Enfrijoladas casserole, dog-less life, energy systems

Whenever we go to Mexican restaurants (which is often, as they tend to have more meatless options than most places), I'm likely to ignore the 17-page menu and order an enchilada platter- corn tortillas filled with vegetables and enrobed in a flavorful red chile sauce, with beans and Mexican rice on the side. There's a variation on enchiladas called enfrijoladas, with a bean sauce instead of the typical red or green enchilada sauce. I've had it on my to-try list for a while.

Yesterday, I had a pot of cooked black beans in the fridge, and corn tortillas in the freezer, so the time had come. I put it together casserole style, which is the quicker, lazier way to fix a large batch of enchiladas. I assure you this recipe is not authentic in any shape or form, but it made for a hearty dinner with a whole lot of leftovers- meal prepping, baby. 

First, the bean sauce is literally just thinned pureed beans. My cooked beans had some of the usual seasonings already- onion, garlic, tomato, chipotle peppers. I added some water and some salsa that needed using up, and pureed them to a thick inky sauce. You can see it in the blender in the pic.

Second, the filling: I sautéed onions, pepper, garlic and usual spices (usual spices for my Mexican inspired food= chile powder, smoked paprika, cumin, oregano). Then added some tomato and soaked, drained soy curls. Added green onions and cilantro and a spoon or two of sour cream at the end. 

Assembly: 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Sauce, 6 corn tortillas, half the filling, light sprinkle of cheese, repeat. Use up everything, sauce and all, bake at 350F, uncovered, for 30-35 mins until bubbling. It was a good, hearty dinner. More earthy than enchiladas because of the beans.

* * *

• Reading 
• Patina by Jason Reynolds, for the POPSugar 2025 reading challenge prompt #17: A book about a run club. A bit of a stretch, because the book isn't so much about a run club but a track team. This is the second book in Reynolds' Track series about the young members of a track team, and I picked it up because I loved the first, Ghost. Patina is a 12 year old newcomer on the track team. She hates to lose a race, but the truth is she has racked up too many losses in her young life. She runs for her mother, who can no longer run because she lost her legs to "the sugar" (amputation due to diabetes complications.) 
• These are middle grade books but very much recommended for adults too. In fact, if you're a grown up with little time for reading, good middle grade books are shorter and easier to read but still touching and meaningful. Another series I would recommend for this kind of reading is the Front Desk series by Kelly Yang. 
• Kamini's wonderful blog post  - a theater review of a play based on a difficult time in South Asian history. Every post by Kamini is a treat!
• Watching
• I got a chance to see the studio company (their young performers, ages 18-21) of the famed American Ballet Theatre. It was not a very traditional ballet performance but it blew me away to see these young people with such talent, grace and athleticism. I am grateful to live 10 minutes away from venues that have such incredible live performances, not something I take for granted. 
• While I was at the ballet, the rest of the family went to watch an ice hockey game. They came home at 11 PM, completely hoarse from all the shouting and cheering. I may love exercise now but I will never like spectator sports. OK, maybe gymnastics and figure skating. But ball sports and team sports- hard pass. 
• Listening
• The almighty YouTube algorithm served me this song I haven't heard for 20+ years- Faasle by Shaan, the Hindi pop star of my teeny bopper days. It made my day. The song is as sentimental as it gets, with the saxophone of that era and everything.

* * *

It has now been over 13 months since our beloved dog Dunkie passed away. Our beautiful dog is now a pile of ashes in a wooden box. We miss him every day and reminders of Duncan are all around us- photos and videos that pop up on my phone, his water bowl now filled for backyard wildlife, his fur on the headliner of my car, which confused the car detailer as to why dog hair would end up there. Before Dunkie's loss, V and I were dog owners (or more accurately, were owned by a dog) for 22+ years straight, with only a 6 month gap between losing our first dog and adopting our second.  

We often get asked if we will adopt another dog, and our son especially is begging us to welcome a new dog into our home. We're not quite ready for it, for a few different reasons. The fact is that V and I stretched quite thin as two working parents with no help. Our kids are not old enough to be independent and the days are filled with packing lunches, doling out snacks, reminding the kids 3 times to put their plate in the sink. Our kids are 5 years apart in age, with completely different schedules and friends and places to be. 

