bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Fajitas.

    We grilled steak for dinner last night, and since I defrosted a 1.4-lb sirloin, I kept a big chunk of it back for the next day.  Part went into Mark's lunch, but the remaining six ounces became skillet fajitas.  This is a great way to stretch a little bit of meat to feed the whole family.  Sliced onions and bell peppers, plus tomatoes either fresh or canned, are required; but the rest of the veggies?  It's clean-out-the-crisper time. Tonight's fajitas included mushrooms, red cabbage, and thinly sliced carrots. 

    Do you really need me to tell you how?  Stir-fry the peppers, onions, mushrooms if you got 'em, anything you want to get caramelized, and any hard veggies (e.g. carrots) until they're tender.  Stir in a few cloves of minced garlic and some oregano and cumin, and maybe a minced chile if you have one.  Then put the soft veggies in, with water — maybe a half cup — and some salsa from a jar — not much, a couple of tablespoons.  Let it bubble till the liquid is mostly gone and stir in what little meat you've got.  If it doesn't look substantial enough you can always throw in a can of well-drained beans of any sort.  Warm up some corn tortillas and you've got a meal.  If you happen to have sour cream and guacamole and chopped lettuce and cilantro, so much the better, but these things are not at all necessary.

    I boiled up some plain turnip greens to have on the side; no reason, it just feels weird by now not to have a plain vegetable.  They're pretty good with salsa, did you know that?   And I also sliced oranges into half-moons.  I don't know why, but sliced citrus fruit always seems like the perfect side dish for salsa-based dishes.

    I had two tortillas wrapped around the fajita filling, and two helpings of greens, and two orange slices.  I finished off my day with a quarter-ounce of Dagoba dark chocolate with chiles and cacao nibs, and then a nice hot cup of decaf.

    I did not count calories for this meal.  When I choose to count calories, recalibrate my portion sizes and so on, I generally don't do it through dinner unless I have some reason to be exceptionally careful.  Rather, I count everything else, keeping it low enough to have a comfortable margin going into dinner.  Then I just try not to overdo it, relying on my eight-and-a-half-inch plate, and declining second helpings.

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  • Seven almonds.

    It took me a while to get used to the idea of a single-digit number of tiny things as a snack.   I do it almost without thinking now. 

    Assuming you've already gotten control over the number of snacks you're having daily — I allow myself exactly two — a decent rule of thumb for controlling the size of snacks, especially snacks of unknown composition (are those baked or fried tortilla chips?) is to have one ounce.  Even if you were to eat one ounce of pure oil, you'd only be set back about 250 calories.  That's not insignificant, and you'd better not do it every day, but it's not going to break the bank, so to speak.  Think of it as a ceiling.

    Almonds are another one of my talismans.  It is hard to believe now, but not long ago I did not like them very much.  I had tried to like them, because they're way up top of the "good for you" nut list.  I tried to switch from peanut butter to almond butter.  It never worked very well.  

    But after I started adding nuts, a few at a time, into my snacks, I found myself choosing almonds more and more often.   Now they are the first nut I reach for.  I am beginning to think I should buy stock in Blue Diamond.  I keep these in my car cup holder as my emergency snack.   It has measurements on the side, as if I needed to be told; by now I know that there are about 24 almonds in an ounce.

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    1 comment on Seven almonds.

  • Still there?

    Just checking.

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    5 comments on Still there?

  • In-the-mood pasta salad.

    I still remember that the very first week I started losing weight, I made myself a giant batch of a particular pasta salad and ate it for lunch every day that week.  I guess it seemed easier than figuring out what to eat, and how many calories in my lunch, five different times.

    In honor of that first week — maybe this will be my last week!  – I am returning to that same pasta salad.  I figure this to be approximately eight servings at 275-300 calories each; each serving is a "heaping cup" or 180 grams.

    • 8 ounces dry whole wheat elbow macaroni
    • 4 ounces your favorite expensive salami (I like the herb-coated kind), diced small
    • 4 ounces mozzarella or monterey jack cheese, diced small
    • 2 large yellow bell peppers, sliced thinly
    • About 16 or 20 cherry tomatoes, quartered 
    • 5 stalks celery, thinly sliced 
    • 1/4 cup olive oil 
    • Salt and pepper 
    • Oregano, unless you have the herb-coated salami  

    Boil the pasta till al dente and drain.  Toss the pasta with the oil, cheese, salami, and vegetables.  Salt and pepper and oregano to taste.  Best at room temperature.

    Low-carb version:  Halve the pasta and use Dreamfield's brand low GI pasta; double the salami and cheese.   It's very nice.  

    You can certainly stretch it by adding more pasta, up to a pound, but it won't be nearly so vegetabley if you do.  You'll probably also need to add a couple extra tablespoons of oil.

    This is my lunch today, along with a few sections of grapefruit.

