Week 35 135 lbs

I’ve got to stop wasting food! I can’t believe how much food we throw away. Green vegetables and herbs are constantly turning into mush in our crisper drawers. Bananas turn into black colored fruit fly magnets.  Rice and yogurt become cultivation labs for brightly colored molds and bacteria.

I recently read that ⅖ of all food grown in the US is wasted.* 

Growing up in India, we never wasted food. Since we always ate foods that were freshly prepared, my mother cooked in precise amounts and served us our meals. We ate what we were served. Everything that was cooked was finished at the table and leftovers typically went to the extended household help or to the poor people that were always nearby. 

It still is very hard for me to throw away any food that has been cooked and/or brought to the table. This makes losing weight a challenge, as most foods I prepare can’t be cooked in number-of-people-to- be-served times serving-size quantities like, say, hamburgers or hot dogs. So I find myself eating all the leftovers.

My aunt once said to me, “Don’t you think overeating is a bigger waste than throwing the extras away?” I was shocked to hear her say that. But as I began to rationalize all the repercussions of overeating — obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, and the cost of managing those ill-effects — this began to make sense.  Yet, emotionally I cannot adjust my eating habits based on this logic. This means, I have to simply do a  better job with my shopping and cooking quantities. 

I will stop buying food just because it catches my eye or because it is new. As I have said before, I never a saw a new item in the store that I could simply walk by. Of course, this isn’t all bad, because it has meant our kids will eat almost anything – or at least try almost anything at least one. And both our children have grown up to be complete foodies.

Our daughter Nisha recently texted me: “I feel like eating liver!!!!!” Not because she felt like trying liver, but because she genuinely loves eating liver and hadn’t eaten it fora  while.  Apparently, it is not a common occurrence for children to send their mothers this message in the middle of the morning. Who knew?

As I have mentioned before, this desire to try any new and interesting looking food combined that with my difficulty asking for help can have less than happy results like the persimmon incident when my throat almost closed up on me and my tongue felt like it was coated in the worst way for the rest of the day. Needless to say, I couldn’t ask anyone about it and couldn’t admit to being stupid, so I just spent the rest of the day hoping I wouldn’t die, or worse, that I wouldn’t get explosive diarrhea.

This was in the pre-internet days. Now, I try my best to look up all new fruit and vegetables before I actually ingest them. 

One of my favorite fruits is one that I discovered after I moved to the US — the nectarine.

I love nectarines and usually cannot buy them in moderation. I bought 10 huge and beautiful  looking nectarines at the farmers market the other day. The lady at the stall offered us a taste but neither Nisha nor I wanted to be bothered with that extra step. As you might expect, they turned out to be so sour that Nisha made some very dramatic shudders and grimaces. But that girl is so graceful can make any move look beautifully elegant.

My talent is that I can turn any fruit into an amazingly delicious and, usually, healthy dish. 

So here is my recipe for a healthy-ish Nectarine Crisp.

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 350 F
Lightly butter a 9 X 7 pan

Mix together:
6 large or 8 medium firm nectarines stoned and roughly sliced
2 TBS white sugar (can substitute Splenda)
1tsp cinnamon
Grated rind of 1 lemon

Pour into a lightly greased pan.

Mix together till it resembles fine bread crumbs:
½ cup softened butter
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar (can substitute 1/2 of this with 1/2 cup brown Splenda)
1 tsp cinnamon powder

Sprinkle the mixture over the nectarines.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

Serve at room temperature with whipped cream (the real stuff) or vanilla bean ice-cream (not the French kind – which though delicious just does not quite go with the refreshing flavor of this tart  dessert).

This Crisp does not keep well as the crispy crust turns soggy after 6 hours or so.
But, in truth, Nectarine Sog tastes pretty incredible too.

Some other ways we waste less food these days:
– Freeze leftovers when we can
-Compost all leftovers that we can

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Notes:
*https://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-ip.pdf