One of the most enjoyable things about traveling, aside from seeing the sights and meeting the people, are the little things that make life in a different country feel, well – different.
Those wacky electrical outlets.
That cool radiator in the bathroom. (Could it also be a towel warmer?)
The electic tea kettle.
The under-counter washer-dryer combo, which would be perfect in my tiny NYC kitchen. (Although it takes 2-3 hours to finish a very small load of laundry.)
And the built in wine racks in the fridge.
These are the little joys of travel that make every minute special. Minutes that in our normal lives pass us by as we make that morning cup of coffee the same way for the thousandth time, turn on the shower, half-asleep, or absently swipe a metro card while heading onto the subway.
You don’t swipe cards here, by the way. You touch them to a sensor.
And did I mention the practically empty ladies room at intervals (that’s London-speak for intermission) at the theater tonight?
Actually, that’s not a little thing. That’s a really big thing.
For almost two weeks now, I’ve been playing with the recipe for this Devil’s Food Cake with Mocha Frosting. My daughter Natalie had requested the cake for her birthday, having remembered it fondly from a family dinner earlier this year. The recipe, from my mother in law Irene‘s old Kitchen Aid Mixer booklet, looked straightforward, and included exact mixer speeds and times for beating at each step. Making it, I figured, would be a piece of cake.
Cake #1
The first time I made the cake, other than using extra-large eggs (the only ones we had in the fridge), I followed the recipe instructions exactly, including sifting the cake flour before and after measuring it. I ended up with a very large amount of fluffy batter which overflowed two 9-inch layer pans as it rose into deliciously moist but structureless layers that split when I took them from the pan. I cemented the cake together with frosting and served it at Natlie’s birthday bowling party – the kids loved it.
I, on the other hand, was not so pleased. This patched-up mess was not up to my usual standards. I needed to try it again.
Cake #2
Assuming that the problem had simply been the too-large size of the eggs, I made the cake again 3 days later for Natalie’s birthday dinner, this time using large eggs. I was surprised to once more end up with an unusually large volume of batter. Having learned the hard way just how well burned cake batter sticks to the bottom of the oven, I got smart and used 10 inch pans this time. The final product was yet another very moist but very crumbly cake that literally fell apart as the girls and I lay the top layer onto the bottom. Laughing, we patched it up as best as we could. It looked a bit sad, but tasted great.
I had two theories this time. One was that I hadn’t let the cakes cool enough before moving and frosting them. The other was that perhaps my oven was slow. I couldn’t imagine any other reason for the high batter volume and fragile final product.
Cake #3
A night at my mother-in-law Irene’s home and a promise to bring dessert to Christmas dinner provided me one more chance to get this cake right. After all, Irene had given me the recipe – surely she could help me figure out what I was doing wrong.
I explained to Irene that I had followed her recipe exacly, only varying the pan sizes. “Exactly?” she asked. Yes, I replied, including sifting the flour twice. Why wasn’t my cake as nice as hers?
Turns out Irene hadn’t actually followed the recipe she had sent me.”I never sift my flour”, she told me.”That’s how my mother taught me.” And as for the beating times, well, they were too long as far as she was concerned.
Now it all made sense. By sifting it the first time, I was likely ending up with less flour after measuring. Sifting a second time aerated the ingredients even more, as did beating for the long periods of time noted in the recipe. No wonder the batter was so fluffy. It was half air!
So Irene and I made the cake together. We did not sift the flour, and our beat times were about half that which the recipe advised. We ended up with exactly enough batter for two 9 inch pans, and this time, I let the cakes cool completely before removing them from the pan. The layers were denser than their predecessors, but still very light, and although a fair amount of crumbs graced the lower edges, the layers held together beautifully.
And finally the cake looked as wonderful as it tasted. Pretty enough to earn a crown of bittersweet chocolate shavings. And a doily.
Rich Devil’s Food Cake with Mocha Frosting
The quantities are straight from the Kichen-Aid booklet, with a single addition of expresso powder for added flavor. If you don’t use a Kitchenaid Mixer, ignore the speed numbers and use an approximate corresponding speed on your own mixer. (1 is low, 10 is high). If you make it, let me know how it turns out.
