Good News Everybody! (She said with a sarcastic laugh)

Guess what! Canadians are fatter and less fit now than we were 20 years ago... I think we all already knew this, but now we have a study to back us up. The Stats Can Survey, which is the first one completed since 1981, shows that almost two-thirds of adults and one-quarter of children in Canada are overweight.
These are scary numbers people. Scary numbers that wouldn't happen in poorer countries because they have so much less to eat. But it makes me wonder. I watched this clip for a documentary called FoodMatters, and one of the guys in it said, "a quarter of what you eat keeps you alive and three-quarters of what you eat keeps your doctor alive". I really do think that as a society, we've lost sight of the reason we eat. We've made food more a social thing or an emotional thing, and so much less something we do to nourish our bodies. So far, I've been making good on my new year's resolutions about food and exercise: I just got back from the gym; I haven't put a single bite of anything made with processed sugar or flour in my mouth since Jan 3rd. My plan is to keep this up for at least a month and then revisit - but the crazy thing is that, even though it seemed like it would be impossible to eat this way before I started, it's really not that hard. Habits just need changing is all, and I think we as country need to make those changes. And soon.
p.s. I've bought Food Inc. Now I just need to find the time to watch it.

New Years Resolutions

I write New Years Resolutions the way I dream, throwing in a variety of plans and hopes, from the immediate and practical to the out-there and wishful. So... let me try to write some things I can actually accomplish, just to keep myself from getting discouraged, and then let me write somethings that are less likely to keep it interesting and more motivating, and then - just for the heck of it - I'll add some thing(s) that are more 'Life Resolution' than 'New Years Resolution', just to remind me that I still want to get to them at some point.

1. Read a Tariq Ramadan book or two. This man is a genius and I just heard him speak at a conference last week. He has such great ideas and is so good at articulating them that I'm constantly buying his books with the intention to read them, but I have a hard time with long non-fiction books (articles -good, books - not so good) and they're quite academic at the start that I can't get past that. But I must this year. Even if I start in the middle of one of the books to get over the dreaded "first chapter curse", I'll do it.
2. Write more. My good friend Jen over at UticaAvenue and my sister and I have started a little "weekly writing circle" virtually, seeing as we're all in different locations. It's a start, but I need to dedicate more time to writing. I actually would like to start submitting writing to magazines and journals and see what happens. This is my realistic goal...
3. My unrealistic one? Write a novel/novella... I've tried this before but it's never amounted to anything. I think I can do it, with more time and focus, neither of which I currently have. Still, I would love to walk into a store one day and see my name on something. Ultimate dream.
4. Exercise more, eat better. This one is on-going and needs constant reminding. Working on it. This entire month is going to be an exercise in conscious, healthier eating. Will keep you posted.
5. Stay in touch with family/friends who aren't living nearby. I am really really awful at this, as all my friends/family who aren't in Montreal know. Case in point: my friends in Ottawa thought we'd be seeing each other constantly the whole year and a half I was commuting and living there 2 nights a week. I saw a few of them once or twice. That was it.
6. Join a community garden - another far-away one. there are so few gardens with so few spaces that even if I got on a waiting list now, it would take 3 or 4 years before I was actually allotted a spot, so next best thing....
7. Start buying organic. This one IS doable, and I hope to be doing it soon. The more reading I do about this, the more convinced I am that our food system is so messed up, and so tied in with disease, not to mention water wastage, fossil fuels, carbon emissions, that it's worth changing my personal approach to it.
8. Bike to work in the summer. If you live anywhere in Eastern Canada, you know that it's not very easy to bike in the winter. I could do it if I really tried, but it involves a LOT of risk with the way drivers in this city drive, along with the snow and ice and all. But now that I'm living so close to my office, it should be doable when the snow is gone.

and that's what I'd like to do, this month, this year, this life...