For the last year, it has been somewhat of a relief to be able to go straight from work to sports events without juggling the schedule to be home for the dog. It is a luxury to go away for the day or the weekend at the last minute without scrambling to organize dog sitters. When Fourth of July or New Years' Eve rolls around, we don't lose nights of sleep because of noisy fireworks. (Dunkie, all 100+ lbs of him, would clamber on top of us, quaking with fear, bless him.)

The adjustment period of a new dog can be a handful. Even with Duncan, who eventually settled down to become absolutely the Best Dog Ever, we had a wild adjustment period when we first adopted him. Think holes in the drywall, bent wire crates, chewed doorknobs; I have no idea how we managed this with a toddler at the time! It is not always easy to find a dog who fits your life and I don't want to push my luck.

At the same time we feel the absence of a dog, we know our kids adore having a dog in the family, and there are too many precious pups out there waiting for a home. We will have to let a few more months go by and revisit this.

* * *

In today's moment of fitness, I have an introduction to the energy systems of the body. There would be no physical activity without the movement of muscles. And there would be no movement of muscles without energy to do so. When we train our bodies, we're training more than our muscles themselves- we are also training the energy/metabolic systems that drive the muscle contractions. 

The energy needed for muscle movement at the cellular level is in the form of a molecule called ATP.  There are three main energy systems that work in tandem to provide this--

• Phosphagen system (ATP-PC): Our muscles are stocked with a small molecule called creatine phosphate. For the first 10 seconds or so of an activity, ATP is generated quickly from creatine to drive muscles. So short, intense movements (explosive movements, jumping) are supported by this energy system.
• Related to this- I'm not a supplementation enthusiast in general, but creatine is the one daily supplement I take- it has well-studied, evidence-based benefits. I'm happy to share more details if anyone asks.
• Glycolytic system (Anaerobic): The primary fuel source for muscles is glycogen, which is the storage form of glucose/carbs. Once the activity proceeds beyond 10 seconds to a few minutes, this system kicks in to break down the glycogen and produce ATP, creating lactate as a byproduct. It is called anaerobic because it does not require oxygen. Activities like weightlifting are generally anaerobic and improve insulin sensitivity and blood glucose control.
• The word Anaerobic means "without oxygen", coming from the Greek words an- meaning "without", aero- meaning "air", and bios meaning "life". 
• Oxidative system (Aerobic): This system takes longer to kick in and provides fuel for longer, low to moderate intensity activities like jogging or swimming. Here, the body's energy stores, carbohydrates and fats, are broken down to produce ATP with chemical reactions that require oxygen, that is, aerobic reactions. 
• We've all heard of aerobic exercise, another term for cardio. I first heard the term as a child in the 80s when my mother attended some Jane Fonda aerobics classes! Anyway, this is why cardio is called aerobic exercise, because the fuel for cardio largely comes from this oxygen-needing energy system. You are doing a rhythmic activity and breathing harder as you are taking in all that oxygen to burn fuel.
• Doing cardio regularly is a great way to improve your body's ability to use oxygen efficiently for sustained energy production. 

In a future post, I'll talk about metabolic conditioning, which involves exercises that train both the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. 

20 Years of One Hot Stove

20 rambling thoughts on 20 years of blogging--

1. Time: In the winter of 2005, I was a graduate student in NYC, and had newly discovered some of the early food blogs. It was fun to read them. On a dreary Thursday evening, Feb 3, 2005, I made a free account on Blogger and wrote a tentative post on a blog that I named One Hot Stove on a complete whim. I had no plan to blog for 20 months, let alone 20 years! I can't wrap my head around the fact that two decades have passed since that day, and the blog is still active. It gives me a strange feeling. It is the same feeling that I had when my toddler son once asked me if dinosaurs were around when I was a child. 


2. Creating: I've taken long and short breaks from this blog, but so far, I keep coming back. A big reason is that it makes me a content creator and not just a content consumer. Even as I consume books, blogs, TV, podcasts and media of all types, I get to process it and produce some content of my own, and that is deeply satisfying. Creating content also makes me a more thoughtful consumer as I realize how easy it is to be a consumer and a critic than to be a creator of any sort. 


