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>For 15 months, three days a week, I did yoga with Susan Powter at a studio in North Seattle. When Susan moved to Los Angeles, I have to confess that there were times when I regretted not having surreptitiously audio-recorded one of the classes. For while I can remember all the moves, I can’t push myself through the workout at the pace to get the amazing benefits I got from working out with Susan live.

It looks as though Susan has issued the yoga routine on DVD, and I just ordered it from her website. Stay tuned for a full report when FedEx delivers it next week.

If it is indeed the Trailer Park Yoga workout I remember, we’re all in for a treat.

>I like food. Some foods I like quite a bit. So the past three weeks have been extremely odd for me. I got the flu, and my stomach never really recovered. I’m fine as long as I eat bland foods (cereals, breads, bananas, yogurts, rice, a bit of mild cheese or an egg, poached or boiled meats, and that sort of thing). But anything spicy, or greasy, or anything like a raw vegetable, and I’m miserable and sick.

This certainly keeps me away from most restaurant food!

I’m taking lactobacillus supplements and gradually introducing small amounts of “real” (or surreal, in some cases) food.

This experience has given me a completely new perspective on food.

First of all, most of us are very rarely hungry, in the sense that we’ve burned up available fuel and are starting to draw on our bodies’ reserves. But that happened to me a few times…I didn’t get hungry, but I certainly felt exhausted.

I didn’t get hungry because I have a pretty strong aversion to food after the flu experience. That was another revelation. I didn’t realize that an active aversion to food could psychologically overpower years of liking food. Now I see certain foods (like tomato sauce) and cringe.

I am finding myself having to remind myself to eat, and to make sure I’m getting things like potassium and calcium.

By the way, if anyone thinks this is a good way to lose weight, it’s certainly not. It robs you of the energy you need to work out and maintain fat-burning muscle. I have been able to do moderate exercise, but noticed at the dance festival this weekend that I needed to eat carbs and a little protein every two hours to keep moving. And even then, it seemed as if my balance was a bit off.

>I was just watching Susan Powter talking about healthy eating and fitness on a NY morning news show. Susan was explaining the difference between drinking vegetable juice and eating (“mulching,” she called it) actual vegetables.

This is particularly ironic because I came down with a stomach virus Tuesday morning and haven’t been able to get near food for the past four days. I had no idea you could go this long without eating solid food, but, of course, it turns out you can as long as you drink plenty of fluids that contain sugar, salt, potassium and a couple of other elements. It seems inconceivable to me that I’ll ever again want to eat something as fiber-y looking as, say, broccoli, but the doctor I checked in with yesterday assured me that this will happen. In the meantime, she suggested trying chicken and rice soup, which apparently has the magic sugar/salt/potassium combination. And, of course, there are those weird electrolyte drinks. Still, at the moment they sound much more appealing that something I’d have to mulch!

Filo dough crust. Creme fraiche with cinnamon. Pink Lady apples and fresh basil. Citrus-marmalade-and-Calvados glaze.

It’s a pretty assertive dessert!

My friend Tom said the idea for this pastry came to him in a dream. Yesterday I assisted as he transformed the inspiration into a first-draft recipe. Today friends are stopping by to taste-test my half of the final tart.

Some of their (and my) thoughts:

The creme fraiche base tastes amazing, but is a little too soft when the tart is at room temperature. How could this be made more substantial without losing the taste and smooth texture of creme fraiche? (I’m concerned getting ricotta involved would make the texture too grainy.)

The Pink Lady apples were a particularly flavorful choice. And they held their shape well, even when sliced thinly.

The basil (many leaves of it) gets stronger by hour. Which is fine, right up until I find myself chewing on a cooked basil leaf. How could you get the same intense basil element in the tart without having the whole basil leaves? Chop them? Puree them?

The marmalade-Calvados glaze (my contribution to the beta version) add a second savory element, the marmalade being a bitterish citrus (crafted by my friends John and Sally). But now I’m thinking that with the filo crust, the tart might be better with a sweeter, honey-liquor glaze.

>I love summer clothes, fall clothes, and winter clothes, but I’ve never liked spring clothing.

I guess I remember junior high school in Virginia and all the pastel floral shirt dresses and John Meyer matched cardigan-and-skirt outfits (and, one year, a lime green polished cotton dirndl skirt with white fishnet stockings) I suffered through.

For me, spring is the season when it’s too late to stride around in my favorite black boots but too cold to start showing off beautifully pedicured toes in my favorite strappy sandals. Instead, I have to deal with pantyhose (creepy), uncomfortable shoes, and socks — and end up freezing to death anyway.

Worse, spring is the one season when I can’t wear all black, so I end up realizing that no two grays (or beiges) will ever match, and that denim doesn’t quite work for business meetings — though I’ve certainly tried to get away with it.

As it would happen, I have a client meeting early tomorrow morning with a client known for her impeccable and expensive Eileen Fisher wardrobe. I’m thinking this is the moment to wear understated black pants and tank top with the long silver-beige Eileen Fisher jacket/sweater I snagged at a thrift shop and have been wondering about. It’s an idea, but I don’t think I have a raincoat long enough to cover the damn sweater.

Oh, please. Isn’t it June yet?

