Memory is a curse!

I was really excited to run with Anna and do stairs while in Calgary… the first I accomplished on Monday: no problem! The second I accomplished yesterday: oh for the love of everything holy!

See this (sorry for the quality) photo? These are the Crescent Heights stairs (officially McHugh Bluff) in NW Calgary. 12 flights of stairs, roughly 20 steps each… and last summer when I spent a few months working in town, I definitely RAN pyramids up and down these stairs with Anna and another buddy from our group fitness class.

Last year, we RAN. This year, I walked it. I couldn’t do any more than that… and the up part was a hefty workout, don’t get me wrong! I was definitely using what little breath I had left at the top to thank all forms of higher beings (including the lesser known pagan gods) that there were only TWELVE flights and not thirteen… but the hardest part was coming down.

I actually did the “hand-over-hand” descent, gripping the railing tightly, because my quads were such jelly that I actually feared that without a little support I would pitch headlong into one of the other unsuspecting exercisers on their way up… So it was a ferocious workout, but I LOVED it! That is… I loved it until this morning…

I have the genetic gift of formidable calves. It’s more of a curse, since I’ve never found boots that I could get over them, and if skirts and dresses fall at the wrong length, it ain’t pretty. I’ve never done a single calf raise in the gym, nor have I ever needed to… until now, I guess! For this, I blame my beloved car. I have owned my special little guy for 1 year and 19 days, and I adore the freedom, flexibility, and efficiency he’s given me. But I also definitely think that he has eroded a little of my base fitness level: that walking to and from bus stops having been eliminated from my day DEFINITELY has had an effect on calf strength.

So today is my last full day in Calgary, and I have a to-do list, of course… but… I CAN’T WALK! I’ve never had calf pain before in my life, and it’s CRAZY! I’m going to try applying some heat and doing some gentle stretching to get me out the door, but… did I mention my special little guy is also standard? Clutching is bound to be hilarious, painful, and I’m promised to stall… so if you see a grey Toyota Matrix XR with BC plates on the Calgary roads today, you’ll definitely want to overtake me. I would, too, if I were you.

Oh no: late realisation has struck… I have to RUN through the zoo tonight. Zounds!

And bringing this back to memory:

Have you ever dusted off an old workout that you remembered fondly, only to find out that you weren’t up for it anymore?

Welcome to healthier baking Tuesday!

Today’s excitement is over a selection from Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache, which I mentioned the other day with great anticipation. For unexplained reasons, I sometimes get a cookbook in hand, and it can take me eons to get around to making something out of it—I don’t know why. This is one example, a second would be the “all things chocolate” cookbook Anna got me at Christmas: heavily thumbed and sticky-paper-marked, but as yet untried. It happens.

Anna is a Yankee living among us, and pointed out with exasperation that the measures of things in metric would have been better if also given in imperial. As a through-and-through “colonial” (an American of my acquaintance used to refer to me as “the Colonial She” and I hated it—and, oh look, I’ve just done it to myself! ) I am less bothered… but you’re warned in advance!

Chocolate and Cherry Brandy Cupcakes

• 2 medium free-range eggs
• 180g Demerara sugar
• 200g peeled and grated butternut squash
• 100ml cherry brandy (—we soaked fresh cherries overnight in regular brandy)
• 50g white rice flour
• 100g ground almonds
• 50g good-quality cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 12 tsp cherry jam (i.e., good quality store-bought)

For the icing:

• 150g icing sugar, sieved
• 2 tbsp cherry brandy
• 1 tbsp boiling water
• 30g good-quality cocoa powder
• small pinch of salt

For the top:

• 12 whole cherries, with stems

You will need:

• a 12-hole muffin tray
• 12 cupcake cases

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C / 350°F / gas mark 4 and line the muffin tray with the paper cases.
2. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a large mixing bowl for 5 minutes, until pale and quadrupled in volume. Add the grated butternut squash and cherry brandy, then whisk again. Mix in the flour, ground almonds, cocoa powder and salt until well combined.
3. Spoon 1 healed tbsp of the mixture into the bottom of each paper case, followed by 1 tsp of the jam. Fill the rest of the case up with the mixture so that it comes nearly to the top of each case.
4. Place in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes until the cakes are risen and cooked (we pulled them out in 15, actually…).
5. Whilst (—I don’t understand why Brits don’t just say “while”, do you? ) the cupcakes are cooking, make the icing. Combine the icing sugar with the cherry brandy, boiling water and cocoa powder until you have a smooth paste. The back of a spoon works wonders for flattening out lumps. Depending on how absorbent your cocoa powder is, you may need a dash more brandy to loosen the paste enough for spreading evenly. If you are not going to use it immediately, place a sheet of cling film directly on the surface of the icing to prevent it drying out.
6. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and cool them in the tin for 10 minutes, so that they are cool enough to ice. Spread a spoonful of icing evenly over the top of each one and place a whole cherry (with its stem still on) on top of each cupcake before serving.