3. Tally: Looking back, I'm proud and amazed to see that I've churned out hundreds of original posts. This is my post number 808 on this blog. It has added up to quite a substantial body of work. 
   


4. Vulnerability: It takes some vulnerability (or maybe courage or imprudence- call it what you will) to put your innermost thoughts out here on the Internet. Some of it will resonate with readers while some will turn them off or leave them indifferent. You have to be somewhat thick-skinned about the whole thing. I never delete posts and rarely get around to even updating them with better pictures/ correcting grammar/ deleting old links. Everything- good, bad, boring, ridiculous- is here for all to see. For better or worse, it is what it is. 
   


5. Winners: I never look at blog stats, how many views I'm getting, or how many comments I'm logging. I never use SEO keywords or any of that. This is truly a hobby blog. But, for the purposes of this post, I did look up the all-time top 3 posts and they are all from the first few years (apparently, I peaked early.) The bronze medal goes to On Freezing Indian Food (2011), the silver medal goes to A to Z of Marathi food (2006), and...drumroll...the gold medal goes to Pav bhaji recipe (2005). 
   


6. Hype: Cooking is a big and necessary part of my life. Preparing family meals and everything that goes with it- grocery shopping, meal planning, kitchen management- is an endless, relentless, time-consuming job. The blog hypes me up to try new things and record what I'm making. It turns a daily chore into a fun project of sorts. 


7. Features: What started as a food blog has increasingly morphed into something much broader in scope as my life and interests changed. Books, crafting, parenting, fitness- many things in my life are represented here. The blog fits my unofficial life motto: "Get excited and do stuff." Just as important is what's not on here. For instance, I realized early on that I don't really care about food photography or recording recipes step by step. Photos are added here and there for illustration. 


8. Stamina. Writing posts for decades has helped me to be comfortable with the dreaded writer's block and to work around it. The discipline that it takes to put something down, no matter how terrible the first draft, has helped me in other areas of life, including the technical/scientific writing that I do quite often in my professional life. I am not afraid of a blank page or a blank screen. Blogging builds writing muscles.


9. Flow: On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes I sit down to write a post and the words just tumble out effortlessly. It is that "flow state" of being completely absorbed in a task- rare and special. Occasionally, I'll read one of my old posts and think- did I really write this? LOL
   


10. Diary: Yes, I do read old blog posts now and then. Usually, it is when I search the blog for some recipe that I've made before. But this blog is more than my online recipe diary. It is very much a diary of my life and is full of memories and slice-of-life glimpses of some of my most precious years- what I think will be the "good old days". 
    


11. Projects: I would love to turn some of my blog projects into book projects, whether that's proper published books, self-published e-books, or just a manuscript that I write using R markdown. Three of my favorite projects have been the A-Z of Marathi Food, the A-Z of Indian Vegetables, and my ongoing Moments of Fitness. Right now, time is my biggest challenge in bringing this dream to life as I work full-time and have school-aged kids. I was also working through the United Tastes project- cooking dishes from all 50 states- on Instagram, abandoned it halfway, and would love to finish it sometime. 


12. Escape: In my posts, I try not to comment much on news and world events, other than what's happening in my little life. There is so much suffering, tragedy, injustice, chaos in this world. In real life, the news usually has me somewhere between bewildered and devastated. But I save my hand-wringing and editorializing for my long-suffering spouse and friends. This blog is my escape- a mundane, cozy, dream world full of domestic simplicity and the excitement of stacks of books to read and new recipes to try. “Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated.” - Fred Rogers


13. Comfort: Recently, a few readers have shared that this is their comfort blog and it moves me deeply to know this. I am glad to host a space of comfort in a world of hard edges. As it is, I don't fit into this world of wanting more and more, of ruthlessness and winning and disruption and being a boss lady, whatever that is. None of it resonates with me at all. I'm happy to carve out this quiet corner of the Internet to just be. 
    


