Hi Pals
Sorry to be so scarce. I lost a good friend and it has tailspinned me down the toilet in flames. I've been reading though!
I'll write more in a bit.

Hi Pals. I'm back.
My disclaimer to the following: this is in no way intended to be serious advice. (although there might be a couple of sort of valid points.)

The topic of Not Wasting Food has motivated me to write. I too don't like to throw food away. I was well taught, by my mother who actually did live through the great depression, and had "depression mentality." However, to translate this into thinking you must eat food in order to not waste it, woud be, to my mother's logic, faulty reasoning. It would be the equivalent of finding ten dollars in your pocket and so therefore needing to spend it. So, my mother, God Rest Her Soul, would say the following. If I may, I will indicate to you what I observed from her: (and no, I do not live this way.) Pretend there is a after each sentence of this.

Food is scarce. Your job is to make as little of it last as long as possible with no waste.

One way to do this is to eat as little as possible. You need to cook for your husband. Men like to eat meat for some reason so you should provide that, except for Fridays. Try to make a pound of meat last you a whole week. If you have leftovers, you probably bought too much. Make a half a pound last a whole week. That would be a big improvement. Count your blessings.

Meat is for men. Milk is for children. Neither of these have much to do with you, as an adult woman. You don't need much of anything. Look at what is left on someone elses plate and maybe after they are done you can have that.

If you have a child who is a picky eater, count your blessings. That means they won't eat much. Never buy anything special for them. You didn't need it when you were a child and they don't either.

Vegetables are grown in your large garden. You pick them in the summer and then you make them last all year by canning and pickling and freezing them. You never buy vegetables at a store. Salads are eaten only in the summer because you can't freeze or can them. A salad consists of some lettuce and cucumbers in a bowl.

Dessert comes from apples, which are grown on your 7 apple trees. They come in the summer and the fall, and when there are too many you can them with a little bit of sugar and cinnamon. Not too much sugar. That bag of sugar has to last you about 2 years. Make sure to keep it in a real tight container so you don't get ants.

Restaurants are for rich people. They are something to Not Understand.


Multi-Course meals are for rich people. They are something to Not Understand. In the summer if you have a lot of corn you have corn for dinner. Just corn.

When you go to the store you buy meat and dairy products and eggs and flour. Flour is used to make bread and noodles. Anything else that comes in those cans and boxes are for rich and modern people and are something to Not Understand.

The only time you get those ready made things or frozen dinners is when you send your husband to the store because you are sick. This is one of the reasons that you don't want to get sick.

If you end up with some leftover cooked food that you think might go bad if you don't do something right away, do not eat it. Freeze it. Even if it is only a tablespoon of food. Later you can add it to your other frozen tablespoons of food. Even if they are totally unrelated. A tablespoon of meat loaf and a tablespoon of fish and two tablespoons of green beans will make a feast! Don't be greedy. It's one of the seven deadly sins, and people starving in Africa would love to have this 4-tablespoon meal. Maybe it would last them two meals. Maybe it should last you two meals too.

Butter: when you buy butter take one stick and cut it in half and put it in the refrigerator. Put the rest in the freezer so it won't get rancid. After all, a half a stick of butter is going to last you two months.

Fat: When you get meat, cut off all the fat and wrap it up and save it. When you need to put a thin layer of fat on your pan so food won't stick, use a little bit of this fat. It won't melt much but you'll get a tiny bit out of it which is all you need anyway. No need to buy those fancy highfalutin bottles of oil.

Fancy Sauces: These are for rich people and are something to Not Understand. Spices are made of salt and pepper. Potatoes and noodles are eaten plain. They are perfectly fine by themselves. You just boil them to death in tap water and put them on your plate. Not too much of them though.

An interesting thing happens, that we have no label for in the 1950's but when you do all these things successfully, you will find yourself being able to eat next to nothing, and still not get too skinny. This is a wonderful thing, since everybody knows it is not healthy to be too skinny, and if you can be medium sized by eating minimal quantities of food, it is a blessing. Maybe in the next lifetime you can be a plant and just photosynthesize. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Beverages: Tap water is your blessing. Be glad that you have tap water. People starving in India have to collect water from rivers that have wildebeest poop in them. Your kitchen sink is your Angel.

