A weigh in.

I was fairly good last week, or at least I though so. I did not journal, but I did keep track of points with my little bead bracelet I made years ago with crafts materials from the boys’ daycare. I got the idea from an old item they used to sell at Weight Watchers, a river-pearl bracelet with black pearl every 5 points–you just move a little marker down the beads for every point consumed. Not very manly, so I made mine using earth tone beads, with every fifth bead a dark green. A kind of calorie rosary, as it were. I made a little elastic loop to move down the line of consumed calories. When I first tried this, years ago, it worked fine– I kept to my allowed 26 points, with no real effort on my part.

    No longer the case. 

  So this week, for the first time in years, I am going to journal again, writing down everything that goes in my body. Boring, but it might be what it takes. When I was flipping channels last night, there was some rotund comedian talking about his failed dieting experiences– “I tried Weight Watchers for two weeks. Wanna know what I lost? Two weeks.” Those damn desires. Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum. . . 

Boys have been gone this week with Grandma at nature camp.  It is too quiet around here, and I’ve been cooking all the things they won’t eat, mostly for myself– I did my killer, low-fat puttanesca sauce, with enormous shrimp and a whole tin of anchovies. 6 points a serving, I think, since shellfilsh are fairly innocuous. Weigh-in tomorrow. We’ll see.

My marinara.

Mirepoix marinara sauce (vegetarian)

3 stalks of celery with leaves

4 large carrots, peeled

1 can crushed tomatoes

1 lb roma tomatoes, cored, seeded and chopped

2 large onions

4 garlic cloves, minced

 

                     1/3 cup sweet sherry (!)

                     1 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped coarsely

                      2 tbsp olive oil

                      1 thai chili, seeded and chopped finely

Some recipes add sugar. The carrots and the sweet sherry take care of that here. 

In food processor, chop celery, carrots and onions. Heat oil in heavy saucepot and sautee onions until translucent; add  garlic, chili and sautee 1-2 minutes until aromatic. Add celery and carrots, sautee for another 4-5 minutes to coat with oil. Deglaze with sherry. Bring to slight boil. Add canned tomato and diced fresh tomato, bring to boil and reduce to low. Add salt to taste (about 1-3+ tsp, depending on the salt content of the canned tomatoes). Simmer covered for about half an hour, stirring occasionally until thick. Add basil 2 minutes before serving, stirring until wilted. Before serving, you can stir a small amount of extra olive oil to give it a glossy finish. Makes a thick, hearty sauce that clings nicely to thicker pasta shapes like radiatori and orechiette. Also serves as a good base for a meat sauce; or with the addition of olives, artichoke hearts, anchovies and 2 more chilis, makes a nice puttanesca.

yield– about 7 cups

In theory, 2 points/half cup.

The Mysteries of Pittsbrugh

When hungry, shave. 

We just moved to Pittsburgh, a lovely city, with all its post-industrial squalor and its impenetrable hills. I read on a web search that the steepest street in the country is somewhere here in town (37 degrees!), not in San Francisco, mind you. One curiosity about this city is that its streets and neighborhoods are almost impossible to figure out. Even the GPS has gotten confused, bonging, producing multiple arrows and screaming “when possible do a legal U-turn!” It is a so hard to figure out precisely because of its loveliness: all those hills and valleys produced little independent nests of neighborhoods which eventually crept to each other and interlaced fingers, sometimes with bridges, sometimes with tunnels, sometimes connecting streets that shouldn’t have connected. The basic problem is that each of these neighborhoods had its own distinct logic that doesn’t necessarily correspond to a composite whole. Forget grids. This town is a literal non-sequitur, “doesn’t follow.” And proudly so. 

So non-sequitur seems to be the order of the day around here. I gave a fly-fishing demonstration (yes, a patrician affectation from when I lived in New England) to Junior’s first grade class. I showed them flies I had tied, how a multiplier reel works, how to lift a weight-forward line into the air and cast it into a coffee cup twenty five feet away.

“Any questions or comments?” Hands rise. “Yes?”

“My dog ate a butterfly.” Lovely.

When hungry shave. When pressed for time, plant an heirloom tomato. Be good for a week, show up on time to the Weight Watchers meeting, lose nothing. Be so-so for the next week, lose four pounds. Don’t try to figure it out. The GPS will go crazy.