Joining the Dance

I posted a Craigslist ad two nights ago. I've long wanted to learn ballroom dancing, and decided to take the plunge. So my ad stated that I was looking for a man (who was "patient, friendly, and who had good hygiene") interested in doing the same, and only dancing. I made sure to mention I was African American, and 56. The result? I've received 4 or 5 responses, most accompanied with photos. None of them look like Scott Hastings (from the very funny Strictly Ballroom, trailer below), but I don't look like Fran, either.

I guess I didn't expect responses so quickly (or at all)? That, alone, is valuable information.

Food and Money

I've budgeted $580 a month for groceries--not food, groceries. Where did I get that figure? Out of the air--I had no idea what I was or should be spending on food, or what other people spent, or what that would mean on a daily basis. It just seemed like an "good" number. This past month (according to the wonderful mint.com) I spent $616 on groceries, or $36 over budget.
Now, not all of it went to groceries. I frequently get cash from my checking account ("cash back") when shopping, and have only now started splitting those amounts apart from my total (yes, mint.com lets you do that). I also buy non-food items (e.g., cleaning supplies) at the grocery store, too. So let's say that $100.00 of that $616 was for cash and dish soap. I still spent $516 on groceries last month, or $16 a day.
That is incredible to me: how do I spend $16 daily on food?!? I do eat only organic foods and dairy products, and lots of non-factory farmed beef and fish. But $16 a day?!? Goodness. As I think about the food I eat on a daily basis, this level of spending just doesn't seem possible.
It is a lot of money, too, when compared to the cost of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's four food plans (as of December 2011). The monthly cost of the "liberal" (read: most expensive) of the four for one woman in my age group is $291.00. Granted, those plans have grains galore in them, and my food has none.
I'm not sure how to think about this. I need and want to reduce my monthly expenses, and obviously food is a big one. I'll be collecting my receipts this month to see where my grocery dollars go. Stay tuned.

The Familiar, Anew

I've been tracking my food and nutritional intake for the last few days, and can't help but marvel at how valuable the information is.
At the same time, I'm also feeling a growing and familiar resistance to capturing this information (including the measurement of the quantities of foods I consume). I wrote about this in August (Longing to Linger Longer in the Vague). It is as if I want to rebel against myself for having to be this conscious, for being required to know what goes in my mouth and how it affects me.
A few minutes ago I was making a shopping list, and checked out my blueberry supply. Now, blueberries are a wonderful food, and mostly carbohydrate. I have been keeping my carbs to about 30 40 grams daily and, to do that, one really needs to be conscious and careful about what goes in the mouth.
So what do I do? I sneak a forkful of berries, and feel like I'd gotten away with something. Who am I sneaking this from? Myself. Who am I harming/not treating well by not measuring the food? Myself.
It is as if there is a collision between old behavior I developed growing up and the needs I have as an adult trying to live differently with food. Put differently, I don't need to rebel or sneak food from myself, yet somehow I gain an emotional kick from coloring outside the nutritional lines, as it were.

Why Is Today Different From Any Other Day?

Today I:

• Tracked and wrote down all of my food.
• Entered the data into my nutritional food log.
• Ate no chocolate. 
• Kept my carbs to 40 grams.
• Am marveling.

Stuck Between the "I Know That" and the Not Doing

What we want is "how to." And the more you diet and the more you struggle, the more you know all the answers...Most of us can look at a buffet on a ship and tell you how many points everything is on that buffet. We've got "how to" down...
So if "how to" is the issue--how to be joyful, how to have more meaning and purpose in our lives--then we'd be done. But "how to" is not working.
The problem is bigger than "how to." The problem is about what gets in the way of implementing what we know.

--Brene Brown

 This quote certainly resonates for me. I've made lots of recent changes to my food, mostly boosting the amount of fat I'm eating, and reducing, even more, the amount of carbs I consume. Well, that's the plan, anyway.

Here's the reality: I'm still eating too many carbs, and not enough fat. And, instead of tracking the amount of carbs, protein, and fat I'm eating on a daily basis, I do, but don't write the information down. In fact,  I solemnly weigh the food and track the portions in my head. Not writing them down, of course, means all that solemnness goes to waste, and I am not capturing information I need that will help me meet my goals and intentions. I'm not doing the things I know "how to" do and the things I need to move fully and successfully into this new (ketogenic) way of eating.

And it isn't about this particular food plan. I do this (what my mother used to call half-stepping) with a lot of my eating, and around a lot of others elements of my life.

Brown talks a bit in this video about the need--the crying pressing need we all have, in this culture--to begin talking about the things that get in the way. I am fortunate in that I am able to do that in my Women & Food group, and with most of my friends. So it isn't (for me, anyway) the opportunity to have those conversations that bring about change. 

In another video, Brown talks a bit about shame, and speaks a line early on that resonates for me: 

There was a part of me that was working very hard at staying small, staying right under the radar.

 The curious bit, of course, is that I am staying small by staying big (though I now weigh the least I have in years) and not doing the things I know will help me achieve my goals--and remaining right under the radar of success.

What is getting in the way of me implementing what I know?

