for different aspects of my life. Some of it is literally upgrading my cookware and such (I am a chronic under-buyer) but mostly it is not about buying new stuff but about upgrading systems and habits and routines and spaces, both mental and physical. 

On the subject of new year resolutions, here's an amusing little poem: It's Me Again by Erica Reid. 

Goodreads sent me a 2024 reading report. This year I plan to keep enjoying books as I always do without particular goals in mind. I'm intrigued by some of the 50 prompts on the 2025 PS Reading Challenge and the 24 prompts on the Book Riot 2025 Read Harder challenge. I rarely (OK, never) complete reading challenges but always do some of the prompts and am rewarded by discovering new books and genres. If you have suggestions for any of these prompts, I'd love to hear them. 

I got a head start and completed one prompt on the PS 2025 Reading Challenge over winter break- #10- A book you got for free. I found this one in a Little Free Library nearby- I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. What a very strange title this book has. The author is a Nickelodeon child star from the long-running tween TV shows iCarly and Sam and Cat - not someone I'm familiar with at all. But the book was known to me because it is a well-received childhood memoir published a couple of years ago. It is a very candid and heartbreaking account of growing up with a narcissistic mother, being pushed to be a child actor, and the dark side of fame- the alcohol addiction and eating disorders. 

I also started on Read Harder 2025's Task #24- Pick a 2015 Read Harder Challenge task to complete. The 2015 task I chose is A collection of poetry. This was a book sale find sitting on my shelves, Poet's Choice by Edward Hirsch. It is a compilation of poetry columns from a magazine, a mini-course in world poetry. I have it sitting on my end table, and have been reading one section a day, 3 short but deep pages of prose explaining one or more poems on a theme. It has been utterly lovely to spend 10 minutes a day reading this. One recent column talked about the tradition in poetry of celebrating athletic achievement- the Olympian Odes, another of the poetry of Sappho. Yet another talked about Greek epigrams, short poems intended to be carved or inscribed on monuments or tombstones. Like this one--

Take what you have while you have it: you'll lost it soon enough.

A single summer turns a kid into a shaggy goat.

* * *

The best thing I ate this week was a food gift: bagels made from scratch and shared by my friend. She used the bagel recipe from The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François. I've talked about this book in this no-knead naan post in 2013 and still have it sitting on my cookbook shelf. I'm sorely tempted to try the bagel recipe now. They were the best bagels I've eaten since we lived in NYC! 

* * *

Today's moment of fitness is a simple, doable, but powerful habit- walking for a few minutes just after every meal. There is a tendency to sit down after a meal but if you can get moving instead by going for a short walk or even doing some housework that involves moving around, there are tangible health benefits to this. Walking after eating has two specific benefits: (1) it regulates blood sugar levels and can prevent it from spiking, and (2) it stimulates the digestive system and minimizes unpleasant symptoms such as bloating. 

While this habit is backed up by research evidence today, it is also ancient wisdom, and I knew about this as a child in India- the habit of "shatapavali" or hundred steps- a compound word made up of the Marathi words "shata" meaning hundred and "paaul" meaning step. If you don't already walk briefly after every meal, join me and see if you can put this into practice in the new year! 

Holiday meals, Lentil pasta salad, How workouts are put together

Here we are, in that liminal space between Christmas and New Year's Eve, transitioning between two years. 

This year our family is enjoying a staycation during winter break. We are staying cozy at home (board games, Project Runway season 18), doing some fun things around town (ice skating, cocktails with neighbors) and catching up on to-dos that we never seem to have time for (getting the cars detailed, organizing closets, mending clothing). 

We vacationed in the Caribbean during Thanksgiving week- our first trip to that part of the world- and missed our usual Thanksgiving meal, so I made the same exact meal this Christmas Day. 

The plated meal, with an
apple cider-rum cocktail

This meal is fun and easy to make when there are two cooks in the kitchen. Usually for Thanksgiving, my sister is here to help. This year it was just our family of four and one guest, our new Australian friend. She's my new colleague who moved across the world to our town in early November, and stayed with us for a couple of weeks while she acquired an apartment and car. She quickly became integrated into our family; she's halfway in age between us and the kids, and the kids seem to think of her adorably as "one of them". We've had a lot of fun in this short period of time- shopping downtown and in thrift stores, doing our big cookie-baking marathon, going out for her first "American-sized" burrito, and hanging out over cozy homemade meals. She spent Christmas Day with us and we enjoyed cooking our favorite holiday meal together.  

