Comfort Food

A death in the family is one of those occasions where people like to help out by feeding you.  It’s a well-intentioned, lovely gesture, and quite practical, as we all need to eat, and with so many other things on our minds, it’s nice to have something there, home-cooked, to heat up and enjoy.

Tons of my parents’ friends fired up their stoves and ovens to help out this week, and I was quite impressed with how health-conscious they were, especially since comfort food, generally speaking, can so easily be a greasy, saucy, cheesy affair (I think it helped that most of my parents’ friends saw me on Ellen just days earlier).  The first pot to show up on the front porch was full of low-fat broccoli and rice soup.  No cream, only a little oil used to saute the garlic, and a little cheese.  It came with a tupperware full of chopped-up fruit.

The next day some more friends stopped by with, if I had to guess, about 2-3 gallons of turkey barley soup, another healthy dish, and these fantastic muffins where most of the oil is replaced with applesauce.  Then came a minestrone soup, full of tons of vegetables, and a big bowl of salad (with croutons, dressing, and parmesan on the side).  There was another delivery of chicken pot pie (which I tried, in moderation) and teriyaki chicken wings (I only ate one).  I know there’s a few things I’m forgetting, but at this point, I was able to eat quite well, under the circumstances, without ever really having to think about where my next meal was coming from.

But then things changed.  My parents, who both work in the same office, were told to expect a food delivery a day before the visitation, on behalf of the entire staff of the office.  A couple of their office friends stopped by, and started unloading their car.  Catering tray after catering tray emerged, which soon covered practically every counter in the kitchen.  I snapped a quick pic of one of them – this is a Greek salad, with my phone off to the left for a size comparison:

The layer of feta cheese is obscuring lots of components: tomatoes, cucumber, onion, beets, olives, pepperoncinis, and absurd amounts of lettuce.  It’s hard to tell from that picture, but the trays are 5-6″ deep.  And we got two of these Greek salads.  I ate a lot of it, being careful to not eat much of the cheese, because it was by far the healthiest option in this delivery:  We also got 2 trays of fried chicken, 2 trays of fried potatoes, and 1 tray of ribs – 7 heaping trays total!  It could easily feed, I don’t know, 30 people? 40? Maybe more?  And there were 12 of us staying at the house, and 4 of them (my nephews and niece) were under 6 years old.  I’m not being critical, because it’s a very kind thing to do, and, ultimately, I’m the only one responsible for what I put in my mouth, it’s just a LOT of food!

The day of the visitation, I overate.  I’ll come right out and say it.  I ate way, way, way too much, and I ate poorly.  But you know what?  I don’t care.  It happened.  It’s over.  I’m not going to dwell on it.  I’m just going to get back on track and move on.  And so far, that’s what I’ve been doing.

I’ve gone to the gym 5 times in Michigan, 4 times before the funeral, which was yesterday, and again this morning.  I went this morning with my sister to a gym I’ve never been to before, that’s not too far from the house.  It’s called Fitness 19:

Does it look familiar?  It might, because scenes from the HBO show Hung were shot there last year (the episode aired over the summer; you can read about it here).  It’s in a strip mall, next to an bar/restaurant called Rusty Bucket (which reminds me of the sort of places Blanche would talk about picking sailors up in on episodes of The Golden Girls), and it’s a totally fine, no frills gym.  According to their website, it’s actually a nationwide chain with gyms in 27 states, with an emphasis on family-friendly facilities and affordable prices, but I’ve never heard of it before.  I snapped a couple pics of the inside:

Lots of cardio, lots of weight machines.  It looks like a gym, huh?  This was the conversation my sister and the woman at the front desk had as we were signing in:

• Sister:  “Do you offer any classes here?”
• Staffer: “We have yoga classes!”
• Sister: “Have you been to one?  Are they good?”
• Staffer:  “We just started them on Tuesday.”  (which is yesterday)
• Sister:  “So, you haven’t been to one?”
• Staffer:  “No, they’re kinda early for me.  They’re at, like, 7:45.”

Way to sell those yoga classes, woman at the front desk!  They also had this poster up in a couple places that I thought was interesting:

I love the idea of getting offers and coupons through my gym membership, but Domino’s? Taco Bell? Baskin Robbins?  Hopefully there are more offers on the website for companies and products that fit a little better into a healthy lifestyle.  The things that excite me most on that poster are Subway (I love me a turkey breast or veggie delight on wheat) and Dunham’s, which is a fantastic Michigan-based sporting goods store.

My sister and I were craving a healthy lunch after the gym (I did 50 minutes on the recumbent bike), so when we got home we made an egg scramble.  We used Egg Beaters (25 calories a serving, and no fat), and we wanted to add some veggies, but there’s no veggies in the house, so we pulled tomatoes, red onions, and olives off the giant Greek salad above, rinsed off the cheese, chopped them up with some garlic, and sauteed them in Pam before adding the eggs.  We toasted whole wheat English muffins (100 calories each), no butter, and dug in:

Some honeydew, strawberries, and blueberries finished the meal.

