Best Gifts for Dads

Why is it that holiday shopping for women is so easy, but finding gifts for men is so difficult? Fathers are especially challenging to shop for. Why is it that holiday shopping for women is so easy, but finding gifts for men is so difficult? Fathers are especially challenging to shop for. Got a few hard-to-shop for dads on your holiday giving list? Here are the top 10 gifts that are sure to please Dad. Read on...

undies...recipes...it's all the same

I am belly laughing right now. Maybe that's because I feel lighter having (finally) vacuumed up the Christmas tree needles and put away the last stray ornaments, or because I gave in and went back to a nice cup of fully caffeinated coffee this morning, or maybe it's because this post my friend sent me is just so spot on. If you're reading The Happiness Project along with me, then you know that in January, you want to try to "toss, restore, organize". Undies, sweaters, toys, recipes...isn't it so true that when you pare down, you actually feel like you have more to choose from?

In the spirit of freshening things up a bit, I also updated the "Sites that Inspire Me" column here on the right (scroll down a bit). If you have other sites I should check out and possibly add, please make a suggestion here in the comments section. As with anything, I find the best ideas through my friends!

Physician, Heal Thyself

Well-known faith healers, used by God to heal multitudes, had their share of sickness and trouble ... Kathryn Kuhlman died at the age of 68 following open-heart surgery; Smith Wigglesworth died of a stroke at age 65; John Alexander Dowie died of a stroke at age 60; and Aimee Semple McPherson died of an accidental overdose complicated by kidney failure, at the age of 54.

I was healed miraculously of an incurable disease 8 years ago, but I still have my occasional share of the common cold or viral infection, and each time the sickness takes its course and I recover in a few days. Does this mean that Jesus does not heal? Absolutely not! In James 5:14 we're told that when we lay hands on the sick and pray the prayer of faith that the sick will recover. I've recovered from every one of these illnesses, proof enough for me that Jesus heals! The Bible is TRUTH; God cannot lie; and I love what Bill Johnson said in response to someone not getting healed: "It would be tragic for us to use an example for which we have no explanation to cancel the clear mandate given and modeled to us by Jesus. Mystery is important, otherwise there's no reward for making the right choice."

We must continue to operate in faith, believe for every healing, and trust that God is sovereign and in complete control. Do not let sickness (yours or someone else's) make you doubt the healing power of Jesus.

The phrase, "Physician, heal thyself" is a proverb found in Luke 4:23, "Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.'"

The usual interpretation of this passage is that, during the "Rejection of Jesus," Jesus expected to hear natives of his hometown of Nazareth use this phrase to criticize him. Matthew 27:42 - "He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him."

Jesus could have come down from the cross; He could have called ten thousand angels to his side; but Jesus will never conform to the taunts of man to violate the will of God. Let's be careful to not discourage faith healers from acting on what the Bible says, even when they themselves become sick.

A psychological problem with snacking in front of the telly

TV snacks are easily forgotten

Besides how hungry we feel, all sorts of other factors also affect how much we eat, including portion size and social convention. Another factor is memory for how much we've already eaten. The much-studied amnesic H.M. readily sat down to eat a second meal having just finished one, presumably because he'd forgotten he'd already eaten. Now Dolly Mittal and her team have shown that snacking while watching TV, as opposed to snacking while not watching TV, can lead us (well, women at least) to eat more later on, partly because the effect of the TV is to affect our memory for how much we snacked on earlier.

Thirty-two non-dieting women of unexceptional weight spent 20 minutes in the morning consuming as much snack food as they could, including chocolate balls, crisps and coke/orange squash. Half of them did this while watching Friends or Seinfeld, the others while sitting quietly. There was no difference in the amount of snack food the two groups consumed. Approximately an hour later, the women sat down to eat a lunch of sandwiches, biscuits, crackers and dip. The key finding is that the women who'd earlier snacked while watching TV ate significantly more of this later meal, than did the women who'd earlier snacked without TV. What's more, the TV group were also less accurate at recalling how much they snacked on in the morning. The implication seems to be that watching TV while snacking affects our memory for how much we've snacked on, thereby leading us to eat more later on.

