Eating markers.

I still eat markers.
No, I don't have one of those odd urges which makes me eat highlighters or anything. I eat markers as in foods; snacks or candy which shows me how much of my food I have disgorged.

For 25 years it has to some extent cast a shadow, a curse even, on me, my life and my body.

If I knew how hard it would be to write down this confession, would I do it again? I don't know. I sit here, curled up inside, in shame, while I continue to write my compunction and abashment.

Strange how I feel this way in spite of it began so unintentionaly. I didn't have problems with my weight or body. I didn't have low self esteem due to my appearance: I was healthy, strong, slim, young... Any garment looked good on me, because I wore them with confidence.

Even when my friend told me I was gaining weight, she could tell, because I had gotten dimples on my knees, I laughed it off. That's how confident I was in myself.

When I was 20 I would experience occasional involuntary throwing up. I thought perhaps I was sick, but as it increased, and it would happen more and more often I went to see a doctor, worried something more serious was wrong with me.

I went through every test in the book, and then some. My doctor sent me to one specialist after another to find out what caused it. Maybe he was just humoring me, sending me off to another specialist to shut me up, because he would say: "You have an eating disorder. There is nothing physically wrong with you, it must be of psychological reasons". And I strongly refused, saying I had no problems which would cause that kind of troubles.
And he would weigh me in and raise his eyebrows.

One week I had gained 5 kilos, the next one another 4... then I would lose 8 kilos the next.
My weight went up and down like a jojo, varying from 55 kilos to as much as 90.
Keeping three sizes in your wardrobe is perhaps not the most normal thing to do, but to me it was how it was.

There was no internet, encyclopedias weren't updated on the matter, and though it didn't start out as an eating disorder, my condition developed into one.
I needed some sort of control, and it's funny how the tricks I learned myself, are now the most common signs to look for when suspecting someone is having an unhealthy view on food and their body. (I guess that means I found out a clever and sensible way to deal with it... from a sick point of view.)

I know exactly what to eat, and how to eat it, to disengage effortlessly.
Mind you: I never stuck my fingers down my throat, or used any other means, to make me retch.
I just decided it would feel better if I emptied my stomach, so I did. Very controlled, no fuss, no hurry. I have great control of the muscles in my stomach and can still throw up just by will.

It didn't take me long to control the food expences, it didn't take me long to learn how to hide the smell from my breath. All in all I didn't think of it as such a big problem. When I was slim I looked great, when I was fat i knew I would bounce back into sexy shape in no time. No hassle.

Not untill my dentist started to charge me sky high fees, and told me something odd was going on, because I had cavities under even fairly new fillings.

Then I got pregnant, and 4.5 months into my pregnancy I got these pains, like phantom pains in my stomach and my appendix was removed one night,
I woke up from the anaesthesia, and I was still in pain, but they told me I was making it up: My appendix had been fine, and pregnancy was all well. They blamed it on my eating disorder and the psychological state which had brought the condition upon me.

One of the specialists in x-rays was a friend of my father. He had heard I was in a bad shape, and pregnant, so the next night, when he had little to do, he woke me up, took me by the hand and we walked down to his ward.

He did an ultrasound on me then, and his findings were life changing to me:
I had no infection, but my gall bladder was almost bursting with the amount and sizes of the gallstones.

They all apologized, telling me how unexpected and uncommon it was for a young person, such as me, to have that. Suddenly I had no eating disorder anymore, I was suffering from symptoms of a physical disorder.
I was sceduled for a surgery a year later.

Suddenly I had no medical backup anymore. Suddenly I had no psychological challenges. Now there was an explanation to my weight issues, and it was like as if it was already fixed.

It wasn't. Now I turned worried, and ate even more to make sure the baby got the nutritient it needed, and my weight changed faster, and more, than ever.
It took me years to get a balanced and healthy view on food.
And to do that I had to accept being over weight. Sounds strange, but that was what it took for me to get peace of mind.
The chemistry in my body is a mess and not functioning right.

For 15 years I have been over weight. 1/3 of my life, and enough is enough. I am ready to take the next step.

Financially it has cost me a lot. At times I have cut back on every expence, just to spend as much as possible on food.
Dentist bills have been astronomical. Still are cause my teeth now crack and fall out in pieces. You can't tell by my smile, but they do. I have to be careful where I chew, and what I chew.

Buying clothes which fit has become quite an obsession, almost as bad as my shoe purchases. (Maybe that's why I like shoes so much, because they always fit, no matter my size.)

