Off on Holiday...

Jenny and I are off for the next few weeks to live amongst our friends across the pond in the UK and Ireland. I can't wait to tell you how it goes...

Out with the Old...

Jenny and I were out this weekend to buy a few articles of clothing for our upcoming trip to the UK and Ireland. We didn't want to walk around the chic streets of London like a bunch of lazy American hobos! My year-old jeans were slowly getting larger, so I took the opportunity to buy a new pair.

After trying on a half dozen, I settled on a pair that was slightly snug, but would fit great after an hour or two of walking around to stretch them out. Ok, you're thinking, what the heck does this have to do with anything? When I decided enough was enough back at the end of the "fat" era, I wore a 44" waist...a tight 44" waist. I bought a pair of 32's for the trip. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've taken a whole foot off my waistline.

I've passed the mythical line where I stop measuring the shrinkage of my waistline in inches and move on to feet. In terms of personal measurements, this ranks second only to the day my mom started counting my age in years and not in months.

And what of my trusty old pair? I'm glad you asked!

They've been relegated to oil changing and camping duty. Jenny and I have gone through untold hundreds of dollars of clothes in the last four years. I've slowly watched my waist shrink through a half dozen or more sizes. My gut has gone from a Santa-like XXL to a DeLaHoya-like small. I've gone through more belts than a Jiffy Lube. I've shrunk out of more underwear than...you get the point. And I've always ditched my old clothes.

One more time - I've always ditched my old clothes. Don't keep yours. Get rid of them.

Keeping your old clothes is one of weight management's biggest no-no's. In doing so you say, "Hey I might (or probably will) fail, so let me keep these just in case." What a terrible state of mind that puts you in! You're starting out assuming failure, accepting defeat! I only allow one old article of clothing to remain in my closet - a pair of black slacks, affectionately called my "fat pants", that I keep to see how far I've come.

Getting rid of garbage bags (the lawn kind, not the little bathroom wastebasket kind) of old clothes has been so incredibly therapeutic. It's almost a spiritual cleansing, as if I'm saying a final goodbye to the body I loathed and hello to the person I've always wanted to be.

Don't like throwing away perfectly good clothes? Might I suggest:

• St. Vincenet DePaul
• Goodwill
• The Salvation Army

Jenny also sells old clothes on consignment. This works great when she's gotten me clothes for Christmas that don't fit by Easter. Don't laugh, it's happened.

It's a strange thing, when an activity that you used to hate and avoid becomes something fun, something to look forward to. Enjoying my new me, and letting go of the old me, is one of the many indescribable joys that make losing weight so much more than a number on a scale.

Catering is Not a Crime

I have a confession to make. I didn't cook this meal.

Jenny and I hosted a dinner party for 6 and we didn't cook a darn thing. No, I wasn't lying to my guests. They knew the food they were so happily scarfing down was not of our hands. Loathe us if you will, but we slept really well that night.

Usually a dinner party involves much planning, pre-cooking and rushing home from work at 4:00 to get things started. This time, I wasn't breaking into a sweat. I wasn't stressing over details, studying recipes, waiting in nervous anticipation for the food to be done, all the while asking myself if my guests would arrive before the food gets cold.

Not that I don't enjoy hosting dinner parties! Indeed, that's one of my favorite things to do, and I'll very happily cook for friends and family. It's just nice, for once, to have people over here to eat without the task of making a meal. I could actually sit down, eat chips and salsa, converse and enjoy a drink or two.

One day I envision a house with a "TV" kitchen where I could be in the kitchen cooking smoothly while hanging out with people from the party. Think Mario Batali's show on the Food Network. It would blend seamlessly into the living room. Guests could walk up to ask about a particular dish and I could yarn endlessly about Greek olives or the kind of crusty bread made by grandmothers in the Pasta Fajioli region of southeast Tuscany. It'd be sweet.

But until then I'm stuck in a galley kitchen that gets to be 100 degrees when the oven and all four burners are on. I still love to cook in it, but for this once I'll lay down my mitts and let someone else do the dirty work.