Our Aussie friend had been telling us all about her Christmas traditions and how she has been making the traditional pavlova for her family's Christmas dessert. When she offered to make one for us, I knew it would be the highlight of our holiday. A pavlova is a thick meringue disk, tender on the inside and crispy on the outside, piled with whipped cream and lemon curd, and decorated with fresh fruit and a shower of powdered sugar. I've eaten a pavlova only once before when a former neighbor, an American woman who had lived in Britain for 10+ years, brought it over. 

I got to see this one being made from start to finish. Our Aussie friend came over the day before Christmas. She chose this recipe which calls for 6 egg whites for the pavlova; she reserved the yolks for lemon curd. Eggs and sugar have to be beaten to a stiff mixture. For the superfine sugar, I just took some granulated sugar and pulsed it in the food processor. We used the balloon whisk on the stand mixer. She's only ever made it with a hand mixer and thought the stand mixer was astonishingly fast and good at bringing the mixture together. There's nothing difficult about making the pavlova per se, but there are a few tricks, like having a very clean bowl, wiping the bowl and whisk down with vinegar to remove all traces of soap/oil, and adding sugar very slowly. I'm glad I watched it being made because the mixture has to be whipped until it is absolutely glossy and stiff. Then the mixture is spooned into a circle on parchment and baked at a low temperature for a long time. We left it in the oven overnight to cool. Next morning, I moved the baked pavlova carefully into a lidded cake container.

She made the lemon curd while the pavlova was baking and spooned it into a jar to be refrigerated overnight. Just before serving dessert on Christmas Day, we added whipped cream, and my daughter and two of her friends decorated it with berries. It is a stunning and light dessert. Very sweet, yes, but the lemon curd cuts through the sweetness. The tart berries add a wonderful contrast. I know I will make this again for a celebratory meal. Even the leftovers were fantastic with coffee the next day.

The pavlova, all dressed up

 

The pavlova just after baking

Santa cookies- how beautiful!- a
family tradition at my friend's house,
served to us at brunch

The kids assembled a 
gingerbread house on Christmas Day

* * *

The thing about big holiday meals is that you also have to plan and make all the regular meals while planning and prepping for the big holiday meal. I soaked and sprouted a big batch of brown lentils (masoor) to counteract all the heavier holiday fare. Then I steamed them lightly in the Instant Pot. Usually, I make Indian dishes- usal, salad, pulao, curry- with sprouted lentils, but this time I used them in a new-to-me way that worked very well- in a pesto pasta salad.

I had a box of mixed greens on hand, as well as cooked shell pasta. Plus a tub of pesto, so a big pasta salad sounded like just the thing to make. We took a big bowl of this to my friend's brunch, and it was great to eat leftovers for a quick dinner. 

Start with the dressing in a big bowl

• Pesto
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

Add the other ingredients and toss together:

• Steamed sprouted lentils
• Cooked pasta
• Chopped mixed greens and spinach
• Diced bell pepper
• Mozzarella and parmesan

Lentil pesto pasta salad

Pasta salad with Quorn nuggets

* * *

Today's moment of fitness builds on all the previous ones to ask a basic question- how are workouts put together?

Let's remind ourselves of the 7 types of training- every exercise you can think of will fall into one or more of these seven categories, and together they all contribute towards fitness:

1. Cardio
   
2. Strength training
   
3. Core 
4. Flexibility
5. Plyometrics (jumping)
6. Speed, agility, quickness
7. Balance

Let's also remind ourselves of the weekly exercise recommendations for healthy adults:

• Cardio
• 150 minutes of moderate cardio
• OR 75 minutes of vigorous cardio
• OR a combination of moderate and vigorous
• Strength training
  
• Minimum of 2 sessions
• Balance training (for adults age 65+)
• 2 sessions

There are countless ways to put together workouts to meet these exercise requirements while covering different types of training. But here's a popular way I've seen it done. 