You can use your tap water to make coffee. When you steal a little bit of the milk you bought for your child and put it in your coffee, it is known as protein. You don't need too much. You aren't growing anymore. Coffee with some milk and a small crust of bread is a meal to be thankful for.

Well, enough of the Wisdom of Mom -- but that would be her take on the concept of Not Wasting Food.

Have a good day everyone,

jo

Hi Jo,

Good to hear from you. So sorry about your friend.

Enjoyed reading your Mom's take on things. Brought back a lot of memories. I have a hard time throwing food away so I don't usually have left overs. I only fix what DH and I will eat. I buy meat in bulk and divide up into one or two servings. If I do happen to have leftovers, it is usually something I can eat later especially since I do IE. When my children were young and at home, once a week I took all my leftovers (didn't have many as the boys got older) and added a few things with it if I needed to and made kind of a stew. This helped keep my refrigerator cleaned out and food didn't spoil and get thrown out. But I wouldn't eat something I thought would make me or someone else sick. I never lived through the depression but heard all the stories of my late DH grandparents and his Mother tell how they made it through that time. My Daddy's family lived on a farm during th depression and his Aunt told me they didn't feel the depression until they moved to town. Any way, I learned a lot of tricks from my in-laws on making foods go a long way. I have lived through times when I had no money to buy food. I think that is why I am having to work through IE and learn that no one is going to take my food from me and I can buy more if I want it. Late DH used to laugh and tell people about me cooking a chicken. He would say "I don't know how she does it, but she can get more meals out of one chicken". It was just one of those little tricks his little grandmother taught me from her depression days. In fact, she is the one who taught me to take all the leftovers and throw them in a pot once week to make a meal of stew, goolash or whatever. Those things are lost to our younger generation coming up.

Hope you are having a good day.

Jo we always have a big garden and even a night when we freeze it and supper is just corn!!! After that you don't want to see corn for awhile. ha! We're visiting DD right now and eating is much easier because you're out of your realm. KInd of exciting. I've been eating a lot of fiber lately but not sure for me if it is a good thing. I've been kind of bloated and had a lot more back ache. I have a lot of trouble with belly fat anyway and taking prednisone doesn't help. Then add the bloat and.......well.....it's just uncomfortable. Live and learn.

Until I was 14 and my brother 18 my mom was a single mother. She is a survivor through and through for many reasons but she never harped on us about cleaning our plate or throwing away food. I have learned from her how to make a meal out of minimal ingredients.

I'm hoping my IE book will be here tomorrow. I'm excited to get a chance to learn more.

Hi Shay, One thing bad about vacation is that a lot of what you do for fun is eat new things or things you can't get where you live. I over did it a little yesterday but haven't eaten yet today.........except for a handful of cheerios. One of my problems is that I can't be in the sun at all and I don't like indoor exercise much except for our eliptical at home. I just need to eat less. Sometimes that's not hard and sometimes it is very difficult.

Carol--I know what you mean. When I go on vacation I definitely what to eat at places specific to that location. There's no fun in eating at an Applebee's or Outback when that is available at home. I'm going to Myrtle Beach in September and I want to start scouting out places.

I'm still working on the overdoing it. I know I'm up in weight although I haven't been on the scale. I can tell by the way my clothes fit.

I can identify with that Carol and Shay. When we go back to Boca to see DD, we love to go eat out at 2 of our favorite restaurants that we don't have here. Same is true when I go back home to TX. My family always tries to have a BBQ dinner for me (we have SC/NC BBQ here which I love, but just not TX) and we try to go out to ou favorite cafeteria when home too. No Picadilly type place arolund here. I love BBQ and DHs DS has a wonderful BBQ place in IN as well. So what I usually do when traveling is I "try" to only eat one main meal when I know I'm going out. Some times it works and some times it doesn't. I may not lose weight, but I don't gain this way while on vacation.

