It's World Baking Day today (thank goodness for Twitter, which is letting me know about such incredibly important things) so I'll share a recipe with you. It's not a classical cake, but can be eaten as a dessert: Quarkauflauf (curd cheese casserole). Basically, this is rather close to a crustless cheesecake.

[caption id="attachment_2417" align="alignnone" width="452"] There you go: Curd Cheese Casserole, fresh out of the oven, with cherries on top.


I remember this being an occasional sweet lunch when I was small. It was only occasional partly because sweet lunches were just not the rule, and partly because my dad is no fan of curd cheese, and didn't much like this as a meal. All of us had some meals we weren't too fond of, and these would thus be only very occasional - so that nobody had to suffer too much under the taste preferences of the rest of the family.After I moved out from home, I more or less forgot about this dish - until I rediscovered it a while ago, when I was looking for something to do with a leftover pack of curd cheese. This time around, I completely fell in love with the stuff, as it can be eaten hot or cold, it freezes well, goes with a lot of different kinds of fruit, and is quick and easy to make.

• 2 eggs
• 250 g curd cheese
• one tablespoon starch or about 30 g protein powder (neutral)
• about 50 g sugar (or less, if you prefer it less sweet - I use about 20 g of unrefined sugar, as the fruit delivers enough sweetness for my taste buds, and I like the taste the unrefined stuff brings into the mix)
• one teaspoon baking powder
• 200-300 g of fruit (tangerine, apple, cherry or plum all work beautifully for this)

Put everything except the fruit into a bowl and mix to a creamy consistency. Place into a suitable casserole or several smaller forms; I split this mix into 3 small oven-safe glass forms. Add the fruit of your choice either on top of the mix, or layer it between two layers of the curd mixture.

Bake for about 15-30 min at c. 170°C (fan oven) depending on your oven and the form(s) you filled it into; it should still be moist on the inside, but golden on the outside.

(If you are wondering about the protein powder substitution - I'm still getting rid of excess weight, and this is a relatively easy way for me to get enough protein per day.)

Happy World Baking Day!

... apart from some knitting, that is:

I went for a little walk with the most patient of all husbands, entered a building, handed a card over to an elderly lady, and received a sheet of paper with lots of boxes to tick in return.

Boxes were ticked. Then I brought the sheet into another room and handed it over to a guy in a white coat, who stuck something into my ear, asked me a few questions, scribbled some notes on the paper and signed it.

I carried it into yet another room, where yet another guy pricked my ear and did some stamping on the paper and the card, and a third one handed me an aluminum box with a few plastic items in it. And the sheet of paper, joined by a second and third one.

In yet another room (I carried the box there), I lay down on a comfy recliner, told some lady my name and date of birth (while she was looking at the papers), got handed one of the three sheets, and then she stuck a needle into my arm.

About ten minutes later, my right arm looked like this:

[caption id="attachment_2213" align="alignnone" width="677"] The barcode in the wrap matches the barcode on my paperwork and the bag plus the test tubes that my blood went in. It's more or less just decorative on the arm, though!


 
And you've probably figured it out by now - we went to donate blood. I've been doing this since I turned eighteen, with a few years of hiatus inbetween, and it's a really nice thing to do. We usually team up with a friend or two, which makes this a nice and social evening for us. It's a good feeling to be able to help somebody else (plus you get your blood checked, and will be informed in case there's anything really amiss with you), there's lots of nice and friendly people there, and after the donation you get coffee and a bite to eat. Donating blood also has some health benefits for the donor, so it's an allround win-win situation. Yay!

I've discovered Yoga a good while back (in spring 2013, actually) and have been doing a little bit of yoga once a week, sometimes skipping it, and sometimes adding in a bit of extra yoga time since then. With the sort-of "life reboot"* that I have going on at the moment, started off by the weight-loss-myth-busting book that I read in early January, I've returned to the mat with more dedication again - and yesterday, I discovered that Do Yoga With Me (which is still my favourite place to go to for yoga class videos - if you're interested in yoga at all, do go check them out) has a 14-day challenge up, featuring fourteen classes with Fiji McAlpine.