Cooking with Pineapple

Maybe it's the memory of our honeymoon in Hawaii floating in our heads, but Jenny and I really have a thing for pineapple. Our visit to the Dole plantation was a relative let-down from a tourist standpoint, but it was a real treat from a culinary view. Our free samples were delicious. Soft, but not mushy and with a pronounced sweetness and light acidity. Sorry to say, but the pineapples available here on the mainland rarely taste as good as those that are consumed fresh in paradise.

Since joining Weight Watchers, we've been eating candy and sweets a lot less and consuming fruits a lot more. To me, the pineapple is the king of all fruits. It's flavor is so versatile that it can be featured in both sweet and savory dishes equally as well. It can be consumed raw or cooked by a host of different methods.

I volunteered to prepare the dessert for my company's recent cookout. Since the purpose of the exercise was to put the grills through their paces, I decided immediately that grilled fruit was to be the centerpiece of the dessert.

Pineapple has all the qualities needed for great grilling. It's firm enough to stay on the grate and not fall through to the coals. The fruit has a lot of sugar, so it browns nicely and develops a complex flavor when cooked. It also tastes great hot!

I used a rocket-hot (clean) grill to lightly brown both sides of the pineapple, then cut the rings into quarters and served them with pound cake, vanilla ice cream and a simple strawberry sauce. The dessert was a big hit, even after everyone filled their bellies with meats and side dishes. There was a distinct absense of talking while people were eating, which is always a good sign.

Pineapple-Strawberry Shortcake

1 Whole Fresh Pineapple, peeled and cored
1 Sarah Lee Pound Cake
8 oz. Strawberries chopped roughly
2-3 tbsp. Sugar
Vanilla Ice Cream

Toss the strawberries in sugar and refrigerate covered overnight. Cut the pineapple into 1/2" rings.

Cook the strawberries with liquid in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat until
the strawberry chunks have broken down and the mixture becomes thick and
syrup-like.

Grill the pineapple over high heat on a well-cleaned grill. Serve with the sliced pound cake, ice cream and strawberry syrup.

I didn't calculate the points value, but light pound cake and light vanilla ice cream can be substituted to bring the value down. The recipe serves 6.

Switching gears, I also tried a savory dish with pineapple this week. On a whim, I constructed a Hawaiian style sandwich for lunch. It's nothing complicated, just a few slices of honey-baked ham and thin sliced pineapple with a little yellow mustard. The flavor was great though! This sandwich was perfect on a summer day, and it was a nice break from my usual ham and cheese.

I can't say what inspired me to try a host of pineapple dishes this week, but I feel like I've loosened up with regards to using the fruit in a variety of recipes. That's the glory of stepping out of "ham and cheese" mode or "raw fruit" mode and opening up to new flavors.

Of course you can still just eat the fruit raw, but that'd make for a pretty boring post.

Update 8/23 - In my eagerness to post I completely forgot to mention that, yes, pineapple is an especially light treat. Truth be told, I'd have just settled on the fruit and ice cream in my dessert. That would have considerably lightened the dish! The play of hot vs. cold in this dish is the key. The pound cake just gives it a base.

Update 9/12 - The photo of the grilled pineapple was entered in this month's Does My Blog Look Good in This photography contest!

Eating Savannah

Jenny and I just returned from a delightful trip to Savannah to enjoy the beach with my family. Yours truly took a break from most of the cooking chores and let my Mom take the reins in the kitchen.

As far as vacations go, this one was pretty light on the heavier foods. We're all on a weight management program of some sort, so we avoided heavier meals and desserts...for the most part. We rented a beach house with a kitchen, which made it really easy to avoid eating out. There were lots of healthy snacks (fruits, fresh vegetables) and my Mom made very healthy meals. My Dad even came through and made a batch of his signature pancakes. He was even so kind as to add strawberries and banana slices to mine. No syrup required!

I'm a big fan of this kind of family vacation, food wise. By eating together as a family, we get time to be with each other. Besides, it's far healthier and WAY cheaper.