14. Words: Long form blogging is the only think I've stuck with. Over the years, I've tried some other forms of content sharing like the photo-centric Instagram but it did not endure. I never did get into micro-blogging or podcasting or video blogging. Trends have changed completely, several times over in 20 years but I like words more than images and audio and I'm happy to stay right here. 


15. History: The early years of blogging were magical as I was part of a big and vibrant global community. I got to see food blogging from almost the start and through its heyday. Food blogging democratized the voices of home cooks everywhere. I learned so much about regional cooking, food from all over the world, family recipes, the many talents beyond just cooking and baking- like writing, photography, food styling- that lurk in ordinary homes. We would do these challenges and it stretched my skills beyond anything I could have done on my own. Occasionally, I run across a sentiment online about food blogs that is along the lines of- "I don't need your life story. Shut up and give me the recipe". It is a sad and ungracious response to the generosity of food bloggers, and let me tell you that food bloggers (I know so many of them) are some of the most generous people you will meet anywhere, online or in real life. 


16. Journey: Many bloggers from those early days took their blogs to the next level, monetizing them and leveraging them into successful careers. They are now food personalities, cookbook authors, professional bloggers. I did...nothing. Part of it was a lack of interest for doing so, and part of it was the fact that I was on visas at the time that precluded any other sources of income. There are pros and cons to everything. On rare occasions, it feels like a missed opportunity. But mostly, it feels really good to keep writing whatever I like without any external pressures, to keep cooking and baking as "real hobbies" and to keep this space simple and unfussy and low-maintenance. 


17. Gain: I've never made a penny off my blog. I've gotten free cookbooks to review, and once, a few spice extracts, but it has always been, by design, an ad-free zone. In terms of non-tangible things I've gotten from the blog, including inside knowledge and friends from all over the world and a working knowledge of html, I am very rich indeed. The blog adds meaning and purpose to my life. 


18. Values: The blog fits my core values well. The biggest one is lifelong learning- the blog gives me a venue to share and record tidbits of what I've learned.  A second one is service- I love being useful and providing something, whether it is a good recipe or pointing out some good media. A third is well-being- I get to promote wholesome food and an active, purposeful life that I strive towards.


19. Connection: One Hot Stove has been an enduring way for me to connect with people around the globe. The comments were and are a big part of the blog. On many posts, you'll find the best nuggets of wisdom in the comment section. For my part, I read and respond to every comment and email. When people tell me that they make one of my recipes or that they read and loved a book I recommended, I am amazed and grateful to have touched their lives in a small way. "I am a part of all that I have met"- Tennyson.


20. Reciprocity: I've always maintained that I write the blog for myself, but there's no doubt that it is kept alive by the wonderful people who stop by and read it. To YOU, gentle reader- whoever you are, wherever you are- I send you my love and gratitude. ❤️ These lines of poetry that I read recently capture this feeling perfectly, that being creative is a social process--
    
    You make the thing because you love the thing
    and you love the thing because someone else loved it
    enough to make you love it.
    ~ from An Horatian Notion by Thomas Lux (read the whole poem here)
    

If you feel like it, drop me a comment below. Tell me something, anything- your favorite recipe on this blog, your favorite feature, how long you've read OHS, what you'd like to read more of, share something about yourself, or a favorite book/poem/song that you think I would like. 

Cookies and a Veggie Bowl, Community, Scheduling

Last week, I was looking for a small birthday gift for a family friend, and thought of making a batch of cookies- they are consumable (this person is downsizing and doesn't need a single thing), and a good gift for someone with a hefty sweet tooth. I wanted cookies with a snail theme (snails because of an inside joke) and thought of making pinwheel cookies which resemble a snail shell. 

My son and I made them together on the MLK holiday using this recipe. Our chocolate dough was very light (I need a darker cocoa, perhaps) but the recipe was a success. The cookies looked cute and tasted great, soft and rich with two distinct flavors. I've wanted to try making pinwheel cookies for a while; they will be great in my next holiday cookie line-up. 

