Almost Pedal Time... (!)

http://atom.smasher.org/gas-station/

My challenge for the month of April is a biggie.  In fact, while I’ve been a little intimidated by all of my previous challenges, I have to confess, I’m nervous as hell about this next one.  Because April is the month I’ve chosen to cut back my consumption of gasoline.

Now, anyone who drives a car or pays any attention to the news knows that, recently, the price of gasoline has been increasing faster than you can say Exxon.  GasBuddy.com has this feature where you can chart out the historical gas retail price averages for many North American markets over different time periods, ranging from one month to six years.  According to the chart I pulled up for Seattle, average gas prices for regular unleaded have gone up 60 cents per gallon since Christmas Day, and half of that price increase has been in the last month.  That's a 1-cent increase per day.  As I’m writing this, the average price of gas per gallon in Seattle is $3.748, $0.206 cents higher than the national average. 

So my upcoming month of limited gasoline consumption is certainly timely from a budget perspective.  Of course, when I decided to embark on my Operation Consumption Liberation in late December, back in the days when the Seattle average gas price was $3.18 (and I thought that was high!), the current wave of political unrest in the Middle East had just begun to heat up.  I had no idea how much of a good idea an April gas vacay would be.  Instead, I chose April for the following reasons:

1. Earth Day is in April, so I wanted to do something good for the environment.
2. April is a 30-day month, not a 31-day month, like May.
3. The weather is warmer in April than in, say, super-short February, which is important given that I’ll be walking more, biking more, and waiting for buses more.  (I’ll be going into all of this in my next post.)
4. Seattle is amazingly beautiful in the springtime—last year, I was training heavily for a half marathon during April and May, and I really enjoyed running around so much and seeing all the different flowers blooming.
5. In fact, I heart Seattle so much in the spring that I don’t want to miss a moment of it, so I don’t really want to leave town.  A low-gas consumption month kind of requires no trips on the airplane, right?

Spring=pretty flowering dogwoods on my street

 Of course, while April is warmer than February, it isn’t typically a warm month.  And April isn’t the driest month of the year in Seattle either.  Here’s a little chart to illustrate Seattle’s average monthly high and low temperatures and average monthly precipitation from www.usclimatedata.com:
 

Source: U.S. Climate Data

 Actually, that ~2-inch average April rainfall looks pretty sweet compared to the soggy >5-inch fall and winter months.  Still, those 2 inches of rain are behind most of my anxiety about going car-free this coming month. I'm not keen on biking in the rain.  It isn't just the inconvenience of getting soaked between home and the office; I am afraid.  I'm scared I will wipe out while riding downhill on a wet road, breaking my collarbone and totaling my bike.  For the record, other bicycle-riding worries include: getting hit by a car, going too slow for an impatient driver and getting yelled at, and getting laughed at and passed by other bicyclists while I have to walk my bike up another one of Seattle's big-arse hills.

A little hill--I can bike up this one.  Barely.

Thus, it isn't surprising that I've been thinking a lot lately about how I can avoid biking during low-gas month.  For example: I can take the bus!  However, given my desire to cut both my overall gas consumption (buses run on gas, yo.) and my spending ($2.25 non-peak/$2.50 peak bus fare with 2-hour transfer), I've decided to limit my bus usage for the month too.

"Well," thinks bike-fearing Jess, "if I can't bus all the time, I can walk!"  Sure, I can walk to the grocery store and the pharmacy and the library, but walking takes time.  On Tuesday, I decided to find out just how long it takes to walk home from my writing office.  +45 minutes.  One way.  It was a lovely day for a walk, but I can't spend 90 minutes walking to the office every day.  Maybe one way, once a week.

"Then perhaps I won't go to the office very much all month..."  Umm, speaking of wasting money...  I pay rent, I better use it.  Carpool?  Don't know anyone else in the building, everyone has their own weird hours, no.  There's just no way around it.  If I'm going to dump the car and limit the bus, I'm going to need to get on the bike.

Look, I live near an official bike route!