Well, technically this challenge started on January 10, so I'm a bit late to the party. I'm also not completely convinced that I will not need a day inbetween to take a break, as Fiji is incredibly fit and I find her classes rather challenging, to the point that I have in the past taken a look at a few of them, or did the first bit and then gave up, switching to something less taxing. I did the first day of the challenge as my morning bit of sports today, though, and I managed to get through it with just a few little extra breaks (because while I'm not at the very low end of a fitness scale, I am definitely way, way less fit than I could be).

So I'm feeling a little tired now, and quite happy with myself. Which is actually a very nice combination. Tomorrow? I'll try day two, and I'll see how it goes.

 
* Looks like that is a Thing at the moment, too - Wil Wheaton has started his reboot back in October last year. Alasdair Stuart of the Escape Artists (free podcasts for Fantasy, SF and Horror) is in week 3 of his new fitness plan of working out 5 times a week. And there's probably a lot more people that are doing something similar right now - after all, the start of a year is a good time to take stock and change things for the better.

I've debated with myself for several days now whether to write this post, or not. It's a very personal topic, and one that has just very recently become a topic I can at all approach - and that is my weight issues.

However, I'm so happy about this recent development, all triggered by reading a book (my Book of the Year! That was an easy choice!), that I really want to share - maybe it helps someone else out there, too. So here you go. Be warned that it will be very long, and more rambling than usual, and quite personal. If you prefer not to read stuff like that, I can understand, and I can promise you this will not turn into a weight loss or diet blog - depending on how much interest this post will generate, I might do a few more posts about the topic, but then we'll return to the usual mix of things.

That all being said...

I'm carrying too much weight for my relatively small frame, and I've done so for years. It got more and more weight gradually, and I was trying to reconcile myself with the fact that I'd be overweight for all my life, as my family... well, almost all of them are, too. You're surely familiar with that stuff about weight being hereditary, right? About the body having a set point for its weight? Also that dieting makes you just heavier if you're unlucky, and that it breaks your metabolism? And that diets don't work for long-term reduction of weight?

These things also had a cozy place in the fact-storing area of my brain, and they made me silently and quietly despair about weight gains while suggesting to me there was nothing I could do against it, and trying would only make it worse. So I did what a lot of other overweight people do - I tried to come to terms with the inevitable and see it as positively as possible, or to at least ignore it as much as possible.

Until little more than a week ago, when, via a friend, I found out about a new book called "Fettlogik überwinden" (German for "Overcome Fat Logic"), written by a lady who went from 150 kg to her normal weight of 63 kg. She writes from her own experiences, and the book is very nice to read and never shaming, or insulting, or pressuring in any way (because, as she aptly puts it in her blog, nobody makes bad decisions on purpose - everyone tries to make the best decision possible from the things they know as facts). She just gives you better facts. Proper, scientifically grounded facts. Lots of them. Plus hilarious stick-figure comics that help to take apart even the last bit of fat logic possibly remaining after a chapter. There's also the blog accompanying the book (in German as well). The book will come out in print on February 12 and is already available as a Kindle ebook.



So. Those things that I had accepted as facts about weight and weight loss, heard about from everywhere and everybody, all the time, and thus known for all my life? The very "facts" that led me to believe I was doomed to being overweight and I could do nothing against it because my body has a weight set point, because diets break your metabolism, because there is starvation mode that the body enters at once when you eat much less, because calorie counting does not work, because [insert common knowledge of your choice about dieting here]? The book takes all of them, and it takes them all apart using actually reliable scientific studies. It also takes apart those studies that are based on people self-observing and self-reporting - because, as it turns out, these self-reports are not reliable at all. Let me repeat that for you, because it makes such a difference. Diet studies that are based on people self-reporting are not reliable at all. (The reason, in short? Human beings are really, really bad at estimating food and activity correctly. They are, on the other hand, really, really good at lying and denying, to themselves as well as towards others. So if you have a study, unless everything consumed by the subjects has been measured, weighed, and logged by a scientist... toss that study.)