Another birthday gift I made a few weeks ago to mail out to a family member- cashew shortbread cookies, again cashews were a pun/ inside joke. I used this recipe, and it is lovely. The dough comes together quickly in a food processor. I did need a few additional spoonfuls of milk to pull the dough together. The resulting cookie is barely sweet, but rich and tasty with a hot beverage. It is a good cookie to mail out as long as it packed well; it stays fresh for days. 

A final bake from last week- pumpkin swirl bread from a King Arthur Flour recipe. I found this cute pan for two bucks at a consignment sale last year and am determined to use it a few times before spring arrives! The recipe is great and makes a tasty, plush loaf. It was demolished at a lunch with friends. I used AP flour instead of cake flour. 

* * *

On Friday, come dinner time, I was feeling absolutely uninspired to cook. But we had a lot of veggies in the fridge. This was my fairly-low-effort dinner:

1. Two sheet pans, one with cubed potato and sweet potato, and the other with diced cauliflower, carrot, yellow pepper. Add some salt and pepper and olive oil and roast all the veggies. 
2. Meanwhile, bake some frozen nuggets (I used Quorn nuggets) in the toaster oven. 
3. Make some massaged kale salad. 
4. Mix tahini and lemon juice and hot sauce to make a dressing. 
5. Assemble a bowl and serve- veggies, kale, drizzle of dressing, nuggets.

It was a great meal in the end!

* * *

I'm not a particularly social person but I am community-minded, and one thing that has always made me happy is volunteering for various things. I like to feel useful. Doing big social projects, sitting on nonprofit boards and such is totally beyond me, but I'm a great little worker bee when entrusted with short and specific tasks. With our kids getting older, I have a little more time to volunteer occasionally and this past week brought me three fun opportunities. 

Monday was the MLK holiday and here, we are encouraged to celebrate it as "a day on, not a day off" and participate in some volunteer activity. So I spent a couple of hours in a warehouse of a local literacy advocacy organization packing books that will be distributed to kids to fight against summer slide (learning loss when kids are out of school.) 

All week, while drinking my morning tea, I read and evaluated ten papers for a statewide high school science competition. There are many bright kids out there, y'all. 

Over the weekend, there was a marathon in town and my running buddy K and I decided to volunteer at a water station. We run many races and appreciate the water fairies who keep us hydrated and cheer us on, and here was a chance to be on the other side. NE Georgia has had unusually cold weather and marathon morning was absolutely freezing (teens and 20s F.) The water we were pouring into cups started freezing into lumps of ice! Yikes! I almost lost my toes to frostbite; meanwhile, there were a few people running in shorts. The runners were great, very inspiring as always. 

I also benefited from someone else's volunteer generosity. A local dance instructor announced a free 90-minute contemporary dance class, open to anyone in the community at all experience levels. I signed up and enjoyed it thoroughly. Contemporary dance is a style of dance that combines elements from other genres like jazz, ballet, and modern dance. There is a lot of freedom of movement, fluidity, and improvisation as dancers use their bodies to tell a story or express emotions. I love watching dance performances but have always felt like I don't "get" contemporary dance the way I appreciate ballet or hip-hop or other dance forms. Well, I understand it a whole lot more now, and it was a rich experience that I'm grateful for. 

* * *

Today's moment of fitness is all about the power of scheduling workouts. It is a simple but powerful way to prioritize fitness in a busy life (and not just make it an afterthought) by adding it to your calendar, just like you would add the other important commitments and obligations such as work meetings, teacher conferences, birthday parties and dentist appointments. 

Doing this reduces decision fatigue- you don't have to make the daily decision to exercise and then struggle to fit it in. It is already planned and present on your calendar. As you keep scheduling workouts, you create a routine and help build a habit. Fitness becomes an expected part of the day and you can mentally gear up for it, and prepare for it beforehand, by setting out clothes, etc. 

For me, personally, I live and die by my calendar and scheduling workouts is a must to keep me on track. Through trial and error, I've found that I realistically can only exercise in the mornings before work. Scheduling workouts during lunchtime or after work has absolutely failed for me- so scheduling and adjusting the schedule can help you find what works for real in your life. 