I never buy clothes in a store. I hate it when the helpful, smart and smiling, young staff come over to tell me how great I will look in this or that in those colours.
Almost all my clothes are grey or black.

I hate to see great garments on the online stores, knowing I can't wear it because it will reveal too much, or I will be too noticable. I cling to my previous love for cut and fabric by having a somewhat black and grey chic punk style. And people call me eccentric for it. Not even realizing I AM eccentric, but for other reasons.

I find it quite a paradox, you know, knowing I now hate pictures of me. I avoid being taken pictures of, and get quite upset when I find out somebody did. When I see a picture of me I examine my double chin, the shape of my body, my "love handle" of excess skin, and I get upset.
All the normal and perfect imperfections everybody has, is to me a reason to hide. And admitting to this is quite surprising to me, as I find all people, regardless their shape, color and style, beautiful.

I hate doing any kind of physical activity because I know I am too heavy. And I know my kids at some level are missing out on things I would love for them to experience.

But now I have come to a point in life when I have to take a grip and make a few changes, more than a few: many! I need to become good enough again. Being like this is too exhausting. Because, after all, I am not sick anymore... I just still eat markers.

Wholesome meals.

I am very easilly distracted. It is a fact, and nothing worth discussing: I would lose that exchange of views; Big time! And being distracted is by many considered to be a flaw in one's personality.
I can't really help it, it's just how I am. Then again I haven't done a lot to establish habits or systems to make short shrift with the confusion it sometimes causes. It is confusing though, both to me and others, so I agree it's not a good thing about me. Come to think of it, I have many flaws and errors which affect others I surround myself with; Qualities which make me comfortably imperfect. Comfortable because being imperfect lowers everybody's expectations to me. It gives me the freedom to break out and behave out of standard. You know: dancing in the rain or serve waffles for dinner.

Which one of my imperfections and flaws is the biggest, varies by time and fashion. In example: Most of us act, and live, far from the norm of courtesy you would find in the 1940s. Not that I keep up to that standard, but a couple of people do... I have my values and standards on what is acceptable, and what isn't. I like to think I don't hold prejudices, but of course, like everybody else, I do. I know this, I'm just not very happy about it. So, I am distracted, I have prejudices, I am very shy and therefore perceived as arrogant... the list goes on and on. And yet, right now I think my biggest sin, in the eyes of society in general, is my body.
At least that's the impression I get, judging by the comments so-called friends and acquaintances have the nerve to say out loud to me and about me. A lot of it is ever so rude and quite hurtful at times, and yet those remarks, and their alike, have become socially acceptable. Not only that: they have become normal.

I'm not really fat... I can still tie my own shoelaces, but my belly has through the years become.... hmmmm.... spongy (I did not want to say "like jeasted dough, well risen" because that would have put you off rolls, baguettes and white bread for weeks!).
But unless you get some surgery of a kind done, that is the punishment you are given when you participate in life. At least that is how I comfort myself.

I recently went to the doctor to get my annual cancer tests done. People: it's October and the month to give some consern to the cause: Remember to check yourself for breast cancer (yes, men too!) and go

give the blood needed to get your healthy self confirmed!

(The American Cancer Society’s most recent estimates for male breast cancer in the United States are for 2010:

About 1,970 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed among menAbout 390 men will die from breast cancer

Breast cancer is about 100 times less common among men than among women. For men, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000. The number of breast cancer cases in men relative to the population has been fairly stable over the last 30 years.)

Since I was already exposed and feeling very small, I asked the female doctor if I by any chance could go on a diet or do any kind of work-out to get rid of my shame, aka: the appearance of my belly. She looked at me in the eyes and shook her head: "Nope, but I can arrange for excess skin to be removed and the appearance of your muscles more defined".
Her reply made me determined to prove her wrong. I can live a normal life, with variety as the core spice in every aspect of my being, and feel good about it. Without having the beautifying surgery done. So what if the trousers are unable to give me the lift-tighten-slim look no matter how I wiggle to put them on. I still get a muffin-top.

The medias have made it into something we should focus on and adopt as an obsession, and we read about it everywhere: in the newspapers, online, numrous books and magazines: The right diet and food can make us healthy, slim, strong, sexy, beautiful and adorable. No wonder we get so focused on diets: who wouldn't want to hit the jackpot and be all of above? These days to stay away from gluten is the new right thing to do. "No gluten" is the new "low carb" (unless the preferred diet changed during the last two hours).