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    3 comments on In-the-mood pasta salad.

  • 8 AM in the kitchen of good and evil.

    Of course, the children wanted hot buttered cinnamon toast for breakfast, and of course, they left a bunch of crusts on their plates.  Sometimes they come back and eat more; I often feel I should leave the plates out for a while to give the kids a chance to finish.  There is a problem with this, of course.

    I am a recovering crust-nibbler.  Here is my slightly ridiculous coping strategy:  I imagine that the impulse to eat those leftover crusts is not from me.  I imagine that the food scraps themselves are talking to me.  Don't waste us!  Eat us up!


    As long as the food lies there quietly and does not say anything, I can leave it there.  But the instant it starts suggesting to me how  tasty it would be, and lecturing me on frugality, I know it is Evil Talking Food and I scoop it right up and throw it in the trash.  Get thee behind me, bacon!

    (What?  Your kids don't leave bacon on their plates?  You see the peculiar difficulties I have to work with.)

    OK, maybe the anthropomorphism isn't necessary.  The point is, when I feel the impulse to nibble the leftovers, I take that as a signal that I must throw them out (or otherwise get them out of sight and out of mind).  And I do it right away before I can change my mind.  

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  • Schedule questions.

    The more you encourage me to write about The Last Three Pounds (note:  new category), the easier it will be for me.  No kidding.  Those of you who are sick of reading about my diet, think of this as the pledge drive.  Keep me obsessed just a little longer, and then we'll go back to regularly scheduled programming!  (Except on the hour and half hour.)

    MrsDarwin: "Can I ask about the time frame for all this? I'm embarking on a weight loss routine, so I'm curious to know how you structure your evenings at the gym."


    Admit it, Mrs. D.  It's the bridesmaid dress, isn't it.


    We belong to the local YMCA.  I live a mile from the closest branch.  In January , Mark and I resolved that I would swim twice a week.   I shoot for 40 minutes in the water, and if I really hurry in the locker room I can get in and out in one hour five minutes.  I began with the 400-yard workouts here and worked my way up to 1200 yards.  Three different 1200-yd workouts, plus a speed trial that I can complete in 20 minutes if I'm in a hurry, are written in a waterproof notebook that I take to the pool's edge.  Each time, I swim the one that feels right for the day, but once I've picked it, I follow the workout exactly.


    I decided not to try to exercise more often, or any other way, until "I swim twice a week" had become a firm habit.  


    I swim Mondays and Thursdays, usually in the evening.  


    On Thursdays, I plan a light dinner that's done ahead of time.  The kids and I eat a substantial snack around four o'clock, and we try to have the table set and the cleanup done.  At 5:45 we meet Mark at the Y.  We drop the 2yo off at the child care room, and Mark takes the boys to their swim lessons while I head to the locker room.  Mark can do about 20-25 minutes of weightlifting while the boys are in swim lessons before he has to fetch them.  I'm usually done and showered and changed about the same time the boys are.  We go right home and are sitting down to dinner around 7:20.   


    Mondays there's no swim lesson schedule to follow.  We decide each week (when I plan the meals) how we're going to make it work.  Often the schedule's similar to Thursday, but about an hour earlier, and with the boys joining the 2yo in child care (Oscar generally brings schoolwork to do).  Other times I go by myself after supper, Mark having exercised at work before coming home.  


    (If Monday evening exercise is impossible for some reason, I will swim Sunday night, Monday very early morning, or Tuesday very early morning; or I will take the kids midday Monday, but I use the treadmill if Mark's not there because it's a pain to have the child care staff come get me out of the pool if the kids need me.)

    Where does Mark's workout fit in?  Well, first of all, he's been running and biking to and from work; that takes care of a lot of cardio.  He also lifts weights, and can do it at the Y or in his workplace gym.  He's got enough options that he generally works around the rest of us.


    We developed this routine over months.  My advice is to make one commitment at a time, and make each one a commitment that you really can stick to, and don't add on until the previous commitment is a thoroughly ingrained habit.  The first habit was a few years ago, literally because of doctor's orders:  "Mark works out three times a week."  Not too long after that came a once-a-week "Family Gym Night" including the swim lessons and incorporating one of Mark's workouts.  We added "Erin swims on Family Gym Night and on one other night each week" in January.  In the spring, Mark decided to start running and biking to work, which actually made the workout schedule a lot easier because we weren't trying to fit his cardio in.


    Ten months later, I am starting to add a third, non-swimming exercise session to my week.  

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    2 comments on Schedule questions.

  • Boiled egg, tomato juice, and black coffee.

    I have always liked this breakfast, but by now it's a kind of talisman.  It puts me in the right state of mind. 

    I have three states of mind and being now, so to speak.