The Fix

So much of this process is about learning myself, and being with foods (and ways of eating them) with which I can be at ease. Ease has seldom been a component of my relationship with food, myself, or much else, for that matter.

Buddhists talk a lot about how we humans want certainty, predictability, a stable ground on which to stand. And, they tell us, there is no such thing: Nothing is constant, the ground always shifts, and it is our hunger for that permanence which causes suffering. That we seek to fix: ourselves in time, the supply of whatever it is that gives us comfort or pleasure, our relationships with others and ourselves, and the way in which we view the world.

The word “fix” has been resonating for me lately. Of course I think about the way alcoholics and other addicts fix with their drug of choice. I’ve been thinking, too, of those delicate glass slides in biology classes, each with a specimen of something or other ‘fixed’ in an eternal, unchanging marriage.

And of course I think of the scores of self-improvement fixes on which I’ve embarked, and the driving way I’ve tried to fix friends and strangers by imparting (imposing) my opinions on them. So many years invested in holding ground, so many fears.

I don’t know why I was surprised to see this play out as I’ve been embarking on this new way of eating. Although I’m now eating few of the foods I used to, my range of choices is still small. I purchased the first fresh figs in my life just weeks ago. Before purchasing a new kind of squash recently, I looked around as if I was going to commit some radical act. I bought some leeks and circled them warily (as if they were space aliens: do you come in peace?) for weeks before cooking them. 

Yes, I'm learning. I'm judging myself a lot less, and a lot less harshly, and that is all to the good.

Embracing the Ugly Meat

For most of my life I've preferred to eat meat that looked as little like meat as possible: nothing resembling a body part or organ, no visible blood or fat, and no large blood vessels, hanging skin, or connective tissue. To me, meat with any of these elements was ugly and undesirable meat.

Moreover, I didn’t like meat to have much of a taste, or flavor. Any that did I called, “too rich” or gamy. When given a choice, I consistently and insistently requested the “breast” or “white” meat.

Moreover, from an early age I looked down on those who chose the ugly meat. I remember being silent and disgusted as my mother ate chicken hearts, livers, and butts (which we called “the parson’s nose”), or gnawed on and split small bones between her teeth, then sucked out the marrow. I would swear to myself that I would never eat such things when I grew up. And I didn’t.

For decades, I preferred not to handle, or even smell, raw meat I was a vegetarian for many years, telling others and myself that eating formerly living, sentient beings was abhorrent. I now know I didn’t eat meat for years because of my dislike of meat in the raw. 

The Now

Today I eat lots of meat, often three or more times a day. I would prefer not to eat meat. I've tried plant-based protein (including tofu and other soy products; nuts; and grains such as quinoa), and they don’t "work" for me nearly as well as meat. That is the fact: I would prefer that it not be.

After making my food changes in July, I eat mostly meat and leafy vegetables, and spend a lot of time thinking about, handling, and cooking raw meat. As I've written about before, I give thanks at each meal to all the beings that contribute to my health, especially the animals killed so I could eat parts of them.

For months, eating meat has meant reducing mounds of generic “ground beef" into stacks of patties. In addition to being easily measurable, ground beef frees me from contemplating what part of a cow provided a particular mass of raw flesh.

That’s all changed in the last few months. I’ve adopted a couple of elements of the gut and psychology syndrome (GAPS) food plan, especially the use of sauerkraut as a probiotic, and eating meat I’d formerly rejected.

The GAPers believe that “[t]he gelatinous soft tissues around the bones and the bone marrow provide some of the best healing remedies for the gut lining.” That means marrow, connective tissue, and rings of fat. Hamburger patties just don't cut it—cue the ugly meat.

The other day I bought two chunks of cow leg, known in the trade as center-cut shanks). When I opened the brown-paper wrapped package, I saw what a three-inch section of my own leg would look like (without the skin). There was no way of avoiding my kinship with that cow.

A slice of your leg would look like this, too.

Cooking ugly meat is different from cooking its cuter cousins. With ground beef, fish fillets, or chicken breasts, the cook just warms up the toaster oven, pops ‘em in, and waits about 10 or 12 minutes for them to cook.
Ugly meat takes time, and several steps. Take the shanks. Because leg muscles are well used, the meat will be tough unless cooked for a long time in liquid at a low heat (known as braising).

I first browned the shanks (in bacon grease), took them out of the pan, and put them on a plate. Then I browned sliced shallots, garlic, and shitake mushrooms in the same pan, along with some beef broth, apple cider vinegar, and spices. I then transferred everything to a covered Dutch oven, and cooked the contents in the over for 2 hours at 325 degrees.

After years of avoiding ugly meat, I was in for quite the taste shock when I ate the shanks. After not eating “dark” meat for decades, the full-bodied, over-rich, and gamy taste of the first bites of center-cut shank gagged me. I’m used to it now, but it was definitely an acquired taste.

Just now, I ate one shank with some steamed bok choy and snow peas. I’m taking this excursion into the World of Ugly Meats quite slowly. I’ve made shanks a few times, and baked barbecued pork ribs. Don’t expect posts about braised trotters, brains, or cow tongue anytime soon.