My sister, her husband, Jenny and I did make it down to Savannah's City Market area for dinner Friday night. Matt had heard from friends about a Scottish restaurant and pub that had just opened in the area. Molly MacPherson's at first appears to be a typical UK-inspired pub, but inside we found a place far better than the formula. Molly Mac's has a great atmosphere, as to be expected at a joint of this type. The staff were extremely polite, and service was really good.

What was truly exceptional was the food. Jenny and I split the "Bangers and Mash" and a Highland Salad (sorry, it was a little dark for pictures). The bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes) was really exceptional, especially with a draft microbrewed ale. Jenny even noted that she isn't a huge fan of sausage, but she loved this dish. The highland salad was really tasty, so much so that I didn't mind trading my half-eaten plate of sausage and potatoes for it. It had hazelnuts and gorgonzola cheeze and a light dressing, which is a pretty exotic (for me) and delicious combination.

We all really enjoyed this restaurant, and would recommend it. I hope the pubs in London are this good when we go on holiday!

And what of the Queen of Southern Cooking, Paula Deen? I love her show on the Food Network and her personality on-screen, but I hate waiting out in the sun for an hour and a half with three small kids. The crowd begging to get in to The Lady and Son's was simply enormous, and we all decided that it was best not to attempt a meal there on this trip.

Frankly, I was a little relieved. I'm struggling to pull out of a plateau and I was a little uneasy thinking about the damage that could be done with an all-you can eat buffet of fried chicken, fried okra, biscuits and gravy and a host of fatty heavy southern food. Sorry, but I don't have that much self-control!

Grilling at Work

Anyone who's had more than 5 minutes around me this summer knows that I desperately long for a grill of my own. Georgia fire codes prevent me from owning a real fire-spewing grill in my complex. As long as I live in a box with 10 other people, the primal urge to sear and char food over open flame will have to be suppressed, or at least mitigated by smoking meats at low temperature in my little brown egg.

Or so I thought. I had the rare (for me) treat of actually preparing real grilled food this week. Oddly enough, I did it at work. The occasion was a grill out hosted by my company's strategic partners, the fellows at Propane Design. Steve, Propane's owner, kindly let me take the reigns and burn some burgers (and brauts).

It was hotter than heck outside, but I still had a blast. Every man loves to cook out, and having to suppress our most basic hunter urges goes against billions of years of instinct. It's just not natural!

Besides the biological reasons why grill bans are evil, there are the culinary reasons. Nothing you can do inside your home will make your meats, fruits and veggies taste like they do when they come off a grill. It's just a fact. Even my broiler can't get hot enough to match the jet engine-like flame of your basic gas grill and heat equals browning. And we all know that brown tastes good.

I'll be the first to admit it - I suck at grilling. Call it years of inexperience. I still haven't learned the basics of temperature control or food placement on the grill. I'm pleased to say that my grilling got better as the afternoon wore on. I did a surprisingly good job at dessert, but that's a different post.

In addition to over/undercooking the meat, I provided a Pyrex full of my Mom's Jack Daniels baked beans (recipe below). These don't seem to be too popular with the women, but the guys sure do devour them. If you're too much of a nancy boy, you can cut back on the JD to 1/3 of a cup. Oh, and don't make the mistake of using coffee grounds instead of instant coffee. Bad eats!

Jack Daniels Baked Beans
Courtesy of Mama Conway

3 cans (15 oz. ea) Pork and Beans
1/2 cup Jack Daniels Whiskey
3 tbsp. Brown Sugar, packed
1.5 tbsp. Yellow Mustard
1 tsp. Instant Coffee

Drain the liquid out of one can of beans. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350 degrees uncovered for 45 min to 1 hour. Serves 12, 3.5 WW pts. per serving.

Kurt, a designer at Propane, found an interesting new product at our local megamart. Kosciusko beer mustard, in case you don't get it, is spicy brown mustard with beer in it (45% amber lager, per the label). It was love at first sight for me.