 So, yesterday, a gorgeous sunny day, I pulled my bike out of storage, dusted it off, and put air in the tires.  I put on my helmet, and consulted Google Maps on my smartphone for bike route advice to the office.  Then I biked it.  And yes, I got a smarmy look from one or two drivers who had to drive around my slow self, and yes, there were some painful hills, including one where I had it got steep so quick that I had to hop off and push my bike up the hill.  But I made it there and back.  And it only took 20 minutes each way. Of course, yesterday was fair weather biking.  Sooner or later, I'm going to have to face my fear of wet road conditions. 

Anyway, I just wanted to write about my pre-April planning and some of my concerns.  Also, do you have any great rainy-biking advise for me? Please, send it my way, along with any good luck wishes, prayers if you prefer....  I'll be laying out my rules for low-gas April early next week.

(Oh, yeah, I'm doing fine with no alcohol March.  As I mentioned in my last post, I'm doing a spring-cleaning week of no sweets to get my sugar consumption under control again--four days in and feeling sane still!)

Relapse.

Giving up alcohol this month hasn't been hard.  Nope, aside from some whiskey-flavored frosting and some red wine vinegar here and there (both totally within my self-imposed rules), I've been booze free without much of a thought about it.  Sounds good, right?

But there's a catch.  A sweet, sweet little catch.  My sugar cravings are through the roof.

What I wouldn't give for one of these...

See, I knew I should have paid more attention to that whole blood-alcohol-sugar relationship back in January.  I said, "eh, isn't giving up added sugar enough?"  Sure it was.  Still, I'm kind of horrified about how nuts-o I've been going for the sugar bowl.  I got curious, so I Googled "sugar craving no alcohol" and came upon tons of recovering alcoholic discussion boards bemoaning the heightened sugar cravings in their now clean and sober lives.  This article from LiveStrong.com sums up why the sugar cravings come on in recovery at the bottom of the piece, if you want a technical explanation.

So maybe I should have kicked off the year with alcohol followed by sugar, or vice versa, but here I am. Still, I think I need a little sugar-free refresher.  When the official first day of spring comes around this coming week, I'm doing a little week of cleansing.  (I read somewhere that cleanses are best undertaken at equinoxes.  Who knows?!)  No sweets from Sunday the 20th through Sunday the 27th.  That includes adding sugar to my oatmeal, but I am not going to freak about some sugar added to a can of tomatoes.  Doesn't that sound doable?

I bought some Dubliner cheese for St. Patrick's Day.  Who needs green beer or Guinness when you have cheese? 

Image by KUsam at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-2.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Next time, I'll start looking into my gas consumption and transportation habits in anticipation for reduced gasoline consumption month in April. Oh boy...!

Blame it on the alcohol.

Welcome to Operation Consumption Liberation March MADNESS.  The cr-a-a-a-zy Monthly Mission?  To consume no alcohol!  The guidelines?  Here they are:

1. Don't drink any alcohol this month, and
2. Don't drink any alcohol this month.

Yup, it is that simple. But for all you contrary people in the cyber-verse:
 
     3. Yes, I can have red wine vinaigrette and use wine in food recipes, and if I'm inclined to gargle
         Listerine, so be it.  And cold syrup. But not as a beverage.  Kapeesh?  

So that's it.  I have to tell you, the amount of apprehension I'm getting from friends and family members about this month's challenge is amusing me.  One family member suggested maybe we wait to get together until next month when hearing I wouldn't be chugging the alcohol (in jest, to be fair).  Most friends have reacted with a mixture of shock and awe.  And I'm hear to tell you: this is not a big deal.  For me.  But I'm starting to be a little concerned about all of you...

Like about everyone I know, there is alcoholism in my family history.  Not a ton, but there have been family members who spent time in rehab and family members who made the decision to switch to O'Doul's at some point in their lives.  And I confess, I love me a glass of red wine, or a vodka tonic, or a nice pale ale or crisp chardonnay in the summer time.  If I had to put a number on my average weekly alcohol consumption over the past few months, I'd guess around four. That number is up from my typical average last year of two--what can I say, I've been spending too much time with other red wine drinkers and hosting too many dinners.