3 squares unsweetened chocolate ¾ cup hot water ¾ cup butter 1 tbsp instant expresso powder 2 cups brown sugar 3 eggs 2 ¼ cups UN-sifted cake flour 1 ½ tsps baking soda ¾ tsp. baking powder ¾ tsp. salt ¾ cup buttermilk 1 ½ tsps. vanilla Bittersweet chocolate shavings (optional topping)
Combine chocolate, expresso powder and hot water in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until chocolate melts and is smooth. Set aside until mixture cools.
Cream butter in bowl for 1 minute at speed 6. Add sugar and beat at speed 6 for 1-2 minutes. Stop and crape sides of bowl using a rubber spatula. Turn to Speed 4 and add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition till just incorporated, about 30 seconds, scraping the bowl when needed. Add cooled chocolate. Turn to Speed 4 and beat about 30 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl.
Sift together cake flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Combine buttermilk and vanilla. Turn to Speed 2 and add 1/3 flour mixture and bea till incorporataed, just a few seconds. Still beating, pour in 1/2 the liquid, then another thirdflour, the second half liquid, and finally the last third of the flour, beating as little as possible until just combined, stopping and scraping the sides when needed.
Pour batter into two greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans. (Before flouring, cut a nine inch round of waxed or parchment paper and place on greased bottom of pan. Then grease the paper and flour pan.) Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pans 10 minutes, then invert pans on wire rack, remove waxed paper and let cakes cool completely before icing with mocha frosting. Sprinkle the top with bittersweet chocolate shavings.
Mocha Frosting
¾ cup butter 1 tbsp instant espresso or coffee granules 1 tbsp. Hot water 1 tsp. vanilla 3 ½ cups powdered sugar 4 tbsps heavy cream
Dissolve coffee granules in hot water. Set aside until cool. Place butter in bowl. Turn to Speed 6 and cream for 1 minute. Do not overbeat or it will melt. Stop and scrape bowl. Add cooled expresso and vanilla to butter. Cream 30 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl
Add powdered sugar, ½ cup at a time, beating 30 seconds after each addition. Stop and scrape bowl. Add cream and beat on Speed 4 for 2 minutes, until fluffy. If frosting is too soft, refrigerate for a while before frosting cake.
Place 1st layer on cake plate upside down and frost. Place 2nd layer on top and frost top and sides.
COMMENTS
Surgeon in my dreams says:EditThey look sooooo good!!Reply
Anonymous says:EditSo we made the cake today for a late holiday celebration, following your modifications to the original recipe. Used my new Cuisinart stand mixer which I am still getting used to. The cake turned out fine. Make that “very fine.” I added 7 tbsp of cocoa to the icing and another tbsp of coffee (after looking at a Saveur No. 62 recipe for Fudge Icing). It was so good that it will become our House Chocolate Cake. Thanks for your research and the recipe. Rural ObGynReply
kacee says:EditI was having a similar problem (cookies and cakes too light-textured) a few years ago and traced it to my switch to White Lily flour from Gold Medal or Pillsbury. White Lily is popular for biscuits in the South. However, all your cakes look scrumptious! Our favorite family birthday cake is BHG’s Best-Ever Chocolate Cake topped with Mackinac Island Fudge ice cream.Reply
Shell says:EditLooks super yummy! Maybe I’ll try it once I purchase a mixer =)Reply
Folks are starting to notice, which is nice, and I really should buy new clothes. But I have no time right now to shop. Plus, I really don’t want to reward myself just yet. I’m not being good enough right now.
Dinners with friends, Thanksgiving and Christmas have given me excuses to slack off just enough to maintain, but not lose significantly more weight for over a month now. And the cold weather has stopped the long weekend bike rides that were giving me the exercise I needed.
Although I dropped below the snore threshold about 20 pounds ago, I cleary have not yet passed the point where reflux and hiatal hernia symptoms disappear. Smaller meal sizes on my food delivery program have helped my symptoms somewhat, but they remain bad enough that I finally went for an endoscopy and upper abdominal songram last week. Despite the fact that all was okay, I’m annoyed at myself. Because if I had just stayed a little more true to the diet and exercise plan, I might have dropped below the reflux point by now and saved myself and the US healthcare system an expensive medical procedure. Now I am determined to get a move on with this weight loss.
The encouraging news in this regard is that we’re heading off to London for a week (the girls can’t wait!), and if my tradition of always losing weight on vacation holds, I expect to a few pounds thinner when I return. Just in time to start off the New Year with another push downward on the scale.
It’s that time of year again, Folks. Time to take the Menorah off the bookshelf and the electric frying pan out of the closet. It’s Hanukkah!
