Adjusting to a Healthy Heart diet  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

You vegans out there, take comfort. Your cholesterol levels must be amazing.

After my near-miss non-heart attack, or whatever we want to call it, my diet’s undergone some drastic – even painful – redirection.

Look, I don’t want to sound like a victim or act the martyr, when it comes to food, it seems like everybody has some kind of limitation. Ever try to plan an all-inclusive menu for any social gathering nowadays?

Still, looking at the American Heart Association’s Healthy Heart guidelines has me thinking of perpetual Lent along the Greek Orthodox lines. Heavens! At least I can still have my daily martini, with the definitive stuffed olive.

Red meat is limited to once a week, and that includes pork. Three eggs, which you’ll find hidden in all kinds of food, and a microscopic amount of butter, which is likewise infused, as well as cheese – yikes – they’re are also out! (Well, we have found low-fat cheese. Ain’t quite the same. And while egg whites are allowed in unlimited amounts, it’s the yolks that have all the flavor.) So there went my three main fallback ingredients when I had a hunkering. A good omelet used all three, easily. Thank goodness mushrooms are still OK in other combinations.

Look, before all this there had many days when we didn’t touch any meat – nada – and I was perfectly happy. But now?

Let me tell you about the first time I stopped for fast food at breakfast and thought the muffin was allowed. Bonk! Or a doughnut. Ditto bonk!

At home, the butter I’ve loved has given way to apple butter or jams and jellies. That’s fine, though I still look at that yellow stick on the counter with some lusting. Oh, God, do I!

But six months into this routine, I had lost weight I couldn’t afford to lose. I had lost appetite, too. My wife and I independently came to the same conclusion: I needed to get more fat into my diet. We’re still working on it.

Ten sets of wheels in my life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments
  1. My 2002 Camry. Coming up on 300,000 miles on the odometer.
  2. My wife’s 2013 Prius.
  3. Her Saturn before that.
  4. My Plymouth Neon.
  5. My VW Fox, a two-door wagon.
  6. My 1600 model BMW coupe. Oh, the memories!
  7. The company car, a Chevy Impala. Burgundy.
  8. My Subaru, when they were first being imported into the States.
  9. VW Bug. Classic memories. Anyone else ever pop the clutch to get started?
  10. A ’66 Buick Skylark, purchased from my dad.

~*~

So what are you driving. And what’s been your favorite?

~*~

Nothing I’ve ever owned. This Pontiac convertible got a lot of attention in mid-coast Maine. Look at this as inspiration.

Yes, it’s a sidestroke

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

So there I was, swimming my laps when one of the lifeguards asked, “Excuse me, is that a sidestroke?”

Like what, I’m doing something wrong … after sixty years of this?

Uh, no. Turns out he didn’t know how to do one. A butterfly stroke, yes. But this essential way of swimming?

So I ask, “Didn’t you need it with a reverse kick to pass lifesaving?”

Turns out, no, they’ve changed the requirements. No more cross-chest carry, either.

Huh?

No, they use a backstroke to keep the victim’s neck and back more secure.

Wow, times have changed.

At least he’d heard the sidestroke was great for swimming distances, as in the ocean. I gave him a few tips.

But, jeez, I hate feeling old. I remember when CPR was the new thing, and it was much, much gentler than what they’re teaching these kids. I can expect a few broken bones if they go for it, and I’ll be grateful.

Yes, even with that, I trust them with my life.

A stent? Seems everybody has one

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Get to a certain age and the conversation often shifts to personal health issues. (Sorry ’bout that.)

I am surprised by the number of people who tell me about their stents, for instance. This matter of running a probe from your wrist and up your arm into your heart is surprisingly commonplace. It’s also amazing what relatively small community hospitals are doing nowadays. (OK, ours is now a subsidiary of Mass General Hospital in Boston … like the best. Not that I really considered that at the time I was being wheeled off to God knows what.)

But that leads to other things like learning that my clerk at the hardware store and I have the same cardiologist, or did till said doc moved to Florida. (Well, that has to be a hot market for cardiac work!)

It also brings up others who say that they, too, felt no pain … thought it was a breathing issue rather than a pending heart attack.

Or that their cholesterol levels, like mine, had been normal.

