Posts from — April 2010

photo by jeremyok
Only we weren’t blonde.

I was just about to tell you to mark this day down when I realized its importance is meaningless to every single one of you. Except The Man. He generally agrees with me when it comes to ranking things in order of importance. (For instance, he wholeheartedly agrees that bread pudding is the best dessert ever, even counting chocolate cake which is pretty amazing. He also agrees that the apple tart we had twice on our honeymoon was the only non-bread pudding dessert to ever take the No. 1 spot.)

So where was I before I got off on that amazingbestestever apple tart tangent? Oh, right, today. And how it’s really important because it’s the first time in all of my years living in the DC area that my younger sister has visited. No, she’s not a hermit. No, she’s not afraid of driving or flying. Yes, she works retail and doesn’t get weekends off. Yes, I’ve been up to visit her a bunch of times even though she never set foot on Virginia soil. (Yes, I’ll be rubbing this in the entire weekend.)

I’m not sure yet what we’re all going to do this weekend. What with my gimpy can’t-walk-anywhere knees and my sister’s funky can’t-eat-anything stomach we’re like a really, really, like ridiculously good-looking geriatrics ward. (And yes I love Zoolander and quote it abundantly and often.) It might involve a lot of sitting around hungry. Or her running laps around me while I eat. We’ll see.

So now, before we go have so much fun you’ll be jealous—unless you’re doing something like going to the beach, in which case I’m jealous—I’ll leave you with the Craziest Thing I Heard All Week. Straight from the mouth of my mother, who called me while packing for the trip.

MOM: Do you have eggs and cheese?

TRACEY: Yes.

MOM: You sure? Because we can bring ours.

From Massachusetts. Five hundred miles. Oh, Mom.*

Let’s skip the routine “What are your weekend plans?” question today, shall we? Just for the sake of total randomness, tell me a silly childhood memory.

*No, she didn’t travel with the eggs and cheese. My sister and I talked her out of it.

photo by stetted
If you look close enough, you’ll realize this is not, in fact, the coleslaw I ate. It’s a nice photo, but the creaminess grosses me out. Add that to my food issues.

Sometimes The Man does something so un-Man like that I laugh inside all day long.

The other day, while writing the jumbo grocery list to go with our first grocery trip in a month (I did mention we were being frugal while The Man was out of work, didn’t I?), I handed The Man the latest copy of Everyday Food. “Find something you want to eat,” I said. I had already started a menu for the week but I like to involve the kids The Man so he has something to look forward to.

In case you’re new to my blog, I’ll translate that last bit for you. I like to let The Man pick a few healthy meals so that there’s less of a chance he microwaves frozen cheese dogs for dinner.

Anyhow, he found a recipe for coleslaw that looked delicious to me (as in it used oil and vinegar instead of mayo, which makes me want to gag), so we added it to the list. Well, halfway through the week, when The Man was at home before his new job started, I got an e-mail with a photo of the coleslaw. Not only had he made it on his own, but he improvised by adding diced radishes and even snapped a picture before eating. I don’t know which body snatcher invaded my husband that day, but it made me smile. Maybe he’s coming around after all.

Anyone else with a health food-phobic spouse that sometimes throws you for a loop?

photo by marxfoods

When I first started forcing urging The Man to eat healthy, salad dressing was a major issue. He was used to eating the great whites: Caesar, creamy Italian, and ranch. It took years for him to agree to homemade dressing, possibly because he really liked the bottled stuff but more likely because he was rebelling.

(He likes to take a stand against total healthification—yes, I just made up that word—by eating foods he knows are bad for the sole purpose of annoying me. Hence the hot dogs in our fridge. And the mystery meat marketed as pulled pork. Don’t even get me started on that one…)

As you may have learned, I’m a super picky eater so it’s almost impossible to find a bottled dressing I like. Instead, I make my own. Over the past year of making salad dressing for myself and The Man, I’ve realized I’m addicted to vinegar. I even bought a few flavored vinegars last summer while on vacation in Cape Cod. A tiny shop in Chatham sells enough oil and vinegar to keep you busy for hours, and I walked away with amazing basil oil, hot pepper oil and two new vinegars: coconut and fig balsamic. (The shop has a Web site, so go crazy.)

