I'm still getting the hang of switching over to this journal...
...when I write about food. Several times since I began this I've found myself writing about Mom & Me & Food in other places and thought, "Okay, I'm going to have to remember, next time, to write stuff like this in the other journal." Tonight, the same thing happened; I began writing somewhere else about food, then stopped, cut what I'd just written and hauled it over here.
    Mom came home from Costco with a sweet thing, today; an orange cranberry something-er-other, looks kind of like a very rich pound cake with shiny dried cranberries and pieces of orange on the top, really delicious looking. I okayed that purchase (I don't always okay the sweet things, in fact, I rarely okay them). When we arrived home I placed it on a high shelf in the laundry closet, a shelf so high that I have to stand on a chair to reach it. However, because her stats looked so good, tonight, before dinner, and she'd had an exercise session, when we finished eating I asked her if she was ready for dessert.
    "No," she said, "not tonight. I just don't feel like something sweet."
    I mentioned it, later, too, but she still wasn't interested. Many times now, I've noticed, it isn't the eating of the sweet that's important to her, it's the buying of it, the knowing, I think, that if she had a craving that simply wouldn't let up, she has the personal freedom to purchase something sweet and eat it. This is why I continue, on occasion, to either let her buy something sweet or I select something that I know she loves and surprise her with it.
    The four year evolution of her craving for sweets into a controlled interest has had nothing to do with me, nor with doctors. In fact, when her treatment for diabetes began her PCP gave her a choice regarding whether to be treated, mainly because the evidence suggested that even if left untreated, she would not live long enough to suffer the ravages of the disease, nor die from its complications. She opted for medicated treatment and was clear that if it could be controlled with medication, fine, but she wasn't planning on controlling it with diet. I respected her wishes.
    I honestly don't know why she started eschewing, first, her daily bag of Hershey's Almond Chocolates, then her weekly syrup coated, carb loaded amalgam (usually in the form of a cake or pie or brownies) of sugar, then, finally, her taste for high fructose condiments. During this cut-back period she and I would regularly go shopping together, she pushing the basket and helping to fill it with the stuff she liked, me filling it with the stuff she and I both ate. I truly had nothing to do with her beginning to pass through the candy aisle without divesting the shelves of bags of candy; passing through the snack aisle without throwing exotic bags of chips in our cart; passing through the frozen food section without selecting a flavor of ice cream; walking through the bread department without inhaling all the sweet rolls out of their cabinets.
    For six years prior to and a year and a half after her being diagnosed as diabetic and deciding to opt for drug treatment, she and I lived together, ate together, but ate completely different foods. I regularly prepared two meals for lunch and dinner (we essentially have always eaten the same breakfast), and continued to do so up until around 2001, when I noticed that she was eating more like me and allowing an occasional vegetable to corrupt her plate. Thus, I began preparing the same meal for both of us, just leaving most of the vegetables that I ate off her plate. Often, at that time, what I prepared would end up, on her plate, between two slices of white bread, one slathered with sandwich spread, the other with butter. But, she and I were, fundamentally, eating the same meal. The only aspect of our life together, at that time, that may have influenced her decision to cut back on sugared food was that I recall making remarks, all the time, about how much more alert she was when her blood sugar was under control. I never mentioned this as an object lesson; just, as life continued and she'd suddenly perform at a level higher than I'd come to expect through the last few years of her sugar hunger, I'd mention my surprise and say something like, "Wow, that's very cool, what a difference it makes when your blood sugar is under control." Some of her voluntary change of diet may have been triggered by these spontaneous reactions of mine. Then again, maybe not.