A modest request for the coffee shops

You know I'm a lover of sitting in your wonderful, relaxing atmospheres. You know there is little I enjoy more than kicking back with a latte and a book and just losing myself in the setting.
Of course, I can't drink milk, lactose free or otherwise, because of my allergies. and my solution has always been soy. Well, recently I've read some frightening things about soy (including the fact that 90% of the soy generated for North American consumption is genetically modified - if you haven't yet watched the future of food, you should!). As a result, I've switched to almond milk and stopped buying soy products. Now, this works at home, but in coffee shops, the only non-dairy alternative is soy. Timothy's, Second Cup, Starbucks, anyone who can make you a latte without milk can only make it with soy milk. Now, I'm not drinking these every week or anything, but it would be really really nice if someone started offering almond milk based drinks, or any nut milk for that matter.
So, I'm asking you, please oh coffee shop people, give me something I can drink while I'm reading a book other than herbal tea. Give me a latte without the bad stuff. Please?

Well, at least now I have a new record to break for next time...

I broke. At 2 a.m. this morning, despite trying to satisfy my sweet-tooth craving with raisins and walnuts and repeatedly telling myself to just go to sleep Noha. Nothing good can come of this, I opened the freezer and reached for - gasp! - the cookies and cream ice cream. It wasn't a rash decision. My mind knew full well what my hands were doing. I even stopped to calculate how far I'd gotten, to decide if the number of consecutive allergy-free days was respectable enough to break now, or if I should hold off a little longer. 49 days. Respectable. I had the cookies and cream ice cream. I had some chocolate fudge brownie ice cream too, for good measure. And then, only then, did I finally go to sleep.
I won't lie. They tasted positively divine, but if I was expecting harps playing in the background, or the sensation of being carried off to some dessert-flavoured, chocolate-based, culinary heaven, it didn't happen. Things you can't have always seem soooooooooooooooooo much better than what you can.
I woke up with a stomach-ache this morning, but I suppose I earned it. I've also decided that today is a day off. A day to allow myself to indulge in whatever else so that tomorrow, when I start again, I'm not already craving things. I've basically decided that I'm failing today to succeed later. Twisted logic? Maybe. An excuse to stuff myself with anything and everything today? Also maybe. But a funny thing is happening so far: I've had a slice of cheesecake that was in the fridge, left over from a visit we had on Friday, and nothing else. I've been down to press cafe, and looked at the brownies and cupcakes, felt nothing, and ordered my usual coffee. I think I'll end up getting something else, something gooey and chewy and wheat-based, and chocolatey-sweet, before the day is over. But if I don't, it'll be okay because I know how to make the wheat-free, dairy-free, processed-sugar-free version from scratch now. And tomorrow I'll start over. And while last time, my goal was to go as long as I could, this time, I'll have a number in mind. I want to get to 50 days of allergy-free food. At least. 50 days and beyond. Far, far beyond.

Eat Green, Be Green

Everyone knows I like me some meat, but I also think that there is something to be said for our meat consumption in North America, and the effects it has on our health and our environment. I found this article on the topic absolutely fascinating.
My bottom line after reading something like this? Everything in moderation. Factory farming is nasty, not to mention cruel, and the ugly truth is that, without it, we would never be able to consume as much meat as we do today. To my mind, the way nature intended it, meat is meant to be eaten, but not with the frequency we eat it.
Do I have the self control to cut it down to the levels I think are ideal? Probably not, but I think the article points out that even small changes could make a big difference.
Good night. I'm off to eat my lentil soup.

A Word About Will Power

I'm on day 14 of my sugar-free, wheat-free, dairy-free diet. This week I endured

• a friend's baby shower at work, where home baked cake, breaded chicken wings, and a traditional kosovar bread-roll of some sort were being served - on Wednesday
• the left-overs of said baby shower on Thursday, and
• a benefit event to raise money for Palestine - where the food being sold came in the form of sandwiches, tarts and butter rolls, and brownies, on Friday

Today, I subjected myself to cake-baking. No one told me to make the cake, I just really wanted to make it. For the first time in probably my life, I didn't lick the left over batter off the pan. Instead, I made a second batch of cake for myself where I replaced the wheat flour with Kamut flour, the milk with almond milk, and the sugar with stevia (big mistake about the stevia, horrible aftertaste, but now I know to use honey for next time)...
I haven't cheated yet. I think what stops me is that I've made it all so public. If I broke down now, I'd have to tell you all. I'd have to post it to Facebook. I'd have to start counting at 1 again. If I only had myself to tell, I would have broken down at least 5 or 6 times by now. I'm sure of this because I've made the "no more allergens" promise to myself countless times before. I've typically made it to mid-morning of the same day the promise is made; on the days my will power has been phenomenal, I've made it to just before bed time. But in the end, I've always caved.
I like to think this isn't just my lack of will power, but how humans work in general. We need to own up to someone or we cave. I've figured out what makes me tick, what motivates me. I know I'll break sooner or later, but my plan right now is to go on for as long as I can. And when I break, my plan is to announce it, lick my wounds, and start over. It's worth it. I feel so much healthier. And it's easier every day.