Low carb was in 2011 the most popular word in Norway, and the most frequently googled word the same year. I can only imagine what "no gluten" will be like.
We switch to the better and more efficient diet with ease, and start eating the diet for yet another sickness. Not that many actually have lactose intolerance, but we stick with the diet to become a better person. Only 1% have intolerance for gluten.

There is an increasing pressure to take responsibility for our body and health. And especially women with higher education are very preoccupied with what not to eat. The no-list of food and ingredients gets longer day by day.  It's like as if it turns into an unhealthy obsession. The enthusiasm for changing the current diet is increasing, it's like taking over the search for meaning of life.

As human beings we are so predictable. We still most often think that going out includes a meal, and we choose restaurants by their rumour and the reviews. And then, after having chosen where to eat, dressed up and arranged for babysitter, we go to fancy restaurants only to move food around the plate.  We end up never eating the carefully cooked and presented dishes. What we ordered may be fashionable in the food world, but it is not by any means compatible to the diet world.
I used to love long and lazy meals with something nice in the glasses. I used to cook and find joy in flavours and good ingredients.
Not so much anymore. Many don't compliment the chef anymore, instead we hear about how many calories can be found in the meat, the bread, the sauce...; nothing kills conversation about life's peculiarities more efficiently than that.

I always took into considerations different lifestyles and allergies. Allergies of fish and eggs, even gluten, vegetarian and vegans alike.
One time my son was celebrating his birthday party and we served the traditional rice porridge. At Christmas a almond is placed in the pot of rice porridge and who ever finds it in their bowl wins a prize-usually a marzipan pig. And the lucky person who won the pig might say, to express his satisfaction, that he was in the middle of a butter island. That is to say in the middle of the hot porridge's melting butter.

I knew one of the kids came from a vegan family, so I asked his mother if she had any experience in cooking the porridge using rice milk. She told me not to make too much of it. He had never participated in the almond in the rice porridge ceremony, so it was ok. He could bring food from home. I found that very touching that she didn't want me to be bothered with their alternative lifestyle, but it also made me even more determined he should not only participate: he should also find the almond.
I asked what I could give him as a winning prize.

I made porridge the traditional way for the party, and with rice milk for him. I explained to the 23 boys that part of the game was to trick eachother by rolling their tongue in their mouth as if they had found the almond... but never reveal it untill all the plates were empty. They ate so much porridge.
The boy had such a sneaky smile on his face it was priceless. I watched him, and he played the game with glory. He found one of the 6 almonds hidden.

When I gave him the chocolate bar his parents had agreed upon, he ran over to his father and asked if he was allowed to eat it... and he cried when his dad said yes.

There is a doctor in the USA who came up with the expression orthorexia.
It worries me that food has become something we use as a sign of personal excellence. A healthy, slim and well toned body gives you status and sends signals of self control, and the diets makes the strive easier and more concrete.
It IS a good thing to eat healthy and to be active, but I believe food gets a lot of unhealthy attention. More and more doctors and dieticians are getting really worried about the psychological and social consequenses people's attitude towards food may cause.

Some say we overfeed but malnourish ourselves. Some say we underfeed and overnourish ourselves. I just want meals to stay the highlights of a day, when we gather around the table and have those good, soulful and silly conversations.

When we face eachother and grant our senses the pleasures of smells, textures, tastes and colours, while we laugh, get serious, turn sad and silly and feel like a wholesome family of friends.
To dare to let go of time and the daily rat race. To use the senses we received as gifts when we were brought into this world, disregard the rules of a perfect appearance and just enjoy...
That is to live life to the fullest.




Who are more likely to see behind the "flaws" we might have? Men.... or women?

Baking for Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner, and here, in Norway, part of the tradition is to bake cookies. It is common to count 7 different kinds, but most have more than that at home. They don’t necessarily bake them all (the store has a lot of delicious options) but most have cookies and cakes in cookie jars and tins, ready to be served if someone should drop by during the holidays.

Preparing for Christmas takes a lot of organizing on beforehand. To get everything done on time, and avoid intense stress mess (after all I want this season to be about family friendly values and spending quality time together with others), I plan December day by day. Too much planned in one day often results in nothing getting done at all; I just get caught in overwhelmed distress. Much because this is not only a month of extensive number of traditions and seasonal events at home, in sports-clubs and school, but it is also the season for end of term tests and grading. This is the height of the season, both at home and work.