Sunday dinner alone with my book and wine.

As much I like the wine, I went alcohol-less from Friday to Friday last week.  And then I drank 2 glasses every night for the last four nights.  (I was bulking up for March.)  But during that alcohol-less week, I hardly noticed its absence, and I certainly didn't miss it one bit.  In fact, I've been feeling a little crummy and sluggish the last few days, and perpetually dehydrated.  What's that?  You say alcohol dehydrates a person?  Seems like I could use a little detox, and a little hydration right about  now.

So for the month of March, I would like to set a parallel goal to drink more water every day.  Because dehydration causes migraines, and kidney stones.  And because it's nice to drink water.  If you want to join me, either in giving up the hooch, or picking up some agua, please do!  It will be easy, and your liver will thank you.

money matters

As anyone who has been paying attention knows, this month in my OCL (that's Operation Consumption Liberation, yo) is one of two months this year dedicated to curbing frivolous spending.  A quick review of my ATM-card purchases over the last year reveals that the highest percentage of those card transactions took place in restaurants and grocery stores.  In the month of October, for example, I made 48 card purchases. Eighteen of those purchases were made at the grocery store, in a restaurant, or a bar. Now, I'm not great at math, but I believe that's 37.5% of my monthly card purchases.  The category with more purchases during that month was "Miscellaneous," with 19 purchases for 39.5%.  (FYI, "Miscellaneous" purchases include iTunes, clothing, entertainment, haircuts, and non-med purchases at the drugstore--the things I'll be cutting from my spending during my second month of curbing frivolous spending, currently planned for May.)

Look, I finally got my cupcakes! Using my one No Eat-Out gimme: my soon-to-expire Groupon.

Watching my spending is pretty important to me at present.  Earlier this month, the department at Amazon that I've been writing for regularly since 2006 sent me a note saying that they would no longer be using freelance content for Home and Kitchen. Poof! There went a lot of income.  Suddenly, this whole No Eating Out thing feels kind of essential.  Reviewing my 2010 ATM purchases, I found that I spent approximately $130 a month eating out, and that's not including when I paid cash.  I don't know about you, but for me, $130 IS a substantial amount of money.  As long as I have so little income, I absolutely cannot spend that much money eating out.

Hard times requires frugal cooking: English muffin pizza

While I'm saving money from eating out, I'm curious to look at how much more money I've spent on groceries this month in comparison to a so-called regular month.  I like fancy food; I tend to gorge myself on Gorgonzola and Kalamata olives and pine nuts (Okay, not pine nuts.  Who can afford to snack on those?).  And meat.  When you host people for dinner all the time, you often want to give them meat. Where have all my vegetarian friends gone?  I'm getting a little off topic here, but I think I've made my point: my grocery bill could use a makeover too.  I'll keep you posted.

Chicken is expensive, but this chicken was AMAZING.

Anyway, I've been pretty lazy about taking pictures of the food I've made, or the food others have made for me (!!!).  I am also finding I am a lousy food photographer, though the fact that I'm using my phone camera may be half the battle.

No picture on Earth can capture how yummy that above garlic chicken was.  I made that for CI and ES a few weeks ago, and I can't wait to make it again.  Recipe here.  (Chef's note: I made this with skinless chicken breasts.  Also, if you love garlic like I love garlic, I'd use three heads of garlic instead of two.  We almost duked it out over the last few cloves, squeeze that roasted garlic directly out of the clove onto bread and smear it like butter.  True, the house will stink pleasantly of garlic, but the garlic wasn't overpowering at all to eat and I don't think we reeked of garlic for the next day.)

I have been enjoying lots of soup.  It is 30 degrees F in Seattle right now, so soup is good.  And a big batch lasts forever.  I think I still have some leftover pesto minestrone in the fridge from almost two weeks ago.  I made over three quarts of that stuff in the crock pot.  Pretty good, certainly fine for taking to the office for work.  Recipe here.  Also, my friend JM came over last week with all the ingredients for a warm and healthy miso soup, full of carrots, cabbage, turnips, onion, and ginger. I don't have the recipe, but it was good.