7 Days Done

So I told you about the 7 day challenge I gave myself last week to avoid wheat, sugar, and dairy products. Well, I'm happy to report that I'm now on Day 8!
In total honesty, I didn't really think I'd get this far. Sure, I might have been able to make it on the weekend, or on my first Monday, when I was working from home, but on Tuesday, I was back in the Ottawa office, with the pharma plus, in all its Toblerone-selling glory, and the Marcello's, with its rice pudding and nanaimo bars and apple fritters and chocolate chip muffins. Well, at 2 p.m., as the afternoon yawning came in, I went down and got a coffee and some celery sticks. Yup, celery sticks...
Wednesday and Thursday were similar. On Friday, I spent most of the day in the Montreal office, and had to walk by the best bakery ever 5 times, without buying anything I couldn't eat. I discovered that the Pharma Prix sells almond and date bars in the back of the store. I checked the ingredients. I bought two. They were yummy, if overpriced, but they helped me get through the day...
7 days may sound like not a big deal, but before I started this, I was eating "allergy food" nearly every day, often more than once a day, so I'm really, really relieved to have gotten this far...
Oatmeal is one of my best friends when I'm craving dessert. Put some dates or berries in it, sprinkle a little cinnamon or cocoa on top, and it's gooey like something baked would be, and just sweet enough.
My next goal is to hit next Sunday. If I get there, that's 14 days. I'll keep you posted.

The Crazy Subliminal Cucumber Post

Cucumber would have to be one of those vegetables I rarely eat. It's good in salads, but M's not a fan, and when I buy them they end up going bad before I get through the small package of 4 or the one massive one. Plus, you can't cook cucumbers, so you can't salvage the slowly wilting veggie by slicing and dicing and throwing it in a pot, right?
Well, it would seem that cucumber is subliminally trying to convince both myself and a friend of mine that it can indeed be cooked or baked. The evidence:
Situation A
Last week, I was describing to my mom the vegetable soup I was planning to make as part of dinner for a little dinner party M and I were having on Friday night (random note: I ended up making cream of mushroom soup. M made the most divine chicken. No one could believe he'd cooked it. We have left overs. I'm in heaven.) So, as I'm describing the soup, I say it has diced onions, celery, cucumbers, only I'm saying all of this in Arabic, and my mom goes "Wha?? Cucumbers? WHY are you putting cucumbers in your soup?"
To which I respond, "I always put cucumbers in my soup. I got it from you. YOU always put cucumbers in your soup" and she shakes her head profusely and we continue to have this debate for 5 minutes before my little sis says "I thought M didn't like cucumbers?"
I start to answer that "no, no, M doesn't like.... oh, wait, M doesn't like cucumbers". At which point I realise that I've been saying cucumber all along when I meant to be saying carrot. Cucumber in soup jokes ensue for the remainder of the evening.

Situation B
I have been eating everything on my allergy list with complete abandon on and off for about 2 months and I have decided to put an end to it with a 7-day no wheat, no dairy, no sugar challenge to myself. For moral support, and to hold myself accountable, I posted this to my status on facebook and my friends have been very good in cheering me on. So much so that one of them offered me her "cucumber cookie" recipe.... Now, having just had this cucumbers-don't-cook conversation with my sis and mother, I am very skeptical, and ask her what on earth this could possibly be. Somewhere in the back of my mind I'm thinking there's a teensy possibility that a cucumber cookie does in fact exist in some alternate raw food vegan universe, but I'm just doubtful that my friend belongs to this universe. Well, ta-dah! I'm right. Friend meant zucchini cookie. She sent the recipe too. it looks divine, but it has butter, sugar, and wheat flour... I could substitute. I might give an alternate version of the recipe a try. if I do, and it's edible. I will post.