• Cardio is often done as its own thing, 2-4 times a week, 30-60 mins per session
• Depending on the person, this may be any form of cardio like jogging or walk-run intervals, running, biking, swimming, dance classes
• It can be outdoors or indoors
• The other types of training are bundled into workouts that are done 2-3 times a week in a gym or at home. These workouts may have 8-12 exercises which are doable in a 45-60 minute session, for instance,
  
• 2-3 compound strength exercises (those are squat, hinge, push, pull, press)
• 3-4 accessory strength exercises (focused on particular muscle groups like arms or legs)
• 1-2 core exercises
• 1 plyometric (jumping) exercise
• 1 balance exercise
• 1 agility exercise
• Flexibility is included in all of the above during warm ups and cool downs, and some folks like to add stretching in the morning or evening, or an occasional or regular yoga class.

Another common way that people do it is to do longer workouts 3 days a week, with 30 minutes of cardio followed by a 60-minute strength exercise routine. But you can see how training can be mixed and matched to fit each person's schedule and lifestyle.

My take home message today is that it is possible to touch on all types of fitness training by fitting it into our lives for an average of 5 hours or so per week. We're talking 5 out of the 168 hours in every week! That's not such a big commitment when you think about it. 

See you in the new year! 

Holiday Cookies 2024

Life has been a whirlwind for the last two months and the poor blog has been neglected. But the kitchen has been as busy as ever, especially this weekend when I launched my annual holiday baking marathon and made 7 cookies/treats in 2 days- five batches on Saturday, one dough made at end of day to rest overnight, and the final two batches on Sunday. My two helpers were my 8 year old son and a sweet friend who came by to spend the afternoon and bake with us. 

5 of the 7 cookies of 2024

I tried to select recipes that was a good mix--

• Some with chocolate, some with spices, some with fruit and nuts
• Some old recipes and some new recipes and techniques
• Some plain and some decorated
• Some crunchy and some chewy

Chocolate crinkles: I discovered this cookie last year when I made this recipe twice. It is definitely a crowd favorite with a deep chocolate flavor and an interesting look. The dough needs to be chilled for 3 hours but otherwise comes together very quickly. 

Cherry shortbread: I've made various types of shortbread before, but this recipe looked interesting because it includes cornstarch, making it an especially tender cookie. This is a good choice for a low-maintenance cookie to make with kids- a stand mixer is not needed and the dough is easily made in a bowl. There is no chilling required. Kids can enjoy making balls of dough, flattening them with forks and decorating the cookie with a halved cherry or some sprinkles before baking.

Chewy molasses cookies: These cookies look quite plain but they taste fantastic and are full of the rich flavor of spices and molasses. I used this recipe which came together very easily, with a dough that requires no chilling. 

Pecan snowballs: I've seen these cookies for years- a beloved holiday cookie that is variously called snowballs, Russian tea cakes, Mexican wedding cookies, Swedish tea balls, etc. This was my first time trying this traditional cookie and it was probably my favorite new cookie this year. We used this recipe and the success of the recipe depends very much on careful and patient chopping of the pecans, which my friend did beautifully. 

Brownie trees: We made brownie trees last year and they were so popular and adorable. We had to make this cute themed treat again this year, included for the "aww" factor if nothing else. This was the one my son was most involved in and it was the only not-from-scratch treat. We simply used boxed brownie mix and premade cookie icing. Look at last year's post to see how to make the cuts in a 9 x 13 pan of brownies. 

Cranberry pistachio biscotti: Biscotti is a must-have in any cookie box, IMO, a very dunkable cookie in all sorts of hot beverages. 
I used my go-to almond biscotti recipe that I've made for years and simply added a lot of chopped pistachios and chopped cranberries in place of the almonds. So good! 

Pastry twists: This was probably the most ambitious recipe I tried this year. The recipe just looked so intriguing- Swedish sour cream twists. It is an enriched yeast dough that chills overnight and then is rolled and folded with sugar before being cut into strips, twisted and baked. I thoughts my results were pretty good for the first try. The twists taste quite plain but would be great with a flavorful drink like hot chocolate or mulled cider. 

I impulse-purchased some cute little paper gingerbread house boxes to package the cookies this year.

Peeking into a house box

The gingerbread house cookie box

* * *

On November 1, when we celebrated Diwali with a few friends, I wanted a fruit and nut cookie and tried this unfussy rugelach recipe. I think this came from a desire to try something adjacent to the Diwali classic treats chirote and karanji, with all the flaky goodness and sweet filling but without deep frying. 