I started to wonder whether all that vinegar’s good for my health. Sure, I’ve heard about crazy celebs taking vinegar shots to lose weight (because, you know, that’s a great long-term weight loss plan) but research on vinegar’s actual health benefits seemed slim. I did more digging but came to the same conclusion: Vinegar may be good, but I think science is a long way from giving a final answer.

Here’s what I found: [Read more →]

photo by vgm8383
Yeah, that’s a bad idea.

There are a lot of bad ideas. Take, for instance, the second dessert I ate the other night. Sounded good at the get go, but in reality it was one big mistake. Well, lately I’ve noticed a few other bad ideas. Perhaps their creators have a sick sense of humor. Or maybe they didn’t get the all-important foresight gene. Either way, here are some future fails…

photo by christianyves

Hot naked yoga. Because yoga mats wet from sweaty feet aren’t gross enough. The punch lines are endless with this one, but I’ll just add one more thing: Think real hard before using the studio’s free yoga mat. Real hard. [Read more →]

photo by 3liz4

First off, The Man thanks you for all of your well wishes. His first day was a success, though we’re both beat. To get to work and back, it takes him an hour. Which means I got into the office at 7 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6 p.m. Whew. I think as the weeks go on and he gets into his sales territory closer to home the days will get back to normal. Until then, we’ll be sleep deprived.

On to today’s post!

I always hear that humans need about eight glasses of water a day or else they’re shrivel up into homo sapien–style raisins. Maybe that’s an overdramatization, but whatever. It’s true. We need to stay hydrated, especially in the warmer summer months.

I’m probably one of the most well-hydrated people you’ll ever meet. (Not that we’ve actually met because, you know, you’re all the way over there and I’m here. And we’re not really talking since we have these giant interwebs between us. But you get the basic idea, right?) I chug fluids all day long, which works out in my favor unless you count the number of bathroom trips. But aside from those, I notice a difference in my health. I don’t get nearly as many headaches when I’m drinking a lot compared to days when water is scant—such as last week, when our office ran out of ice and I boycotted warm water because it reminds me too much of spit.

Not only do I drink water throughout the day, but I pepper my daily drinking with tea (to fight the chill induced by 30-degree temps in my office) and lug a bottle of water with me whenever I’m out. While I enjoy the taste of ice water, I get that some people think it’s boring. So following is a list of other ideas for getting enough fluids every day.

Before you read it, know that sugary drinks don’t count (duh) and water-filled foods do (like, say, melon or cucumber or brothy soup). Oh, and everybody’s water needs are different. You may only need a few glass of water daily. Judging from how thirsty I get, I’d say my body requires way more than eight glasses a day. [Read more →]

photo by D Sharon Pruitt

And then we started another week.

Hope you all had a nice weekend. The Man and I trekked out to his brother’s house for a baby shower on Saturday. He and his wife are expecting a baby sometime in May, though I got the feeling she’s just about ready to get the baby out now. As in five days ago.

The best news? It’s going to be a baby girl. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nephews like crazy, but shopping for baseball-themed shirts doesn’t really compare to picking out adorable dresses that look like they’re made for Cabbage Patch dolls. Yup, I squealed when I saw them. The Man’s sister is also pregnant with a baby girl, which means I’m going to have two new nieces by the end of the summer.

The party was nice and somewhat crazy—what with the hoard of children running all over the place. That’s the good thing about being the aunt, though. You can spend the entire day remarking how cute and funny the little kids are, but the next morning you get to sleep in till 10.

Saturday was also a major test of the new car. Here’s something you probably didn’t know happens when you have worn-away cartilage on the underside of your kneecap: Pain, pain, pain and some more pain when you sit with bent legs for too long. So when The Man and I were shopping for a new car, a major must-have was low seats and enough leg room so I could fully stretch out. Despite the fact that my legs were achy an hour into the trip, the car passed the test. (I count it a pass as long as I don’t have to rest my legs on the dashboard. Doing that makes them feel better, but I always fear getting in an accident and having my legs smash through the glass. And my knees smash into my face. And other sorts of ugliness.)

