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Food for Fun and Thought

Resolutions And Goals: Perfection Just Might Be The Enemy Of Good

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It’s a week into the New Year.  Your pants are uncomfortably tight and the number on the scale is in the wrong zip code. Trying to right the ship did you resolve – swear — to never again eat another chocolate chip cookie?  Or maybe you’ve taken an oath to lay off potato chips forever or to go to the gym six days a week at 6AM.

Resolutions Can Be Tricky

Count yourself among the legions of people who have a specific end game in mind and then set broad – huge – resolutions and goals to try to get there. Unfortunately, those resolutions and goals usually aim for perfect achievement – something that’s virtually impossible to accomplish.

Aiming For Perfection

Be honest.  You know that aiming for perfectionmeans lining yourself up for a big time fall. Inevitably, you end up feeling awful when you step over the theoretical line – or maybe it’s more like you fall off the cliff.  Why must pursuit of a goal be done that way?  Perfection, in this case, is really the enemy of good.  In the real world, isn’t movement toward achieving your goal good enough?

Two Tips

1.  Ditch the all-or-nothing thinking and overly ambitious goals. Drastic changes usually don’t sync with daily life and probably won’t last more than a few weeks.  Cycle through the drastic changes often enough and you solidly embed a “no can do” attitude in your brain. Remember, your less than ideal behaviors have taken time to develop and replacing them with more ideal, healthier ones takes time, too. Don’t reassess/alter everything at once. Instead, work toward changing one thing at a time. Human brains don’t like too much disruption all at once – they like their familiar way of doing things.  Pick one thing at a time and create a new habit around it. Then go on to the next thing on your list.

2.  Not having succeeded before doesn’t mean you won’t succeed this time. Everyone has made and broken resolutions. We’ve all tried to lose weight or eat more fruit and veggies.  Adopt a positive attitude and frame your resolution in positive terms. “I will eat vegetables instead of French fries twice a week” or I’ll have cereal only on Saturday mornings” is much more positive than “I’ll never eat French fries or cereal again.” It’s easier to put a new habit in place than to change an old one, so embed the positive behavior not the negative one.

30 Days Of Usable Tips And Strategies

For the next 30 days check in daily at EatOutEatWell.com for a practical, usable tip of the day to help you on your way to achieving – and keeping – your resolutions and goals.

 

What To Eat On New Year’s Day For Good Luck – And What To Avoid!

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Pork products, fish, beans, cakes with coins, grapes, pickled herring?

Sound tasty?  Maybe yes, maybe no?  So what do they have in common?  They’re a sampling of some of the foods people eat on New Year’s to bring good luck.

Food has power and especially at transitional points – like holidays and feast days — many cultures traditionally eat food that has special meaning.

I grew up with the Greek tradition of eating Vasilopita on New Year’s Day.  It’s a rich, buttery cake-like New Year’s bread with a coin baked in it.

Named after St. Basil the Great, a theologian who gave all his possessions to the poor, the needy, the underprivileged, and children, tradition has it that whoever gets the piece of cake with the coin embedded in it is supposed to have good luck in the coming year.  I once got the coin in the first piece of Vasilopita that was cut in a restaurant in Athens, which blew the hopes of everyone else in the restaurant!

Then again, I distinctly remember my Mother, who is Russian, eating pickled pig’s knuckles on New Year’s for good luck.  Try as she might, there was no way she was getting me to even go near them.  Vasilopita – even if you don’t get the coin – is a much more appealing choice.

What Not To Eat (Hint: Don’t Look Or Move Back)

Different cultures have various foods that are supposed to be eaten at the stroke of midnight or sometime on January 1 to bring luck, fortune, and plenty (both money and food).

There are also foods not to eat.  Things that move or scratch backwards — like lobsters, chickens, and turkeys — are to be avoided because they symbolize moving backward instead of progressing forward. There should be no looking back, setbacks, or past struggles – only things that move forward should be eaten.

And in some cultures, a little food should be left on the table or your plate to guarantee – or at least to hedge your bets – that you’ll have a well-stocked kitchen during the coming year.

Why Tempt Fate — Some Lucky Foods To Consider

There are many New Year’s foods and traditions — far too numerous to list – that are honored by people all around the world.

Don’t you at least want to consider piling some luck on your plate on January 1? Why tempt fate?

Here are some of the more common good luck foods:

  • Pork is big.  It symbolizes abundance, plenty of food, and the fat of the land (think pork barrel legislation, too). The pig is considered an animal of progress because it moves forward as it roots around for food.  Pork products appear in many ways – ham, sausage, ham hocks, pork ribs, and even those pig’s knuckles.
  • Seafood, with the exception of the backward swimming lobster, symbolizes abundance and plenty. Fish also symbolize fertility because they produce multiple eggs at a time.  It’s important that a fish be served whole, with the head and tail intact, which symbolizes a good beginning and a good end.
  • Long noodles signify a long life – don’t cut or break them because that could shorten life!
  • Cakes and breads with coins or trinkets baked into them are common in many countries.  Sticky rice cakes, rice pudding, and fruitcakes also fit the bill in various parts of the world.
  • Grapes – in specific numbers — are lucky.  Their shape resembles a coin, sweet ones can mean a good month.  In some countries twelve grapes are eaten at midnight — one for each stroke of the clock or one for each month. The number and sweetness of the grape is important – for instance, if the fifth grape is a bit sour, May might be a bit rocky. In some places the goal is to eat all of the grapes before the last stroke of midnight, and some countries eat a 13th grape just for good measure. There seems to be an awful lot of hedging of bets all around the world.