The one glimmer of hope on the horizon: I have a few VIP passes for the OnlineShoes.com warehouse sale in Mukilteo Saturday morning at 9 a.m. (General public isn’t admitted until 10 a.m.) My friend Kim and I went to the fall sale and each came away with five or six pairs of the most stunning shoes and boots, and we each spent less than $120.

Interested? You know how to reach me… I’ll be happy to give you a pass.

>You’ve heard of Peeping Toms? I have a Peeping Mark — a former boyfriend who has for the past 13 years come by the house and hung a bag full of boxed Peeps on the front door.

I was in the basement doing the laundry today when the Peep-and-run occurred. This year it’s a batch of traditional yellow Peeps. Very nice in their traditional Bartell bag. (Somehow, I don’t think this would work if they weren’t in a Bartell bag.)

I’ve been thinking quite a bit recently about the sentimental pull of food. Since very few of us were raised with treasured recipes for tofu and salad, these sentimental foods tend to be on the unhealthy side. This, then, introduces the question of how to avoid overindulging in Aunt Helen’s fudge, the five-pound box of chocolate from the candy store in your old home town, and the deep-fried goodies at your family’s favorite clam shack (forgive the East Coast reference).

My solution? Eat one meal of the goodies and then ask someone else to make the leftovers disappear. Face it, you will never be able to put even a tablespoonful of Cousin Guido’s lasagna down into the trash. Another approach is to tuck the items into the back of the fridge until they are no longer appealing. And yet a third approach is to let someone else in your house finish them off (unless, of course, this gets into the territory of “sabotage.”)

Not being a sweets person, I’m most likely to have these eat it/toss it interior dialogs in front of a bag of bagels and tub of cream cheese, or looking at a piece of fried chicken. So, fortunately, the Peeps are harmless. I’ll eat a package of them today and then put the rest in a basket for the Easter bunny. He’ll burn it off hopping around tomorrow.

>A friend turned me on to Mashiko in West Seattle last week. The meal — plates of sashimi composed for us by the chef as we sat at the sushi bar — was amazing. Toro. Monkfish liver. Scallops wrapped in proscuitto. Geoduck. Mashiko offers a sampler of three types of saki, and, that, too, was stellar; one type was redolent of cedar.

The next morning I woke up feeling so healthy and energized. I think it was the food!

>(cross-posted on The Mysterious Traveler)

Ten years ago, fat was the bane of dieters. Today, it’s carbs.

But there are carbs, and there are carbs.

One one hand, you have Minute Rice, Ritz crackers, instant oatmeal, and white bread. And on the other hand, you have brown rice, Rye Krisps, steel-cut oats, and breads like Ezekiel Bread and Dave’s Killer Bread.

The difference is whole grains and fiber. The high-fiber carbs are very filling and nutritious. Eaten with a little cheese or peanut butter, they’re a whole meal.

Somewhat to my amazement, I’ve come to love brown rice. I cook a big pot of it every Monday morning, and live off it for the rest of the week. (See the brown rice recipe, below.)

Brown rice heated up with a little cinnamon and brown sugar and chopped apples makes a quick breakfast. Leftover baked chicken or leftover vegetables (or curry) can be mixed with brown rice for lunch. And brown rice pudding with currents makes a very good dessert or evening snack.

My favorite brown rice dish is brown rice pancakes. I mix cooked brown rice with lots of browned onions, eggs, a little potato flour (or regular flour) and a pinch of baking soda. Then I drop the batter by 1/4 measures into a frying pan with oil to make something very similar to potato pancakes.

It turns out there are many types of brown rice. I’ve been using the plain, large-grain brown rice. Here’s the basic recipe:

Either:
• 2-1/3 cups of rice to 4 cups of water
• or 3 -1/2 cups of rice to 6 cups of water

Rinse the uncooked rice three times and drain well. Put the water on to boil in a separate saucepan. While waiting for the water to come to a boil, put two tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a heavy, tight-lidded sauce pan, then sauté the well-drained rice in the oil while you wait for the water to boil. Do this over fairly high heat. It has to be stirred constantly, otherwise it will scorch. This process coats the rice with the oil and evaporates the water from rinsing. The rice will begin to smell very nutty after a minute or two.

When the water in the other pan has come to a vigorous boil, pour it over the rice in the sauce pan. It is very important at this point not to stir the rice anymore, not even once. Let it come back up to a vigorous boil, put the lid on, turn it down as low as you can and cook for 45 minutes. During this time, do not lift the lid or do anything else to it. When 45 minutes is up, turn off the heat and let the rice sit undisturbed for at least 15-20 minutes before serving.

>I’ve had a cold in my chest for more than a week, but no fever. I get tired in the late afternoon, and start coughing when I’m tired. The first day this happened, I took a nap, but now I’m chugging along at pretty much my regular rate.

I’ve been doing yoga, but skipping the African dance aerobic cardio workouts.

Mulling over whether to get back on the track with the cardio class tonight, I did some online research. The best article I found quoted Mayo Clinic physicians advising against doing a major workout after a cold has settled in your chest.

So it’s yoga at home again tonight.

>There’s something about being sick that strips your life down to basics: Bathrobe, shearling slippers, bed, and food that doesn’t have to be cooked much, if at all.