And suddenly, my brain was free from all those bullshitty myths and fat logics. I have no "fat genes" - the only thing my genes might have to do with weight gain is more of a propensity to mis-estimate calorie needs and more of an appetite for high-cal foods. They'll not stand behind me with a loaded gun, though, forcing me to cram another bar of chocolate into my mouth. (Cultural and social surroundings are much the same - they might nudge towards consumption of high-cal foods, large amounts, or both, but there's never someone forcing that stuff down my throat.)

There's also no "weight set-point" - yes, if you regularly consume 16oo kcal while you only need 1500, you will eventually arrive at a stable weight, because larger bodies have a higher Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), but you could just cut down to 1500 and stay at the lower weight. There's no way to break a metabolism by fasting, and eating again. As long as you keep eating within the limits of what you burn, you will keep your weight - any weight you have. If you eat more, you'll gain. If you eat less, you'll lose. And that's it. Oh, and metabolic differences between "fast" and "slow" are actually rather small - a hundred or so calories up or down. That's about a large apple, or two medium-sized squares of dark chocolate.

Words cannot tell you how much of a relief that was for me. For the first time in my life, I can accept that I weigh way too much, because I also, finally, know that this is something I can change. I'm not condemned to be fat, not by genetics, not by food intolerances, not by anything or anyone. I'm not condemned to a life with too much weight and all the resulting health risks and impediments - because yes, being overweight is not healthy, and it does make things harder, and less accessible, and less fun. It weighs you down body, mind and soul, gradually and slowly - just as weight tends to climb gradually and slowly. As the human being is incredibly adaptive, this also means that you'll forget what "normal" once was and felt like - making it even easier to accept the slow loss of quality of life all around, and easier to deny all the bad side effects to yourself. It's a survival strategy of a kind, this denial and "think positive" attitude - it's just not a very healthy one in this case.

This point was driven home to me even more in the past few days by realising how much of a difference those first few kilograms I've already shed are making. What's more, and making me even more positive about my future health and happiness: I have realised what attitudes and patterns have led to the weight gains and occasional "mysterious" weight losses (though small and infrequent) that I had over the years.

Again, words cannot tell you how wonderful that feels to me, and how miraculous, and how stupid I now feel about having bought into all these diet "facts". I felt awful at times when I could not ignore my weight anymore, but still felt - was so, so convinced! - that I had no real chance at all to do anything against it. When I went more-or-less-paleo because of the food intolerances, I lost a bit of weight at first, making me rejoice inwardly and hope that I had finally found the Miracle Cure - but it crept on again, furthering my conviction that I would be destined to be fat. I now know that I just fell back into a few patterns that meant I was eating more than my body used up per day. Part of that might be genetic disposition, but a lot of it (as I now know) was also triggered by cultural crap, such as the "bigger/more is better" mentality, and "finish what you paid for", or "it's not worth putting that little bit into the fridge for storing".

So, when I suddenly got rid of all that bullshit that is touted everywhere, losing weight became dead simple: I just have to eat less calories than my body consumes. Every body has a basal metabolic rate (BMR) that can be calculated, and there are lots of calculators online. While this can fluctuate a little and even decrease a bit when fasting or eating very little, there's a baseline (which is above 1000 kcal/day) that cannot be undercut even by a small woman doing nothing all day but lying in bed. So it boils down to simple maths: the less you eat, the more stored energy will be used up by your body.

But what about the quality of food, you might say? Well. For gaining or losing weight, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, no matter whether it's from sugar, whole wheat, meat or fish or veggies or butter or whatnot. Yes, of course it's a difference for your overall well-being if you are subsisting entirely on choc chip cookies or on a diet with meat, fish, fruit and veggies - but you can lose weight by restricting yourself to 200 grammes of chocolate per day and no other calories from anything else. It won't be the healthiest way, but you will shed weight - because you're only consuming about 1000 kcal. For your calorie balance, it's also completely irrelevant whether you eat the choc in the morning, or noon, or evening; whether you distribute it over the day or eat it all in one fell binge. It would even be irrelevant for the calorie balance if you ate a kilo of choc every five days and nothing inbetween, instead of 200 g a day. (Mind you, that's only the calorie balance - we're not talking about quality of life, or health, or sanity, here.)