Pesto minestrone.

Miso Soup.

Chicken Enchiladas!

I've been treated to quite a few home-cooked meals at friends' this month, which is almost as lovely as cooking for them.  It isn't easy hosting: my friend MK invited me over for dinner last week and forgot to turn his crock pot on when he left for work, poor guy. SO he whipped up some Asian noodle dish for us instead, and then he dropped off a Tupperware container of the crock pot dish a couple days later--I'm lucky to have such good friends.  The other weekend, I got to enjoy TWO home-cooked Mexican meals: fantastic chili rellenos at CW's, courtesy of his friends I and Y on Saturday night, and then tasty chicken enchiladas at the house of SW and MH-squared on Sunday.

This week, I confess, I've been a little worn out on hosting and social activity, so I've only planned to host dinner one night.  It HAS been a fun month though!  I haven't missed eating out much.  There's only one night where I've really thought, "God, I wish I could just go out to eat" and that was last Friday when I had tickets to something on Capitol Hill that started at 7:30 and started cooking this on Queen Anne after 6. It is true, cooking at home can be time consuming.  But it doesn't need to be an all-day affair.

Oh, and remember my four-drink allowance for the month?  I haven't needed to use a single one.  Maybe I should let them roll over into next month, in which I will stop consuming alcohol....  Ack!  Stay tuned.

Adventures in Home Cooking

Perhaps this post should be entitled "Adventures in Home Eating" as moments after I typed the title, my elbow had a little mishap involving a fork and my lunch of chicken and rice, that resulted in sauce and rice in my lap and on my laptop.  Oops.

My fridge is never this full.

But given that my monthly challenge for February is consuming no restaurant meals and drinks, I have indeed been cooking at home a lot.  Also, with my parallel February goal to increase my social activity, I have indeed been hosting friends for dinner or drinks a lot.  Which, while a little exhausting with all the dishes and recipe research, has been a whole lot of fun so far.


I've always enjoyed the idea of hosting dinner parties.  For many years, I wanted to host them with a specific someone in my life.  He wasn't against the idea really, but it wasn't exactly his idea of a riotous good time either.  Especially because, back in those days, I was a bit of a control freak in the kitchen, as well as an overachiever.  Oh, and I'm not always the best with time management.  I never allowed enough time for whatever fancy-pants recipe I picked out, I hated compromising on perfectly diced tomatoes for efficiency, and I didn't like delegating cooking tasks to my partner because I didn't trust him to "do it right." Thus, we did not host very many dinner parties over the years.

NOW, that was a long time ago. That individual and I have been cooking apart for over two years now, and I've hashed out my perfectionist and time management issues with my therapist more than a few times.  I'm still not great with time, but boy, have I embraced half-ass dicing and quick 'n easy recipes!  And should you come into my kitchen, I will happy thrust a cutting board and onion at you and tell you to get a-slicing.

Besides learning to go with the flow in cooking, I had one other obstacle to my ability to host dinners: I live in a cute, but small mother-in-law apartment with a very small living room.  There's not exactly room for a permanent dinner table, not if I want to do yoga in my living room, which, as many of you know, I do a lot.  But with a little creative rearranging, I brought home on Tuesday an excellent drop-leaf table that tucks away easy as pie and extends to seat four comfortably, and six cozily.  Hooray!

And that's only half size!  Oh my!

So I thought I'd share some pictures, stories, and recipes from my first week of No Eating and Drinking Out month.

Tuesday: I am nuts about my new-to-me crock pot, and I have tried about five recipes discovered on Stephanie O'Dea's blog "A Year of Slow Cooking"--including this recipe for Sweet Potato Chili.  I made this for lunches and nights eating at home alone.  It turned out alright; certainly edible.  But for my crock pot and my sea level location, I definitely recommend cooking on low for closer to 6 hours than 8 hours.  Or perhaps the baby-food mushy sweet potato results have more to do with my "2-inch chunks of sweet potato" which were more like 1-inch chunks. Live and learn!

Can you see the marshmallow consistency of that there sweet potato?