 

Making tons of Christmas cookies (julekaker) is one of the Norwegian traditions. We tend to eat so many of them while baking, that by the time Christmas is actually here, we are almost fed up with them. But they are important to us.

The discussion on which kinds of cookies we should count as the real deal is an ongoing issue through out the country. There is no key or set rule to which ones to bake (or buy), but most families have their own traditional cookies they would like to include. On the net I found  the most common ones are:

«Smultringer», «goro», «fattigmann», «krumkaker», «sandkaker», «sirupssnipper» and «berlinerkranser». I bake a few of them, but far from all. I guess tastes have a say on what you bother to bake, as there is no point in baking just to throw them away when they get stale…  some time in March.

Smultring  are Norwegian doughnuts. They are smallish and usually prepared without glazing or filling, and are often flavoured with cardamom.

Smultrings are torus shaped and sold from trucks and, at Christmas time, from stalls. They are described as being "thick heavy dough fried in lard – best eaten while hot and with the grease still dripping! Smultring are popular with expatriate Norwegians including those in Minnesota who serve them with krumkake, riskrem (rice cream), and fattigmann at Christmas dinners.
^{(source wikipedia.com)}

Goro were traditionally the "rich man's" cookies in Norway – they are prepared from what used to be really expensive ingredients like butter and cream and they are baked on specially smithed irons that very often are family heirlooms. The cookies have a texture that's a cross between a cookie, a cracker, and a waffle, lightly flavored with cardamom. I just love the pattern these cookies get in the iron when baked. I don’t make them very often, though. My grandmother had an old fashioned iron, which had to be flipped, as it was heated by the fire or cooker, but my iron is a modern, electrical one and the cookies are just too thick to become as delicate and crispy as I like them.

Another cookie, which is made from almost the same ingredients as Goro is Fattigmann, or "Poor Man Cookies" which are twisted into pretty knots, quickly fried in oil or lard, and sprinkled with vanilla sugar or confectioner's sugar. They're a favorite in Norway and Sweden, and easy to prepare either with a special fattigman cutter or with a pastry cutter.

I don’t really make these either. I have tried, but... I just never got the hang of it. They just turned fatty and not that tasty at all... maybe I have the wrong recipe. My family never really had a tradition for baking these.

Delicate Norwegian krumkake cookies are baked on a circular cookie iron, then rolled into cones or cigars. They're guaranteed to crumble when eaten, in such a delicious way! There is no way you can eat these in an elegant manner, but I love them! I do not bake them in a large scale... I make them when I plan on serving them or when someone asks for them, as they are the best when just made. Or at least I think so.  I serve them alone, but most times I serve them filled with whipped cream mixed with fruit or berries (cloudberries is very popular around Christmas time) or with ice cream.

 

Serina Cookies are the ultimate Norwegian butter cookie, with a light texture that comes from using hartshorn (a.k.a. baker's ammonia or hornsalt) rather than American baking powder. Sprinkle them with pearl sugar and watch them disappear! Lovely to dip them in hot coffee and add some mocca taste to them  (I know, not very proper, but I do that to chocolate as well...)

 

"Sandkaker" (sand cakes) are formed in pretty fluted tins, quickly baked in the oven, and then served either inverted to highlight their beautiful shapes or else used as tart shells for both sweet and savory fillings. I usually fill them with vanilla custard and berries... or diced fruit. Any kind I have at hand makes these cookies a real treat.

The cookies my kids love the most is Spritz (Sprut in Norwegian), Christmas Cookies are crisp and delicious. Sprut cookies are always on my list of goodies to make.

I lay them together, filling the pair with a delicious frosting added a hint of rum essence.

 

A cookie I do bake a lot of and put in the freezer is Sarah Bernhard. An almond base with chocolate butter cream and chocolate icing.

When I am to serve them I take them out of the freezer, put the coffee on and they are thawned just right for serving by the time coffee is done. They are delicious and just melt in your mouth with an explosion of jammy taste of chocolate.  They are ok for Christmas, but I would turn big as a house if I made them all year round.

 

We also design and build a gingersnap house for each of the kids to decorate with sweets  of their own choice and confectioner's sugar. They get to crack it and eat it New Year’s Eve.

We bake big hearts and tie a bright red bow in them and hang them, i.e. the windows, for decorations... and then some figure shaped smaller ones for eating. Scrumptious!

