I woke up around eight o’clock this morning. My back was feeling pretty good, but I felt tightness in my ribcage. The true test is when I get on my stomach and up on my elbows. That puts a lot of pressure on my low back, and this morning it was painful. I have a long way to go, apparently, but I have noticed a reduction in pain in my lower back since going off dairy. I’ll abstain another week and try dairy again and monitor any changes.
I had pretty much ran out of fruit, so I didn’t eat much today. Wasn’t very hungry either. But I note that I’ve lost a couple of pounds.
Day Five’s Consumption
08:50 2 cups tea
14:55 bowl of grapes
16:15 5 carrots, 5 stalks celery, some romaine lettuce and parsley, juiced
18:25 large bowl of shredded green cabbage, chopped pecans, dried sweet cranberries with olive oil and lemon juice (I usually include cubes of raw sharp cheddar with this dish. Try it. It’s simple, fast, delicious, and healthy.)
20:45 1 head napa cabbage a 1 leek steamed with umeboshi plum vinegar, nama shoyu, flax and olive oil
11:30 to bed
I didn’t time the cabbage consumption very well, and realized only when I was getting dinner ready that I’d be eating it twice in one day. I’m not used to planning meals and cooking for myself. Mom never taught me to cook. I eat out a lot. When I was little she cooked for the family, but after years of being taken for granted she quit. I think it was the night my dad said, “We’re having porkchops again?” My sister tells me she threw the porkchop at him. How easy it is to take for granted someone’s efforts.
I Become a Fast Food Expert
So we kids were left to fend for ourselves. Cupboard staples were Beefaroni, Swanson’s Hungry Man Dinners, Kraft macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly, tuna fish, grilled cheese and egg salad sandwiches, Campbell’s soup, saltine crackers and Top Ramen soup. I was also good at bacon and egg sandwiches on French bread with mayonnaise. Fortunately, we had an apple, plum, peach, and orange tree and occasional pears to eat in the summer.
This bounty of bad food was readily available, but whenever possible it was, “Mom, can we have some money for dinner?” Then we’d race for the car shouting “Shotgun!” and my older brothers Robin and Andy would fight over who got to drive. If we took highway 92 there was a little section where we’d get the old red Corolla up to ninety miles an hour (on the way home only). Otherwise, we took Parrott Drive into town, which was a long road through roller coaster hills where we’d time the speed to flip our stomachs. The road was later pelted with stop signs and became tedious.
Round Table was Our Favorite
We liked variety and dined at McDonalds, Jack in the Box, Burger King, and A & W. But our favorite food was Round Table Pizza, which was pretty expensive. A Round Table Pizza Parlor was about a mile and a half away. Back then it was lavishly decorated in coats of arms and knights and horses, dark reds and blacks, carpeting and thickly lacquered tables and benches. The restaurant would fill with people, the bar stools were covered and the juke box played all night long. The song most played was All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix. Today most people get their pizza to go and eat it in front of the TV. Why have we abandoned the village?
Sometimes our whole family would dine there, mom consuming copious amounts of beer, the rest of us swilling Coca Cola and stuffing our faces with the King Arthur Supreme or simply a salami. My favorite became the pepperoni, mushroom and linguica pizza. But usually we got a pizza to go, which was carefully divied up at home. I hung out a lot at Round Table and eventually was engaged to the bartender (for all of seven months. Hey, I was fifteen!).
After mom died and was cremated, my two brothers and I picked up the box, took it to Round Table for one last pizza, and then drove her to one of her favorite parks: Point Lobos. My brother Robin stood at one end of the trail to keep watch, my bother Andy at the other, and I jumped the fence that said “Keep Out” and raced to the Veteran Cypress tree, a well-known landmark, and quickly dumped the ashes beneath it. Mom had been an Army veteran, so it was all so symbolic for us but the speed with which it happened seemed rather crude.
Then there was Phil’s Deli in the shopping center where we’d buy a peroshki or linguica sandwich. Mom brought home Chinese takeout and during dad’s visitations he’d take me to Kwok Wah where I’d have Wor Won Ton soup and where I received my certificate of achievement in chopsticks. To this day I cannot eat Chinese food with a fork; I must use chopsticks.
Another favorite was the Hillsdale Mall food court in San Mateo. Back then we ate on real ceramic plates with metal tableware and glasses, and every table had an ashtray. The restaurants were all privately owned and unique. My favorite was the pizza restaurant. Might have been called Ramone’s. I don’t remember. They had the most unusual salami and spices I’ve ever had on a pizza. It was truly the best pizza ever, so juicy and full of cheese that I would have to fold the tip over into the rest of it, fold it over and eat it like a sandwich. The cheese would slide off the pizza and fat would dribble down my chin and in between my fingers. God but it was good!