So fill your plate with a serving of luck — and, don’t forget resolutions. They’re not quite as tasty as most (not all) food traditions, but they do have longevity — they date back 4000 years to the ancient Babylonians.

Happy New Year

Rudolph Really Does Have A Red Glowing Nose!

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Poor Rudolph  —  he’s had to put up with all of those clown nose jokes over the years.

But wait — it turns out that scientists have determined that reindeer have more abundant blood vessels in their noses than humans. The British Medical Journal reports that a team of scientists and researchers used a hand-held video microscope to observe the nasal capillaries of reindeer as they ran on a treadmill. No joke!

The capillaries in reindeer noses are 25% thicker than those in human noses.  Those capillaries are critical for heating and cooling, delivering oxygen, and humidifying inhaled air so the hardworking reindeer noses don’t freeze. (The research does have potential human application).

The mystery of Rudolph’s red nose is a mystery no longer.  The explanation:  reindeer have a large number of red blood cells that flow through small nasal vessels – which makes reindeer noses glow.

Merry Christmas!

If Santa Claus Walked Instead of Rode In His Sleigh — How Many Calories Would He Burn?

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Even Santa has weight challenges – and he certainly has a lot of carb and calorie temptation with all of the cookies and milk left out for him! He uses a sleigh pulled by reindeer that lands him on the roof of each house he visits – so he doesn’t get much exercise just sliding down the chimney (tough with that belly and bag of presents). Should Santa change to walking for transport and eat healthier snacks?

On Christmas Eve, Santa visits an estimated 92 million households. Walking.about.com figures that if all households were evenly distributed across the earth, Santa would travel 0.78 miles between houses, for a total of 71,760,000 (71.8 million) miles.

Guessing Santa’s weight at 250 pounds and assuming that he’s a pretty fast walker – after all, he does have to get his deliveries done in one night – walking.about.com’s calorie counter estimates that he would burn 13 billion calories.

Would He Burn Off All That Milk And Cookies?

Two small cookies and a cup of skim milk (giving households the benefit of doubt about full fat dairy) clock in at about 200 calories. If Santa snacks at each of the 92 million households, that works out to a payday of 18.4 billion calories.

So, Santa would gain 1,529,350 pounds every Christmas Eve — even if he walked instead of rode in his sleigh. Walking, he’d have to circle the earth 1,183 times to burn off the extras.

What If Santa Snacked On Veggies Instead Of Cookies?

If Santa had a cup of carrot and celery sticks at each house rather than cookies and milk, Walking’s Calorie Calculator shows that he would have just 50 calories at each house — which adds up to 4.6 billion calories. Since he would burn off 13 billion calories by walking, he’d actually lose all of his weight and disappear.

Maybe the best idea for him would be a nice combination of veggies at most households and cookies and low fat milk every few households to keep him in caloric balance!

 

If holiday eating is on your mind, for some hints and tips get my book,  The Sensible Holiday Eating Guide: How To Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Without Gaining Weight, available from Amazon for your kindle or kindle reader.

 

Is There A Polar Bear In Your Box Of Animal Crackers?

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Holiday animal crackers — in the classic box with the string handle and a holiday polar bear cub and mama in a snow globe on a starry blue background – can probably be found in your local market.  What kid (and some adults) wouldn’t want to grab a box or two!  But is there a polar bear on the inside, too?

A Bit Or Two About Those Little “Crackers”

Animal crackers, those easy to pop into your mouth crackers (cookies) in the shape of zoo or circus animals, are made from a layered dough– the way biscuits are made — but are sweet like cookies. The classic ones are light colored, slightly sweet, and crunchy – but some companies make frosted or chocolate flavored kinds, too.

Biscuits called “Animals” arrived on American shores from England in the late 19th century. Around the start of the 20th century, domestic bakeries, predecessors of the National Biscuit Company, now called “Nabisco Brands,” started producing “Barnum’s Animals” which looked like the circus animals found in the Barnum and Bailey circus.

Originally the package looked like a circus cage on wheels and full of animals. Perforated paper wheels used to continue under the bottom of the box and could be opened up allowing the circus cage box to stand on its wheels.

The little box with the string that we know and love – and can still buy (although without the perforated wheels) — was designed for the 1902 Christmas season – and sold for five cents. The string was for hanging the box from Christmas tree.  Obviously a design that was a home run, although now sold for about two bucks a box.

Is There Circus In The Box?

In 1948, the name of the cookies officially became “Barnum’s Animal Crackers” although the animals have changed over the years.  There have  been 54 different animals – but not all of them play together in the same box.

Today, each package has 22 crackers and a toss up of animals. Lions, tigers, bears, and elephants will probably always be a part of the menagerie – but dogs and jaguars have yielded to hyenas and gorillas. I expected to find a whole bunch of polar bears in my holiday box with the polar bear on the front, but the winter white animal was nowhere to be found.   Here’s a selection of what I did find.

How Many???

More than 40 million bright red, yellow, or blue circus boxes, each with a variety of animals, are sold each year in the United States and abroad. An animal cracker takes about four minutes to bake and 15,000 cartons and 300,000 crackers are made each shift – which uses up about thirty miles of string for the packages, or nearly 8,000 miles of string a year.

Although the circus box has gone through updates and changes over the years, it remains bright, colorful and fun. There have been three different and limited edition boxes produced in the last decade, still the same shape and size, but with a different design on the outside of the box.

Ingredients And Nutrition

Here’s what you’ll find in a box.  Note that there are two servings, not one in each box so adjust the nutrition accordingly.