Wednesday:  I got some pretty undesirable news around 6 PM (which I'm sure I'll elaborate on in another post soon) and almost called my friend MK to tell him dinner was off.  But sometimes, when things are going down the crapper in one department of life, it is nice to have a big distraction like throwing together dinner real quick for a guest to keep you from crying on the floor all night.  I put together this Curried Dal and Basmati-Rice Pilaf from Cooking Light's October 2008 issue, and sauteed some garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and kale in peanut oil for some vegetable love. I've made this dish before and I always forget how fast and easy it is to make.  Also, eating it feels downright nurturing in the dark night of winter--it is warm, flavorful, and it's reasonably healthy too.  MK agreed.

Do not fear the lentil.  Do not fear the kale.

Thursday: I had my friend GM over for gin and tonics.  Memo to self: I may need to invest in a jigger and a cocktail shaker.  For dinner, I had left-overs from the dinner I cooked for CW on Monday night, Moroccan Chicken, brown Basmati rice, and a side salad.  This is one of my favorite recipes to prepare for guests, because it is damn good.  I adapted Cooking Light's recipe to my crock pot this time, and it was perhaps even better than ever.

Look at that chicken glisten!  This is by far the best food picture my Droid camera will ever take.

Friday: I had a G&T hangover and leftovers.

Saturday: My dinner party hosting, put to the test!  I invited my friends MO, QH, and CW over for pizza.  CW came an hour early, as I was just beginning to make the crust.  Delegation example #1: I promptly assigned CW with the task of carmelizing an onion, something I've never even done.  The instructions I'd pulled up on the web obviously weren't written with my hot-trending stove top in mind, and perhaps cast iron isn't the way to go, but CW, the epitome of a good sport, did a great job at blackening onions--they actually tasted great (Letting go of perfectionist standards example #1).  When M and Q showed up, I'd hoped that all the toppings would be ready to go, but they weren't (ah, time, you continue to taunt me!).  So I put M and Q to work grating cheese and chopping peppers. (More delegation!  More going with the flow! My therapist would be thrilled.)

So many options for pizza goodness!

Anyway, we rolled out the dough and cooked the pictured four little pizzas, which we cut into four pieces so we all try each of them.  They were FANTASTIC.  And it was so much more fun than just meeting up at a restaurant--we worked hard together to create those little pies, and then we got to sit and feast and shoot the breeze for as long as we wanted without worrying about whether someone else was waiting for our table or needing to settle the bill.  This is what hosting a dinner party for good friends ought to be like.  M, Q, and CW, you all have my permission to put me to work at your next dinner party.


Sunday: I'd planned to throw something random together alone at home, but my friend CI called.  She's in town with her 10-month-old daughter S house hunting, and is staying at our friend ES's house.  E was out for the night watching the Super Bowl, but C and I decided to put her kitchen to good use and make dinner there.

Cooking dinner at friends' houses is definitely an adventure because you don't know where to find tools, if they have desired spices, and because you don't want to trash someone else's kitchen and stuff.  But it is also a great thing to do, especially with friends who have little ones.  S crawled around in the dining area while C and I started prepping for our vegetable saute pasta dish.  When S got hungry, C could go sit on the couch and breastfeed, while I kept prepping.  Likewise, when C put S to bed, I started cooking everything.  She returned just as things were starting to finish cooking and she whipped up a salad dressing and set the table while I drained the asparagus and mixed the veggies into the pasta.  And it was really good. We had everything cleaned up and put away except for the wine when E came home.  Relaxed, yummy, and fun.  I'm going back tomorrow to make this.

"These noodles are so good I want to take a bath with them." -CI.  Oh really??

Lots of thanks to my dining, cooking, and drinking companions this week!  You too can enjoy a dinner chez Jess. I'm taking reservations through the end of the month. Comment below or send me a note and we'll get cooking.  Next time, I want to look at my restaurant and bar spending habits in more depth, by the numbers.

Until then, Bon Appetit!