The dough calls for mixing butter and cream cheese and flour in the stand mixer or food processor. I made some mistakes in pulling the dough together (processing the flour with cream cheese made it sticky and it did not incorporate the cold butter chunks- which were cut too big- very well) and still. This was the closest thing to puff pastry I've ever made. The dough is fantastic and worth making for many applications. This was definitely my other favorite cookie of the year.

The Diwali treat tray with coconut burfi, cookies,
and store-bought chakli and bourbon biscuits

Three of my favorite store-bought cookies:

• Bourbon biscuits from the Indian store
• Triple ginger cookies from Trader Joe's 
• La Dolce Vita classic biscotti from Costco

Happy Holidays to all, and I'm hoping to post more regularly from now on. 

Ginger Garlic Paste, and a Fall Hike

I'm not an adventurous person, so I read adventure stories with a large measure of awe and admiration. Books like Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air have stayed with me years after I read them. Recently, I read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods about hiking on the Appalachian Trail (AT). I am endlessly fascinated by the AT trail, which is said to be the longest walking-only path in the world, extending over 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine. 

I live only an hour or so away from the AT and have always wanted to walk on it. My little bucket list dream came true last weekend. My Thursday running buddy C is from a town very close to the AT and she planned out a day hike for a small group of four women. Millions of people do day hikes and multi-day section hikes on portions of the AT each year. About 700 people walk the whole length of it each year, hiking for about 4-6 months! (Astonishingly, C's husband hiked the whole trail from Maine to Georgia back when he was just 19, and did it in under 3 months because he really wanted to be home for Thanksgiving LOL.) 

Back to our day hike- we started around 9 AM and covered 10 miles of trails in about 6.5 hours, 30K steps according to my watch. We started off climbing up and down Blood Mountain, Georgia's sixth highest peak, and the highest point of the AT in Georgia. It was cool to see the AT shelter at the very top of the mountain. We ate a packed lunch at the foot of the mountain and then walked 5.5 miles from Neels Gap to Tesnatee Gap. 

We were either ascending or descending the whole time. It was no walk in the woods, I assure you. Ascending is hard for obvious reasons- you're working against gravity. But descending is also very hard- as you have to be very careful with balance and it uses a whole different array of muscles. I was wary of injuries and descended gingerly and overall was the absolute slowpoke of our group. By the end of the hike, I had three simultaneous thoughts about my legs: (a) My legs feel like jello, (b) My legs feel like lead, (c) I can't feel my legs.

The day was picture-perfect, the views were spectacular, and fall colors were just starting to show. We saw no wildlife at all- I see a diversity of wildlife in my own backyard every day but spotted none up in the mountains that day. Over 10 miles of trails, I also did not see a single piece of trash. 
 

It was a special feeling to be on the AT trail and know that I could have just kept walking for a few months and reached Maine. Instead, I hopped into a car, went back to our rental cabin and dined on canned veggie chili on a bed of spaghetti, washed down with a beer. I was ridiculously sore for days afterwards. But it was completely worth it. It gave me a tiniest taste of the AT and what it must be like to do the full hike, sleeping in shelters or on the ground, walking on average 15-20 miles a day for months. Humans amaze me with the things they do for recreation and adventure.

* * *

On the culinary side, I am highlighting a staple ingredient in my kitchen- ginger garlic paste (GG paste). I've mentioned it in hundreds of recipes but I don't think I have ever talked about how I make it. (Probably because there's not much to it. But here goes.)

Why make GG paste? Ginger and garlic are aromatics that add plenty of oomph to many savory dishes- especially Indian, Thai, and Chinese, for me. Technically, it is just fine to keep some fresh or frozen ginger and garlic on hand and mince it up for recipes as needed. But making a paste of the two together and storing it in the fridge/freezer is an absolute time-saver and significantly cuts down the friction to making curries and stir-fries from scratch. 

You can buy jars of GG paste in Indian stores but I find that homemade tastes best.

