Simple Soutions – Page 2 – in thriver words

Light and Breezy Fare

The return of blazing hot summer weather has me looking for light and breezy fare. Not only do I want the food to sit lightly, I want the prep to be fast and the planning to be simple. That has left me looking for ways to lighten up things I eat regularly.

grilled vegetables on plate with fork on right

Here are ten tricks I use:

Skip the cheese. Yes, salads, sandwiches, pasta, and casseroles are delicious when smothered in cheese, but they can also be delicious without!

Forego the butter. A tiny touch of honey or jam on your toast makes it satisfying and lighter on the palette.

Use raw nuts. Without added oil, nuts bring a delightfully fresh crunch.

Reduce the dressing. I sometimes eat salad without any dressing at all, but there are many ways to lessen the amount you use. One is pour less on. Another is to dip each bite of salad in dressing after it’s on your fork.

But there are other dressing tricks too. You can make a vinegarette that uses no oil, squeeze lemon or lime juice over your salad in place of dressing, or dilute ranch-style dressing with salsa. Salsa can work as a dressing substitute as well. You can also hold the oil and use nonfat plain Greek yogurt as a base for creamy dressing.

Substitute ground turkey. Ground turkey makes a great beef substitute for burgers, meatloaf, and meatballs. A little Worcestershire sauce will beef up the flavor (see what I did there).

Ditch the gravy. If you’ve had to become gluten-free, you may have already done this just for convenience. But biscuits, roast beef, mashed potatoes, and hamburger steak can be enjoyed without gravy.

Skip the syrup. Use a single pancake as a shell for your eggs to create a breakfast taco.

Freeze out the frosting. Instead of frosting cake or cupcakes, sprinkle them with a light coating of powdered sugar. Okay, I don’t regularly eat cake or cupcakes, but if I’m served them, I remove the frosting right away because it weighs things down. I’d much rather have just a sprinkle of sugar or a light glaze.

I recently baked a birthday cake for a friend using applesauce instead of oil and glaze instead of frosting. It’s easy to turn canned frosting into a glaze by diluting it with water, milk, or even coffee. Keep the fun by lightly glazing and then throwing on a few novelty sprinkles.

Grill baby grill. An outdoor grill is ideal in the summer because it keeps the kitchen cool, but you can also grill on the stovetop with a grill pan. Grilled veggies are excellent and lighter than their sautéed counterparts.

Swap the slaw. When it gets hot, I swap out mayonnaise-based dressing for a vinegar-based one my mom preferred. To lighten the slaw even more, add some cucumber.

None of these changes require me to buy special ingredients, add prep time, or change my normal routine. That’s the kind of adaptation I love when turning meals into light and breezy fare.

A Perfect Fit

Whether it’s clothes or meals, one-size-fits-all will never provide a perfect fit. From friends to salespeople, the obstacle most mentioned as forestalling adherence to dietary plans is fit. It seems it’s hard to visualize how required dietary changes will fit current lifestyle.

Fit is important. If you’ve tried to squeeze into clothes you want to fit into but can’t, you know how uncomfortable it feels when the fit is wrong. It works the same way when we try to visualize making changes to well-worn patterns that make life feel good to us.

Open spiral notebook with blank lined pages and pencil laying across one.

All change causes discomfort. Having a plan to move through that to find a new perfect fit is key to getting past the obstacles within our control.

No matter what sort of plan I’m creating, I begin with the part that is most foundational or most likely to affect everything else. While this is logical, it’s still worth mentioning. If you’re building a wall, you need to know where it goes, what size it will be, what weight it will need to support, and what materials are available long before you decide what color to paint it.

But choosing the color is the fun part. It’s natural to want to skip to the fun part but important to understand why it’s lower priority.

Common foundational priorities include time commitments, access to food, finances, family routines, and family objections. You may have others. Make a list.

Number the list beginning with the thing most likely to prevent you from following a prescribed plan. Once your list is numbered, it’s time to address obstacle Number 1. If it’s time related, explore ways to free up time. Can you delegate a task or reduce social media time? Sometimes, just opting out of notifications makes a big difference.

If food access is an issue, do you have an option to order online or grow food in a community garden? Can you periodically bake and freeze? Do you have neighbors or relatives who can pick up items for you?