As a factor, I’m convinced stress was a major component in my case. Seventeen years between marriages, with all of the relationship uncertainty, along with working under relentless deadlines as I did at the newspaper must have taken a toll. Besides, I wasn’t getting regular exercise in that period, other than dashing to and from the composing room.

As one buddy said, if you lined up a hundred guys our age, he would have been the first to be tagged for this problem and I would have been the last.

Well, he’s had a few health issues, but cardio hasn’t been one of them.

For you younger readers, take warning.

Cheers! And good luck …

Ten once-exotic foods that have become commonplace

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Americans’ food choices expanded unbelievably in the generation between the events told in Daffodil Uprising and What’s Left. Admittedly, Cassia’s mother had grown up with a wider awareness of dietary options than had her father – her mother’s Greek heritage relied on olive oil rather than Crisco, for starters, and running a restaurant meant keeping an eye open for new options. Roasting a lamb for Easter would have been in her mother’s background but probably made her father’s side cringe. Still, it’s mindboggling to think how exotic some of today’s common dishes were just a half-century ago.

Here are ten:

  1. Broccoli. And zucchini and summer squash, which show up on a lot of national chain restaurant plates. Hey, even fresh parsley.
  2. Yogurt. Seriously, even before you add granola, another upstart.
  3. Tacos. For that matter, anything Mexican like burritos or quesadillas or margaritas. We’ve even added a holiday every May just to celebrate this development.
  4. Salsa. And sriracha and any of those Texas hot sauces. Whatever happened to ketchup?
  5. Sushi. I still can’t believe you can get it at the grocery.
  6. Thai. For that matter, anything Asian. You know, this extends to Vietnamese and Indian and even authentic Chinese. For me as a child, chop suey on top of wormy dried noodles, both out of a can, were as adventurous as it got for miles around.
  7. Pasta. Yes, any of those various Italian noodles. Our spaghetti used to come with sauce in a can. Seriously. And a spaghetti dinner was typically a fundraising event in a church. Oh, and it was still pronounced EYE-talian. Ouch!
  8. Espresso. The word itself conjured up images of beatniks. And now? Just think of all the gourmet coffee storefronts and drive-throughs. Not just Starbucks, either. You no longer have to explain cappuccino or latte or café au lait apologetically, thank goodness. Many of us even make our own.
  9. Flatbreads. As in wraps, especially, though they can be the foundation of a good pizza. Well, speaking of breads, add baguettes and croutons to the list of advances. We’ve really come a long way, baby.
  10. Real cheese. Not the processed stuff. We now have so many glorious choices we could do another Tendril on just this one item. Hallelujah!

History? Pizza had recently entered the mainstream. And wine was still a daunting frontier.

What would you add to the list?

When the author starts choking up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of Kenzie’s lovers in Pit-a-Pat High Jinks had long puzzled me. In the earlier versions of the story, I pretty much ran with a set of details mirroring those I had encountered in real life. I refrained from speculating on what she wasn’t telling me – or, by extension, Kenzie.

In the latest set of revisions, though, I ventured beyond that self-imposed taboo. I had learned from two other girlfriends how devastating childhood abuse could be. Yes, in this fictional case, the hypothesis fit. Not that it had to be factually true, but rather that it was a plausible possibility – that was enough for a novelist. As I fleshed out that incident and its impact, I began weeping. If only I had known more of her at the time or more of all three, would the course of our relationships gone differently? The feeling of deep loss and grieving was pervasive, all these decades later.

Likewise, as I was reworked the text that morphed into Daffodil Uprising, the focus shifted from the lighthearted face of the hippie experience to a broader comprehension of its desperation and even destructive fringes – and that sensation also had me grieving. As a deep sense of loss regarding the promise we saw on the horizon but failed to reach and fulfill washed over me, I began seeing the novel as a requiem for the hippie dream.

With Kenzie’s daughter Cassia at my side, though, I started thinking about the way dreams work. They have one foot in the past and the other in the present. And then, even when she was looking at her father’s history, she had her own generation in mind. From where I stand, their situation looks even more confusing than ours had. What can we who did change so much of society, pro and con, offer them now in continuing that vision?

These are dire times, friends. Anyone else feeling some déjà vu and unease?