A follow-up study was similar to the first except the researchers investigated the effects of different types of TV show - boring TV (a Lawn Bowling Contest - apologies to bowling fans), sad TV (a scene from the film Dead Poets Society), and funny TV (a Friends episode). The main finding from the first experiment was replicated as regards snacking whilst watching TV leading to more eating later on, but the specific type of TV show made no difference.

An anomaly in the results is that TV versus no TV had a larger effect on the amount eaten later on compared with its effect on recall memory. This suggests that TV has some other effect besides impairing memory for snack consumption, or else it affects memory in more ways that just impairing recall. Another issue is that the effect has so far only been demonstrated for women. When a pilot study was attempted with men, Mittal's team explained, they 'treated the experiment as an opportunity to consume as much food as possible, so the design may not be optimal for this group.'

'...[O]ur data suggest that TV probably exerts some as yet unspecified effect on participants' ability to recall earlier bouts of food consumption, leading to over-consumption on a later TV free test meal,' the researchers said. 'As TV viewing is associated with eating in so many different ways, and as overconsumption of food is a major problem in most industrialised nations, it would seem important to study exactly how this occurs.'
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Mittal, D., Stevenson, R., Oaten, M., and Miller, L. (2010). Snacking while watching TV impairs food recall and promotes food intake on a later TV free test meal. Applied Cognitive Psychology DOI: 10.1002/acp.1760

Back and Alive, Sorta

I can finally blog on computers again!!!

Well my laptop is still dead, no thanks to the holidays and Sony doesn't really have really good customer service, I have to bring my sodden laptop into a service centre today.

Sigh.

So now I'm working on a temporary HP desktop which I obtained from the office.

So at least I can do some work.


Ahh.. feels so weird to be away from a computer for so long, it's been over a week!


It's one thing to be away from blogging, and I haven't exactly been away from Twitter and Facebook since I can access those all the time from my Iphone, love you Iphone. xoxo.

But to be away from a computer, I felt like I've been amputated for a week!

I can't even log in to type with all 10 of my fingers! Or google something with a mouse. Or even write an article at top speed.


So anyway, my new resolution for 2011.

First off, 5 kg off my body. Tqvm. I've been doing this very well in year 2010, thanks to good walking in Beijing and Taiwan, and thanks to all those Marie France treatments, but of course one is never fully satisfied so I've decided another 5kg will just do the trick. Off with those fats!

Secondly, perhaps I'll start blogging a bit more. I sorta stopped being a professional blogger for a while now, and with that I stopped blogging frequently too, and I have to tell you, it feels great! Of course I miss all those perks but nothing beats having a bit of stability and to get the pressure of blogging every other day off my shoulder.

What fun is to blogging if you feel oblidged to blog all the time? It takes the fun and the passion away. Urgh. Perhaps I'll only write things that will make me happy for now.

I still have a lot of travellings to write about. So stay tune.


I don't have a lot of resolutions as I don't really believe it making them. Perhaps staying happy and learning to mature would be my ultimate goal this year. Stop being so depressed all the time already! I seem to gain more sincere friends around last year and I want to keep it that way.

Anyway more talk about this another time. It's raining cats and dogs here, I could resume to my work. Writing writing writing... And editing.


Ciao.

eeking out an extra hour by making meals ahead

New York Magazine says that "vegetables are the new meat". Meatless Mondays is a popular catch-phrase with a celebrity studded site to boot. And chances are, as we enter the New Year, you are either aspiring to eat more veggies, hoping to eat more meals as a family, or maybe both!

If you've kicked off your new year with a juice cleanse then you may find yourself drooling over my upcoming posts, because while my meals are always simple and healthful, I am not doing anything so extreme. My resolution was more of a macro one: focusing on getting a little more balanced...in the hopes that my overall health and happiness (and, achem, a svelte body) will follow.