Um, yeah, moving on… [Read more →]

photo by chotda

In That Is So Not Fair news—an area typically populated by studies that report people spend more when they set a budget or that we’re less likely to find true love when we’re single—comes this:

Dubbing a food “healthy” can make you hungrier. Sigh.

I could tell you all about how the researchers gave two groups of people an energy bar and told half that it was a healthy protein bar and the other half that it was a candy bar. And I could reveal that the people who ate the “healthy” bar reported being hungrier afterward than the people who ate the “tasty” bar. I might also tell you that the researchers did another study where the groups viewed—but didn’t eat—the bars then rated their hunger; the hunger levels were about the same. (In case you were wondering, that suggests that eating a food labeled “healthy,” but not just looking at it, increased hunger.)

But I won’t say any of that. I’ll whine a bit…

You’re telling me that eating healthy food is fooling my brain into being hungry post-meal? Really?! And you’re saying that if I eat a salad for dinner I’m more likely to splurge on dessert or have a snack before bed? Not fair! [Read more →]

photo by foshydog

Contrary to what the title of this post would have you believe, this isn’t a philosophical discussion about whether we actually weigh anything since we’re weightless in space and earth is in space, so… You get the idea. But that’s not what I meant.

I’ll preface my question by telling you about my childhood. Zzzz… No, wait! Don’t fall asleep just yet. I promise this will be a quick jaunt down memory lane and not a meandering road trip.

Growing up, our house was a no-scale zone. I remember my mother telling me at a very young age that Those of Which We Do Not Speak were pure evil and had no place in a home. Aside from my yearly checkup, I never knew how much I weighed. That was fine with me since I was always thin.

When I moved out, it didn’t even cross my mind to buy one of Those of Which We Do Not Speak. I have a pretty good grasp on my weight based off how my clothes fit. And I never really saw a need to fixate on numbers every day. And then. [Read more →]

photo by rachellake

I just want to mark this post by letting you know I finally—finally!—went to the dentist. After my December appointment was cancelled because of a blizzard and my rescheduled February appointment was cancelled because of another blizzard (it was a rough winter in the Mid-Atlantic), I was able to get my teeth cleaned before they all fell out. Woo hoo. Didn’t I tell you I love going to the dentist? Well, I do. Big time.

And onward…

Pop quiz.

What type of breakfast should you eat to avoid metabolic syndrome (a cluster of risk factors for cardiovascular disease including abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, and insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes):

A. Bacon with a side of bacon

B. Waffel or oatmeal

C. Absolutely nothing—breakfast is for wimps

[Read more →]

photo by foundryparkinn

You can’t see me, so I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I write these posts hunched over my laptop. If you stare hard enough, I’m sure you can see a lopsidedness to my shoulders. That, my friends, is due to the twisted knots in my muscles.

I wouldn’t say I look like Quasimodo, but that’s how I feel. You see, while I’m at work I’m multitasking. I’m building great big knots in my shoulders and back and neck. It’s not an easy task, but if you work at a desk long enough you pretty much become an expert.

When the knots get big enough, you can try to massage them out. That works for a little bit, but nothing—nothing!—beats an honest-to-goodness massage. I should know. I grow shoulder knots like I’m getting paid for it.

The first time I got a massage, I thought I died and went to Heaven. Now that I’ve gotten a bunch more, I know that’s exactly what happened. So I can totally understand why researchers who analyzed a bunch of studies found that massage can relieve symptoms of depression. It’s. That. Amazing.

(In all seriousness, it’s hard to really determine the effects of massage in studies because you can’t really blind the participants. There’s no such thing as fake massage.)

Though it has nothing to do with the study, I’m pretty sure massage can also relieve the symptoms of stress. I conducted a study with me, myself, and I and lemme tell ya, I felt muuuch better.

Since I’ve had a lot of massages in the past, I thought I’d impart some massage wisdom. And then I’ll take up a donation for my next rubdown. (I have no shame, people. No shame.)

[Read more →]