ILSA! What is she good for? UHH! Absolutely SUMTHIN'!

(The title is sung to the tune of "War" by the Temptations....anyhoo....I've been thinking about my nutritionist Ilsa lately -- she's movin' on from NYC and going to embed herself on a farm out in Massachusetts, and our active bi-weekly meetings will be coming to an end. Next time we meet, we're going to work on just what has come out of the work we did.

Well, the first thing that's come out of it is kinda obvious -- this blog! Originally under the name "I Am What I Eat, I Eat What I Wish to Become" (snappy, huh?), it came out of Ilsa's request for me to keep a food journal for a week or two, and the reflectivity of it just made it too easy to roll on.

It was the original iteration of this blog where I started really cooking for myself, and thinking about what I was cooking....and with a little knowledge, I quickly learned how little I knew about cooking. Which lead to 8 months of culinary school....and my current part time job as a pizza cook. And another blog, Culinary School Confidential, to go along with it.

Yesterday, I ate really poorly....but upon reflection, it makes sense. It's winter, I'm craving the heavy, not feeling the light. One thing Ilsa has caused me to really reevaluate is portion size. The portion of mac n' cheese I ate yesterday was big enough for me, but a few years ago I would of easily eaten 2.5x more on one plate....in fact, if I were to put that much in front of me, I probably still could eat it without too much trouble. It's just now I know that if I cut my portions down, for some reason psychologically it just seems like I ate a full portion and enough is enough. For that, I definitely have to credit the work I did with Ilsa.

As I just mentioned, I'm now conscious of the seasonality of my eating. Before Isla, I would mindlessly make the same exact salad 12 months a year, whether I enjoyed it or not, regardless of what was in season. After Ilsa's assignments to choose random in-season veg from the market (and the skills acquired from c-school to prepare them), I can't imagine eating my standard salad outside of late spring and summer -- it just doesn't taste so good in the colder months.

I guess the biggest thing I gained was my control over my sweets intake. I still occasionally eat 2-3 sweets in a day....maybe once a week, if the sweets on offer are special. Before Ilsa, it was 2 to 3 of ANYTHING sweet, prepackaged industrial junk, as long as it had that fix. I enjoy sweets more now! It's not a habit, there is thought behind it.

This thread needs to be picked up later, I'm getting sleepy.


The HVS is back from overseas, spent a good part of the day eating with her -- I've been making food for her the past few days, but her front door key was changed at the last minute, so she came over this evening for an unprecedented snickle dinner. It was nice being able to serve a fully homemade 3-course vegan dinner with almost no prep or cooking! I was worried the chocotofu pie would be nasty, but was pretty good and rich and redolent of molasses.

BREAKFAST: 9:30am, organic chex with the dead milk, .75 bowl, hunger 3/5

SNICKLE SNACK: 2pm, large vegan Caesar salad, bowl of dahl, water, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 4pm, swig of apple cider, small wedge of halavah, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 5:45pm, one glass of black cherry/orange soda cocktail, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

SNICKLE DINNER: 7pm, grilled seitan, orzo salad, butternut squash soup, chocotofu pie, seltzer, 1.25 bowl, hunger 4/5