There was also a great Chinese restaurant, Mexican, American breakfast and sandwich, donut and coffee, Bar-B-Q, German Hofbräu, steakhouse, fish and chips (where you could also get a falafel; I worked there for a while), a bar, yogurt, and some other restaurants I don’t recall. It was one of our favorite outings. We usually went there after mom went to the Emporium to buy some books. It was also next to a grocery store where mom shopped that was later was turned into a Pier 1, a mysterious and magical place full of exotic smells.
Last time I visited that mall the fast food chains had moved in and displaced all the private restaurants. It was all garbage served on paper and plastic, marketed in garish colors and embarrassing costuming. I was deeply saddened by this loss of individuality replaced by corporatism. But we Americans did it to ourselves, because we chose WalMart over the local storeowner.
We kids got good at dividing food. When my older brother and sister moved out, it was just Andy and me. We devised a system where one person would divide the food and the other person got to choose their portion. So we got good at cutting something down the middle. Up until then it was pretty much stuff your face as quickly as possible to get what’s yours! That’s where I learned to eat fast, which was further drilled into me in the military where you had five minutes to get in line, get your food, and eat it.
In my early teens I would steal coins from my parents’ coat pockets (not much was available after my dad moved out) and run up to the college bookstore where candy bars were a dime and lifesavers were a nickel. They charged sales tax over a dime, so I would have the cashier ring up one candy bar at a time. I could harvest anywhere from fifty cents to a dollar, so I’d eat several candy bars before I got home jacked up on sugar. Looking back, this was probably the motivating factor to mom slipping me valium. Mom loved her valium.
I would also check the vending machines in the college cafeteria upstairs, and sometimes I’d get lucky and find a lot of money forgotten in the change tray. I did this regularly. It’s no surprise that I put on weight when puberty hit. I’ve been overweight since then and always conscious of it. A year after joining the military a dentist filled every molar and pulled my wisdom teeth. I always wondered if he was just practicing on me, but it was the sugar.
It’s the Dressing That’ll Do You In
Now I don’t remember eating salads in those days, but I remember having dressing around and being able to make my own thousand island. I do remember iceberg lettuce, something that never belongs in a salad, only as crunch and moisture for sandwiches. Talk about a nonfood! It’s inconceivable that restaurants still sell iceberg lettuce salads. Oh yeah, we made tacos, too (which is where the iceberg comes in) and spaghetti, and pancakes smothered in butter and syrup. But I don’t remember ever making myself a salad.
At a local diner a few weeks ago I saw a couple fellows come in for lunch, soiled from their labors. I expected them to order burgers or sandwiches, but they both ordered salads. I was heartened that these two men were concerned with eating healthily. Their large salads came and then I watched in mounting horror as one of the men poured half a cup of creamy dressing on it.
The salad was made from iceberg lettuce. So these gents got a large bowl of nothing with a few little tomatoes and threw six or eight hundred calories worth of fat onto it. I think in this instance they would have been better off getting a hamburger. At least then they’d have some protein, which would have reduced their fat intake. A BLT would have been a health food comparably.
Think about it. The lettuce itself has very few calories. It’s mostly water and cellulose. Throw in some cucumbers and tomatoes, and your calorie count is still very low. Then add a few tablespoons of dressing and your calorie count skyrockets. But it’s not the number of calories that’s the main concern; it’s that you’re eating a meal that’s probably ninety-five percent fat. So salads can be problematic.
People’s tastebuds are quite deranged from eating heavily seasoned processed foods full of additives and preservatives. So they require a lot of dressing to enjoy the taste and eat what is essentially tasteless to them. But if you slowly begin to incorporate more whole foods with minimal processing into your diet, your taste buds will become more sensitive.
Lately, my salads have been dressed with about a tablespoon of olive oil and some lemon juice. I’ve also found that a little cilantro can take the place of olive oil. Chopped kalamata olives are a personal favorite. But it took time to get to the point where my tastebuds could appreciate the simplicity.
How to Reduce Your Salad Dressing
For now what you can do to reduce the amount of dressing in your salad is use a trick my friend Tom taught me. Get your dressing on the side. Dip your fork in the dressing and then spear the salad. This way you get dressing in every bite but you’ll consume less than half of what you normally would. Try it. Let me know what you think.
Slowly move to lemon juice and olive oil, then begin decreasing the olive oil or substituting it with avocado or cilantro or even nuts or sunflower seeds. You’ll find the oil isn’t all that necessary for flavor, and you’ll begin to appreciate the subtle, sweet taste of lettuce. I love eating lettuce straight from the plants in my garden.
Lettuce comes in many different forms, but iceberg is just water wrapped in cellulose. Save it for tacos and burgers. It has no place in a salad.
If you have any light homemade dressings you enjoy, please post them here.
