I love you and want you to be happy, so I am going to slowly kill you

April 1 I saw a segment on 60 Minutes highlighting data I'd already read (and chose to willfully ignore) in the New York Times last year—sugar is really pretty bad for our health and we eat way too much of it. I can't ignore it anymore and I thank dismissive friends and online commenters for showing me just how dearly we Americans—including me, until now—guard our sugar addiction and the role it plays in our culture and lifestyle. The first day of the month is a great time to turn over a new leaf, start fresh and try to do the right thing, which is, to cut waaaaaay down on sugar. It's unfortunate, though, that as soon as tomorrow our family has plans to go get our free Ben & Jerry's ice cream and that is not something my husband is going to let go of. I don't even like Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but he is a free stuff junkie and already talked it up to the kid. My solution will be to have my daughter and I share our scoop, then avoid treats as long as we can.

This should be a little easier this week, since my kid is on spring break from school. At school, it's always more difficult. Last week, for example, one child one day brought cookies for the class and later the same week, the same child brought brownies. (This is a lovely child with a very attractive and thin mom, just as a side note that I find interesting but is probably completely unrelated.) She was "star of the week" that week (a little thing they do at the school) but were two treats really necessary? We brought fruit and cheese kabobs when my child was star of the week!

Now I am totally guilty myself of giving too many treats at home, but I don't like to have them be a part of school. I like to administer them when I want to, at strategic and thoughtful times and only after nutritious and healthy food has first been consumed. I recognize, also, that I need to change (as opposed to being completely in denial). Even though our family eats arguably less junk with sugar than the average American family, too often I find myself making cupcakes to celebrate...a Tuesday? Or because I am in the mood for homemade chocolate chip cookies. It really has to stop. I have to save the treats for holidays, outings (like the Ben & Jerry's but no, not all outings) and such. That it is "hard" is a sign that it's a problem.

When I spoke to the director of the preschool after the first week of school, having heard my child had 3 treats in that one week alone (I guess they were catching up on birthdays?), my request that they stop the practice of bringing birthday treats in was met with "No, I won't do that. Birthdays are special for the children, they like to celebrate and bring treats...blah blah blah..." Well, couldn't they do a once a month group birthday celebration? I think that many people just don't get the gravity of it and have no clue how much sugar is in things and what it does to the body. That, and it's just not something we want to focus on. We all want to be happy and have fun. It's a little sad and uncreative, though, that we need junk food to have fun, isn't it?

It was interesting to me last night that the reaction to "news" that sugar is bad for us and we eat too much was...a whole lot of defensiveness and denial (discussing on Facebook and reading comments on the 60 Minutes website). Some people were like, "this is news? of course sugar's bad for you, but not toxic and we don't eat that much, anyway..." They weren't paying attention at all to the latest data indicating that sugar is much worse for us than we think (leading to more overeating, poor memory formation, learning disorders, depression, as well as heart disease and obvious things like diabetes) and they certainly weren't facing the reality of how much excess we're consuming (156 pounds a year).

When I posted the link to the 60 Minutes story on Facebook, an average-girl-mom-friend countered that "kids DESERVE ice cream on a hot summer night...or just a 'family together time'" and how mad it made her that "what we did and ate as kids is now killing or bad for our kids...and I will not stop letting my kid be a kid..they need sunshine.....and sometimes that comes in the form of sugar..." a sciencey engineering friend (who drinks at least one Mt. Dew a day, but considers himself healthy) dismissed it as vilification of one ingredient saying " ...it does no one any good blaming individual ingredients" and saying that all things in moderation are OK.

I can buy the moderation point to some extent, but the thing is, the data shows we've lost all grasp of what moderation is. So many people seem offended by the suggestion that something we all do all the time, and that we did as kids, and our parents did is bad for us. They say, "but I ate all this and I am fine" in one post, while in another one complaining of all their ailments as they creep up toward age 40 and beyond. So, not fine, actually! This data is an attack on our culture to some extent, as well as a threat to our addiction. And we are totally addicted. Even I, who eat more healthfully than most Americans (I keep saying that because from everything I read Americans as a whole eat awful diets and at least I try—no soda, no red meat, lots of veggies...) fall into the trap. The science shows that the brain responds to sugar essentially the same way it does to cocaine (this is in the 60 Minutes segment).

In considering how much added sugar one should have, I remembered a figure I'd read a couple years ago when I had started a push to get in really great shape. Jackie Warner in her book, This is Why You're Fat (And How to Get Thin Forever), explains that the body doesn't register less than five grams of sugar, so we should eat things that have five grams of sugar or less per serving (and stick to one serving, natch) at a sitting. This is moderation for day-to-day. Most cupcakes, for example, have at least 20 grams of sugar. I can't imagine a life of never again eating a cupcake, but I now believe that the instances of these pleasures should be memorable, and therefore rare.

Family Food Friday—my delicious, hodge-podge week

So, I am participating in the "Family Food Friday" that TFB initiated on her blog.