Yeah my IE book is here. Gotta love Amazon. So I want to read a little bit each day. I really don't want to drag it out but want to have time to read and process it. I'm excited. I feel a little more a part of the crew now that I have a resource to refer to. I see that both ladies work with individuals with eating disorders which helps because I have self diagnosed myself as a binge eater.

WHEN YOU LOVE WHAT YOU DO,
YOU'LL NEVER EXERCISE A DAY IN YOUR LIFE!
By Michelle May, M.D.

(Discover your Exercise Personality by taking our quiz at
the end of the formatted version of this E-Newsletter - go to
http://www.amihungry.com/pdf/newsletter-02-08.pdf)

My husband Owen recently completed his first half-marathon.
Afterward he was limping a little but smiling from ear to ear.

I, on the other hand, had signed up to walk it and didn't
even go.

As a teenager in New Zealand, Owen played rugby and ran
about 10 miles a night delivering milk in glass bottles (so
that tells you he's in his late 40's). In the last couple
of decades, his exercise has consisted of walking the dog
and intermittently working out at the YMCA, so I was
surprised when he announced that he had signed up with a
team to train for the Rock 'N Roll Marathon.

He enjoyed the structure of the training schedule, the
camaraderie of running with his friends twice a week, the
challenge of training for a long-distance event, and the
opportunity to raise money for "Chances for Children."
During his five months of training, he progressed from
walking and jogging a mile or two to running all 13.1 miles
at a pace of 9+ minutes per mile on race day. I was proud
of him--but more importantly, he was proud of himself!

As for me, I've never liked to run and never had the
slightest interest in training for an event like that. For
the last eight years or so, I've loved yoga and hiking--and
I'm actually disappointed if I can't fit one or the other
in most days of the week.

Why then, when a friend asked me to walk the half-marathon
with her, did I say yes?

Because I knew I could and I thought I should.

It turns out that those reasons weren't good enough because
my "exercise personality" is a poor fit for training for a
long distance event. My travel schedule can be crazy so I
didn't like the pressure of having to train. I hated
missing my yoga class when I needed to walk instead. I
resented the thought of carving out long periods of time
for distance training.

Then, just weeks before the marathon, I was sick and
couldn't exercise for nearly two weeks. When I finally
recovered, I bought a new pair of shoes and developed a
deep blister that wouldn't heal. As the marathon drew near,
I found myself dreading getting up early and dealing with
the crowds and the traffic on event day.

Hate? Pain? Resentment? Dread? Enough already!!! Clearly
this was not my thing. I had nothing to prove and it was
ruining the joy I find in moving simply for the sake of
moving.

So I backed out. No guilt, no shame, just an important
lesson learned about myself.

Owen reached his goal and rediscovered his love of running.
I'm back to my hiking and yoga and realized how much I love
the flexibility of exercising on my own terms.

Whatever your personal exercise traits are, get out there
and try different things until you find something you
enjoy. When you do physical activity you love, you'll never
exercise a day in your life.

Carol--Thanks for the article. I am now subscribed to the newsletter. I planned to read a little of the IE book today but haven't had a chance yet. I hope to do so before heading to bed tonight.

Vacation is going so so. Somedays are better than others eating wise. Yesterday was a good day. I ate less because of the previous days abundance. Today, after a couple of bites of cheesecake bar I'm not hungry again. I'll wait awhile to have some soup. I sure feel better when I don't over do it.

Hi Everybody,

Shay - I have been reading my IE a little bit at a time. It seems that I end up reading it when I need what I need next and it fits where I am in my eating. I am learning a lot.

Carol - hope you are enjoying your trip. Sounds like you are doing better than you think.

Hi everyone,
I still haven't had a chance to crack my IE book but tonight is the night. I want to try and read the foreward and Chapter 1. Looking forward to it.

Has anyone read Beyond Chocolate, another IE book? The authors are from England, I think.