So there you have it folks. Cucumbers are feeling the heat (or they aren't and badly want to be... hardy-har-har).

But the Chips Were So Much Cheaper...

Is this not utterly depressing? Apparently a new study by the Heart and Stroke Foundation has found that food pricing across the country can vary hugely for a lot of healthy foods. How much, you say? Well, in Toronto, you pay about $1 for a bag of 6 apples. In Calgary, you pay over $5. Sorry, but what? And it's not like this is a "who cares" item of interest either. We're hardly eating well as a country as it is.
My favourite quote from another article on this study:

"You have to wonder why we control the price of alcohol but allow such price inconsistencies for healthy food - and not just in remote regions of the country - but even between larger metropolitan areas."

Well, at least we know we all pay the same amount for something, eh?

All Hail the Presse Cafe

There's been an empty store front at the end of our street for months now, and M and I have been watching closely to see who'll take it.
Our dream: an independent bookstore with a coffee shop built in.
What happened? First, the store front turned out to be not one, but two store fronts.
Recently, a sushi place opened in one of them. This is very, very good news, but it's not a coffee shop.
More recently, (two weeks ago to be exact), a sign went up in the other window for a Presse Cafe opening soon.
Victory!

Work (or more accurately, vacation)

Tomorrow it's back to work after 11 days off. M and I were thinking about the last time we've actually each had this much time off and we decided that our honeymoon didn't count - I know, I know, we're coming across as very very hard to please and also a bit ungrateful, but let me preface the decision: we were looking for the last time we had a lot of time off that was essentially "pure". This means, not a lot of travelling, not a lot of having to get up at a specific hour, and A LOT of vegging.
Now, let me give you a summarized itinerary of our honeymoon:

• Montreal to Paris - 6 hours in Paris
• Paris to Cairo - 3 days in Cairo
• Cairo to El Gouna - 7 days in El Gouna
• El Gouna to Alexandria - 4 days in Alexandria
• Alexandria to Cairo - 4 days in Cairo
• Cairo to Paris - 1 day in Paris
• Paris to Montreal

Through out, suitcases were opened and closed a million times and all luggage was taken to all locations. Also, as this was the first time we were meeting each other's extended family (the folks still living in Egypt - and there are many!) we were constantly visiting with others, sometimes doing 2 or 3 visits a day. Even the time in El Gouna, which included a breakfast buffet with out accommodations, meant we had to be up early enough to eat breakfast. The bottom line: tons of fun, but very very little vegging. Sometimes, you come back from vacation feeling like you could use another vacation.
So, if we go back before that, the last no strings attached, long time off chunk we've had was Calabogie in the summer of 2007. Which is not that long ago, but we were both ready for a good chunk of vegging time...
And "vegging" we did: in TO, with M's parents and brother... I swear, the breakfasts we have at M's parents place are the kind that can go on for ages, where you start with eggs, and then you go for jam, and then cheese (goat cheese, and sheep's feta cheese, no allergy problems for Noha here) and then smoked salmon, and fava beans (traditional Egyptian breakfast food - prepared to excellence by M's father) all next to your fabulous cup of coffee, and topped off with very very very good conversation with a million tangents... This is true vegging.
So I come back from vacation feeling like I've actually relaxed, and as ready for work as you can actually be (are we ever actually ready for work? Like, really, truly, ready? I mean, no matter how much you like it, and I like my work, it's work, right??)
Happy end of vacation to all. Hope you had good ones if you were off.... and Happy New Year...

Juliette et "Wow"! (or 'Must Love Chocolate')

Coming to Montreal soon? Want somewhere to majorly overindulge your chocolate addiction? I've got just the place for you: Juliette et Chocolat on St. Denis. As good as advertised (and I don't get paid for this, swear...)

'nuff said..

