Sun and Soup

The dropping temps and crisp air are getting me excited for two things: soup and Thanksgiving.

Yes, I recognize that these are both technically food-related.  However, this year, I am particularly excited about Thanksgiving because we will be spending it in Florida with family.  This means I will be lovingly surrounded by some of my favorite S-words (not swords, as Sean Connery might say): sun, sand, sustenance. 

"Sustenance" for me is both physical and emotional.  Delicious food and being taken care of.  It's amazing how that can be so important as an adult. Sometimes all you need is for someone else to make decisions. And I, for one, am looking forward to going with the flow as one of the chitlin, so long as there is some beach time in there.

My love for the beach is a bit odd considering my genetic makeup. I'm pretty sure very few of my ancestors ever saw the sun on a regular basis. My body was built to withstand hard Scandinavian winters and Baltic farming duties. And yet there are few things that bring me more joy than playing in/around water and in full sunlight.  Despite my pale as all get out alabaster complexion, I actually don't burn that badly...mostly I turn into one big giant freckle and must avoid too much time sans SPF due to relatively predictable rashes of sunpoisoning. And yet, all I ever want is sunshine. Given the stress and uncertainty of the last few weeks, I can't even begin to tell you how much I am looking forward to this trip. I am actually day dreaming of beaches and flip flops as we speak.  But I am also at work, so I would be better suited to get back to the present and try to actually earn my keep.

Which brings me to another welcome S-word: soup.  This time of year, soups are perfect one-pot meals to feed a lot or a little and freeze the leftovers. Plus they're (usually) easy to make and (often) oober healthy. I've made a couple of nice ones so far (the marvelous M was especially fond of my recent potato-leek experiment), and today I'll share one that I think is filling and fun (or, at least as fun as flavors can get).

Butternut Ginger Soup

Makes about 8 servings.

4 Points+ per serving.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium butternut squash
• 1 small onion
• 2 carrots
• 1-2 stalks celery (optional)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• a 2-inch piece of raw ginger (yes, I actually mean that much)
• 3 cloves garlic
• crushed red pepper flakes
• 6 cups +/- water or stock (veggie or chicken would work best; I used chicken bouillon) 

Directions:

• Peel the squash with a very sharp vegetable peeler or with a paring knife. Discard seeds and cut into 1.5-2 inch chunks. Be warned: the skin of the squash is extremely drying, and will dry out your skin something fierce if you don't scrub real well after peeling/chopping. No joke, it's uncomfortable.  Thanks to the illustrious N for this tip!
• Melt the butter in a large pot or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add chopped onion, carrots and celery and cook until onions are translucent.
• Add finely chopped garlic, salt and pepper and saute another minute or two.
• Add water/stock and squash chunks. Season generously with salt, black pepper and crushed red pepper flakes (a few good shakes, the ginger is spicy too).  
• Grate fresh ginger with microplane/other finer-toothed kitchen implement directly into pot.  Yes, it seems like a lot of ginger.  You'll just have to trust me.
• Bring to a boil. Once boil is rolling, cover and turn heat down a bit to simmer for 20 minutes for so, until squash chunks are tender. Once tender (e.g., once you can easily squish the chunks with the back of a spoon on the side of the pot), turn off the heat.  
• If you have a fancy-pants immersion blender, now's the time to bust it out. If not, use a large coffee cup to ladle a few mugfuls into a blender. Cover and puree for about a minute, or until it's as smooth as you like. Important Note! the heat from the soup will want to expand in the blender and blow the top off, so make sure you are holding it down tight with an hot pad or towel before hitting that puree button.  
• Pour pureed soup into a separate pot while you repeat that last step with the remainder of the soup (or if you have a fancy-pants immersion blender, don't worry about it).  Return the whole thing to the original pot on the stove to reheat and check seasoning.  Fun fact: if you're looking for a bit of extra creaminess, add a dollop of sour cream before serving. 

Any other treasured soup recipes you'd like to share? I'd love to hear them! 

If Wishes Were Fishes

Hello friends.