The results:

I love the idea behind this cookbook, I love how cute it is, I love the personality… and I wish I loved the product more… but I *have* only tried ONE recipe so far!

So, they’re pretty! We love the way they look, but are a little less in love with the taste. Actually, first and foremost, it’s the texture that’s an issue. We used slightly coarser almond meal than maybe we should have, so the overwhelming texture is a bit granular. It’s neither very chocolatey nor very cherry-y, so we began immediately revising the recipe… it went like this:

I said: “I’d want to mix a cherry purée into the batter.”

Anna said: “and I wouldn’t put the cherry jam in the bottom, I’d make a hole on top and fill it in with cherry purée, after baking.”

I said: “and real chocolate—we need some melted chocolate in the batter to bump up the flavour.”

Anna said: “I’d lose that frosting and use a dipped chocolate ganache on top—NO! I say, a cherry CREAM inside and then dip it in ganache!” And then when I laughed at her for taking all the healthy out of the recipe and replacing it with fat and sugar, she came back with: “OK: yogurt cheese flavoured with stevia and mixed with cherry purée in the centre… and THEN dip it in ganache!”

So obviously, we found the result tasted… healthy… and maybe not enough of chocolate and cherries. I would take the recipe and remodel it to keep the no-butter-but-still-moist quality that came from the butternut squash (which is also awesome on the gluten-free front), but this baby needs an overhaul before either of us is totally satisfied.

I’m absolutely going to try more out of this book—it just BEGS to be played with—mostly because I had 2 mini cupcakes, and didn’t feel overwhelmed with the need to eat keep going. For me, that’s a sign that it didn’t set me off on a sugar binge, which is nothing but good news!

Maybe the best news, however, was that the cherries we soaked in brandy overnight were spectacular. Why didn’t we make more of them?

Sorry about the photo quality: I forgot my camera (which isn’t phenomenal to begin with) and was left only with my little phone…

Update! I just had a whole big one, and I think the frosting is too sweet, but that the recipe is good… it’s just that Anna and I want to improve upon it!

Update 2! I just fed one to my friend who is a tough sell on healthy foods, and she said a) “you thought this wasn’t chocolatey enough?!?” At that point I went “well, most chocolate cakes are better on the second day… maybe this one is improving with age?”

Then she said b) “this is one of the best cupcakes I’ve had!”

So maybe Anna and I were harsh? I’ll admit, I had another bite and am warming up, too…

I love vintage Simpsons. LOVE! And not just: I regularly work in little pop-culture references to my daily life, and the greatest fun is when someone else knows them, too. It’s why I really love other kids of the late-70s. Bless us and all the cultural references we dwell in.

Back to the Simpsons, though: they make a big deal out of the Hallowe’en episodes, and the one that stands out for me is the “Treehouse of Horrors IV”. Marge got kidnapped by the aliens, who want to impregnate her (image source). I don’t actually remember all the details of the episode, but at one point, when Kang the alien is trying to chat up Marge as he moves towards impregnation, he says “Oh, you look lovely this evening. Have you decreased in mass?”

It makes me laugh. I don’t know what it is, if it’s how the alien pings the woman stereotype right on the head, with awkward delivery and totally atypical language, or what… but it makes me laugh.

I am actually a little bit annoyed with myself to BE in that stereotype, wanting to “decrease in mass”… but I have also never been one who believed in settling. Accepting this version of me would be settling… so I will keep the goal in mind, but I’m painting the bigger target on health.

Luckily (?) for me, my appointment at the dietician’s last week helped me put the two in line in a new way. Kelly Anne pointed out that I had gotten my cholesterol under control once before, and that maybe my current unfortunate state had to do with having exceeded my set-point weight. I’m not even out of the normal range on the BMI scale, but I think that my body is still saying, “me no likey!” (Which would be Emperor Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove, if you’re keeping track…)

It’s an interesting connection, increased weight and high cholesterol… and whether it’s absolutely correct or not, I’m happy to pack it away in the arsenal of reasons to keep on keepin’ on. Maybe the physical me I’m most comfortable with on the outside is also the physical me with the very healthiest inside. Sold!

I also wanted to update a little from the day that I calorie-counted. As someone with a history of eating disorders, I find keeping numbers out of it is often the best way not to fixate on things… especially since I’ve seen all sorts of truly insane ranges of “celeb dieting targets”. I’m NOT trying to do anything that crazy (I read here that Amanda Seyfried was eating spinach and seeds and thinking it was food—don’t judge me for remembering it, I was just surfing for 2 minutes of mindless diversion and it stuck!), but I did find it useful to have some numbers to let me know where I was and what I was up to.

I thought my 1500 calories was good, too, but Kelly Anne said that 1800-2200 was a great range for maintenance—and, in fact, if I had had a stonking hard workout that day, I might have needed one last feed of about 300 calories to get me up to that level, and that was OK. The best rule of thumb, apparently, is to be sure that the 3 hours before bedtime aren’t spent grazing.

You learn something new every day… and “it’s great to learn because knowledge is power!” Anyone remember where that one came from?

