On nutrition and cooking

I'd been planning a nice, deep Thinking Post before I spent five minutes trying to figure out why my dishwasher detergent thingy wasn't latching and envisioning calling maintenance to complain, when in fact it hadn't latched because it can only do so "once the wash cycle is complete." So we'll see how this goes.

After spending a few days counting my calorie intake, I discovered I wasn't getting enough of them. Now, my frame is really built for cardiovascular activities, such as running (and when the city agrees to make the sidewalks out of rubber, I'll get right on that), rather than, er, heavy lifting. I don't put on muscle mass easily, and so I wouldn't be surprised if my resting metabolic rate is lower than average. Even so, 1000 calories a day struck me as being too few for a 5'9" person who gets what I guess is "moderate" exercise (at least 30 minutes an average of six days a week). Though I tend to eat more on the weekend, so that probably helped. But still.

The thing is, though, that I never really felt deprived, or too weak to accomplish what I wanted to do. So I guess my decrease in caloric intake was so gradual that my body kept adjusting its resting metabolic rate while greedily storing every bit of nutrition I deigned to give it. But being slightly undernourished would explain why I've been bruising more easily, and why those same bruises take longer to heal.

Anyway, I'm getting things back on track now, but I did wonder how exactly I got around to eating so little in the first place. I was never really actively trying to cut calories. I think it amounted to laziness: I'd come home from work, and if I hadn't gone through the effort over the weekend of making the meal I'd live on for the week, I'd do something easy, like sautée a zucchini in some olive oil and have some sort of fruit alongside it. Quick, and better than sticking a questionable foodstuff in the microwave, but not exactly nutrient-dense.

The thing is, though, that I like cooking--or at least I like the romanticized idea I have of cooking, in which I flit about my kitchen, testing the soup on the stove and checking the quiche in the oven and chilling the cookie dough in the fridge until it's firm enough for me to mold into balls that will bake into little rounds worthy of Martha Stewart or Paula Deen.

Or scratch the soup and the quiche, because my favorite thing really is baking, and after a particularly frustrating day at work, I'm given to fantasizing about opening up a bakery. One in which there is no sign of refined flour or sugar, and I smile Sphinx-like at the customers who say, around a mouthful of brownie or lemon bar, "Sweet merciful heavens, Amanda! Whatever did you put in this [brownie or lemon bar]? It is ambrosia!" Because, after all, it's generally more fun to cook (or bake) if you have someone to cook for.

But I don't despise cooking main dishes, and I like to think I'd enjoy it more if I didn't have the ol' 7:15-3:45 (the hours are my choice, BTW). I buy organic as much as I can, and since organic is expensive, another one of my favorite fantasies is the one in which I have a yard and can do some organic gardening. When embarking on one of these fantasies, I usually manage to forget how I rather disliked working in my mom's garden. Instead, I am growing zucchini for (of course) sautéed zucchini and and zucchini bread and zucchini fritters and whatever else it is one can make with zucchini, and I am growing pumpkins for pumpkin pie and pumpkin pancakes and, why not, pumpkin fritters, and for the local children to carve into jack-o-lanterns around Halloween, and while I sit in my garden on my knees, shears in hand and a straw hat on my head, I hum a little tune that the birds pick up, and they provide a nice counter melody while flying about my head a la Snow White.

And, of course, there are no insects in my garden, because I am an organic gardener and would never, ever, use pesticide on my produce. And I have a dog, because I like dogs, but he doesn't eat my strawberries or anything else I grow, unlike a certain canine for which I have visiting rights since he wouldn't get on well in my apartment. It is, in fact, an Easy Garden, one that doesn't even require the application of a couple of green thumbs.

Yes, fanbase of--what are we down to now? Four? Three?--whatever, that is all it would take for me to truly enjoy cooking, and perhaps therefore more easily maintain a proper caloric intake: an Easy Garden.



Hmm. This post seemed like a better idea before my dishwasher proved it's smarter than I am.