Work your way down the list on paper before trying changes out in real life. Why? Because writing down a plan, numbering priorities, and revising the plan if you see obvious inconsistencies feels less daunting and has lower stakes than upending real life. A written process also gives you time to adjust to the idea of change so discomfort can begin to ease.

Once a plan for foundational outer obstacles is in place, address any internal resistance. Internal resistance may be present in expectations, attitude, emotional attachment, anxiety, physical addiction, and fear. Again, you may have other internal struggles that affect progress. Make a list.

Number the list in the order of whatever is most likely to prevent you from following a prescribed plan. Write it down. Again, the writing process slows things down and gives you an opportunity to feel and work through issues that hinder progress.

For internal adjustments, the writing may begin to take on a form akin to journaling. Pulling internal struggles out into the light has its own inherent healing property. Another benefit is you’re establishing a beginning point from which to measure change.

Through listing, prioritizing, writing, and rewriting, you’ll be able to develop a plan that removes some obstacles, works around others, and takes a shape that will eventually fit you well. The time you invest in the plan can help you stay true to your commitment when you integrate the plan into real life.

Life is unpredictable. A plan helps with focus and provides a way to deal with new obstacles when they pop up. Once you have a plan in place, put it to work. Determine a period of time during which you’re willing to commit to implementing your plan. Begin.

The line of progress may not be straight. The process may not look like you expect or hope. But it is possible to design a perfect fit.

Hot Enough for You

When cooking, it’s important to know if it’s hot enough for you. I’m not talking about the weather. There’s no question there. The weather’s so hot that the patio may be as likely to burn you as the grill. I’m talking about the temperature of food.

Partially sliced cooked roast in front of roaring fire.

In order to kill bacteria that cause foodborne illness, foods need to be heated to a certain temperature. You may be familiar with the minimum safe temperature for hamburgers since some states have laws that require they be cooked well-done or 160°+ degrees. But other common cuts of meat and poultry have safe temperatures as well.

The easiest safe temperature to identify is that for eggs. When both the white and yolk are cooked firm, an egg is safe to eat. For dishes that contain raw eggs, a temperature of 160° is ideal.

Ironically, eggs are also the most common deliberately undercooked food. Right now, 7-minute, jammy eggs are popular. It’s routine to add raw eggs to protein shakes and hangover cures. And over-easy eggs have been a breakfast staple forever.

While there are some beef and fish dishes that are designed to be eaten raw, they require a higher grade of ingredients and careful handling that we may not choose to follow. For the general cooking most of us do, the following safe internal temperatures apply.

Beef: Ground 160°; Roast 145°; Steak 145°

Casseroles with raw meat or eggs: 165°

Chicken and Turkey: 165°

Eggs: Firm yolk and white

Egg Dishes: 160°

Fish: 145° or until flesh is no longer translucent

Ham: 145°; Precooked Ham USDA inspected 140°; Uninspected to 165°

Pork: Steak 145°; Roast 145°; Chops 145°; Ground 165°; Sausage 165°

Rabbit and Venison: 160°

Shrimp, Lobster, Crab, Scallops: Cook until flesh is pearly or white and opaque

Clams, Oysters, Mussels: Cook until shells open

The most accurate way to determine internal temperature is to use a meat thermometer. Many ovens include a temperature attachment for convenience. Thanksgiving turkeys often have a pop-up thermometer inserted when they’re purchased.

I have several thermometers. Only one of them is dishwasher safe. It’s the one that gets the most use for obvious reasons.

Burger on sesame bun with condiments, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, and cheese in front of roaring fire.

Do all cooks use thermometers? Definitely not. Some go by time or color. And some just go by feel. Grillers often use these techniques for determining when to remove food from the grill. Moms cooking frozen food that has a caution that it must reach a certain temp are likely to rely on the recommended microwave or oven time.

Consuming undercooked food or raw eggs won’t necessarily make you sick, but it does put you at greater risk of illness from Salmonella, E-coli, Staphylococcus, Campylobacter, Listeria, and Clostridium botulinum (botulism). If you’ve ever had one of these, you’re most likely already concerned and aware.

If you grew up in a family that has lax food safety, you can reduce risk from adopting the recommended standards and making sure the food is hot enough for you.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.cce.cornell.edu/attachments/19032/Game_from_Farm_to_Table.pdf?1481131140

The Flip Side

When you’re stuck it can be helpful to remember there’s always a flip side. I remember reading an article when Tom Green’s comedy was in its heyday. It described his method for creating comedy as turning things upside down or inside out to find the most bizarre opposite. Doing something similar can help move you out of negative head space.