Or is it Chanukah? I never know which spelling to use. But I do know the story of Hanukkah.
Many years ago, it is said, in the land of Judea, there was an evil Syrian king named Antiochus IV who set out to destroy the Jews and their religion. Some say Antiochus may have been taking advantage of an ongoing struggle between orthodox Jews and their reformed Hellenic counterparts, who were seeking to assimilate into the Greek culture that had come to dominate the land after the time of Alexander the Great. Under Antiochus, Jews were persecuted and brutalized by the Greeks, and their temples taken over by Hellenic priests.
Finally, the Jews, led by a man they named Judah the Macabee (“The Hammer”), rose up against Antiochus, in a war whose inciting event was the killing of a Hellenic Jewish sympathizer by a more traditional Jew. The war lasted 25 years, and ultimately, the Macabees were victorious over Antiochus’ forces.
After one of the decisive final battles of the war, the Macabees returned to Jerusalem and set about to rededicate their temple. The Macabees built a new candlabra (menorah) and lit it. While there was only a day’s worth of holy oil for it, the lamp stayed lit for a full 8 days until a new supply of oil could be gotten. And that is the miracle of Hanukkah.
Today, Jews, Orthodox and reformed alike, celebrate Hanukah by lighting the menorah – one candle each night for 8 nights, each candle lit by the central candle called the Shamash. To remember the miracle of the oil, one eats foods cooked in oil. Hence, the venerable fried potato pancake, or Latke. (Also donuts.)
The Irony of Chanukah
I love Chanukah, probably mostly because I love lighting our Menorah. (We got it the year our oldest daughter was born.) And even more than lighting candles, I love latkes. And getting together with friends and their children for parties.
But it saddens me to think that our family traditions are really based on the outcome of a religious war fought centuries ago between the Greeks and the Jews, possibly even between factions of the Jews themselves. That a bloody war can give us such wonderful family traditions is testimony to what centuries of light, songs and good food can do to eradicate the memory of war and adversity.
Someday perhaps we will have a food we serve to celebrate the time when man stopped waging war against his fellow man in the name of religion. What kind of food would it be, do you think?
It would need to be a food that melds the culinary traditions of all the world’s religions and peoples. A wonderful stew, perhaps, that marries the warmth of the potato with the meat of the sacrificial lamb and wine, along with the olives of Greece and the spices and fruits of Africa and the Middle East, served from a communal bowl and eaten with a flat, soft unleavened bread. We would invite our friends from every religion we knew to share it with us, sitting around a table lit by candles, perhaps on a cold night near the winter solstice. The more different religions represented at our table, the more we would all be blessed.
I can only hope to see that meal, and that world, in my lifetime.
Until then, at least there will be Latkes. (Here’s our recipe.)
This is a family standard that Mr TBTAM and I have been making for years. It’s a variation on the classic Italian sausage and peppers that are usually served on a roll. We increase the tomatoes and serve it over pasta or rice rather than in a roll. A fast and delicious meal for a cold winter evening. You can make it healthier with turkey sausage, but why would anyone want to do such a thing?
TBTAM Family Sausage, Onions and Peppers
Olive oil 1 lb sweet Italian sausage 1 red pepper, cut into strips 1 green pepper, cut into strips 1 large onion, sliced 4 cloves garlic, chopped 1 tsp dried or 1 tbsp chopped fresh oregano 1 tsp fennel seed 1 tsp dried basil or 1 tbsp pesto 1 large can diced tomatoes Salt and pepper to taste 1 tsp sugar 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes 1/4 cup red wine
Heat a bit of olive oil in a big heavy skillet on the stove top. Cook the sausages, turning to brown them slightly, over medium high heat till just done, about 7-10 mins. Remove to a paper towel to drain.
Toss the onion and pepper with some salt and pepper in the same pan and cook till soft and smelling delicious, about 5 mins or so. Add the garlic, oregano, fennel seed, basil and cook another few minutes. Add the tomatoes, wine, sugar and hot pepper flakes, stir and cook a few minutes.
Slice up the sausages and add them to the pan. Cook for 20-30 minutes, till the sauce is reduced a bit and the flavors meld. Meanwhile, cook your pasta or rice.
Season again with salt and pepper before serving. Serve over cooked pasta or rice.
