Um…birthday cakes for Japanese dogs?

Right now I am lying on the couch (aka my cheap IKEA futon), watching TV, feeling tired and achy and sad.  All the clues are present to indicate that I am incubating some doubtless disgusting virus in my system.  I’m taking ColdFX so I really, really hope I feel better tomorrow.

Anyway.  I am flipping channels and I came across a documentary on the CBC news channel about the newfound passion the Japanese have for dogs.  They showed a kind of gourmet takeaway where some of their customers come daily for their dog’s meals.  They also do birthday cakes.  Cut to a group of middle-aged Japanese with their clothing-wearing dogs singing “Happy Birthday” — in English (I suppose there is no equivalent in Japanese?– and blowing out candles.

I had to share.  Yes, food is frequently about love and spoiling.  And I know Shannon has been guilty of feeding her dogs prime steak.  And if I ever had a dog, I would want to feed it properly.  But I thought this was way over the top.

Self-imposed rules for dieting and thoughts about Chinese pastries

I am very much afraid that I am losing ground with the whole weight issue. Even though I am still exercising 3 times a week, the rest of the time I am almost always immobile in front of a computer– for work, school, thesis. It’s having the expected effect.  I’ve made plans to increase my exercise to 5x per week which should help maintain my weight, but I need to supplement things on the eating/ food front to help me lose.  My thought is that if I really, truly cared about losing weight I would give my mind and energy to it and make it happen.  I do care about this– I think about my surplus fat all the time– so I have to take real action so when I graduate I feel good and confident going into my interviews, and so I can be ready for my planned glamour year when I turn 35.

I’ve made some rules for myself that I am posting here so you can all see them and know about it. Hopefully that will help shame me into action.

1. Eat breakfast within half an hour of waking up, to start my metabolism
2. No eating after 6pm
3. Desserts only on weekends
4. Eat bread only on weekdays – one meal at most
5. Increase protein intake for breakfast and lunch

Kristin and I went to the West Edmonton Mall last night and stopped by her favorite Chinese bakery. As I always do when we stop by there, I was fooled by appearances and prices into buying some stuff. Bean paste balls, winter melon pastries, and a curried beef pasty. They were no good. The sad fact is that Asian countries do not understand pastry making like the Europeans and Americans. Got some totally disgusting vegetable that is inedible/ toxic when raw, and want to make it savoury and delicious? They’re your guys. Want sweetness, crispiness, creaminess, flavour? Find your European/ American bakery. Not your Chinese one.

Now I am only speaking in generalities. There may still be some Chinese pastry that is unbelievably good, and I just haven’t found it yet. Of course, if I kept on with buying the undesirable pastries that might help me with the whole dieting thing. I threw out most of what I bought after I got home last night, once I tasted it and realized I didn’t really want it.

Music to cook by

Tonight it was time to make this week’s pie. I love to listen to music while I cook, so I turned on the radio and it was “90’s Night”. They were playing some of U2’s “Achtung Baby” CD. This is probably way more information than you want, but I once made out to that entire disc back in the early 90’s and ever since things didn’t work out with the guy I haven’t been that keen on listening to it. Flashbacks.

So I put in a couple of CDs that Kristin lent me. They are both UltraLounge CDs, and they are totally weird. There’s a lesson on one that tells you how to play a bongo drum. They have songs that used to play in department stores and elevators. And it has the romantic stylings of Jackie Gleason. It is hilarious. But it wasn’t cooking music.

I made my pie, and thanks to constant monitoring and adjusting of the oven temperature, it cooked properly.  I made  a regular plain old apple pie, and it’s OK.  Good, even.  Not excellent.  I think it was the strange music playing.  I do my best work when I feel loving and relaxed and I have proper cooking music on.  Cooking music to me is Frank Sinatra.  Yes, he was a womanizer and virtually a criminal mobster, and he was a terrible husband.  But nobody, but nobody, sings like Frank!

Tonight I also sneaked in a pan of brownies.  JenW gave me this Cook’s Illustrated recipe after the Pierre Herme debacle.  It calls for 3 kinds of chocolate, so that was a good sign right there.  Any recipe that only calls for cocoa, in cakes or brownies, will never be chocolate enough.  I’m still waiting for them too cool completely so I can check the texture, but they are super-duper yummy.   The recipe recommends that you cut and serve them in one-inch squares, which makes me laugh and shake my head at the recipe author’s total naivete.

I’ll finish by saying that I am watching Viva Laughlin right now.  I was hoping to see Hugh Jackman, but no luck.  Instead I was taken aback by the fact that this is a musical!  Everyone keeps singing the “give me money…that’s what I want” song.  It’s peculiar.