    1.  where I lived every day before May 13 of this year,  even when I was trying to lose weight:  the place where more food promises to make me feel happier.  I've visited a couple of times since then, enough to know I don't want to stay for long.
    2.  where I lived almost every day after May 13 and up to a few weeks ago, powerful and aware, choosing on purpose to feel hunger; hunger, my physical therapy, my cure.  
    3. where I'm planning to settle, the place of stability, a place I don't know and don't understand.


    The boiled egg first thing in the morning is a signal I send to my self:  This day is for choosing.  Get ready.

    There's a ritual to the boiled egg.  I come downstairs, I collect my materials.  The tiny saucepan my mother-in-law gave me.  Two teaspoons.  Egg cup.  Small plate.  Salt and pepper.   The brown egg.  A child's juice glass.  I put the saucepan of water on to boil before I start the coffee.  I wait, warming my hands over the rising steam.  When the water boils I put egg on spoon, slip it into the water carefully (don't crack the shell) and set the timer.  Six minutes later, I turn off the flame, spoon the egg out and drop it point-down into my egg cup.  The egg cup goes in the center of my plate next to the clean spoon.  A cup of hot coffee, tomato juice to the rim of my glass, the salt and pepper grinders to the side.  I tap all around the shell, a quarter of the way down, with the edge of my spoon, then slice it off and lay it aside.  

    In the perfect egg (for me) the white is all solid, the yolk a viscous fluid.  I salt and pepper the sliced-off top and eat that first, scraping it out of the cupped fragment of shell; then I turn to the rest of the egg in the cup, alternately salting and spooning till the shell is empty.  I drain my glass and pick up my coffee cup, warming my hands. 

    Boiled eggs aren't for everyone, I suppose.  But do you have a magical breakfast, a breakfast that marks the beginning of a sort of day — a "good day," a "work day," a "busy day," a "calm day" — some kind of day you're hoping to attain?  Is there a breakfast that says to you, "There, that's one thing — one thing that went exactly right — what's next?  Bring it on!"  

    If you haven't got such a breakfast, I recommend you come up with one.  It may not be a boiled egg — maybe it's a big bowl of oatmeal, maybe it's a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk (for me that would be the start of a "comfort myself with food" day — bad idea), maybe it's an omelette aux fines herbes, maybe it's breakfast at the all-night place up the street in the wee hours before the rest of the family wakes up, just you with the Sunrise Special and the early edition, maybe it's a particular brand of granola bar, maybe it's a yogurt smoothie.  

    It doesn't matter what it is.  If you haven't got one, then you can design it.  Make it a ritual, make it regular, and make it yours.

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  • What does “traditionally” mean again?

    In a NYT article about family caregivers for ill and disabled relatives:

    Various surveys have found that 20 million to 50 million family members in the United States provide care that has traditionally been performed by nurses and social workers. Family caregivers supply about 80 percent of the care for ill or disabled relatives, and the need for their services will only rise as the population ages and modern medicine improves its ability to prolong lives.


    Do nurses and social workers "traditionally" care for the ill and elderly, and are only now being supplanted by family members and friends?  


    Or do families "traditionally" care for their own?  And what about that 80 percent figure?   Is that higher or lower than in the past?  The article doesn't say.

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  • In a way, I’m already there.

    Up and down, up and down.  I have been within a few pounds of goal for weeks now.  I keep inching a little closer and swinging back up.  Once I was within a pound.  

    "It's odd that I'm so close and I'm not mustering the willpower to push through to the end," I told Mark over coffee after dinner.  "I guess I'm a little tired of the privations.  And I'm craving sweets like crazy and don't know why, or what way to respond is best.  And I keep thinking 'aaaah, it's not such a big deal, I'm pretty close anyway,' and that makes it hard to deny myself, well, anything.  It doesn't seem important anymore."

    He looked at me and said thoughtfully, "You know, maybe 'the last three pounds' are the most important ones.  I mean, if you're going to make 108 your target weight.  Aren't you within the range of weight that's supposed to trigger you going from maintenance mode to weight loss mode?"

    "Yes, I guess I am.  I'm at the point where, if I met goal and then I saw this weight one morning, I'd say 'I've put on a couple of pounds and I'd better cut back and take it off.'"

    "So… what you've got left to lose is something you need to be able to do.  Quickly."

    He's right.  All that's left… is something I ought to be able to lose cheerfully and quickly as a matter of course, because (if things go well) I can expect to lose it repeatedly, as part of normal maintenance.  I'd better start practicing.

    Three more pounds.  You with me?  Just a little bit longer?

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  • The old me would have sat in the car with the kids, the heat running, and waited for rescue.

    Garlic-lemon egg salad was chilling quietly in the fridge, sliced red cabbage rested under plastic wrap on my counter ready to steam in the microwave, washed mixed greens breathed quietly in my salad spinner, and the bread machine was set to produce a loaf of "French" in ninety minutes.  I was driving to the Y with the kids; Mark was to meet me there on his bike; I was to swim, he was to lift, the kids were to play in the daycare and Oscar was to finish his schoolwork, and then we were to go home and eat the dinner.