How to make GG paste? I buy fresh ginger and garlic- the freshest you can find, which is often in the Asian store. Peel the garlic and wash the cloves. Peel the ginger (a spoon works best), wash and roughly chop. What ratio to use? I like a 2:1 ratio of ginger to garlic. I like the warmth of ginger and garlic can be assertive to the point of being overpowering, so this ratio is best for me. Here, I used roughly 2 cups chopped ginger and 1 cup garlic cloves. Just place them in a powerful blender with some salt and a few tablespoons of water and blend it down to a paste.

How to store GG paste? One batch of GG paste lasts me several months, portioned into a few glass jars. (One of my GG jars is a baby food jar from years ago.) I store one jar in the fridge and others in the freezer. Then as I finish a fridge jar, I move in the next one from the freezer. There are other clever ways of storing it, such as using ice cube trays to make GG paste blocks. But I find the fridge method to be the most flexible so I can spoon out whatever amount of GG paste I want for any recipe. 

* * *

A new recipe I tried last week: a modified version of cowboy beans where I used smoked paprika in place of bacon and veggie crumbles in place of the ground meat. I took it to a potluck and the dish was a hit. 

Before baking

* * *

Media round-up

• Watching: I took my son and a few of his friends to the movie theater to see the recently released movie The Wild Robot. The biggest success was the screening room itself, because it was outfitted with a playscape on an entire wall, so the kids could climb and jump and get their wiggles out for 30 minutes before the movie. I'm glad I discovered this place! The movie itself is very enjoyable. The story trope of found family is nothing new at all, but done with a lot of heart of gentle humor, and the animation is stunning. 
• Reading
• Another short story collection, The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans. I enjoyed two of the stories in this collection: Boys Go to Jupiter and Anything Could Disappear.
• This was a random pick from the Halloween-themed book display at the library- Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty and it was a quick, informative and surprisingly hilarious read, given the subject matter. 
• Listening to
• A song I discovered via the car radio- Big Feelings by a Canadian pop group, the Arkells. I now sing it in my head whenever we have a "big feelings" situation in our home, which is...frequently, ha ha. "Are you afraid of big feelings?" Not me, never.
• We spent a lovely afternoon at Porchfest, a daylong community event where local musicians play on porches of homes around town and people wander around and listen to music. It was the most beautiful day weather-wise and a joyful celebration of the enormous talent in our midst. My favorites were tap dancers performing to Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve and high school musicians who did a cover of Supermassive Black Hole by the Muse. I was so impressed by the drummer, a teen girl.
• I recently discovered the NYmag weekly crossword- a new one is published every Saturday, and they are free and a lot of fun to solve, with puns and all. The difficulty is right at the sweet spot for me- hard but doable. 

* * *

In previous moments of fitness, we talked about 3 types of training, (1) cardio or aerobic training, and (2) strength training (including compound exercises and accessory exercises) and (3) core training. Today, I'll talk about the other 4 types of training:

• Flexibility: Basically, this is all about stretching and practicing our full range of motion. Stretching exercises make daily movement easier and can help relieve aches, pains, and cramps. Stretches should be part of every workout. 
• Warm ups before exercising are ideally dynamic stretches where you "get moving", such as high knees and arm circles. 
• Cool downs after exercising often involve static stretches on already-warm muscles where you hold a position for 30 seconds or so, for instance, a standing quad stretch where you stand on one foot and bend the other knee, grabbing the ankle and bringing the foot up behind you.
• While stretching is important with any workout, stretching can also be a workout on its own. Yoga and Pilates are two examples of workouts that involve flexibility training.
• Balance- Practicing balance is very beneficial for reducing risks of falls and sprains. It improves proprioception, that is, our awareness of our body in space. There are three major systems that keep us balanced, and balance exercises involve challenging each of these. 
• Visual system, that is, eyesight. Try to stand on one leg with your eyes closed! 
• Vestibular system, involving sensory receptors of the inner ear. This system can be challenged with exercises that involve staying balanced while bending over or hopping, for instance.
• Somatosensory system, involving sensory receptors in skin/muscle/joints. Running on unstable surfaces is an example of balance training for this system.
• In each workout, try to incorporate a single leg or hopping exercise to practice balance.
• Plyometrics= jump training. We jump around so much as kids, and then almost never as adults. Jumping exercises are beneficial for increasing bone density and decreasing muscle loss with age. They also contribute to increased strength and power. Jumping rope is a great way to practice plyometrics, or doing exercises like jump squats and lateral jumps. 
• Speed, Agility, Quickness. Speed is moving fast in one direction. Agility is being able to change direction rapidly. Quickness is reaction time. Practicing these things improves response time and coordination. Example of SAQ exercises are ladder drills, agility dot drills, and cone drills. 