Everyone knows it goes on. Big Pharma either solicits or creates scholarly review articles that paint its drug in a favorable light, attributing the writing entirely to a prominent thought leader in the field.
But this article in today’s New York Times exposes the process in a way none has before, following the production of a review article from it’s first inception in a Wyeth stratgey meeting to the hiring of a ghost writer and the correspondance with the attributed author, its rejection by a peer review journal and final publication in a throw away.
Most of us docs know that the articles in throw aways are slanted towards Big Pharma’s agenda, and if we read them, do so with that in mind. But some of these ghost-written articles make their way into peer-review journals. One could argue that the peer-review process should weed out the artciles that are not medically correct. But what if the peer reviewers have conflicts similar to those of the supposed author?
For the past few days, my brain has been stuck in high gear. Nothing particularly is wrong. Everything is fine, actually. But I’ve been unable to relax. You know what I mean – Shoulders and neck are like a board, songs are running through your head and you can’t get them out, food sticks in your throat on the way down and you just cannot relax. Deep breathing only works for a few seconds. Sleeping just makes your neck hurt even more, and when you wake up, that same damned song is still stuck in your head. (I love that song, really, but enough already…)
Then, this morning, while walking to work, I slipped on my IPOD headphones and clicked on Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road.
Within 30 seconds, I could feel my shoulders relax in a way they had not done in weeks. My step lightened. My breathing deepened. My head cleared. And that damned song became nothing but a memory.
I sighed.
Four hours later, I was still feeling great.
It wasn’t the first time Bruce had come through for me
When I was in labor with my first child, I came very close to having a C-section. The baby’s head was up at -1 station and I had been pushing for almost two hours but getting nowhere. At that point, we turned down the epidural so I could feel what I was doing. And I put on my Walkman with a tape for Born to Run blasting at almost full volume. Within 3 pushes, Emily was born.
What is it about music that can literally transport us to another place? And what is it about Bruce?
I don’t think it’s just me. When I was in grad school, my roommate, who was always neat but never cleaned our apartment, cleaned it one day because a friend who was visiting happened to put on my Born to Run album. “You always play that album when you clean”, she later explained. “As soon as that song started, it was like I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed the vacuum and off I went.” She had never cleaned before, and was never to again. But that day, Bruce put her into a place where nothing was more important to her than making that place shine like there was no tomorrow.
I don’t know if I’ll ever understand it
But I’m sure as heck going to remember it. And in the future, if I ever find myself stuck in a place and can’t get out, I won’t wait so long to call on my man Bruce.
For years now, Big Pharma’s approach to drug marketing has been to first promote disease awareness and then sell you their drug for the disease you never knew you had until they told you about it. HPV testing and vaccination are textbook examples of an extremely successful use of this marketing approach. (With a little mandatory vaccine regulation thrown in for insurance.)
But what if we could combine disease awareness with brand name recognition by actually renaming the disease with your drug’s brand name? Better still, forget disease recognition altogether. Cast an even wider net and tie your brand name to the symptoms of the disorder. Who cares if other diseases might have the same symptoms? You’re going to own that symptom, and then, like a rancher with a roped calf, brand it.
That, in essence, is what Pfizer is doing with their Detrol Ad campaign.
The Detrol Ad Campaign
Detrol is a drug that is FDA-approved for treatment of overactive bladder (we docs like to call it detrusor instability). The hallmark symptoms of overactive bladder are urinary frequency and urgency. Pfizer calls these symptoms “that gotta’ go feeling”.
In their ads, Pfizer barely mentions the term overactive bladder. They just show images of woman rushing to the bathroom, and then tell us about Detrol. Their icon is the little woman on the bathroom door, so that every time a woman heads to a public rest room, she will think of their drug. (See a typical ad on Ad Pharm Blog)
Of course, no good drug marketing campaign these days is complete without a website. With theirs, Pfizer is using every play from Big Pharma’s market-to-women playbook. First, female empowerment – “Get the help you deserve”. Next, the worry card – images that compare your overactive bladder to a healthy bladder (message – your overactive bladder is un-healthy), telling you overactive bladder “is never normal”, warning you that your symptoms “may lead to an accident” and telling you that “the less you gotta’ go, the less you gotta’ worry”. If you weren’t worried before, you sure are now. And will be every time you pee. Finally, the training – How to talk to your doctor about your bladder symptoms, or having The Detrol Discussion.
Leave it to Big Pharma to take a universal bodily function, turn it into something to worry about and sell you a drug for it.