PS: TODAY IS BAKING DAY!!! Come back later to see the glory!

I’ve been trying to sort out my thoughts on coconut oil for a while now. It seems to have taken off as a new “surprise! It’s good for you!” food, but some of the claims tied to it seem pretty unreal… I needed to know more! So here’s what I have found out in the last little while about decoding coconut oil: good, bad, or ugly?

Friday I went to see Kelly Anne Erdman at the University of Calgary Sports Med centre. Kelly Anne is the nutritionist (UPDATE! Thanks to eatingRD.com I realised I under-credited Kelly Anne: she’s an MSc RD) I saw as far back as 2004 (!!) and continue to think is fab! I always enjoy my appointments because Kelly Anne keeps me accountable and focused, answers all my questions, and is totally clear on what should / should not be going on in my diet.

The first time I went to see her, I had thought I was doing OK in the diet arena, though I still wanted to lose weight and was hoping for some tips. The part of me that wants boundaries was stoked that she gave them to me. Things like: “that “lower-fat” muffin you have after the gym everyday? It’s gotta go. Let’s find you a better carb + protein snack.” She taught me about what sorts of proportions of fat to carbs / starch to protein to aim for in my meals, and generally got me on the road to understanding how to eat well.

I had a lot to learn, overall. Classic example: I was a bit of a dietic catastrophe in the 90s. I would never eat what I now know to be the healthy fats. I used to say “I can live without fat in my savoury foods, so I’ll cut corners and save there, and then spend calories on desserts.” Obviously, I was not exactly a beacon of health.

I went to my appointment with five questions, which means multiple topics and therefore multiple posts. Coconut oil is just first up…

You might remember this pic from my oatmeal cookies post on 17 June… I’ve been adrift in confusion about what to do about coconut oil.

I think it was 2 months ago now (but I’m away from my back issues and can’t look it up), Oxygen magazine’s columnist Tosca Reno wrote about how she had introduced coconut oil to her diet (a spoon before lunch and dinner, if I’m remembering correctly), and reported that she had noticeably reduced in belly fat. Wow!

Reference to the benefits of coconut oil had also appeared in Clean Eating magazine (Nov-Dec 2009), a member of the Oxygen publishing family (Robert Kennedy as Chief Publishing Officer, anyway), which pointed to certain “claims” and “facts”. I was mostly interested in this one:

The “claim” was “coconut oil speeds up the metabolism and promotes weight loss.”

The “facts” cited a study done in Brazil at the Federal University of Alagoas, in which “20 women ingested 30ml of coconut oil daily as part of a 12-week diet and exercise regimen” and that they decreased in waist size and BMI, while their cholesterol improved.

In comparison, another group followed the same diet and exercise regimen, but had soybean oil instead of coconut, which showed them to lose weight but that their cholesterol levels worsened and they didn’t lose belly fat.

These findings are pretty amazing! But the skeptic and nerd in me doubted. So I went looking for this study that many, many, many, many online articles and blogs are citing—the same one cited in the Clean Eating mag—to see for myself.

On pubmed.com, only the abstract is available, which I read. And, yes! The study has some very interesting results! But… the thing is, that’s just one study. There are definitely limitations in what you can say *absolutely* after just one study… so I’m still wary of this explosion of interest about the effects of coconut oil that are making it sound like it’s a silver bullet… the science doesn’t seem to support that yet. There are just too many questions left unanswered. First, the 40 women in this study (and still *just* 40!) had waist sizes of 88cm (34.6 inches) and larger… no other data were available. Was there a maximum waist size for the sake of the study, or was anyone morbildy obese? Did they have any cholesterol issues to begin with? Did the researchers select their participants based on waist size, BMI, or cholesterol? The study also tested these 40 women while decreasing their caloric intake and increasing their exercise levels—but what about throwing in coconut oil to the unchanged diets of sedentary people? It’s just not known… and if I can come up with this many questions without being a scientist or health professional, what would someone with training think?

So, of course, I asked Kelly Anne about the big picture on coconut oil, and she said that right now that it’s neutral. It’s not great, it’s not awful, and a lot more research needs to be done before we can be sure about the major health claims.

I feel good about that—it fits with my overall belief that when something seems too good to be true, it may well be…

So I’ve summed up what I currently think the coconut oil situation is, as I understand it:

The good is that ONE study has shown some unexpectedly good results about what coconut oil might do for weight loss, belly fat, and improving cholesterol, which is neat because it contradicts what we tend to think about saturated fats and their effects on our diets.

The bad is that we just can’t say absolutely yet that coconut oil really is a wonder food—so a little skepticism is OK.

The ugly seems to be the marketing of this one study, treating it as if it’s more definitively awesome than it has proven to be—yet.

Nutrition is confusing! I think I’ll just keep doing what I know will work for improving my cholesterol, just like what I know will work for improving my weight and health: more exercise, more attention to my diet, less stress.

I continue to be a nerd… but am I alone in this? What do you do when you’re uncertain about the health claims about certain foods?