All about the cookbooks

I’ve been working on a paper most of the day.  To speak kindly, it really isn’t reflecting the amount of work I have put into it.  I managed to take time out from it by having conversations with Ketsy and both my sisters.  One sister was making soup, the other fudge.  All of them were busy with their kids.  Depression shortly followed.

When depressed, I have a variety of coping strategies.  Depression over my single, childless state usually results in negative coping skills, like looking at singles dating sites and torturing myself over how I have wasted all my opportunities: now it’s either the deep blue sea of old maidenhood, or the devil of taking on “ldsbiker” or “prodigalson” as my next, eternal/ endless project.  The depression today is more about the sheer cumulative exhaustion of my life and how it is killing all my creative instincts.  Only cooking is left to me as an outlet, because I have to eat, but even there I am planning on frozen pizza later tonight while I work til 8 pm on a project for work.  How sad is it that the highlight of my day will be the hour when I get to put my feet up, eat frozen pizza off my lap, and watch a Star Trek re-run?  This is no way to live.

Today’s entry and the time I am taking to write it is my minor rebellion against my schedule.  I took some time to peruse the cookbooks on Amazon to help me feel better.  I now have a list of cookbooks I want:

• Eating for England – Nigel Slater.  Everything, but everything, he writes is fantastic, and his recipes are nearly infallible.
• Fruit Book – Jane Grigson.  I need to build her up in my collection of British cooks.
• Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques -  The Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante.  Keeping on with that dream of my own backyard food production…
• Diner Desserts – Trish Boyle.  This is out of print and I really want it, even though I am gaining weight from reading the reviews alone.
• The Art of Simple Food – Alice Waters.   I have to start reading up on her.
• Slow Food Nation: A Blueprint for Changing the Way We Eat – Alice Waters and Carlo Petrini.  I need more cooking as social theory to round out my ongoing education.

Of course, I am sure that if I kept looking I would find more books.  Any recommendations of authors you guys love?  I like the look of Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, I love his “At Home” cooking program, and of course I love him personally– how could you not– but I have two of his cookbooks and I don’t find his recipes inspirational.  For starters, I am never going to make my own pasta.  That’s never going to happen.  And I see that Nigella Lawson has a new book out.  But she is so gushy I can’t stand it anymore.  Plus I have three of her cookbooks, and the recipes are no good.  I should throw them out but they are part of my British core collection so I can’t.

A tiny part of me resents the fact that she gains weight in such a fabulous way.  She comes out evenly, top and bottom (unlike us pears), and she looks very Sophia Loren-type sexy, with all that flesh.  Do you remember that Sophia Loren once said, “All that I have I owe to spaghetti carbonara”?  She had cellulite but it was sexy cellulite.  …and now I am depressed again.  Why can’t my cellulite be sexy?  Then I would no longer have to fight it, but could embrace it and eat whatever I want.  Of course, if we were allowed to dress like women, like they used to, it wouldn’t be an issue because I wouldn’t be trying to force my 34 year old woman’s body to look like a 19 year old girl’s.   The fashion world people are total jerks who hate food and women both.

Diet motivation in the face of temptation

I was a little tense — OK, a lot tense– the other night, and so last night I made cookie dough. I only baked and ate one! The other cookies I baked were for a guy/ computer geek I know who has been trying to help me solve a computer-related problem. FYI, it’s no longer a bad thing to call someone a computer geek. It’s more like a way of life or something. Anyway he has called me a food nerd and a flower nerd. I’m proud to be both.

The rest of the dough I made went in the freezer. Sometimes you just need the relaxation of being in the kitchen to help you manage your stress. I have promised myself I will not be eating those cookies myself, even though these cookies are from the best oatmeal raisin cookie recipe I have ever come across. So far. I got it from my sister Lauren, and here it is if you want to give it a try:

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 and 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups oats
• 1 cup raisins

Heat oven to 350. Beat butter and sugar til creamy. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Add combined flour, soda, cinnamon, and salt; mix well. Stir in oats and raisins. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet before removing to wire rack.

Remember last year when the only man I saw that I found attractive was the Ukrainian ambassador to Canada? That is so not the case this year. I have seen lots of cute men everywhere – not at church of course, but everywhere else. I’m hoping all of this will help me be mindful of my eating habits.

And now, more temptation…this weekend’s pie. I’ve bought an oven thermometer and it seems that my oven is cooking some 30-50 degrees high. Armed with that knowledge, I now need to choose a pie to bake. I’m feeling like apples. Here are the options:

1. regular apple with cinnamon
2. grated apple/ raisin tart
3. apple sour cream

I’m leaning toward the comforting regular two-crust apple pie, partly because I want to wipe out last weekend’s failure. I might mix it up with some pears. But who knows, maybe I’ll get adventurous. Do any of you have any apple pie/ apple tart recommendations?