Iftar

This is the word for "breakfast" in Arabic, both breakfast when you're having it any day in the morning, and breakfast when you're breaking the fast after a day of no food, no drink, no bad behaviour, no blowing up...
Back in university, we would be sitting in the computer lab pre-iftar. At first, this was "the Cube", a grey little cube shaped building filled with computer stations, for Computer Science students, and then we would be in the cornily named "library of the future", in the basement of the SITE building, once it existed. We would be scrambling to finish up some assignment or another, perhaps writing the last few difficult lines of code, or hitting compile and praying there would no compile errors, knowing we still had the horrible run-time errors to face. Maybe we'd have already found them; maybe we'd be debugging slowly, exhaustedly, ready to pull our hair out from the effort at looking the same line that seemed fine but was clearly throwing our whole program into disarray. Or, possibly, we'd have given up on all of the above, and had our programs open in some random window on the computer but were only pretending to work. Possibly, instead we were chatting, or checking hockey scores, or surfing away those last few minutes until we had a mandated break to break our fast and clear our heads of the "if-thens" and "elses" of the code that had started to infest our heads...
The SITE building was on one end of campus and Iftar was in the University Centre (shortened to the Uni-Centre, because what's the fun in saying the whole name of anything?), and we had two options to get there:

1. Follow the long, wining path of tunnels through about 5 buildings, zigzagging across campus from the inside to avoid the cold.
2. Take your jacket, go upstairs and brave the elements in what was a shorter trek than in 1, but also a colder trek.

I used to alternate between the two, depending on how much time I had, how cold it was, how long of a break I was affording myself for this communal fast-breaking and prayer.
In the Uni-Centre, dates were passed around or set on a table. Milk or water in Styrofoam or plastic cups was also there, and the desks had been pushed aside in the small room to make space for prayer. Half the time, you didn't know half the people you were breaking fast with, after all, this was a campus of thousands of students, in thousands of programs, and you overlapped here because you were Muslim, and you had class or lab keeping you here to this hour, and so weren't already home. Regardless, you said salaam (peace, our greeting in Islam), you said taqabbal Allah (May God accept your good deeds), and there was a sense of being in it together, of having spent the last 12 or 13 hours in a state of un-having, of emptiness of material so you could fill yourself with something else, some form of perspective, or discipline, or appreciation for the rest of the world, who fasted, not voluntarily so many days of the year. After prayer there were tables set up for big foil containers filled with rice and salad and chicken. If we were lucky, there was samosa, every one's absolute favourite. The food came from people in the community, and it was free: in Islam, we believe there is a great reward for helping the fasting break their fast.
We would sit on the floor or lean against the pushed-back tables and desks, those with classes and labs to get back to eating quickly, those with a little more time winding down. We'd learn each other's names, forget, and ask again a week later when we happened to overlap at another iftar. We'd clean up and go.
This was one of the things I missed most about university, this ad-hoc coming together of a community in a place where the world doesn't revolve around your traditions, where the days are not cut short during your month of fasting and the schedules made more lax. Last night, I felt it again at the McGill MSA iftar. There is something about students and student culture. Something more fluid, more flexible than at the office, where things are set and established, and it's really very... nice. I sat with girls I'd never met and some whom I'd met once or twice, or three WHOLE times, and laughed and talked and got to know them better. We turned the cafeteria into an iftar hall, pulling tables together and pushing them back when it was over. There were those same, massive foil pans filled with rice and salad and a pot full of delicious, Indian style meat. There were taqabbal Allah's and come again's exchanged. I think I will.

For One Month

This is Ramadan. Between dawn and sunset, we don't eat. We don't drink. We don't ingest in basically any form (because I've had questions about chewing gum, popping mints, cigarettes, etc. But no ingesting happens. Nothing.) Before dawn, most Muslims will get up to eat something in order to go the rest of the day without. After a couple of days, the hunger pangs tend to subside and you get used to feeling a little emptier. One of the hardest parts for me is going without the coffee. I've taken to just drinking it before dawn...
The other, less talked about aspect of Ramadan is controlling your temper and behaviour. The food we don't eat is really more of an outward manifestation of the self-control we're supposed to exhibit through out every aspect of our lives. It's almost what I'd call a spiritual-detox period. We use this time to get back on track in our habits, our behaviours, our spiritual / ritual devotions, etc. Things we've let creep in that we don't like, we try to stop. Things we've let slip by the way-side that we want to do, we pick back up. It's like New Year's Resolutions in some ways, except for one month, as the whole community prays together, fasts together, and spends more time together, the hope is that the resolutions won't be broken a few days later, but become ingrained into our daily lives, at least for a while.
Happy Ramadan to all!