The impact of food

The other day I was reading a book which made me think about food. Not thinking about food in the sense of what I would like to eat, but more about what impact food has on our lives. Or rather: my life. I eat a lot of strange things, but there is also a lot I refuse to eat… from various reasons. I eat from different reasons, and I am sad to say most often I am not really hungry.

In parts of the world people spend their days trying to find something to eat, anything at all. In our part of the world we spend a lot of time wondering what to choose to eat, where to order it from or how to prepare it.

I am not very good at ordering take away. I am good at ordering food at restaurants, but to tell the truth I prefer to eat at home. When going out the part I treasure the most is: I don’t have to do the dishes. I confess I’m not a good housewife; it’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just… I know it isn’t pointless, but when someone says they don’t see the point because it looks just as bad in a few hours anyway, I totally understand where he or she is coming from. The house is fairly tidy when I go to bed, though. The thought of getting up in the morning knowing the kitchen looks like a raided area is really not cool.

My kids love McDonald’s! They don’t get to eat there often, but when they do it is a treat! People and campaigns keep telling what disgusting ingredients you get served in your food there, but let’s get real: people have eaten all parts of the animal for as long as humans have eaten food.

In Scotland they eat Haggis, here in Norway we have something called “Lungemos” (= hashed lung), old fishermen around the globe enjoy to suck on a fish’s eye, oysters is a delicacy (to me it tastes like still water… and they are part of the sea’s brilliant refuse disposal service), boiled pig's trotters; the list of delicacies with not denominated origins or ingredients is very long.

Still… I leave it to my kids to enjoy the happy meals there (at McDonald’s). It is purely based on taste, smell and texture. It is nothing “personal” or a specific disliking; I am just generally not very fond of processed food.

There isn’t a lot I’m not fond of, but there are some dishes I have problems with. The thing I have the most problem with is how some use garlic to kill all other tastes in the food when they cook. I don’t mind garlic, but I don’t understand how some can make everything taste like… well, garlic.

Don’t misunderstand me; I use garlic from time to time myself, but for a purpose. Not for the garlic itself. Thinking about it, there is a good chance my cooking is rather old fashioned. I don’t really mind, though, as long as people eat what I cook.

I love to watch TV shows like Masterchef, Hell’s Kitchen and other similar shows. First of all I can’t get over how everybody seems to paw about and handle the food… I can’t for the life of me understand why topnotch chefs and cooks should break an egg in their hand, in order to separate the yolk from the egg white. Is there anything wrong with using the halves of the eggshell? And the constant breathing on the plates, from 10 cm away, when the dish is plated. Touching the hair, then back to fingering the food they have prepared… I would rather not know.

And how come the smaller the dish is, the more exclusive it is?

Do people eat in secret at home before eating out? Just wondering, because when I went to visit my parents last week, she invited the entire family to a barbeque. Then she told me she knows nothing about barbequing, so she left the planning, shopping and cooking to me. I was not very pleased, nor was I surprised; it is always like that. Every time I go there I end up cooking and baking on a large scale.

I sulked for a bit, thinking so much for being the visitor. Again. But after a while sulking is boring, so I started preparing for the feast. 20 people were coming, so I bought 3 kilos of chicken fillets, 3 kilos of salmon fillets and 2 2-kilos beef rib steaks. Along with the baked potatoes, broccoli salad, potato salad, garlic bread (yes, I bake a great garlic bread), the watermelon-/feta cheese salad, green salad and olives, I thought it would be enough food. Now, my family does not consist of heavy eaters, and yet they emptied their plates. They were full, but there were no left overs either.

It’s always like that when I cook, so how come the really good chefs insist on such small portions? Don’t they want people to leave their table full and content?

I love long meals with lively conversations, discussions and jokes. I like to gather people around a table and have meals. Most days I have two or more extra kids for dinner, but I don’t mind. It is nice. We talk with each other instead of to each other. I think it is important for kids to learn that. Having conversations, I mean… and it is important for them to learn to appreciate tastes.

Otherwise they will eat at McDonald’s while thinking they are eating a nice, adventurous meal out, or, they can be travelling around the world and miss out on half the travelling experience.

Because: “To him food was identity, culture, family, how you define home and love and who you are - all of it at once....It's not just the pie. It's the chemistry and physics. It's place and time and history and religion and music...I felt blurred by his presence, overwhelmed with double vision - the world as I was seeing it and the world as Henry would have.”
― Bridget Asher, The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted