It's definitely summer. The temps are rising into the triple digits, I don't set my alarm to get up in the morning, and I only work for a few hours a week.
Husband and I are back on the low-carb lifestyle, and I quickly ended up reverting to only one meal a day as soon as I cut out sugar and low-nutrient carbs. I guess OMAD (One Meal a Day) is my natural rhythm because I just don't get hungry until about 1pm or 2pm when I load up on protein and low-carb foods until I'm comfortably full and then don't need to eat any more until the next day. I have lost an average of a little over half a pound a day eating this way as well as cut out the need for heartburn medication and eliminated the symptoms of insulin resistance (including skin tags).
I'm getting older, however, and things haven't gone exactly the same as they did even just a couple years ago, so I've had to make some minor adjustments. First, after the first two weeks of eating mostly OMAD, I've had to switch to two smaller meals within a four-to-six-hour window instead of one large meal because I wasn't getting enough calories. I also had to add in some more carbs. It has been immediately obvious that eating low-carb (which means cooking from scratch almost 100% of the time) has thrown off my estrogen/progesterone balance, and maybe one of the reasons is because I'm not getting as much soy estrogen from packaged foods and junk foods. I'm speculating here, but there is no question that going low-carb on whole foods immediately equaled some unforeseen side effects having to do with an estrogen/progesterone imbalance, including the return of hot flashes (though only very occasionally and not the former fifteen to twenty per day, thank goodness!). My mom and I had a long talk yesterday about how she made her own soy milk and tofu for years, which got her through peri-menopause with almost no symptoms whatsoever.
I remember my mom making soy milk because we lived with my parents for a long time before buying our own house. She bought a soy milk maker and organic, non-GMO soybeans. Two batches of beans in the soy milk maker would yield enough soy milk for plenty of homemade tofu (she made it very firm) as well as milk for a soy milk/berry shake every morning. The pulp left over from making soy milk is called okara, and she used that to make croquettes that she fried in a little bit of butter. It was quite an undertaking, to say the least. The soy milk maker did a lot of the hard work, but she still had to coagulate the milk into curds and then press the curds in a tofu box to extract the whey, which took a while, though the resulting tofu was delicious when sliced and fried in some seasonings. Cleaning the soy milk maker was also tedious. Yet I am tempted to buy my own soy milk maker and organic, non-GMO soybeans and make a go of it.
Speaking of my mom, we had a big family get-together yesterday at our house for Father's Day. Almost all the usual attendees were there (my parents, my brother Aaron, my sister Ann and her SO, my three married daughters and their spouses, and all of us who live here; missing were my nephew, who had to work, and my youngest brother, Thomas, who also had to work), and we had a great time. When my three-year-old grandson, Tyler, walked in, he threw up his hands and shouted "Hi! I'm here!" because we all get very excited when he shows up, and he loves that. He had a great time.
I decided to make Sushi Bake--or Deconstructed Sushi, if you want to sound more avant-guard--and it was a big hit. We all love sushi, but making sushi rolls is one of the most tedious ways to spend hours of your time for a couple minute's worth of eating. Instead, you make sushi as a casserole, which will give you at least ten rolls' worth of great sushi experience for a fraction of the time spent making it. In short, you press the seasoned sushi rice into the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan, top the rice with furikake seasoning (found in Asian grocery stores) followed by whatever sushi filling ingredients you want to use. In this case, I kept it very simple by shredding surimi (fake crab) in my food processor and then mixing it with mayonnaise. On top of the crab filling, I squirted lines of Kewpie mayo (Japanese mayo), sriracha-mayo, and unagi sauce (eel sauce) before baking the casserole for fifteen minutes to get it warm. I served it with chopped cucumber, sliced avocado, sliced green onions, roasted sesame seeds, and more of the previous sauces along with squares of nori seaweed. Everyone scooped the sushi filling into their seaweed squares to eat it.
I made two pans of the Sushi Bake and a huge pot of hot and sour soup (yes, I mixed Japanese and Chinese cuisine) to fill in the nooks and crannies if anyone was still hungry. Everyone got seconds of the Sushi Bake, and I still have a ton of the soup left (Elannah loves hot and sour soup and has been asking for me to make it again, so having leftovers was my goal).
My kids and family are used to me making weird stuff, so they're experienced in bravely trying out my attempts at international cuisine, and I am fortunate that my sons-in-law are also pretty food-adventurous. Not everyone in the world enjoys trying unfamiliar foods. Still, if they want to marry into our family, they're going to have to put up with my food experiments. I was very happy with the outcome. We all talked and laughed and played games until I was ready to drop, and then they all went home and Husband and I collapsed into bed.
Sushi is definitely not low-carb, but I ate some protein before eating dinner and then didn't eat any dessert. Also, even though it was my second meal of the day, my first meal was pure protein. Also, the fact that you mix vinegar into the sushi rice helps to slightly mitigate the insulin response from the rice. I won't be eating this type of thing again for a long time, so that is how I justified it, haha.
Today I had to run to the store, and I stopped by the soup aisle to grab more bouillon because I had decimated my bouillon supply making the hot and sour soup yesterday. Two men were standing there looking at the broths and bouillon, so I snuck in next to them and snagged a bottle of beef Better Than Bouillon, which prompted one of the men to ask me if I liked it better than granulated bouillon because he had never tried the Better Than Bouillon paste. We had a little chat about bouillon and then they asked if I make bone broth and if I roast the bones before making the broth, which I do. We bid each other a good day and separated to continue our shopping, and I thought how fun it is to have unexpected pleasant little conversations with strangers. Is that mainly an American thing to just spontaneously strike up a conversation with strangers? It's been a long, long time since I was out of the country. The other day in the checkout line at a different grocery store, the cashier (whom I had never met before) quietly confided in me when I asked her how she was doing that she was having a hot flash and was very uncomfortable. I can definitely sympathize, so I told her about evening primrose oil, and she asked me to write it down so she could get some later. I hope it helps her like it did me. Weirdly, I had almost the same conversation with the lady who cut my hair a day later. I must be God's ambassador for evening primrose oil.
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