Coconut macaroons, Book sale treasures, and Core exercises

Fall is creeping ever so slowly into North Georgia. The days are going by in a blur- cross-country meets and fall festivals abound- and I'm not being particularly adventurous in the kitchen. 

For a teacher potluck, I signed up to bring in a gluten free dessert. I had a bag of unsweetened coconut flakes in the pantry so I thought I would make coconut macaroons, based on this recipe. I've made cardamom and saffron macaroons before; they are a lovely, chewy dessert for anyone who loves coconut.

This time I mixed together 4 cups coconut flakes and 1 can sweetened condensed milk in a large bowl, then added some salt and vanilla for flavor. I whipped 2 large egg whites to stiff peaks and folded them in. Then I used a 1/8 cup measure to dollop the sticky mixture onto 2 parchment-lined sheets and baked them at 325F for about 20 minutes. I got 22 golden macaroons and dipped the bottoms in melted dark chocolate. My "artful" chocolate drizzle was a bit of a flop but the macaroons are tasty.

This was the first fall-like dinner of 2024. Lemon pasta from TJ's (an impulse purchase) sautéed with spinach and sage and tossed with roasted butternut squash. 

One Sunday evening I was fresh out of ideas for dinner and made some French toast for the kids. We had plenty of leftovers for school morning breakfasts. 

* * *

Media round-up

• TV: I started watching a random Netflix recommendation that I had never heard of, a sitcom called Still Game. It turned out to be a cult Scottish comedy series and I am enjoying it. The show centers around the lives and misadventures of a group of pensioners, complete with thick accents and salty language. What I love best is the depiction of male friendship, although my favorite character is the nosy and lovable neighbor lady Isa Drennan.  
• Family TV: We started watching the latest installment of the Great British Baking Show. The first episode amazed me. The contestants are taking it to the next level- making an overly fussy bake during the technical round without a recipe (!!) and making hyper-realistic cakes for their show-stoppers. Although I must say I cannot stand all the fondant that goes into realistic cakes.
• Books: Short stories used to be my favorite thing to read, as I wrote in this post some years ago. I recently read a really great collection of short stories, Pastoralia by George Saunders. The first three stories are fantastic, each conjuring up a weird and dystopian but uncomfortably believable America. The story titled Sea Oak in particular, about a male stripper and his dysfunctional family, about the struggle to get out of poverty, is the most absurd yet amazing, darkly funny story I've read in a long time. 
• Music: I listen almost exclusively to music from the 90s (when I listen to music at all) but thanks to readio I discovered some more recent pop music to add to my playlist, from a band called almost monday- three songs I like are cool enough, live forever, broken people. I'm entering a new century, y'all.
• Highlight: I spent a blissful hour rummaging through endless tables of donated books at the biannual library book sale where you get to fill a bag for 10 bucks. Here's a picture of my haul. The meditation book, Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn made it to my bedside table immediately and I'm enjoying reading a couple of passages before bed. The book without a title (gold rectangle on the cover) is The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. The Color Harmonies is for my dad who loves sketching and painting. The Calvin and Hobbes is for my son. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is for my daughter, a middle-grade novel that I've read and loved before. I was very pleased with the number of science books I found this time.

* * *

In my last post, I talked about the seven major muscle groups and mentioned sample exercises for six of the groups. In today's moment of fitness, we focus on the last group, the core. When people think of the core, they tend to think of the "abs" or abdominal muscles, the coveted "six pack" defined muscles for some fitness enthusiasts of the beach body variety. In reality, vanity is the least of the concerns when it comes to the core. This muscle group is literally the primary stabilizer of our body and involved in all movement on and off the beach. 

Consisting of much more than the abs alone, the core is a substantial cylinder of muscle tissue that wraps around our trunk. 