It was exactly what I was hoping for - a mild spicy brown flavor with a major (but not overdone) beer overtone. We had it on everything there, from the burgers to the bratwursts to the 'tater salad and beans. Oh the joys of this awesome mustard on sizzling hot bratwursts...

This stuff will definitely find a home in the Conway household soon.

Thanks to Steve Zwonitzer for taking the picture of me at the grill.

Everyone Should Have a Wife Like Mine

Behind every good man is a great woman.

Last week saw the intersection of two almost mutually exclusive forces - the intense desire to get back on the wagon and pay attention to my weight loss after weeks of little success, and the need to put in tons of hours at work to meet a deadline.

Normally the rigors of a long week and the need to take care of yourself are impossible to achieve at the same time, but my personal superhero was there to save the day. Jenny made sure that I had healthy lunches and dinners throughout the week so that I could stay late at work and get some key deliverables done without compromising my nutritional needs with junk food.

Take for instance Tuesday's care package...

It's quite a spread. In case you're wondering, she packed:

• 2 Sandwiches
• 2 Salads (romaine, tomatoes and cucumbers)
• 2 Bananas
• 1 Container Green Beans
• 1 Bag Grapes
• 1 Bag Celery Sticks
• 1 Nectarine

Pulling my lunch out of the fridge I felt like Emilio Estevez's character in The Breakfast Club. Seriously.

Frankly, it was too much food to eat in one day and I only polished off a fraction of it. Which is fine, because she had a tasty surprise ready for me when I came home late from work. She made fresh guacamole, which is an incredibly sexy skill in a woman.

We're both trying to eat more fruits and vegetables and less meats and carbs Not that meats and carbs are bad, we're just striving for more balance in our diets than we've traditionally had. This menu has 6 fruit servings and 6 vegetable servings, along with 2 meats and 2 carbs.

This new "eat more fruits and vegetables" kick has resulted in mountains of produce that needs to be cleaned, chopped and bagged. More often than not, it's Jenny that's doing the work. She also prepares salads, single serving cups of sugar-free Jello and counts out single-serving bags of pretzels. Jenny's determined to ensure our mutual success at managing our weight.

Having Jenny shows what two people can accomplish when they work together. Losing weight is always easier with a buddy, and it's a lot easier with a group. Not everyone can have the incredible help my wife gives me on a regular basis, but finding someone to share the emotional load of a major lifestyle change can make a huge difference.

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Thanks!

Turkey Burger with Black Bean Avocado Salad

Before summer slips away from us, I wanted to pass on a recipe for some great turkey burgers that I got out of the May/June issue of Weight Watchers magazine. This is another recipe that can be made in bulk and frozen. Thus prepared, you can come home and have them for dinner REALLY fast.

In the picture below, I put a patty on a couple of slices of wheat bread with some spicy mustard and a few thin strips of gruyere cheese. No, I'm not going super exotic with the cheese, I just had some left over from entertaining.

The salad off to the side is a quick creation made by combining a cubed avocado, lemon juice (enough to coat the avocado), a can of black beans (drained), diced onions and some frozen corn. It's seasoned with salt, pepper, and a bit (say a teaspoon or two) of cumin. Just play around with the proportions. For the seasoning add a bit, taste, and add more if necessary. Go easy on the avocado, black beans and corn. Even though they're good for you they contain a lot of points.

Lately, I've also been browning the patties in a non-stick skillet and making a quick turkey parmigiano. After they're browned, make my fast marinara sauce in the pan.

Turkey BurgersWeight Watchers Magazine, May/June 2005
1.25 lbs. Lean Ground Turkey
1/2 cup Fat Free Ricotta Cheese
2 Green Onions (just the green part), finely chopped
2 Cloves Garlic, mashed
2 tsp. Dijon or Brown Mustard
1 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
Salt and Pepper

Mix in a bowl until all ingredients are combined. Let sit in the fridge until the mix has firmed up, then form into 4 to 5 patties. The batch is 20 points, so depending on how many burgers you make, each burger is 4 to 5 points.