Curb Frivolous Spending, Part 1: the Eating and Drinking Out Edition

As a single woman who lives alone, I go out to eat a lot.  In fact, off the top of my head, I can think of TEN meals eaten out during January alone.  That's during my month of no sugar, mind you. Also, I can think of at least two coffee dates and two drinks dates (there must be more of those!). Looking at my debit card record online, I charged $147.41 on meals in restaurant. Now I know I paid cash at least twice, so let's add $40 to that total ($187.00). Divide 187 by 10, and we're averaging $18.70 per meal out.

 Drinking wine, in a restaurant, as usual.

Now, this is highly unscientific. But think about what one can do with $18 dollars. That's my monthly gym membership, with extra to spare!  That's almost two months of Netflix. That's half a tank of gas, well, maybe.  Until my rates went up this month, that amount covered my copay at the doctor's office. Think of the possibilities!

The W & the C's yummy oysters...

There is nothing inherently wrong with eating out or drinking out--in moderation. (Ha!  I think I said the exact same thing about sugar last month!)  That meal Dad and I ate on Thursday at The Walrus and The Carpenter--amazing.  It is an easy way to socialize with friends: it doesn't take a lot of creativity, and we've all got to eat sometime.  And it is convenient as hell for a single gal like me.  If I cook a big dish, roast a chicken or something, I better have someone coming over for dinner.  I made a huge pot of lentil soup earlier this month, and I can't tell you how sick I got of eating lentils for lunch.  It's all me or nothing.

But eating out is a LUXURY.  I may be making enough to cover my bills at present, but we're still living in a recession.  I'm not even going to start on how there are people starving in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Bangladesh, or Haiti.  There are.  Perhaps I'll go into this later.

So I'm going to cease my eating and drinking out for the month of February.  At the end of the month, I'm going to do my best to calculate how much money I saved from eating in, and donate half of that amount to a world hunger relief organization TBA (nominees, anyone?). What constitutes eating out and drinking out?  How gung ho am I going to go?  Here's my rules:

1.  No meals in restaurants.

2.  No take-out meals, including the deli at Whole Foods, etc.  That includes hot prepared soups and prepared sandwiches. However, I will allow myself to eat soup from a can and frozen food entrees, though I don't generally eat much of either.  Also, if friends invite me over to watch the Super Bowl, or Oscars, or whatever, and they're serving Pizza Hut or something from the deli section, I'll eat it--they're the hosts.

Whole Foods Deli: friend to the hungry and in a hurry, foe to the paycheck. Credit: Whole Foods Market

3.  No popcorn or snacks bought at the movies (seriously, $6 for that crap??). However, if I want to buy a bag of that white cheddar popcorn at the store, I will.  I probably won't.

4.  I will only allow myself to purchase four beverages for the entire month of February.  That's one drink out a week, so I better use it wisely.  I'm bending here as a concession to my friends, and so I don't spend the entire month crying about how I suddenly have no social life.

5.  If it suits me, I can go and use my Groupon to Cupcake Royale, because it is going to expire in March and I haven't eaten any of my one dozen cupcakes.  Oops.

Finally you will be mine. Photo by Rachel from Cupcakes take the Cake.

6.  If I decide to go out of town, I have the right to put a hold on my month of not eating out for the duration of my trip rather than subjecting my hosts to my rules. If this happens, my month of not eating out will continue into March for the length of the trip and overlap with my month of not--gulp--drinking alcohol.

7.  "Eating out" does not include picnics or going over to friends' houses for dinner.  Duh.

To balance out my removal of eating/drinking out from my life, I need to add something pleasurable. For January, that thing was sleep.  For February, I want to increase my social activity!  The easiest way to do this, clearly, is to have people over for dinner more.  Thus, I'd like to invite you all over for homemade pizza. Or soup.  I'm going to make one or the other each weekend this month, calendar to be announced.  Let me know if you want an invite!  OR if you'd rather I come to your house to cook with you, I can run with that too. 

Maybe I'll make you one of these pretty drinks!

The "Consume Less Sugar" Round-Up

Over the course of the past month, I’ve had quite a few questions about how this No Added Sugar Products month has been treating me, how it is going, etc.  Now that I’m at the end of the line, I’d like reflect on my total experience and answer some of them here. 

