Category Archives: A Year of No Sugar

A Year Of No Sugar: Post 37

A Year of No Sugar, , , ,

I’m happy to report a successful Third Official Dessert of the Year: on the last day of March we had (trumpets, please!) Sour Cherry Pie, which is a family favorite. Every year in June we know it’s time to call Hick’s Orchard in Granville, New York and find out if the cherries are ready for picking. This tradition began on a Father’s Day weekend many years ago when we were driving around with my husband’s parents, and we stopped in to the orchard on a whim. We picked a flat of the luscious red fruit and when I got home I found a recipe for cherry pie in my ever-reliable, broken-spined Joy of Cooking. We have been utterly obsessed with sour cherries ever since.

They’re a funny thing to be obsessed with, since there’s not all that much you can actually do with sour cherries. You can make a kick-ass pie, and you can make the Best Jam Ever, and… that seems to be it. That really is enough, though. In fact, every year we seem to get greedier, bringing home yet another flat piled high with the sweet-sour smelling orbs that require pitting immediately, because within hours they will begin to age, wrinkle, and develop icky brown-beige spots. Thus, cherry picking is an all-day event: picking is easy, pitting is hard. Well, not hard, but long, boring, and sticky,-juice-running-down-your-forearms-annoying, when you get right down to it.

Of course they make gadgets to make the job easier, which don’t. Over the years we’ve tried them all and reverted every time to the good old thumbnail technique… remember Jack Horner sticking in his thumb and pulling out a plum? It’s kind of like that, and repeat, four thousand times.

In order to minimize mess I cover the dining room table with garbage bags and clean dish rags. Every pitter gets a station at the table and a handy supply of paper towels with which to combat Sticky Elbow Syndrome. Both of our girls usually are enthused for about the first twenty minutes, at which point they wander off and find something less mind-numbing to do. Sometimes my mom is up and we’ll chat while we pit; other times I’ve sat and pitted by myself in a Zen-like, semi-comatose state until I felt encased in juice much the way I imagine a mosquito trapped in sap must feel. (My husband Steve counts himself among the champion cherry pickers of the universe, picking one whole flat for every handful the rest of us generate, and thus rationalizes his hasty escape when I start pulling out the colanders and plastic bags.)

Doesn’t matter. We all know the end result will be worth it. I carefully wash and measure out five cups of fruit per Ziploc bag and off they go to the deep freeze, until the time comes to make a pie or perhaps a nice batch of sour-sweet jam. Right now I’d guess we have about nine pies worth of cherries in our stand-up freezer, or as Steve would say, “Not enough!”

So I knew a cherry pie would be high on the family list of “Desert Island Desserts.”After having chocolate cupcakes in January, followed by chocolate mousse in February, I felt it was high time to demonstrate that dessert can exist perfectly well without chocolate, thank you.

After my pie-making hiatus, I was delighted to haul out my familiar marble rolling pin and board, drain the rich red juice from the thawed fruit, and measure out the (gasp!) sugar. Making the pie felt like greeting a dear friend I haven’t seen in so long, but who hasn’t changed a bit. Mix fruit with sugar, add ice water to Cuisinart, roll out dough, butter the pie pan. If I have time I always prefer to make a fancy lattice-top, because it seems appropriate to the specialness of the dessert. I usually swear under my breath later when I realize I put one of the dough-strips “over” when it was supposed to go “under” or vice versa, even though I’m certainly the only one who will ever notice.

This time, however, everything worked out just right: the lattice was perfect, I remembered to add the butter dots and brush with milk just before baking, and for once I even put on the “crust-protector” ring before the outer crust (which, being slightly higher, tends to brown much faster) was already irredeemably over-done.

Do I sound obsessed yet? Yes, I do love cherry pie. But I have to admit that it wouldn’t be quite the same if we hadn’t picked the fruit as a family one sunny day in June, or if I hadn’t made it so many times before, always endeavoring to make it just a little more pretty- just a little more perfect- just because. There is no doubt that for me it is a labor of love.

So often we who bake express our love for our families in the form of butter and flour and… yes… sugar. We served the pie after dinner that night still just slightly warm and topped with a scoop of silky Wilcox vanilla ice cream. After weeks of No Added Sugar the blast of FRUIT with SUGAR and PASTRY- whoa! It was complete sensory overload. And it was delicious. The sugar went immediately to my head and made my brain feel like it was buzzing for about a half an hour. But above all it was special.

I put down my fork and felt happy, a little high, and utterly satisfied. “Now I am good.” I said to no one in particular, “Now I can go another month.”

***

(Full disclosure note: with half a pie left, we most certainly did NOT throw it away. I’d sooner put my knitting in the blender. We finished it the next day, cold from the fridge, which is, believe it or not, even better than having it warm.)

A Year Of No Sugar: Post 36

A Year of No Sugar, , , , ,

I don’t mean to be indelicate, folks, but I think the time has come to talk about one of the other consequences of eating. As one of my children’s books puts it: “just about every animal poops.” If you’re the kind of person who gets easily offended, I will completely understand if you decide to stop right here and skip this post. Consider this your official “get out of poop free” card.

Quite honestly, I never used to give poop a lot of thought. It wasn’t until I first went to a local chiropractor for pregnant-lady-back-pain about ten years ago that I was given a reason to think about the issue as a matter of health, rather than mere inconvenience or necessity.