Eat Like Mike

So if you're living under a rock, you don't know that Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals at this year's Olympics. Ok, so everyone knows that, but did you know that he eats 12,000 calories a day? I read this hilarious article about a journalist who decides to attempt the Phelps diet for 1 day, and suffers brutal consequences, and liked it so much I had to share:

DAVE MCGINN
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
August 20, 2008 at 2:50 AM EDT
In bloated, panting-for-breath retrospect, it was crazy to think I could match Michael Phelps.
Not in the pool, of course. That would just be stupid. No, I had the audacity to think I could tackle Phelps at the kitchen table.
Where do I stand against Phelps? He is: 23 years old. I am: 31 years old. He stands: 6 foot 4. I stand: 6 foot 4. He weighs: 195 pounds. I weigh: 198 pounds. He has: more gold medals than any Olympian in history. I have: too much time on my hands.
But I've been swimming laps all summer in an effort to work off my gut, so it really did seem possible. I know, I know. I can hear all the incredulous voices and the head shaking that goes with them: Do you know how much Michael Phelps eats?
It's a whopping 12,000-calorie-a-day diet.
The average 23-year-old man consumes about 2,000 calories a day. And even on the best of days I have to wake up pretty early and work pretty hard to reach the category of an average man.
But who knows, I thought, maybe to swim like Phelps you first have to eat like Phelps.
Breakfast: Obviously, if you're going to attempt the Phelps breakfast you have to work up an appetite. So on Saturday morning, I begin the day with 30 minutes of yoga, 30 push-ups, 90 crunches and a three-kilometre run, burning 936 calories, according to an online calorie counter.
I probably expend more energy prepping breakfast: It takes 45 minutes and uses every single kitchen utensil I own.
I start with the fried-egg sandwiches. I feel it might be possible to eat the whole meal. After polishing two of them off, I move on to the French toast. After eating all three pieces, I'm doing some pretty laboured mouth breathing.
Forcing myself to buck up, I start eating a chocolate-chip pancake the size of my face. Both cups of coffee are done.
What's missing from the meal? Fruit. Seriously, Mike, would it kill you to eat an orange wedge? Parading your bazillion gold medals around is no fun when you've got scurvy.
On the verge of nausea, I force myself to take one bite from a bowl of Cream of Wheat (my substitute for grits, because good luck finding grits north of the Mason-Dixon line).
Feeling like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, I'm one bite away from asking my girlfriend for a bucket. I call it quits after an hour of eating in earnest, leaving one fried-egg sandwich, two chocolate-chip pancakes, most of a bowl of Cream of Wheat, and a five-egg omelette on the table, laughing at me from the heights of Phelpsian wonder.
“Dude,” I curse my Olympian nemesis, “how do you not weigh 700 pounds?”
Lunch: It takes about two hours after breakfast before I can even think about going to the pool, but eventually I get there. I feel more energetic than usual, my front crawl moving me through the water with more power than it has all summer.
Nor am I as tired as I usually am when I hit the wall to turn. But with this many calories coursing through my veins, I should be able to tie a rope around my waist and tug a freighter in to harbour.
My go-for-the-gold confidence crashes when I decide to try the butterfly stroke. I'm able to do about four strokes of what must easily be the most embarrassingly awkward misrepresentation of the form before nearly sinking. The teenaged lifeguard is suppressing laughter.
I swim for 45 minutes, burning 472 calories. When I get back from the pool, I go through my morning exercise routine again, shaving off another 936 calories. By 3 p.m. I'm not even remotely hungry, but I have to have lunch because dinner is fast approaching.
I eat the two ham-and-cheese sandwiches and drink two Gatorades while out on a friend's boat, which surprisingly is not heeling to the side I'm sitting on. When I get home, I eat the pound of enriched pasta with tomato sauce, which works out to be three heaping platefuls.
Starting my third plate, I'm forced to ponder a question I've never faced at a meal in my entire life: Am I having hot flashes? A strange sensation of heat is emanating from the pit of my stomach and working its way up through my shoulders. This can't be good.
Just before the clock strikes 9 p.m., I've consumed in 12 hours almost the same caloric intake I would normally eat over the course of three days. The mouth breathing continues. I have to lie down on the couch.
It's only a mix of what willpower I have left and the sheer terror of eating dinner that forces me out of the house to go running again. My 30-minute run burns just 562 calories. I feel like an over-stuffed sausage.
Dinner: What, no dessert? I'm surprised the guy doesn't finish off the day with 16 quarts of double-churned chocolate ice cream topped with an M&M the size of a country ham.
Still, the carb-heavy menu would have most South Beach dieters making the cross with their index fingers in horror.
OK, throw that pizza in the oven, and let's do this. While the pizza cooks, I turn on the TV and see the U.S. Men's Olympic swim team – fit, trim, healthy as oxen, none of them looking like they would cry like a toddler at the sight of another plate of spaghetti. I don't even bother cooking the pasta.
I manage to drink three Gatorades. After you've been eating all day, each big chug of an energy drink feels like a mouthful of pot roast. I decide to eat only as much of the pizza as I can. I make it halfway through. As I look at the other half, my girlfriend looks at me as if she will never find me attractive ever again if I so much as try to cram just one more piece of pepperoni into my gullet.
I need to lie down.
As I collapse on the couch, Phelps wins his eighth gold medal. My awe for him has tripled.
If he ever retires from swimming, he could make a killing at those competitive eating contests. That hot dog guy's got nothing on him.
I've spent an entire day pushing myself to the limits of intestinal explosion and I still fell short one fried-egg sandwich, two chocolate-chip pancakes, a bowl of grits, a five-egg omelette, a pound of pasta, half a pizza and more than four litres of Gatorade. I feel humbled and crestfallen, the way you do when forced to confront your limitations.
I wonder if I will spring out of bed tomorrow ready to run a marathon, or if I will hide under the covers in fear, trembling at the prospect of eating again. Both seem like distinct possibilities.
Michael Phelps now has 14 gold medals from two Olympics, the all-time record.
He should bring me one of those medals just for eating what I did today. But I'd settle for a bucket.
Special to The Globe and Mail