Keep it up, David!

Eating Out 4 Times in 2 Days

When I was looking at my calendar earlier this week, I realized that I had plans to eat out 4 times on Tuesday and Wednesday.  It could potentially be really easy to fall off the wagon with a schedule like that, so I decided I would photograph everything I consumed during those 4 meals to keep myself accountable (and to share on my blog).  So let’s get to the photos!

#1) Tuesday Dinner at COACH INSIGNIA, Detroit, Michigan: I’ll start with dinner last night.  The occasion for eating at Coach Insignia was that it was my reward for reaching, a few weeks ago, my workout goal of climbing 73 stories on the StairMaster without stopping.  As some of you may recall, I chose 73 as my magic number because it’s the number of stories in the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, so I set the goal specifically so I could reward myself by going to the restaurant on the top floor when the goal was reached.

How tall is 73 stories?  The top floor is 696 feet off the ground.  But since that’s hard to visualize, let’s look at some pictures!  I took this from the sidewalk before entering the building:

And here’s the view of the city from the 73rd floor:

I like that it’s high enough that you can see the curvature of the earth.

I went to Coach Insignia with my father.  He grew up in Detroit, and I remember him bringing me to this restaurant when I was in kindergarten or so.  Back then, it was called something else, and the whole restaurant rotated – a complete 360 degrees every hour – but the gears that make that happen fell into disrepair and they opted not to fix them.

We had a fabulous meal, and thoroughly enjoyed everything we ate.  Coach Insignia is an excellent and elegant four-star establishment.  We split an appetizer, the Maine Lobster Corn Dog.  Each piece was half of a lobster tail, flash-fried in a light tempura batter and served with some cabbage and a mustard Hollandaise sauce:

Then I had the Poached Pear salad, which included gingerbread croutons (!).  It looked nicer when it was first presented – I had taken a few bites and dug around a little bit before remembering to take this photo:

My entree was the venison (which I’ve never had before in my life), which was grilled to medium rare, and served with roasted parsnips and haricot verts (green beans):

I really enjoyed, and will remember, sharing this celebration with my dad.  Oh, and we skipped dessert.

#2 – Tuesday Lunch at L. GEORGE’S CONEY ISLAND, Berkley, Michigan: Earlier on Tuesday, I meet up with my friend Debbie, whom I’ve known since middle school.  Debbie and her husband recently became parents to beautiful little boy, Quentin, and I had a great time meeting him, and catching up with her.  We went to L. George’s, a Coney Island in her neighborhood, where I got a large Greek salad with grilled chicken on it.  It was ginormous!

My guess was that there was 3 breasts worth of chicken in that salad, and a good amount of feta underneath it, as well as beets, olives, tomato, and lettuce.  I ate about half of it, and 1 piece of the pita from that side plate, and ended up taking the rest home:

#3 – Wednesday Lunch at BEANSTER’S CAFE, Ann Arbor, Michigan: I spent most of Wednesday in Ann Arbor, where I lived for 5 years when I was a student at the University of Michigan.  I saw a lot of friends and former professors, and for lunch, my friend Nancy, whom I haven’t seen in 8 years, and I went to Beanster’s Cafe, which is in one of the student unions on campus.  Both Nancy and I had the Michigan Salad, which had greens, blue cheese and walnuts (which I only ate some of), and dried cherries (which is the Michigan part of the Michigan salad, as Michigan is a major cherry producer):

#4) Wednesday Dinner at QUINN AND ADRIENNE’S, Ann Arbor, Michigan: This last one may not count as ‘eating out’, because I wasn’t at a restaurant, but I wasn’t at home, either.  I went over tonight to visit my friends Quinn and Adrienne at their lovely home, where they made dinner.  I’ve known both of them since college – Quinn and I started as Freshman together in the same department, and while Adrienne is one year younger, it took me 5 years to get my degree, so she and I were in the same graduating class.  They were high school sweethearts and have been together ever since, and I’ve gotten to see them 3 times in the past 12 months, and you can’t not smile and have a fantastic time when these two are around.

Adrienne is a regular reader of this blog, too, so they were very health-conscious in their menu planning, which was very thoughtful.  Dinner began with a salad (greens, shaved apple, and a little dressing and grated asiago cheese):

Followed by a shrimp and vegetable yellow curry served over brown rice, featuring green beans grown in their backyard garden this past summer:

And a little blueberry and pomegranate sorbet (or sherbet? Can’t remember.) for dessert:

Now that I’ve covered a lot of my caloric intake (everything except my breakfasts), I feel I should also mention the exercise I’ve been doing lately.  The last time I mentioned working out was on Sunday, when I swam 1450 yards in the pool at the gym.