Like vinyl records, we all have emotional grooves that entrench our thoughts and keep us going round and round in the same place. Often, these grooves were created by a significant event that was dangerous, scary, or had high emotional stakes. It’s easy for us to slip back into one of these grooves when we experience emotions similar to those original events.

Vinyl also tended to have spots the needle would skip. Both problems keep the album from moving smoothly through a tune and then shifting seamlessly to another.

If you’re old enough to remember vinyl, you may also remember that placing a penny on the record player needle arm was sometimes sufficient to keep a record from skipping. And you could manually move the arm to unstick the needle. As annoying as the problems were, there were solutions. The same is true of the emotional and mental grooves we tend toward.

One technique for making it easier to move forward is to remember, and make use of, the flip side. I’m not saying look for a silver lining. There are those, but that line of thinking doesn’t usually acknowledge that there’s a cost to only seeking the positive. Instead, we need tools that allow for the downside while also offering peaceful, productive ways to move on to the next tune.

So how can we use the flip side?

First, identify the feeling or obstacle that’s keeping you stuck. Don’t worry about being petty or silly. How you feel is how you feel. Name it.

Once you’re identified what’s holding you back, ask what would be the exact opposite of that? For example, let’s say you’re jealous that your husband can eat pastries of any kind, anywhere, at any time. And, let’s say he eats them in front of you all the time with no apology.

What’s the opposite of jealousy? In this particular instance, you’re jealous that he can eat pastry in abundance when you can only have it under very controlled, specific, limited circumstances. Rather than focus on his abundance, focus on increasing your sparse consumption.

How can you consume pastry all the time? Do you really want to? What if you experiment with it to see how it makes you feel?

So, flip jealousy to curiosity and experimentation and flip scarcity to abundance. Bake or buy a freezer load of pastries your dietary plan allows. For several days, eat a pastry every time your husband does. Then examine how you feel.

Are you still jealous of him?
Do you want to continue eating pastries along with him?
Did you discover there’s something you like better than pastry that you want to keep in the freezer or pantry?
Does eating pastry make you feel better or worse?

The answer is your guide for breaking out of your rut. You may discover that you don’t like that much sugar and carbs because they make you feel sluggish. Or you may discover that what you saw as abundance feels more like gluttony when you’re the consumer. And if you discover that you’re happy matching him, then you’ve learned it’s important to develop a way to continue doing that.

Maybe you don’t feel jealous. Maybe you just feel like your required diet isn’t satisfying. How would you flip that feeling?

This one can be tough because the enjoyment of food is affected by taste, texture, expectation, and effort. But try letting yourself get extra hungry. Then eat the least satisfying food you’ve been eating on a regular basis. Does being hungry change the experience?

Another way to flip that scenario is to gather three foods you considered the most satisfying before you understood your dietary restrictions. If these are foods that will NOT cause an allergic reaction or adverse immune response, eat them – but only two bites of each. Is it possible that just a bite here or there would diminish your feeling of being deprived?

Or you may learn that these foods make you feel bad and you hadn’t noticed before. You may learn that these foods aren’t as satisfying as they once were. You’ll discover whatever you discover. Being open to all the possibilities and observing as objectively as possible are the keys to accessing the most helpful information.

If you’re dairy free but have avoided nut-based ice cream because you don’t like nuts (as long as you aren’t allergic), flip the script and try it.
If you can’t eat spinach but have never tried bok choy or dandelion greens, flip the script and opt for a new exotic green.
If you hate hot soup, try cold.
If you hate fruity yogurt, try it plain.
If you hate plain yogurt, add honey or fresh fruit.
If you hate hamburgers, try steak.
If you hate fried chicken, try grilled, smoked, or rotisserie.

Our work and home schedules take us through the same territory over and over again. We often get locked into routines and forget to think beyond our current habits. We begin to think, I can’t have fried chicken rather than I can’t have fried chicken battered in wheat flour.

Another way to look at the flip side is to make lists of all the foods you CAN have. You may be surprised how long the list is. It’s easier to shift our mindset when we change our point of view.

Don’t be afraid to experiment until you find a technique that allows you to easily explore the flip side. It can make all the difference.