“About how often do you have a bowel movement?” Ray asked me. Ray Foster is not only a wonderful chiropractor, but a neighbor and fellow parent. I was more than a little mortified to be asked such an unmentionable question, not to mention the fact that I really had no idea how to answer it. I had to admit- I really didn’t know. Certainly not every day, maybe every couple of days… heck, who knows? For all I knew it could’ve been once every month. Are we really supposed to keep track of such things, I wondered? Had I missed that day in health class?

Since then I’ve paid the issue a bit more attention, realizing, of course, that what goes in can be as much an indicator of good health as (ahem) what comes out. For a solid two decades of my life I was what they call a “french fry vegetarian,” ie: just because you don’t eat meat, honey, doesn’t mean you’re eating healthy. In that space of time I enjoyed more than my share of all the non-meat items on the menu: cheese, bread, pasta, more cheese. Once in a blue moon I might eat a vegetable, just for the sheer novelty of it.

At that rate, it’s probably lucky I didn’t just stop “emitting” altogether. I probably would’ve made it to my fiftieth birthday party and then, at the height of the festivities, exploded. But somehow the human body makes due with what it’s given, so to speak, and soldiers on.

Which brings me back to the No Sugar Project. I’ve mentioned that, since being on the project since January first, I have not lost any weight, the kids don’t seem noticeably calmer, nor has my hair turned green or any other very obvious side effect. I do seem to feel healthier, and I seem to not get sick as often or for as long as I might otherwise- all subjective effects which could just as easily be due to coincidence or a placebo effect.

However, one thing which is simply not subjective is poop, and I am a little embarrassed to report that- apparently- I am full of it. At first, I tried to ignore the obvious change, but the facts are as inescapable as they are mystifying to me: on our No Sugar Plan I don’t just “emit” like clockwork, I poop like a swiss freaking watch. At least once a day. If not more.

What is going on here?, I’ve wondered. Is it the lack of sugar per se? Or could it be the fact that we’re eating so many more fruits to supplement sweetness in our diet? Could it simply be the fact that we’re making so many more things from scratch in order to avoid sugar, and in doing so are also avoiding a host of other food additives and preservatives?

Hard to say. All I know is, we’re officially at the end of month three today, and my body is, well, working better than it has perhaps ever before, which is really, uh, nice. And probably a good sign of improved health. Not to be gross about it or anything.

A Year of No Sugar: Post 35

A Year of No Sugar, , , , , , , ,

“Children today are increasingly dependent on junk food, fast food, and microwave meals, and they are disconnected from growing, preparing, and appreciating food. The family meal, once an important social ritual, is now endangered.”

-Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy

Getting our two kids on board for a year of no sugar hasn’t been exactly easy. Several months ago we were all driving somewhere when Steve and I first proposed the idea to the girls. They both promptly burst into tears.

“Well, that went well,” Steve said to me over the hysterics coming from the backseat.

Which is why I’m so delighted that our older daughter Greta has become somewhat more favorably inclined toward the No Sugar Project since we began on January first. Part of this has to do with her mercurial personality (“I love it!! I hate it!! What are we talking about!?!”), and part of it has to do with my attempt to give her more of an personal investment in the whole idea. She’s interested in writing, since it’s something her mom seems to do an awful lot, so when I proposed she keep a journal of her thoughts about our No-Sugar year her face lit up; I began to see a glimmer of hope for a perhaps-not-too-totally-awful year after all.

Since then she’s made three journal entries, which impresses me endlessly- totally unbiased parent that I am- and she’s given me permission to share some of the highlights with you.

“Today we ofishily started the ‘NO! Eat sugar Project.’” she writes in her first entry. “I’m so worryed about this. I know my firends already think I’m kind of weird… you need to know my family eats really healthy and so my friends think thats some what crazy. I mean. We don’t eat dorieados nor at fast food Places. Like for instance. I’ve never been to mcDonals & I’ve also never been to sub way”

The second entry is slightly less subtle: “I hate this project! I hate it! It’s know fair. Mom is taking all the sweets in the house and giving them away… And she’s giving away the caramel popcorn that Grandpa just gave us a week or two ago. I DON’T THINK IT’S FAIR!!”

My family is kind of weird: check. My parents are totally unfair: check. So far I think we’re doing fine in our preparation for the teenage years.

Then one night, as I was making dinner she asked me “Mom? What’s that word when you can’t figure out how you feel about something? Like when you feel more than one way about it?”

“Ambivalent?”

“Yes- ambivalent.”

Later on I realized she was writing another journal entry which began like this: “I feel more and more ambivalent about this project every day… I mean me and my family can only eat 4 kinds of cereal now.”

Be honest with me: does that scream “future therapy candidate” to you? Probably not… but that doesn’t mean I don’t obsess about possible future ramifications of our No Sugar Year for our children: who are the participants in this endeavor without a veto vote. Yesterday someone told me the project would be something “she’ll laugh about” when she’s twenty-five… which is a nice way to think about it: at worst, fodder for future stories about what her crazy-ass mom decided to do when she was ten. That I’m okay with. As my Mom used to say, “Tell your friends it’s my fault. I don’t mind. Blame it on me.” What a mom thing to say, to feel. I recall being endlessly impressed by her willingness to be uncool, to be the fall-guy for me. It isn’t until you get to be a mom that you realize there are so many things way worse than being weird, or uncool.

I must admit, however, that the end of Greta’s last journal entry is my favorite part, giving me a few hopeful glimmers to hold onto for now as we continue on our year-long journey: “We had pancakes this morning and boy were they good!! Even if we can’t put on maple surup.”