If I am going to get more balanced, I am going to have to find another hour in my day. One area I know I can gain some of this time back in is the cooking department. The key is to figure out a few go-to recipes that freeze well or can be stored in the fridge for a few days. Once you get in the rhythm of cooking this way, you'll be able to enjoy homemade most meals, but you won't have to cook each meal each day. Sounds too good to be true? Here's my example from the past 5 days. Note that when we came back from vacation our fridge and freezer were bare. As in, no backlog of meals whatsoever, so I am starting this cache of meals right along with you this week:

Wednesday (cooked lunch)
We arrived home from 24+ hours of travel in time for lunch (which is another whole blog post...)
Breakfast: whatever my kids picked out with their $6 food voucher from the airline...gross
Lunch: Cilantro-Walnut Pesto over Whole Wheat Rotini
Dinner: Take-out pizza & salad for dinner

Thursday (cooked breakfast & dinner)
Breakfast: Make Ahead Oatmeal
Lunch: choice of pizza or pasta from Wednesday
Dinner: Polenta & (Soy) Chorizo Lasagna

Friday (cooked breakfast)
Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs
Lunch: choice of Polenta & Soy Chorizo Lasagna or PB& J
Dinner: (New Year's Eve) Local gourmet shop Aux Delices' Mac & Cheese for the kids, and a decadent cheese, cured meat, dried fruit and nut selection from Darien Cheese Shop for the adults

Saturday (cooked breakfast and lunch)
Breakfast: Frittata loaded with broccoli, zucchini and kale
Lunch: Giant pot of 21 Bean Soup
Dinner: Out to a friend's home for dinner, where I brought a hearty homemade dip...and as an added bonus, she sent us home with a big plate of kid-pleasing fried chicken

Sunday (no cooking)
Breakfast: Frittata loaded with broccoli, zucchini and kale (which I made ahead on Sat morning)
Lunch: choice of Cilantro-Walnut Pesto Rotini or Fried Chicken with the last of the Mac & Cheese
Dinner: Bowls of the 21 Bean Soup and some of Saturday night's dip I kept around here for snacking

Still in my freezer to be enjoyed in coming weeks:
8 servings of the bean soup
8 servings of the Polenta & (Soy) Chorizo Lasagna

As I prepare more meals going forward, I'll make extra of some and tuck them in my freezer. As the meals build up, I'll get more time off. Also, we'll have more variety to choose from. (In the beginning, you may only have one or two things in the freezer to choose from...) It's a simple solution to that "What's For Dinner" question. I'll be sure to highlight when recipes I share are freezer-friendly so you can join me in "cooking ahead". This Polenta & Soy Chorizo freezes beautifully, and is actually a re-post of the very first recipe I ever shared on this blog. Here's the recipe in step-by-step photos:

First, one onion and two packages of soy chorizo were sauteed in a bit of olive oil. The soy chorizo is found in the produce section, because it's a vegetable product. (Trader Joe's has their own brand, and I also saw it at another supermarket by the brand, Frieda's.) That said, you can always substitute real sausage if you'd like, or you can use ground beef or ground turkey with your favorite herbs/spices if that's more your speed. The recipe is totally adaptable to your tastes.

I used ready-made polenta this time, which can be found in the pasta aisle of most supermarkets. If you want, you can make your own polenta using cornmeal and water or broth, but adding another step definitely isn't going to help my whole balanced gig so I'm sticking with store bought for this recipe!

The first layer is simply thinly sliced polenta...

next some dollops of Fage 0% Greek Yogurt...

and a layer of sliced zucchini.

Then, a thin layer of the sauteed soy chorizo and onion mixture,

and a sprinkling of mozzarella or Feta, your choice.

Topped by another layer of thinly sliced polenta and

a layer of canned diced tomatoes (partially drained).

Then I added a sprinkling of Feta

and a little more soy chorizo & onion mixture.

One last layer of thinly sliced polenta and a last sprinkling of Parmesan, mozzarella or Feta before it goes into a 350 degree oven for a half hour or so.

There you have it! Dinner is ready, house smells amazing, and the second dish of this I made at the same time gets popped into the freezer* for another day when we want a homemade meal but don't have time to cook. Now that is a beautiful thing!

* You can freeze the make ahead meal uncooked or cooked. If you freeze it uncooked, just double the cook time, and put the frozen dish into the oven as it is heating up so you don't shock the glass going freezer to oven. No need to defrost. Just enjoy the hour it is cooking!

first pages turned in 2011

Now that I have finished up the last batch of Christmas cards (yes, you read that right so don't be offended, just check your mailbox if you still haven't gotten ours...), I cannot wait to delve back into the book that's currently on my bedside table, the magazine I am always excited to find in my mailbox, and the cookbook I am currently reading cover to cover.