    Now, of course, as you know, she and I are eating pretty much the same foods. On the mornings we have bacon I don't eat an egg but will have either an extra piece of toast or an extra piece of bacon. When I eat toast I usually put some sort of preserves on mine. The bread I eat is so heavy with grains that, if I don't go through a loaf in a timely manner, it begins to sprout; although she's eating a whole grain bread, it isn't quite as hearty in grain as mine. As well, she eats at least twice as much bread as I do, perhaps three times as much. Typically I eat slightly larger portions than she of whatever we eat, although not always. And, when it comes to dessert, I am satisfied long before she is. There are certain products I buy for her, or we acquire from relatives and friends, that I simply don't like: bread and butter pickles (although I like MCS's home made bread and butter pickles) or any sweet pickled thing; sweet and sour anything; any sweet condiment, including ketchup; my preference is for large curd, drier cottage cheese rather than small curd; the only white bread I like is sourdough, which she doesn't care for unless it's smothered with garlic butter and Parmesan cheese; crackers...she loves crackers and I've never seen much of a point to them; pancakes and waffles - not my favorite food and certainly not for breakfast. I've always made it a habit, though, to buy for her and me and satisfy both of us in regards to food preferences. Which is why her voluntary and completely independent changing of her eating habits has really surprised me.
    During her recovery from her back injury she was pretty much at my disposal when it came to food. This, however, is when only the final changes in her diet occurred. All the rest, including her passion for Cobb salads (which I used to prepare and eat alone, usually while she was eating some very strange combination of refrigerator food between two slices of white bread), developed before her back injury.
    I don't think the food she ate was a huge liability to her, healthwise, despite what nutritional science claims. She ate a particular way her entire life and has made it here due, mainly, to her own food choices, not mine. I like that she's eating "healthier", and can certainly see some felicitous differences "in her aspect and her eyes" when her blood sugar is under control. But, the truth is, if she decided, tomorrow, that she'd had it with what is considered to be a healthy diet and she wanted to go back to eating the way she used to eat, after a protracted argument, if I lost, I'd do as she asked, because, although there is some difference in certain aspects of her behavior that stem from what she eats, there is no difference in her joie de vivre. I would not take this position with her cigarette smoking. The evidence is much too pronounced for me to allow her to become an habitual cigarette smoker, again, unless I knew she was, literally, on her deathbed. But, food? Well, I feel lucky that she's accepted the changes suggested in her diet to keep her blood sugar under control and has managed those changes on her own. I feel lucky that she's come to enjoy the way I cook and eat and absolutely loves certain things that I never thought she'd recognize as food, like most of the ingredients in a Cobb salad.
    Most of all, though, I feel lucky that we share our meals with one another, whether we're both eating out of the same serving implement or different ones.