This was a busy and crazy (somewhat) week because we had my daughter's birthday party on Saturday last week, Fathers Day on Sunday, which included a ball game and night out for pizza—both of which left me kind of wiped out. Then the real birthday during the week where we ate out and went to a local ska show in a park. The meal plan was sort of a jumble of partying, but many recipes were made, so I am just going to list the ones that were homemade without specific dates as these span back from last Friday (June 17) through now, rather than a Monday through Sunday thing. This, though, is actually a decent snapshot of how most weeks go as far as dinners and such, even when things aren't feeling busy—I kind of do a blend of complicated and easy and let my tastes and cravings drive what I make. We are big beer lovers so I've included the beers we enjoyed with each dish, where applicable.

• Pad Thai (beer pairing: Ommegang Hennepin)
  
• BBQ Quorn Tacos (beer pairing: Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA)
  
• Veggie Burgers (beer pairing: Troegs Nugget Nectar)
• Salmon Caesar Salad with Garden Veggie Side (beer pairing: Sloeber Strong Pale Ale)
• Fresh Veggie Wraps (beer pairing: Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA)
• Quinoa Salad with Cherries and Pecans (beer pairing: it was lunch! I didn't drink! ok, that doesn't always stop me...)

For the Pad Thai, I have a basic recipe that I used to "teach" me how to make it, and now I just kind of throw it together how I want, riffing on the recipe. We don't eat meat (but we do eat seafood) so instead of the chicken, I loaded it up with tofu and veggies. Sometimes I'll use shrimp. I had alot of fun going to a local, huge international foods market to get the real rice noodles and other crazy things like black fungus (still don't know what I'll use this in yet, but I read it's in alot of Asian dishes, and now I've got it), tamarind (I added some tamarind juice to my Pad Thai) and galangal (I steeped the noodled in galangal water).



The BBQ Quorn Tacos is one of my "original" recipes, but with a forced twist. I usually make tempeh tacos (tempeh can be bought at the store, but is made by natural culturing and fermenting that binds soybeans or grains into a cake form, similar to a very firm vegetarian burger patty). Whole Foods was out of tempeh so I bought Quorn instead (which is like a vegetarian faux chicken). So, it's simple but so tasty...you just slice a red onion and a red pepper and saute them in a hot pan in some olive oil. You cook the onion first til it starts to brown and carmelize (maybe add a dash of salt) then once that's going, you throw in the peppers, getting them tender but not overcooking. Then you throw in the diced Quorn (or sliced tempe). Cook it a few minutes til the Quorn (which is cooked right from frozen but does not technically require "cooking" like real meat, same with tempe) softens and gets some cooked color from the pan. Stir in some BBQ sauce and maybe dashes of garlic powder, cumin, chili powder, sweet smoked paprika (this is my favorite seasoning these days), depending on your taste and the BBQ sauce you use. Then, you just put that mixture with some shredded cheddar cheese into tortillas and enjoy. I am big on just sautéing up things I like and putting them in tortillas! We're big on leftovers around here and my husband insists on them being available for him to take as lunch to work to save money.



Veggie Burgers are just veggie burgers. Warm them up in a pan and go. But, I am picky, so I will do things like toast the buns, spraying them with olive oil and sprinkling some garlic salt on them. We'll add sautéed mushrooms and onions to the burgers, maybe some sliced avocado, and of course, melted cheese. Trader Joe's makes a really good garlic aioli mustard that we put on our veggie burgers. Bake up some oven fries, add a side salad and you've got your meal.

Salmon Caesar Salad is another easy go-to meal for me. Just pan sear or bake some salmon filets and top the classic romaine salad with it. I am a big fan of Whole Foods and their caesar dressing (in the produce section, chilled) is very good. Normally, I hate store-bought or packaged dressing and I make my own vinaigrette all the time, but this one I like, especially since making caesar dressing is a little more involved than whipping up a vinaigrette. The Garden Veggie Side was just some extras I harvested from our little garden. I had some carrots and leeks so I braised them with apple cider vinegar, finished the cooking under a quick broil with butter and parmesan, then lemon squeeze, salt, pepper.



Speaking of Whole Foods, the next thing on the list, Fresh Veggie Wraps, I learned about from a kids event at our local store. Not that it's something you need to "learn" exactly, I mean, it's a veggie wrap, pretty simple. But, sometimes you just need a fresh look at ingredients, or to be reminded, hey, this is out there, put it together with that. So, that's what we did. They had out for the children diced veggies in rainbow colors—red peppers, carrots, corn, shelled edamame, shredded purple cabbage—you can choose the veggies your family likes best. Smear some hummus on a large lavash (or tortilla, but I like the big size of the lavash to really get everything wrapped up) and then layer in the veggies with some mixed salad greens and wrap it up. We took these to the Fathers Day baseball game.



The Quinoa Salad with Cherries and Pecans I learned of from a Facebook friend and made back on Memorial Day. It was yummy so I decided to make it again and take it to lunch with a friend last week. Here's the recipe for that.