It’s Saint Patrick’s Day at the Doctor of Things! That means it’s time for New England Boiled Dinner and Irish soda bread. I like the meal a lot, and it means I have Reuben sandwiches out of the leftovers for some time. Since corned beef hardly ever goes on sale apart from this time, I usually buy two and freeze one for later. Actually I bought three, but two of them are quite small (2-3 pounds) and one large (5 pounds).
Annoyingly, the cabbage is hit or miss. Sometimes it’s uniformly tender and sometimes, like this year, it turns out a mixture of tender and tough leaves. But the carrots and potatoes turned out nicely. And I had a success with the soda bread – used golden raisins this time.
Apparently this is not a traditional meal for Irish people – just Americans. But it seems like many of us do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this way. “Why” is a mystery and may stay that way forever. For me, it’ a handy holiday with a food I like.
My food intake and calorie count
Breakfast – 4oz Ukrainian bread and butter (400)
- 400 calories
Lunch – 12oz jambalaya (420); 2 pretzels (100); Cheddar cheese (100);
- 720 calories
Dinner – Corned beef (100); potatoes (50); cabbage (25); carrots (30); soda bread (300); beef broth (100);
- 600 calories
Snacking – tea with half and half (80); ice cream sandwich (190);
- 270 calories
Total for the day: 1990 calories (limit 1800)
Excuses, excuses!
I normally manage my food intake to be around 1800 calories per day. It can be a fun job and I work hard to make sure it is fun and worthwhile. Today I made an error – I thought the jambalaya was only a few calories when it was really over 400! Then I had an ice cream sandwich and that put me over the top today. It was all perception – I believed that I had deprived myself at lunch by only having a low calorie portion of jambalaya, so I felt deprived afterwards and rewarded myself with an ice cream. Oh, well. Normally I would fret over this a little, but I see this week I have had a few days that were below the 1800 calories I strive for. In the game of calorie averages, today should be ok.
I was looking at the data on Amazon regarding best sellers during all this Coronavirus business. Amazingly, while everyone was horking the toilet paper (or Bogarting it, if you prefer), the sales of baby diapers, diaper wipes, and sanitary products for women have not been affected. What kind of targeted freak out are people having? Look at the Amazon top sellers in food: Rice Krispies treats, powdered mashed potatoes, cereal, noodles, and bags of chips. And evaporated milk. Fresh milk has been another odd target of all the horking. You see people walking out of the store with two and three gallons! What they will do with it I do not know. There has also been a huge demand for “survival garden” seeds – presumably people are looking to grow their own since they are stuck at home anyway.
I went to Costco today – part sightseeing, and partly to get some soap and shampoo as we were nearly out. There were not a lot of customers, and almost everything was fully stocked, including meat. It is obvious that the first wave of panic buying is over and people are sitting at home with piles of powdered mashed potatoes, pasta, cookies, cereal, and toilet paper.
I hope my food is a bit more interesting. Quality homemade food is an important part of my weight control system, and I intend to keep that going. I just wish the pools were open.
-The Doctor
Well, since the pool is closed, maybe a daily brisk walk around the ‘hood will suffice. That’s what’s on my agenda. Good luck. Your “Irish” dinner looked wonderful. We had chicken marsala, a salad and yucca. What a combination!
Just a quick note about exercise – I agree from both reading and from direct self study that exercise alone is not an efficient method to control weight. If you were running daily marathons or Iron Man courses… maybe you could have the freedom to consume as many calories as humanly possible when you were not in motion… for the rest of us it is not only the calories directly burned in activity (beyond or resting metabolism). Exercise also makes our muscles and bodies better tuned – we become more efficient and require a slightly larger amount of resting calories to maintain the better turning. That is why a moderate activity level – 150 minutes of cardio per week – has such a large gain in terms of our base metabolism. I have been very active, and as a multiplier to my normal metabolism I am using 1.7. For a sedentary person (up to 150 minutes of moderate activity a week) the multiplier is 1.3.