    My left front tire had other plans.   

    I called Mark from the side of the road. "I'm already halfway there.  It's not dark yet.  Should I walk the rest of the way with the kids, and we'll deal with it after?  Or should we deal with it now and I'll swim after dinner?  Or –" reluctantly — "I guess I could skip my swim."

    He offered to bike home, get his car, come back, and change my tire.  I know a good deal when I hear one.  "Out of the car, kids!"  It was cold, but we all had coats, and MJ was wearing her new pink socks on her hands (yes, she also had some on her feet).  I locked it up and we walked the several blocks to the Y, where I dropped off the kids and had my swim.

    It wasn't till much later that it even occurred to me that this was a pretty big change from before.  Not that I'm unable to change a tire if I had to (although, since I've never had to do it in the Sienna, it probably would have taken me a while to, for example, extract the spare tire, which rides around outside underneath).  More that, when I realized I had a flat, my first thought was How am I going to get my swim in now?  and not Oh well, I guess I won't be able to or even  Yay!  An excuse not to swim!   

    Not to mention that it immediately seemed like the best solution to walk half a mile in the cold with my three children, one a toddler, crossing busy streets at rush hour in twilight.

    Habit is definitely mutable.

    One reason I'm giving a second look to Jen at Conversion Diary's post from earlier this week about building habits of reflection and prayer.   If I can become a person who exercises two to three times a week, then I can become a person who… well, almost anything that's important.   The confidence it's given me has astonished me.

    It occurs to me that my husband would like me to become a person who remembers to turn the lights off when I leave the room.  Well, maybe I should start there.

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  • Do you get a break?

    I'm asking the other homeschooling moms.  Do you deliberately put any kind of "mom's break" into your day?  One where all the children, not counting little nurslings, are all supposed to go do something and not bother you for a little while, while you take a breather, have a cup of tea, read blogs, eat your lunch, take a nap, or any of that stuff?

    I'm just asking.  I do.  It's at lunch time.  After morning school and morning chores, I feed the kids and then they are allowed to have a "recess" so to speak — sometimes I make them go outside, sometimes I send them to the playroom — about half an hour or 45 minutes total if you count the time the kids are eating.  During that time I eat my lunch and catch up on email and read whatever I feel like.  No, we don't eat together, I don't like what they eat and vice versa. 

     No, I don't miss the family togetherness of lunch time either.  I like my quiet time while everybody digests their food.  They're pretty used to it and don't bother me much until I call them back up for the rest of school work.  We have a "tea snack" together around the tableat 3:30 every day, so I like to think that makes up for the lack of face time at lunch.

    I wonder if I will always have time enough to put that little lunch break into my day.  I only have the one third-grader right now, and a preschooler who's done with his lessons before lunch.  I always gave myself a lunch break, in college and in grad school, and I always felt it helped me attack the afternoon work better than if I skimped on it.   Today I still feel it helps me stay cheerful and connect-able with the kids.  Would I get more "stuff" done if I skipped it?  I don't know.  I'm not exactly in a hurry to try.

    I should add that often I do spend the time "working," even sometimes on school-y stuff like curriculum planning and record keeping, but (a) it's always stuff I choose in the moment — if "I feel like spending 20 minutes working on the family budget", then that's what I do and I still feel like I've relaxed and (b) it's in relative quiet.

    I think the important thing is that I get to concentrate on something.  There are not many things I miss dearly about my old life, but one of the biggies has to be the simple pleasure of concentrating on one or two things for hours at a time.

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  • Polenta in the slow cooker?

    Asked commenters on my last post.  I was similarly skeptical about how well this would work until I tried it.  I think it is not quite as good as hand-stirred polenta, but it is good enough for me.

    Here's how I did it yesterday:

    Put in your crockpot 
    • 1 and 1/2 cups corn grits/polenta (I used Bob's Red Mill brand — I do not know if this will work with ordinary medium-grind yellow cornmeal, the stuff I use for corn bread). 
    • 1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt 
    • 7 and 1/2 cups water 

      and cook on LOW for 9 hours.  If you are able, lift the lid and give it a stir a couple of times throughout the day.  This makes a very soft polenta that sets up a bit as it cools.  Don't lick the spoon or you WILL burn your tongue.

    It still works if you don't stir it, but it won't be quite as uniform — it'll be crustier on the outside next to the crock and softer in the middle.

    Before you serve it, give it a good stir, and that's when you would add stuff like butter and parmesan if you're going to be fancy.  Under flavorful stew, though, I like it quite plain.

    The leftovers are, of course, spread out in a 9×9 dish in my fridge, waiting for some morning soon when I will slice it up and fry it and top it with butter and maple syrup.

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