This Was Saturday

We're back now. It was awesome. I spent 2 and a half hours at a walk-in clinic this morning only so that the doctor would refuse to give me a referral for the chiropractor without first sending me for X-rays. The X-rays would have also been a walk-in, so I really didn't feel like spending 5 hours of my day off in various waiting rooms. I got to read in my fabulous book, Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett, while I waited (thanks for the suggestion Jen. It's nearly impossible to put down). I also got my other referrals, so not all bad, but still... I know the chiropractor works for me: exhibit A is having my jaw reset after my bike accident... I love the system (sarcasm, sarcasm). They tell you to be proactive in taking care of your health, and then they make it harder for you to do the things that help your health. Not impressed.
After that, I bought more groceries then I could carry back comfortably home on my bike, and so tottered home. But we needed them. And now there are cherries in the fridge. Mmmm... Nice to have a day off for nothing, which becomes all the loose ends you planned on doing at some point, but never had a chance to get to. What I haven't done yet: write. But I always comfort myself that all the reading is necessary to get to the writing, so really, I'm doing my homework.

Tea Detox (and a little pampering)

I'm drinking this for the next month and seeing what happens. Considering I have the most sensitive stomach of anyone I know who doesn't have an official digestive disease, and considering my crazy list of sensitivities, and considering the fact that all the traditional medicine solutions (ending with the "it's all in your head" diagnosis from that un-fabulous gastroenterologist I went to) haven't worked for me,I figured why not give it a shot... I started this morning. I'm not sure exactly what I'm expecting, but just generally a happier stomach and less feeling sick would be great.
I'll report back after enough time has passed to assess.
I decided this week that I'm going to be nice to my body for the next little while and see what happens. That means more exercise and more sleep, and better eating. Now, I'm not going to deprive myself. If I want a spoon or two of sorbet, okay. But no full-fledged, massive cheating attacks. I've been pretty good so far. We'll see how long it lasts.
Now excuse me, I'm off to get a massage.

If you're not outraged...