Now comes the tricky bit. I've already hinted, above, that human beings (even those working professionally in the diet/nutrition/fitness business) are notoriously bad at estimating activity levels, portion sizes and calorie counts. We're also very good at forgetting how much we ate, or drank, especially small bits here and there (Germans have a saying "gefressen und vergessen", which translates to "gobbled down and forgotten"). This effect of mis-estimation gets even worse when people are overweight. So just estimating foods (and drinks!) will, as a rule, not work, especially not for those already overweight.

Fortunately there's an easy way around this problem. It consists of some adequate kitchen scales and a calorie database (in German, a good one would be fddb, for the English world, I've heard good stuff about myfitnesspal). Put in your basic data (most accurate is to say "no sport at all" and track your activities manually) and weigh and log everything you consume before you stick it into your mouth. Everything. Every little bite, every sip of drink.

You're now getting numbers. If calories in < calories out, you're losing weight. The human body is built to use the fat stored inside to tide you over lean times, and it will do just that.

If you want to optimise the whole thing to best conserve your muscle mass and health, and to avoid side effects from deficiencies, you should make sure to have enough protein intake per day (minimum 0.8 grammes per kg of the normal body weight for your size, and if you do sports, try to go for more - up to 2 g per kilo). Having too little protein can hinder you from keeping, repairing or even building up muscle mass, and make you feel de-energised and bad. You should also make sure to get enough vitamins and minerals; the more you restrict calories and thus the amount of stuff you eat, the less of these are delivered via your food, so supplements might be a good idea. And finally - as you lose weight, your body needs fewer muscle mass to support its weight, and it will get rid of the excess muscle, so you might want to do strength training (with or without weights, whatever works for you) - this tells the body that the muscles are needed, and it should actually keep them for further use.

That was the TL;DR super-mega-ultra-condensed version of the book, muddled together with my own thoughts and experiences. For those of you who want to know more about it, if you read German, go to Nadja's Fettlogik blog or pre-order the book (that should be possible in any bookstore of your choice), or do both. For those of you who can't do this because you have no German, Nadja has graciously allowed me to give you short English TL;DR versions of individual chapters (each of them tackling a single "Well-Known Dieting Fact™"). So if there's a thing that you would like to hear more about, please tell me so in the comments, and I'll look it up and give you a slightly longer TL;DR version in English.

It has been a long while since I posted about my food issues, but I was made painfully aware of them again during the last (long) weekend. As is traditional for me, I spent a few days hanging out with friends that I see once a year to share these days for our common hobby: doing bookbinding work.

What I did last weekend - repaired books and brand-new boxes and folders. And some gold embroidery :)

This was the first time I stayed at a youth hostel since developing (or, more correctly, since becoming aware of) my food intolerance issues. So, as a good guest does, I handed in the shortlist of things I cannot eat well beforehand... and hoped for the best. (There's a shortlist and a complete list of things. The shortlist is the really important stuff, the complete list also contains things I can eat occasionally, but try to avoid.)

It was not a very nice experience. First of all, some of the information seems to have gotten lost between admin and the kitchen, leading to an awkward situation admirably solved by the cook.  Secondly, the foods that were available to me often were the kind that I consider borderline acceptable: industrially made and thus laced with conserving agents, modified starches, glucose syrup and other things I try to avoid. Under normal circumstances, I will eat these occasionally, for example if there is no other choice or if I really want to, but not on a daily basis or several times a day. Thirdly, there was a lack of salads or vegetables in general, which was cutting down my options of avoiding the borderline foods.

I could feel all this in sinking energy levels, a dip in my general happiness, a craving for fresh foods and some other symptoms that clearly showed me I was not eathing things that are good for me. All that is not nice - but the worst thing, and what caused me most stress in retrospective, was having to ask for my food.

Now, in a youth hostel setting, there is usually a buffet style setup. You get your plate and cutlery and help yourself to whatever you would like, in whatever amounts. For vegetarians, or for those with intolerances or allergies, there's clearly labeled food on the buffet, and you are supposed to eat what you were booked for and not plunder the food of the special needs folks. Sometimes, when there is only a single person having a special serving and lots of other people, your serving might not be out on the buffet but brought out when you come, or when you ask for it, eliminating the danger of someone else consuming the special stuff.