It’s brilliant marketing.
And of course, I don’t like it.
Why not? For one, we all have to go to the bathroom. But since most of us women these days are also crazy busy, we often put off the deed as long as we can. Until we can’t anymore. Hence, that gotta’ go feeling. We don’t need a drug – we need to slow down our lives so we have time to go to the bathroom.
Not to mention the fact that the symptoms of urinary urgency and frequency are also symptoms of urinary tract infections, diabetes, uterine fibroids, early ovarian cancer and pregnancy. None of which are treated with Detrol last time I checked. Overactive bladder is a diagnosis of exclusion, only to be made after ruling out these and other underlying disorders.
But let’s suppose you’ve been cleared from all these and other conditions that can cause you to run to the bathroom. Taking a drug is the last thing you want to do.
Because there are so many other simple, inexpensive and healthier ways to address the problem. Detrol’s webpage lists these as things to do “in addition” to taking your medication. I say do them “instead” of taking medication.
Treating the problem without medication
Make time to pee. The first and most important thing to do is to take the time to go to the bathroom before it’s an emergency.
Get real about your fluid intake – what goes in must come out. How many of you have a big plastic bottle of H2O on your desk at work? Getting your recommended 8 glasses of water a day, and even more if you’re dieting? If you’re going to drink that much water, you’re going to be in the bathroom. That’s just the way it is. You don’t need a drug. Just some common sense. If you’re going to guzzle water on a long car ride, you’re going to need to take bathroom stops. If you’re ordering the liter diet coke with popcorn at the movie, don’t be surprised if you miss the good part because you’re in the ladies’ room.
If nighttime frequency is a problem, cut back on evening fluids. You can’t drink tea while watching Letterman and expect to make it through the night.
Drink enough water. While a lot of us are water guzzlers, some of you out there actually may not be drinking enough water. Your urine is concentrated, and that can be irritating to the bladder as well, especially if you’re also post-menopausal. So for you, the trick may be to increase your fluid intake a bit.
Cut back on the Starbuck’s Latte’s and Diet Cokes. Both caffeine and carbonated beverages can be bladder irritants, and caffeine is a diuretic. Put caffeine or diet coke habit together with an 8 cup a day water intake and you might as well just put your office in the ladies’ room, because you’ll be there more than you’re at your desk. Trust me on this. And it can be just as bad if you don’t drink enough water – now you’ve combined concentrated urine with a bladder irritant. You’ll go smaller amounts when you hit the stalls than the water drinkers, but you’ll still be there more often than you need to be.
See if other foods are bothering your bladder. Other foods that can irritate the bladder are chocolate, tomatoes and citrus fruits and juices. Maybe not for everyone, but maybe for you. If this is the case, simply eliminating or limiting these foods may be all you need to do to control your symptoms.
Try bladder training. Some of us have gotten ourselves into some bad habits when it comes to our bladders – running to the bathroom the minute we notice we have a bladder, jumping up out of bed 5 times before we fall off to sleep. But you can retrain it to hold out longer. It really is mind over body on this one.
What if these steps fail?
So let’s say you’ve tried everything up there and you’re still rushing to the bathroom. Maybe you’re even having occasional accidents. Your doctor has ruled out infection and other causes, and diagnosed you with irritable or overactive bladder. What can you do?
If you are post-menopausal, I usually first recommend a trial of low dose vaginal estrogen. (It’s an off-label use with some support in the literature.) For some women, this is all they need. If you don’t want to take vaginal estrogen or are not postmenopausal, then Detrol (or its generic) is definitely a treatment option, and it’s often quite effective.
Bottom Line
Urinary urgency and frequency are common symptoms in women. It’s important to see your doctor to rule out urinary tract infection (a very common problem in my practice) and other underlying causes. Once these things are ruled out, most symptoms can be controlled with simple changes in diet and fluid intake, along with some bladder training for more resistant cases, and if you are menopausal, a trial of vaginal estrogen. If these things fail, there are medications that can control symptoms, one of which is Detrol or its generic.
This is the perfect apple. Juicy, flavorful, light and crisp. Just listen to how it sounds when you bite into it, the juice running down the side of your mouth …
Remember the apple you ate as a kid? What an apple should be?