• The base of the cylinder consists of the pelvic floor muscles
• The top of the cylinder consists of the diaphragm, a key muscle involved in breathing
• The sides of the cylinder are the internal and external abdominal obliques, involved in twisting and turning motions 
• The superficial muscles of the core are the "six pack" abs ones- the rectus abdominis in front of the abdomen
• The deep core muscle is the transverse abdominis which wraps around the trunk
• The erector spinae are deep muscles connected to the spine, involved in stability

A weak core leads to many issues, including poor posture, a tendency to lose balance, and the big one, back pain. I have had first-hand experience with back pain, an episode that is seared into my memory because it happened at a particularly inopportune time, when my son was a toddler and my spouse was out of town for a week-long work trip. I remember being in spasms of pain whenever I bent down, and bending down was essential and frequent while caring for a toddler single-handedly. It was a helpless feeling and a wake up call. Back pain is debilitating and can severely impact daily life- everything from the must-dos to the fun times. 

The good news is that core exercises are easy to learn and can be done anywhere, with no equipment needed. You can do them right on the floor, on an exercise mat, or a rug/carpet. A 10-15 minute core exercise routine done 2-3 times a week is a great start towards building a strong core with many protective benefits. 

Here are some of my favorite core exercises. Search for exercise names on the internet to find images and videos. Try some out and tell me your favorites in the comments.

• Dynamic core exercises (dynamic= you move during the exercise)
• Cat cow stretch
• Bird dog
• Dead bug
• Leg raises
• Russian twist
• Mountain climbers

• Static core exercises (static= you hold the pose for some amount of time, say, 30-45 seconds)
• Plank
• Side plank
• Bear hold
• Boat pose

Mac & Cheese and more, a Mind-boggling Book, and Isolation Exercises

Today, we're on Hurricane Watch in Georgia. Hurricane Helene is gaining strength in the Florida gulf coast and headed straight for us in a couple of days if the models turn out to be accurate. Right now, it is dead quiet outside- the calm before the storm.

Last week, the NYT published a list of their 50 greatest hit recipes of the last decade. I don't subscribe to their cooking section, but the recipes in this article were free to access for a week. I spotted a recipe for chef Millee Peartree's Southern Macaroni and Cheese. As it happened, we celebrated my daughter's actual birthday with a family dinner, and she requested mac and cheese, so I had a chance to try the recipe right away. 

As written, it is a recipe for "cheese with a little macaroni sprinkled in it", but I ruthlessly slashed the cheese to about half, and the dish was (a) much easier to make than my usual bechamel sauce version of mac and cheese, and (b) an instant hit with my family. Even though I got distracted and slightly overcooked the macaroni- the recipe calls for it to be VERY al dente because it will be baked again. I will definitely be making this again. (I remembered just now that I have made and posted a similar recipe over a dozen years ago but it never became my regular version somehow).

To serve with the pasta, I made this broccoli salad. I enjoy broccoli in various dishes and buy it weekly, but rarely if ever serve it raw. This broccoli salad changed my mind- it is a great make-ahead dish and a lighter side for many heavy holiday dishes. 

For cake, I made an ice cream terrine- everyone in the family (except me) prefers ice cream to cake, so this is an easy way to make a festive dessert with very little effort- nothing but 3-4 different flavors of ice cream or sorbet stacked in a loaf pan. 

* * *

Every once in a while, I come across a book that shakes me up. I think The Rigor of Angels by William Eggington is that book for me this year. Eggington delves into the stories and work of three renowned people- a poet, Borges, a physicist, Heisenberg, and a philosopher, Kant- to study how they grappled with some of the deepest questions that humans can ask (Is there an edge to the universe? Do we have free will? and such), and also the overarching question- Can we ever know the answers to these? 

Here are a few of my notes from the book- some are direct quotes, some are paraphrased, and some are from Goodreads reviews of this book. (Yes, good book reviews are an incredible source for getting more out of books.)