That is all very understandable. However, when that means that
a) you do not know whether there is anything special for you or not, and you have to ask the serving people if the normal food is okay for you, and they look at you in a confused sort of way and have to go ask the head cook, and
b) you tell them you need to avoid wheat, but they consistently refer to you as needing gluten-free, or ask you if you have booked gluten-free diet (which I had not), and  get confused if you tell them that gluten-free will work for you but you have stated wheat-free and not gluten-free when booking, and
c) serving people are not always available and you may need to wait, or shout for them, to get an explanation of whether you can eat the stuff available or not, and then wait for your special-snowflake-food or get in line with all the others -
well. It made me feel difficult, and cranky, even though the kitchen people did try their best to help (but were stunningly under-informed). It also let me end up with meals that were not very satisfying, regarding taste, composition, and amount. I could probably have asked for more this or more that, but I did not want to go and wait (or holler) and ask again.

Worst of it all, though, having to state my special needs almost every single meal made me painfully aware of the intolerances instead of letting me handle them matter-of-factly, as I usually do. That will make anyone feel like the odd one out, and rather sick instead of healthy. It was not a nice experience. At all.

So in case you ever need to cater to someone with food intolerances? Try to make things easy for us.
Sharing food is a very social thing, so getting special servings sets you apart from the group. This may be necessary due to the dietary restrictions, and we do very much appreciate getting food that we know will be safe to eat, but getting different things all the time will, over time, do things to your soul. If the special serving is handled efficiently and matter-of-factly, it is not so bad, but every little issue on top of getting something different from the others - having to ask, having to explain, having to wait, even having different plates - will add up to emphasise that we are not part of the group in this respect. Eating is a social thing, and sharing food is a powerful symbol of belonging together. So being set apart continuously is also a powerful sign - of not really belonging.

We're feeling the odd one out or left out often enough - there are so many foods and snacks and things you cannot eat if you cannot eat wheat, for example. In a setting where a group is catered for, anything that makes us feel like our requirements are easy to meet will help. We approach foods prepared by others with a good dash of insecurity about what is in them and whether we will be able to have them or not, so labeling foods to indicate they are clear for us to eat will be a huge relief. Kitchen staff who know about our needs and do not have to run and enquire first help, too (though it's preferable that they run and enquire to serving food they don't know about). The more normal you make us feel, the easier things are for us, and the more pleasure we will have from eating in the group. The optimum would be, of course, to have foods for everybody that we can eat, and to communicate clearly that this is the case (without us having to ask). Reassure us that we can have more (if we can have more). Tell us how you have booked our needs if you decide to let wheat-free run as gluten-free (perfectly okay with me if that is easier for the kitchen, but I need to know what to ask for). Don't make us ask every time for every single thing... because that makes us aware, again, of how much we are the odd person out.

Well, don't look literally - the cat did bring something home, but we made no photograph before picking it up, carrying it to the candle and burning it into nice crisp black oblivion. Yes, it was a tick - the first she brought home this season (at least the first one that we found).

So here's the obligatory Springtime-is-start-of-tick-season post:
Are you living in or planning to travel to a place in Europe that has ticks carrying the TBE virus? If so, have you checked your vaccination status? It's recommended to refresh the vaccination every 5 years, every 3 years if you are older than 60. TBE is a nasty thing, and the easiest way to avoid it apart from spending all your time inside is the vaccination.

Ticks can also give you Lyme Borreliosis, which is bacterial and also quite nasty, but there's no vaccine against it.