There is a wonderful editorial in this week’s JAMA by Laura M Prager, MD a child psychiatrist who worked part-time during her children’s early years. Years in which she completed her fellowship on an extended schedule, then worked only four hours a week – just enough to keep her skills honed and her foot in the door – until she re-entered the full time work force some years later when her children did not need her at home.
This work schedule gave Prader the time to be the mom she wanted to be – in her case, the mom who was able to sit outside her anxious preschooler’s classroom every day for the three weeks it took her child to adjust to the world away from her –
Drawing from my years of training in child psychiatry, I offered to be a transitional object for her or, in her vernacular, a “cubby toy.” …Each morning I walked her into the class and then retreated to the hallway outside the room, where I sat in a wooden cubby with a magazine and waited. The first week she came out to check on me quite regularly. By the second week, she waved to me when she came out to get her jacket on the way to the playground. By the third week, she was done with me. I asked her if she wanted to bring anything else with her to take my place, and she shook her head no: her shiny pink backpack full of the precious toys of the moment that we’d packed with care the night before was enough.
In addition to having what sounds like an amazingly supportive boss, Dr Prader also had a role model for her unique career path – her mom, a doc who had a successful part-time child psychiatry practice for many years. A woman who showed her that achieving work-family balance is possible with some inginuity (and some creative financing).
I have to be honest and say that I rarely ever considered working part time, and working just four hours a week would have been completely impossible financially. I was lucky enough, though, to have the world’s most amazing baby sitter, who in fact handled my youngest daughter’s preschool transition in much the same way Prader did. (I said she was amazing, didn’t I?)
And while I was not able to do the cubby sitting for my kids myself, what I did do was to carve out my own little area of medicine that made it work for me and my family – office gynecology. I first gave up OB and then surgery, giving me regular hours and some semblance of a managable home life.
At the time I chose to limit my practice to the office, no one else in my field that I knew was doing it. A few women were giving up OB, but usually at the end of their careers, when children were usually grown and out of the house. It took a lot of persuasion to convince my boss that an office-based practice was financially viable (it is), and a little more time than that to convince myself that I wasn’t less of a doc than my colleagues still putting in the grueling hours in the OR and on the labor floor (I’m not).
Now, a decade later, I regularly have residents and students asking me “How do I get to do what you do?” I’ve now become the role model for a new generation of doctors, showing them a path they might not have considered when they first became attracted to this field of medicine.
The carrying costs for a doc (malpractice, licensing, support staff, call coverage) may be too high for many practices specialties to allow them to retain an employee who only works 4 hours a week, as Prader did. And it’s hard to envision a workplace that can support more than an occasional employee working part time. Or a fellowship program that can sustain that kind of flexibility for more than one fellow at a time.
But the opportunities are expanding. They have to, with 50% or more of medical student graduates being female. At our institution alone we have one obstetrician who works regular hours as a hospitalist (we call them “laborists”) and another doing what I do, only half time. And several other women working regular hours on the teaching service, with limited on call duties and predictable hours (for the most part).
I don’t know that any of us will be doing much cubby sitting any time soon, but it’s a start. _________________________________________
As the days shorten, we turn to the light of the hearth to replace what has been lost from the sun, firing up the stove to make foods whose warmth fills our stomachs and our hearts with rich, pungent flavors that linger on our tongues and in our bosom long after the last spoonful has been eaten.
Food like mushroom soup – for me the perfect antidote to the cold that permeated my bones hours after I had ridden the Central Park Bike Loop this morning with Linda and Paula. Makes me feel good enough to want to do it again next week.
Well, maybe not that good…
Cream of Mushroom Soup
For this soup, I married elements of two recipes from a pair of my fave chefs – Jamie Oliver and Ina Garten. You can make this soup as light or as heavy as you like by varying the fat content of your milk. (I used a mix of half-and-half and skim milk.)
1 lb assorted fresh mushrooms (I used cremini and shiitake), sliced.
a few ounces dried mushrooms (I used chantarelles; Porcini are more readily available.)
1 cup boiling hot water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
2 large shallots, minced
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, un-chopped
1/4 cup white wine (Sherry is also nice)
1 liter chicken broth
Sat and pepper to taste (be generous with both)
Milk, cream or half and half to total 2 cups
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
Place the dried mushrooms in a 2 cup Pyrex bowl and pour over boiling hot water to cover. Let steep for 20-30 mins. Take out and rinse the mushrooms to remove the grit, the roughly chop them and set aside. Strain the broth using a coffee filter and set aside.