Firstly, my apologies for abandoning the internet adventure of #FitAnniversary (hashtag, see how hip I am?) for the last couple of weeks.  It was touch-and-go for a while, particularly in the "dealing with life like an adult" department.  That is to say, I spent days on end in my sweats, diligently plugging away at internship applications, while wholly ignoring other would-be important bits. You know, things like laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, showering, answering the phone, etc.  Combing the coping strategy of ignoring the to-do list (and, I'm sorry to say, my husband), with managing the emotional freak out that comes with trying (mostly in vain) to control what little is realistically within one's grasp led to consuming food that came from either the phone or the pantry (read: all the carbs). At one point last week I was so anxious that all I ate was popcorn, as it required grinding my teeth against airy kernels instead of each other.  Going to the gym was out of the question, as that would require time, of which I felt I had none. Furthermore, that whole concept of inertia was working in full force.  Meaning that, since I was primarily an object at rest, I was perfectly willing to stay at rest, and not particularly enthused by the idea getting myself in any kind of motion.

Needless to say, last week's weigh in was not pretty.  Up 1.4 lbs.  Ugh.*
*Note: when I weighed in yesterday, I had lost that 1.4 and an extra 0.2. Woot!

(c) National Geographic. Effin love those guys.

Amidst my anxiety, I was also plagued by wishes.  Many of which are old and tired and definitely never coming true.  After last week's abysmal weigh in I found my brain returning to that old standard:

I wish to be thin.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I wish to wake up thin.  Or even more basically, I wish that being thin were easy. As a red-blooded American, I can easily fall victim to the desire for instant gratification. Obviously I know weight loss takes time and hard work, and I'm doing my best to make both happen (er, or at least getting back on the wagon). But this has been such a long-fought battle that sometimes the wish to be thin comes unbidden. I find myself bargaining with God about how good I would be to my new body, how well I would take care of it, if only I could skip over this hard part of actually losing. The worst part is that I know better. I know better than to waste time and energy wishing things were different, and yet, I still do.  I find this to be true in my clients as well; wishing for things to be different. We all have unfulfilled needs and desires, and wishes do nothing more than exercise our fantasies about them. Which has its merits. But for me, right now, wishing to be thin does nothing except discourage and frustrate me.  Def not things that are helpful to Fit Anniversary.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across this article by xojane.com favorite Emily. Her irreverent and revealing stories have resonated with moi before, but this article shot straight through me, first with the title:

"There will never be anything effortless about my body."

Hrmf.  Oh, Emily.  Why you gotta be so full of truthiness.

When I think about it, being human generally means being a work-in-progress. Foreva. Whether this be about your weight, your relationships, your management of internal or external strife, we're all working on something (or should be, at the very least). We make mistakes.  This will always be true. We can always do better, but not in the disapproving-because-you-need-to-be-perfect way. More like an it-is-what-it-is sort of way.

When he was in seminary, J and I used to have this argument about whether God loves us because we are flawed or in spite of this fact. It comes down to being worthy, I think.  Either we are worthy of love because of everything we are, including all the brokenness, or we are worthy of love despite the fact that we are broken. He of course argued that the fact that we are eternal fuck-ups is what God loves about us humans. At the time, I thought of God more like a parent, who is supposed to love you no matter what, even if they don't particularly like it when you fuck things up. So he took up the side of because and I took up the torch of in spite of.  Looking back on it, it makes sense that I would have felt that way; at the time, I could not conceive of being loved because of all the ways you fall short. It's a very hard thing for humans to grasp, or at least for this one it is. But I'm working on it.

And I'm working on viewing my body in this way too. I'm trying to love it because it is mine -- flub and all. The effort extends to the exercise world; I can end up talking myself out of any physical activity because it's not what I feel I should be doing. So I try to accept what I am able to do, period.  Yesterday I hated everything about going to the gym, especially the idea of running.  I'm not sure why I was so furious with the treadmill, but instead of avoiding the gym altogether, I forced myself out of bed and onto an elliptical machine.  Hey, it's cardio. And I get to watch Frasier reruns on the miniature TV fixed to the top of it.  And you know what? I'm ok with it. My body gave me a solid 40 minutes of elevated heart rate and calorie burning, and I love it for doing so.

Perhaps the wish to be thin, or for this body and existence in it to be effortless, hearkens back to the in spite of mode of thinking.  Wishing to be thin separates the me that is lovable from the me that is fat. But they are one and the same. And certainly I am not one because of the other.

Tonight, when I am watching the election result pour in over the latest CGI maps of blue and red, I will make every effort to love my country because it is flawed. It makes me think of that Winston Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." I love my country because it is mine, red, blue and in between. Not in spite of the fact that there are people with whom I vehemently disagree, or practices to which I am wholeheartedly opposed.  I love it because I am blessed with the chance to live in a country where both can be true. That I have the right to speak my mind and have my voice be heard, along with all the minds and voices that grate my nerves.  I love this country, not for what it should be, or what I wish it was, but because of what it is -- failings and fortitude alike.