For those of you who need to refresh tick-bite avoidance and treatment stuff, because you are lucky enough not to get in contact with ticks often:
Wear long clothes when walking through nature, especially if you are walking through high grass, undergrowth, and along forest edges. Check yourself for ticks after being outside, enlisting the help of other people or a mirror for the hard-to-see spots. If you find any ticks, remove them as soon as possible, using a suitable tool; do not cover them in oil or glue. You can get tick-removal tools in every pharmacy (and also in pet shops). There's different kinds of them; we have a sling-type tool called "3iX" that we are very happy with, as it also works well on the cat (our main field of use) and will grip even tiny ticks.  It has been said that just pulling out the tick without twisting is better; personally, I feel it goes out more easily with the old "turn it around a few times, pulling gently" method. Dabbing some disinfectant over the spot where the tick was cannot hurt once it's out.

Once you have the tick out, check if it has come out completely or if the head is still in the wound (that can happen sometimes). Then destroy it. Do not just flush it down the loo - it will laugh at you, ticks can happily survive for weeks under water. Either douse it with boiling water (must have more than 70°C to work), squash it completely (that can be messy) or use metal tweezers to hold it into a flame and burn it. Dead ticks are good ticks.

Fun fact: Sometimes you get a tick that has a tick on its back. A Two-fer. These two, my friends, are doing the Nasty. The Beast with Two Backs. They are humping along. Making more tick eggs.  Or however else you want to describe it. If you kill these two, you have just rid the world of about 1000 more potential ticks...

(Disclaimer, in case it's necessary: I am, in general, an animal-friendly person. I'm one of those who carry the spider out, and make sure the bumblebee gets out of the house too. There are, however, three exceptions: ticks, moths and carpet beetles. Well, four if you count that I will slap a mosquito if it bites me. If you are a small chitin-clad creature that wants my blood or my wool, I will not give you quarter!)

I've been blogging about food before. Naturally, since it is a thing that I enjoy a lot. (Especially baking. I've been called a "cake extremist" recently, and man, I'm proud of that. My cakes tend to feed legions.)

With my recent forays into different-nutrition-land, due to the elimination diet, I have read what feels like gazillions of articles about food and what you should eat, and what not. Eliminating a lot of the previous staples and mainstays of a diet does pose a challenge, and I was happy to find that there are a lot of suitable or almost-suitable recipes out there already. You can find them if you search the 'net for "paleo AIP recipe". AIP stands for "Auto-Immune Protocol", and that's basically the elimination diet scheme. It is a sub-section of eaters who eat what they call "paleo".

Now. I'm of the opinion that "who heals is right" - no matter what the approach. But I am also, due to my profession, attentive to things such as proper terminology. And calling a modern diet "paleo"... that just... gah. GAH. (I'm not alone in that, by the way! See here. Or here, where "archaeologists officially declare collective sigh over the paleo diet". I'm in!) I have enough colleagues who try to learn more about diets from the past - medieval, 19th century, and inbetween - and if you talk to them at any length, one of the things guaranteed to come up is the impossible task of sourcing raw materials that are like they used to be back then. (Just like in textiles. Ah, I can so relate.)

Mind you, we're talking about foodstuffs less than 300 years old, in some of these cases. Or less than 2000 in most. Paleolithic stuff? That's at least 12 000 years ago. More than twelve thousand! Folks! We know about nothing on how food was back then! (I blogged a very nice video about that ages ago, by the way. Here.)

There are a few other things that irk me. Some are due to personal tastes, such as the liberal use  of coconut flour about everywhere where baking is concerned, or the liberal use of other coconut products. (I like coconut a lot - but only in very specific circumstances. Not everywhere.) Some are due to a different personal stance on things, such as the declaration that sugar is really, really bad because it's so nutrition-poor and has been processed so much - but then these same authors happily use stevia (processed) or other weird sugar replacements, also very much processed; or honey which is less processed and yes, not as nutrition-poor as honey, but not that far away from sugar either. (There are some who agree with me in that stance, though. Like this one.)

So. My summary? There's this scene that calls itself "paleo". While the name still makes my hackles rise, a lot of the articles and essays on nutrition for healing are interesting, helpful, and do give food for thought. As always, though, every person is different, and different things will work for each and everyone, so finding out things for yourself is still the thing to do. That said, the recipes - both "normal paleo" and AIP - are really worth looking at, if only for interesting combinations of things to cook or prepare. And if you suspect having a food intolerance, they will be insanely helpful when you try to figure out what to eat and what to forego.