Heat up olive oil and butter in a soup pot over moderately high heat. Add the cremini, shiitake and reserved hydrated chantarelles, stir for a moment or so then add shallots, garlic and thyme along with some salt and pepper. Saute over moderately high heat till the mushrooms have given up most of their liquid. Add the wine or sherry and cook off for a few minutes. Add the chicken and mushroom broths, turn down heat and gently simmer for 30 mins. Cool slightly.
Remove half the soup from the pot and puree in a food processor or blender till smooth. Add back to the remaining soup in the pot. Stir in milk/cream and 2 tbsp parsley, heat through and serve garnished with remaining parsley. Serve with fresh warmed bread or crostini and a cool glass of white wine.
In my last post, I posed the question “Why is my morning weight lower than my bedtime weight?” It’s true, you know. Your lowest weight is always in the morning.
Let’s see if I can explain it.
Basically, overnight weight loss is a combo of (1) water lost via the skin and respiration, (2) basal metabolic caloric expenditure and (3) urine loss in the morning. Water loss, excluding urine and feces, accounts for over 80% of the weight lost while sleeping.
Overnight weight loss may vary depending on how much time one spends in Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) vs REM sleep, with longer duration of SWS correlating with higher sleep weight loss. Slow wave sleep has been called the restorative phase of sleep, and increased exercise during the day leads to an increase in time spent in SWS during the night.
Energy expenditure during sleep varies with varies with circadian rhythms as well as sleep cycle. So one could hypothesize that disruption of these rhythms night lead to aberrations in weight.
The sleeping metabolic rate in non-obese individuals appears to be higher than that of their obese counterparts. Meaning that thin folks may stay that way, not just because of what they do while they are awake (namely, eat less and exercise more), but also because they burn more calories while they are sleeping. (I know. Totally unfair.)
Sleep deprivation has been found to be associated with obesity in adults, and appears to be a possible cause for the rise in childhood obesity. In this regard, I will tell you that I used to stay up till the wee hours blogging. But I don’t do that much anymore, and am definitely getting more sleep. I wonder how much that has contributed to my weight loss success?
Bottom Line
While most of your overnight weight loss is water loss, don’t discount the loss that comes from the energy you burn while you are sleeping. It may not be a lot on a given night, but multiply it by 365 nights a year and it adds up.
The amount of energy you burn while sleeping seems to depend on how well and how long you sleep, so make sure you get enough shut-eye.
And while you’re awake, get some exercise. Exercise improves the quality of your sleep, and that may lead to more weight loss.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s way past my bedtime.
I’ve been dieting since July 15, and while things have slowed down a bit, they are still moving in the right direction. I am down 29 pounds, and am very happy about that.
That’s 29 pounds when I weight myself naked and after my morning shower, which is how I always weigh myself. That’s because I know it’s the lowest number I can get. (Except, of course, if I were to weigh myself after a good sweating work out, in which case it would be another pound or so lighter. But I consider that cheating.)
My morning post-shower weight is always a pound less than the weight I am when I wake up. And 3-4 pounds lighter than the weight I am right before I go to bed.
Why is that?
Not to get graphic, but let me just say that although I know that what goes in must eventually come out, nothing much is happening on that front between the time I go to bed and the time I wake up, other than emptying my bladder once in the morning. And, me not being George Castanza, nothing is happening on that front during my shower. (Seinfeld fans will get this one, it’s too embarrassing to try to explain it to the rest of you…)
So here is my question – what is causing the weight loss between going to bed and my morning weigh-in? I know that I am digesting my dinner and burning a few calories, but 2 and a half pounds? Is it really all water? I’d have to weigh my morning urine to be sure, and am hoping not to have to do that to answer this question. But I know that if I empty my bladder during the day, I don’t see a drop in weight, so I don’t think that is it.
And what is it about a shower that causes one to lose a pound? Evaporative water loss?
When you are tracking your weight loss, you need to be consistent about when you weight yourself, because there are rather significant differences as you can see, depending upon the circumstances. Clearly the weight I am tracking is my morning post shower naked weight. I’d be nuts to do anything else.
But the little part of scientist in me is intrigued by the variability in weight over such a short time.
Other similarly-intrigued dieters and non-dieters are encouraged to comment.
Family members reading this post will most certainly feel the need to comment on how I am my father’s daughter. And they will, of course, be right. ________________________________________________________
rlbates says:
Bottom Line