• The central thesis is that there are limits on what humans can know.
• While humans have made astonishing progress in understanding the universe, it is not just a matter of time before we understand everything. This quote from Borges says it best (and gives the book its title): “There is indeed rigor in the world, but humanity has forgotten, and continues to forget, that it is the rigor of chess masters, not of angels.”
• We cannot truly know nature, but only nature exposed to our methods of questioning.
• It is unlikely that humans will ever be able to know how the universe works because we are inside the thing we need to observe.
• On reality
• Reality is a collective, hallucinated construct.
• Space and time are not "real" and universal and don't exist outside of us; they are mental constructs that we have created to make sense of the world.
• When we think of the many paradoxes of quantum physics, they are only paradoxes because we mistakenly assume that space and time are real. If we radically accept the premise that space and time are nothing but indexes of measurement, paradoxes of quantum physics dissipate.
• The strangeness sprang from what we expected to see, rather than what we in fact observe.
• Kant drew an airtight border between what we experience with our senses in space and time, on the one hand, and eternal truths and principles, on the other, which exist outside space and time and remain true despite what our senses tell us.
• In a fascinating and parallel way, the two constants that form the backbone of modern physics, Einstein’s c and Planck’s h, turn out to be fundamental limits built into the fabric of our observed reality
• c is a speed limit at which time comes to a standstill
• h is a size limit on how closely we can focus on the warp and weft of space-time
• On consciousness
• The soul or consciousness, in fact, is nothing but the unity of a sense of self over time…a connecting of disparate slices of space-time, a necessary condition of the possibility of knowing anything at all.
• For Kant, consciousness isn’t some mysterious entity that needs to be explained but a necessary presumed entity that allows there to be a timeline against which I order and distinguish my perceptions (space is another necessary projection).
• Humans
• We are stranded in a gulf of vast extremes, between the astronomical and the quantum, an abyss of freedom and absolute determinism, and it is in that center where we must make our home.

This book is simply delicious- highly cerebral yet approachable, entertaining and extremely informative. And the way this humanities professor writes about quantum mechanics is impressive. 

The mixing of science and history is tantalizing and results in funny juxtapositions. Here's part of a paragraph that cracked me up- "...the mathematics that resulted from inserting the highly complex frequencies into the existing equations were simply incomprehensible. To top it all, pollen season had arrived in full force in Gottingen...". 

This book also mentions one of my favorite novels of all time, The God of Small Things by Arundati Roy. 

* * *

In my last post, I talked about the five "big lifts" or compound strength exercises. In today's moment of fitness, I'm talking about the isolation exercises that focus on each of the 7 major muscle groups in our body (search on the web for exercise names in bold to see images and videos demonstrating the exercise):

• Shoulders: Major muscles of this group include the deltoids and the rotator cuff. So many activities of daily living such as lifting groceries, cooking, and driving a car rely on flexible and strong shoulders. Examples of shoulder-focused exercises are the lateral raise, front raise, and my personal favorite, the kettlebell halo.
• Arms: The front of the upper arms contain the biceps muscles (they help bend the arm) while the back of the arms contain the triceps muscles (they help straighten the arm). Strong upper arms are important for lifting and carrying activities as well as lifting and throwing. The classic bicep exercise is the bicep curl while a classic tricep exercise is the tricep extension.
• Chest: Chest muscles include the pectoralis ("pecs") and are used in many daily activities such as pushing. They maintain posture and support breast tissue. A typical exercise is the chest fly; another one I like is the dumbbell pullover.
• Back: The back has some large and impressive muscles, including the trapezius ("traps") and rhomboids towards the top and the latissmus dorsi ("lats") along the sides. Anyone who has experienced back pain knows firsthand why it is important to keep the back muscles strong. A great exercise for the back is the lat pulldown and one of the few times I use a gym machine is when I do this exercise.
• Core: We tend of think of "abs" when we think of the core but in fact it is so much more- I'll devote the next fitness moment to the core, a very important muscle group as the very name suggests.
• Glutes: The muscles of the butt; the biggest muscle of the body is here- the gluteus maximus. For bipedals such as humans, the glute muscles are critical for locomotion- walking and running, and also staying upright and balanced. Because modern humans tend to sit a whole lot, many of us have weak glutes. A classic exercise is the glute bridge.
• Legs: The upper legs have the quadriceps muscle ("quads") at the front of the thighs and the hamstring muscles at the back of the thighs. The lower legs have the calf muscles- the gastrocnemius and soleus. The leg muscles are crucial for walking and balance. Some classic exercises for the legs include lunges, split squats, and calf raises.

It is somewhat artificial to divide up the body in this way because the whole thing is one interconnected human movement system, but it is very helpful to know that all strength training exercises fall into one or more of these 12 buckets- either they are one of the 5 compound movements or are training one of these 7 body parts. When designing a workout (more on that later), keeping these 12 categories in mind can ensure a balanced workout that engages the whole body.