So how did a month without sugar treat me?  How did it go?  It went pretty well.  It wasn’t always easy, but it wasn’t that hard either.  And it treated me pretty dang good.  I feel good, though on some days, I felt like I tried to make up for the absence of sugar with more fat in my diet than really was optimum.  It is true; meat, nuts, and cheese have been my go-to defense this month.  I can’t even tell you how many bags/jars of almonds I’ve inhaled. Still, it is entirely possible that my diet before this month was lacking in the protein department: craving sugar or carbohydrates often is a sign of such a protein deficiency.

My lovely Almonds, I wouldn't have made it without you.

Also, while my goal in giving up sugar was NOT weight loss, I will say that I’ve shed the 3-4 pounds I put on over the holiday season.  That may be a result of my sugar fast.  It also may be simply because I’m not eating and drinking like a pig now that the holiday season is well behind us, and because my exercise routine is a little more stable.

A lot of people have asked me if I missed sugar.  The short answer?  Hell yeah, I did.  It got easier to say no to sweets; it got easier to navigate around hidden sugars in the supermarket aisles and in restaurants.  But I did and do miss the luxury of splitting some awesome 2500-calorie dessert after a nice dinner out.  And when I walk by Whole Foods, and the vents from the bakery unleash the aroma of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies onto the sidewalk—yeah, I die a small death somewhere deep inside.  

Sometimes I just want to shout it from the hilltops. Artwork by Benek Kuleczka.

Some friends also assume I’m going to go nuts with the sugar come Tuesday, to make up for lost time.  Of course, it is tempting to run out and spend my Groupon for a dozen Cupcake Royale cupcakes and have a cupcake-gorging session, as one friend suggested we do this week.  That isn’t going to happen.   Still, I’m excited to be able to relax and enjoy certain foods and drinks that typically have sugar added in, like dried tropical fruit and tonic water and wheat bread.

However, here’s the thing that I’ve reminded myself daily all month long: these sweet luxuries are not going anywhere.  Sometime in the future, there will be another nice dinner out where there will be other gorgeous-looking-sounding-smelling-tasting desserts on the menu to share. And if I pass on dessert three times out of four, the discomfort of not quenching my desire for sweet doesn’t last very long—maybe 20 minutes at most. I have never laid in bed thinking, “If only I’d ordered that torte.”  I have however laid in bed thinking, “I shouldn’t have eaten that torte,” because I feel like my gut is going to bust and because I’m hyper from the sugar.  When I do indulge in dessert that one time out of four, I’ll appreciate that sweet delicacy all the more.

...so can I go lie down?

It is nice to have discovered some new treats this month that don’t use any added sugar and don't taste like poo.  I made these yummy cookies* Friday night without any sugar, honey, agave, maple syrup, or Splenda.  There is more than enough sweetness from the naturally occurring fructose in the bananas.  Sure, they were more like nuggets of banana bread than cookies, but it was just as satisfying as baking chocolate chip cookies—the sweet baking smells, removing the cookies one by one from the baking sheet to cool on the rack, eating one or two or five while they were still warm, eating one or three for breakfast the next morning.  But they’re actually kind of healthy.  CRAZY!  Try ‘em out.

 

Five minutes ago, I still had two cookies left to eat.

*     *     *

So…that’s it.  My month of No Added Sugar wraps up tomorrow.  I plan to stay mindful about hidden sugars, be modest in treat consumptions, and to use natural “healthier” sugars over the old white granulated crack in my home cooking/baking endeavors.  I should have ample opportunity to put this last “better sugar” habit into practice during the coming month.  February is the first of two months in Operation Consumption Liberation which are devoted to consuming less goods and services to curb my frivolous spending. Over the next month, in “Frivolous Spending: the Eating/Drinking Out edition,” I will (you guessed it!) abstain from going out to eat and for drinks.  If you can believe it, I think this challenge will be even harder than going without sugar. 

*Chewy Banana-Oat Cookies Recipe by Nancy Burrows, found in Get the Sugar Out by Ann Louise Gittleman.