What I Had For Lunch

They say that when you start out blogging you have a headful of ideas and you wind up writing about what you had for lunch. Well, today I had what I consider a significent lunch: homemade hummus.

I haven’t made hummus in many years, but it’s like riding a bicycle. And I had forgotten how much better homemade hummus tastes. And one does, if one is eating sensibly, resent paying four buck for a lousy little container.

I remember I experimented for years with chickpeas and tahini and garlic and lemon to make the hummus less dry. Olive oil didn’t work, tho that’s always a good idea. More lemon juice didn’t do the trick. What could possibly make the mixture less dry? I pondered the question night and day, and at last I found the answer: a little bit of water.

My delicious lunch of hmmus and rye bread is, as I suggested, part of a program of eating sensibly, but that really doesn’t do it justice. I’m savoring delicious food all day long, and I have parted ways with the kind of food that makes you hungrier than you were before.

So far I’ve lost 20 pounds, and I’m going to take off 20 more.

People don’t change without reasons, and my reasons were lit up plain as day — high blood sugar readings and a visit from my friend Bob, who lost the front half of his foot. The joke is diabetes makes you impotent, but you don’t notice because you’re going blind and they’re cutting off your extremeties — hahaha.

I realized I could avoid the whole deal by becoming a jock and exercising every day for more than an hour and by cutting out beer and pizza and eating sensibly.

So then you realize the whole economy is based on selling fat-sugar-carb crap and you see some sensible talks by people like Dr. Mark Hyman, who can get their message across in a minute, and you find a great coach like Marina Solovyov, and finally you knock off everything that has been hydrogenated or that contains high fructose corn syrup.

I actually cringe now when I see an adult hand a soda to a kid. I keep my mouth shut, but I cringe. And don’t think you’re doing any better with Orangina or ginger ale. Look at the label. Pepperidge Farm? Loaded with HFCS. Rye bread, pumpernickel — the number one ingredient is wheat flour! It’s got a super-gluten super-carb! Just what you need!

Then, if you read the data about pesticides, you wind up going organic whenever you can, and here in the Pioneer Valley, you’re in luck, thanks to folks like Dave Jackson at Enterprise Farms and Bill Hewitt at the Funny Farm.

Food as Medicine

For me, the process has been one of adding, rather than subtracting. I don’t feel like eating when I get up, but I do, oatmeal with ground flax seed and cinnamon and a banana and a kale-spinach apple-orange smoothie. Take your medicine, I tell myself. And these are foods that make you less hungry than you were before you ate them, unlike a cheeseburger or a roast beef sandwich that make you want three more just like it.

Then in the evening I have roasted brussels sprouts and carrots and salmon or pork or chicken roasted on a bed of grilled onions and peppers and mushrooms. With lots of garlic. In between I eat unsalted peanuts, black olives and almost-hard-boiled eggs. I’m never hungry and I’m losing about half a pound a day.

So there’s the story of my lunch, and that’s the last I’ll say about it, unless you’re interested. And of course I’ll keep you posted on my progress, but only in increments of five pounds or more.