Here's a mini challenge for you- if you don't already have workouts scheduled in your calendar, take a few minutes to do it now. This may be your digital calendar in your email app, or a paper calendar or a whiteboard in your kitchen- whatever you use to run your life. Your workout could be at home or outside, 10 minutes or 60 minutes, every day or once or twice a week- it doesn't matter. Even a 10 minute walk can be penciled into the calendar. 

If you're looking for short workouts that can fit into a busy schedule, here are two good ones from NYT (full access gift articles): a 10 minute full body routine and a 10 minute workout to improve mobility. 

One week from now- One Hot Stove will be 20 years old! 

Breakfast Burritos, Snakes & Ladders

I'm a big breakfast person and can eat breakfast foods at just about any meal. Over the winter break we were out running errands one morning and stopped at a local burrito place. We got warm, foil-wrapped burritos with beans, eggs, cheese, potato, salsa, some onions and jalapeños for good measure. The combination of ingredients was hearty and kept me full for hours.

Since then, I've been making breakfast burritos on the regular, and always for dinner, somehow. Trader Joe's sells something called soyrizo, a spiced vegan chorizo substitute. It is flavorful enough to be the main flavor in the burrito. No other spices are needed and it is just about assembly, making this a good busy-night meal. If you have a few boiled potatoes and some beans (cooked ahead, or canned) on hand, it comes together very quickly. 

Breakfast burritos

• Burrito filling (any combination or all of these)
• Soyrizo, sautéed with chopped boiled potatoes
• Scrambled eggs
• Pinto or black beans, cooked 
• Assembly
• Burrito-sized tortillas, microwaved for a few seconds to make them pliable
• Top with fillings (see above)
• Optional- avocado, cheese, green onions, cabbage slaw, salsa
• Roll tightly and warm up the assembled tortilla by microwaving or heating on a pan

It is such a substantial meal. When we pick up our daughter after a long day of school immediately followed by dance class, I love bringing her this burrito wrapped in some foil. She can eat it in the car and it is much more filling and nutritious than typical snacks we would pack for the car ride. 

On the subject of breakfast, here are some pics (taken over Nov-Dec) of what my daughter has been eating for breakfast before school. Avocado toast is a favorite. 

* * *

This week, I read a novel called Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis. Set aboard a luxury spaceship that moves across the galaxy (a la cruise ships on this planet), it meets two prompts for the POPsugar reading challenge 2025 #3: A book about space tourism and #27: A book set at a luxury resort. It was a pretty enjoyable and quick read even if the plot lost me in a couple of places. 

The author weaves in stories of each of the characters that make up the crew of this once grand, now fraying hotel spaceship. There is a spy story and a mystery. At its core, this book is a tribute to the service industry and all the people who work on their feet. Do I recommend this book? Not as much as I recommend another space romp, Becky Chambers' Wayfarers books. But it is always fun to pick up something different from my usual tastes. 

* * *

Today's moment of fitness is all about ups and downs, a reminder that as we embark on a fitness program or start exercising in some form, it is never a linear journey. I imagine it to be a game of snakes and ladders (or chutes and ladders as it is often called in the US.) where we walk on the game board as we go through our days and weeks and months. And every so often, we'll land on a square that is a snake and it sends our fitness on a downward trajectory- common ones that most people will encounter are injury, illness, a family emergency, travel, caregiving. Some are short snakes, a temporary disruption, while others are long and can set us back significantly. 

Also, happily, sometimes we encounter ladders that boost our fitness in some way- maybe we find an exercise buddy, or move to a place with better access to a fitness facility, or we rediscover a childhood passion for dance. Just gaining knowledge and competency can lead to a big progression. 

The thing to remember is that we keep playing the game, keep on keeping on. Expect the ups and downs and don't be rattled by them. Just get back to it when you can. There's no destination, only a journey that can turn out to be quite interesting if you roll the dice and keep playing. 

This is what I told myself recently. I had a cold in the first week of January, and while I felt sick only for two or three days, the congestion lasted for a couple of weeks.When I went on my first 4 mile run in a couple of weeks, I was dismayingly slow and had to take many more walking breaks than usual. But that's just life. I remind myself to focus on process (getting out and putting one foot in front of the other) and not product (how fast, how far) and take each day as it comes. 

Snow days, 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!