Since then, I’ve had 3 wonderful workouts:

• On Monday, I returned to the pool, and swam 1900 yards (76 lengths of the pool) in around 50 minutes.
• On Tuesday, I did a variety of stuff during a 90-minute workout: 10 minutes of jogging around the indoor track, 35 minutes of toning, 10 minutes of abs, 25 minutes on the elliptical, and stretching at the beginning and end.
• This morning, I was back in the pool, where I switched up my workout (after getting great ideas from my sister Sarah in Colorado, who swims for exercise every week at the kick-ass pool at her local rec center) and ended up going 2300 yards (92 lengths of the pool) in 50 minutes.

Keep it up, David!

P.S. Remember the Buddha’s Hand I bought a few days ago?  I used the rest of it to make something delicious, which I’ll share in tomorrow’s post.  Come back to check it out!

Practice Jog #3 – I’m Getting Faster!

Previously on Keep It Up, David: Now that I’m a jogger, I set my first workout goal: to jog past all four of the strip clubs within walking distance of my place – a route that totals 3.8 miles.  Until I discovered two more strip clubs on my most recent practice jog, for a total of six strip clubs (don’t I live in a classy part of town!), and a new route that stretches a whopping 6.4 miles.

Since 6.4 miles is a great deal farther than the 3.8 miles I thought I was going to be running to reach my goal, I decided one way to build up stamina and work up to 6.4 miles is to up the number of strip clubs I run past, even if I’m not able to run by all of them.  So for tonight’s practice jog, I decided to jog past three of them.

Tonight’s jog felt great.  Part of it, I think, was that I was itching to exercise, since I took yesterday off.  It was also cool tonight – I started my jog at 7:44pm, so the sun had already set, it was dark, and it was considerably colder than the 100+ degrees that I jogged in last night.  I noticed during the course of the jog that I didn’t get tired as quickly, that I was getting better at maintaining the chest-out, abs-tight posture that I had learned, and that my stride was longer, and I was moving faster.  I found such a great rhythm and was so focused on my music that I barely noticed the strip clubs as I passed them.  I did, however, notice a Mexican Pentecostal Church that occupied the storefront next to a tattoo parlor.  Ah, the joys of North Hollywood.

Anyway, before I get to how far I ran today, I need to refresh my own memory:

• Practice Jog #1: Distance: 3.1 miles.  Time: 41 minutes.
• Practice Jog #2: Distance:  3.3 miles.  Time: 45 minutes.

Here are the statistics for tonight’s jog:

• Practice Jog #3: Distance: 3.2 miles.  Time: 40 miles.

I’m thrilled.  I didn’t achieve a personal best in either distance or time, but my speed was at an all-time high.  I did the math (with a phone consultation with my friend Jen, who is an accountant and has taken the GMAT), and calculated average miles per hour that I ran.  Here’s how it broke down:

• Practice Jog #1: Averaged 4.53 miles per hour
• Practice Jog #2: Averaged 4.4 miles per hour
• Practice Jog #3: Averaged 4.8 miles per hour

Woo-hoo!  Soon I’ll be like the Road Runner.  Beep Beep!   Although now that I did this math, I suppose an actual measurement that runners use is the amount of time it takes them a run one mile.   Eh – maybe I’ll figure that out next time.  Maybe not.

In other news, those who read yesterday’s blog know that I had done some cooking and packed myself a lunch and dinner to take to the office today.  Well, an hour into the work day the plans changed, when a co-worker came around taking lunch orders.  My company was treating us to lunch today!  That was very sweet, and since I’m working my butt off for them, I’d be delighted to take them up on their offer, thank you very much.  We were ordering from a little Italian place around the corner, that had a lot of pizza and calzones and pasta.  So, in my mind, it was dough, cheese, meat, and more cheese.  I decided upon a simple Greek salad instead, dressing on the side:

I love pepperoncini, and it wasn’t covered in feta, like some Greek salads are.  And I missed having a few beet slices thrown on there, like the Greek salads I grew up having at the Coney Island diners in Michigan.  But I can’t complain about a free lunch.  I had the brussel sprouts/chicken/tomato/couscous dish I made for dinner, and the salad I had brought went uneaten.  But I brought it home, and I’ll take it to work tomorrow for lunch.  It’ll be a little soggy, I presume, as I had already dressed it, but whatever.  It’s not gonna kill me.

One final picture for today.  Yesterday, I amputated about half of my brussel sprout stalk roommate, and today, I finished it off.  My roommate is dead.  Delicious, and dead:

The last of the brussel sprouts got sauteed, and some of them will accompany the aforementioned salad as part of my lunch tomorrow.  With apologies to James Lipton, who I’m paraphrasing:   If heaven exists, my beloved brussel sprouts stalk, what do you want God to say to you when you reach the pearly gates?

Keep it up, David!