Have you heard that expression before: If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention?
Every once in a while, something comes along and really bothers me and I have to rant about it. The latest in this series comes via XUP's cucumber post. Go read it here.
Done? Good, now let's discuss. So, how many people in the world are currently malnourished, underfed, suffering from hunger and starvation? I don't know. I don't have the statistics, but I know, know, know for absolute certainty that the number is high. That too many go without food. That too many have nothing and would take anything just to survive. But we can't eat crooked cucumbers? We can't even display them on our grocery shelves? At least in the EU, they're going to start selling them again, but what about here?
People, let's think about this, food is eaten, i.e. chewed up, turned into a pulp, gets digested and will look much more disgusting by the time we get any nutrients from it than anything we could imagine on our grocery shelves, so does it matter if it's not perfect when our privileged hands select it at the store? How spoiled are we? How far removed are we from what our brothers and sisters around the world are suffering?
I'm going to put out a request regarding food: Let's all be more careful. Let's buy as much as we need and cook in the right amount and serve ourselves as much as we need and not throw any away. Let's not buy twice what we eat and dump the rest in the garbage. Let's remember those poor kids with convex stomachs because they have nothing. It's the least we can do. Really, it's minuscule.

Random Other-Post Follow-ups

Some unrelated-to-each other ideas that may each be related to older posts:

• They say the proof is in the pudding... well, I say the proof is in the brownies. As promised, I bought cocoa, and on a whim, made some wheat-free, cane sugar brownies a half hour ago. The difference between these and the carob ones is astounding. I am truly a chocoholic, and it's not to be cured.
• Because I complained about the lack of hijabi-friendly clothing this season: 1)For any hijabi-Montrealers, there is a booth inside the Eaton's centre near the Metro McGill entrance that sells scarves, long tunics, and other hijabi stuff for reasonable prices. I went last Monday and have a new tunic to show for my efforts. 2) My mum-in-law is way too sweet: after listening to me complain during our last outing about the lack of long sleeved items available, she apparently found one of the very very few things on the market the other day and picked it up for me.... 3) There's a new hijabi clothing store in Montreal called "Inty" (cool play on words because this is how to say the feminine "you" in Arabic). I haven't been there, but I hear from a friend that the stuff is good quality and affordable. If you know the city, it's located where the old Multi-vision store was.
• I finished Bel Canto, the first book from Jen's suggested list, and in an effort not to spoil it, all I can say is GO READ THIS BOOK. Sooooooooooooooooooooo good. Meets all my super-picky criteria: good characters, good writing, good plot. As for Jen's request that I tell her what I thought of the controversial ending, I'll just say that it's crushing, but marvelous, and totally plausible. This book leaves your heart-aching. You love the characters that much. Next, I'm starting The Namesake, which is supposed to also be great. I hope it's as great. Keep your suggestions coming. I'm planning on reading a lot, as I'm hoping to write a lot and for me, the best way to do that is through reading.

The Candy Conundrum

My work group in Ottawa in pretty tight knit, and most of us have been working together for a fairly long time (at 2 years, I'm a relative newbie.) One thing about us, we LOVE candy, and we're waaaaaaaaaaaaay too generous with each other. The proof? By the printer and photocopiers, there is almost always a bowl full of something yummy: werthers originals, chocolates, gummies, you name it. If not, it's those fabulous Danish butter cookies. When we're feeling "healthy" it's salted, roasted peanuts, or worse yet, BBQ flavour.

Yesterday, it was jujubes.

Now, I just finished telling you about my allergies, so you'd think I'd lay off the sauce, so to speak, right? Well, my self-control system basically revolves around a "don't buy it, don't eat it approach". The problem is when I'm not the one buying it but it's magically turning up anyway. When the yummies are in front of me every time I get up to print or photocopy, I have great difficulty resisting. And that other concept of moderation? Non-existent. With me, "I'll only have one" becomes two becomes three four seventeen. Basically, it's cold turkey or a full-fledged candy attack. I don't even LIKE jujubes, but having them there makes me think I SHOULD like them. And appreciate them. By eating them. Sigh.

The funniest part of this is that lately no one will confess to bringing in the candy. Someone's doing it, but she/he is maintaining anonymity. Meanwhile, we all walk by, shove another piece of whatever's there into our mouths, and mumble how we have to stop.

I'm proud to announce that I had NO jujubes yesterday, and none of the toffee that was in the bowl the day before. I can't even remember if there was anything there on Tuesday, but if there was, I held off. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this self-control thing after all?