Labels: elder onset diabetes, managing sweets around Ancient diabetics, mom and sweets, mom's food history, mom's food preferences, mom's food self-regulation, my food preferences

- posted by Gail Rae @ 23:09  0 comments   email...this post

 
Where to start? How about with the cup of cocoa I just made...
...to relax me out of the day and into contemplating why I'm starting this journalized section of The Mom & Me Journals dot Net? This cup of cocoa isn't an Ancient One recipe. It is a Caregiver to the Ancient One recipe. It's my way of winding down in the evening, after my Ancient One has gone to bed. This cup of cocoa is also the smoothest homemade instant (I know, an oxymoron, but hold onto your britches) by-the-cup cocoa you'll ever make. Guaranteed. I've refined this recipe through years of fooling around, and this is the best version, yet.*  *  *  *  *Easy On The Evening Cocoa
Ingredients:
1.  1 really heaping tablespoon of powdered cocoa
2.  a little less than the equivalent of honey
3.  a pinch (just a few grains) kosher salt
3.  splashes to taste of your favorite flavoring (I used orange extract and almond extract, tonight)
4.  about a teaspoon of instant decaf coffee for a little mocha richness
5.  about 6 oz heavy whipping cream to an 18 oz cup

Preparation:
    While you are heating water to a boil:
    Mix the first four ingredients around in the bottom of an 18 oz cup until they've moistened themselves, forming a smooth, thick, dark paste.
    Begin adding the cream to the cup and stirring it into the cocoa paste. As you stir the cream in, the paste will become lighter, smoother, and a touch whipped, as well, as heavy cream doesn't need much encouragement to incorporate air in a pleasing manner. Continue adding and stirring in heavy cream until the paste reaches the color you'd like your cocoa to be. That's right. It's that simple.
    Now, your water's boiling, or very, very hot. Fill the cup slowly with hot/boiling water and stir the water through the smooth, light mousse-like cocoa paste you made in the cup, just as though you were stirring hot water into a cup with instant powdered cocoa mix. But, the cocoa's soooo much better! There's a nice foam on top, perfect for floating marshmallows, if that's your preference. The liquid is smooth and devilishly creamy. You can control the amount, sweetness, richness and flavor overtones of the final product from the beginning.
    This recipe is particularly good when using liqueur as flavorings, as alcohol evaporates at 120F. Always cut back on the honey if you use liqueurs.*  *  *  *  *    It isn't that I keep this cocoa purposely. It's that the only time I make it is deep into the evening, maybe an hour before I'm planning on going to bed. Mom is almost always in bed by this time. If she's not, she usually prefers a generic mint chocolate mix that I can't stand. As well, although she loves chocolate, she's never been much of a cocoa fan. So, I have this recipe all to myself. Almost every evening when I am writing a last journal entry of the day I am usually polishing off a cup of this cocoa as I polish up a post.
    Mom doesn't have personal, never been shared recipes like this, anymore. I'm sure she did. I think I peeked in on some of them during the first years of our life together. Some of her unshared foods, usually sandwich concoctions, were horrendous. But, then, I think she'd consider my evening cocoa scandalous. But, she doesn't do much food preparation, anymore. I'm surprised she made herself toast, yesterday.
    She never really was much of a cook. Not bad, but not good. I think some of that was her smoking habit, which was overwhelming when I was a kid. However, she loved that her daughters enjoyed cooking and put us to the task. So, she has a long history of knowing how I cook and trusting me as I cook.
    She doesn't always remember what she likes (sometimes involving day-to-day lapses), and, advantageously, what she doesn't like. This is how I was able to introduce her to flavorful vegetables over the last two years. It went slowly but surely. Now she lingers over sumptuously vegetabled Cobb salads, the only dinner, when she's not feeling good and her appetite is iffy, of which she'll eat the whole thing, even if it takes her an hour. Of course, a lot of her turn of taste buds has to do with heavily flavoring vegetables, but I've managed to stay away from cream sauce, thank the gods. She never was much for that.
    So, anyway, what I'm doing here over in this Mom & Me journal is recording interesting things about my mother's and my relationship/s to food and how this translates to our relationship with each other. She's come a long way since mid 2000, around the time I stopped writing columns for Playing with Food. So, I haven't written about her eating habits and food preferences since then, although, toward the end of writing the columns I remember beginning to mention my mother's diagnosed type 2 diabetes, some of the changes I was beginning to introduce to her diet and how I was attempting to introduce them.
    Maybe the best formal way to introduce My Mother and Food is to cite some places where you can access her history. If you'll take a look to the upper right in the menu bar, you'll notice, toward the end, two lists of Playing With Food columns in which she is mentioned, or heralded, or both. Her food proclivities played frequent roles in many of my columns. In some, they were the subject. I don't expect you to read the following list, but use it as a reference.

    Informally, though, well, where should I start? My mother's diet, is, now superb, as I've mentioned in other areas here. It has not always been superb, and, frankly, I didn't push for changes until, bit by bit, certain issues had to be addressed or Mom and I had to decide to give up on her health. We, together, struggling, sometimes, chose the high road. So, that's what I'll talk about, as I post. Things like, oh, ruminations on how Mom came to love vegetables. How she broke herself of her chocolate habit, and a few others, like peanut butter and nuts (although she still likes a few now and then). And, sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, I'll publish recipes; things that Mom and I regularly eat.
    I'll talk about my own habits, as well. For instance, I'll bet you've wondered if I continue to eat a different diet than Mom. Short answer: Nope. She's eating my diet, now, except for a few differences. She eats lots more cottage cheese than I. I rarely drink V-8 juice. I eat fewer eggs than she. My portions are usually a tiny bit larger, but not much, and sometimes, depending on the food (like ham and split pea soup), my portion is decidedly smaller. I eat somewhat more fruit and sugar than she does, but invisibly, in my coffee, for instance. If you think her diet is high in fiber, mine is even higher; I use a much heartier bread than hers; I eat lots more vegetables, lots fewer fats. I take the same supplements she does, except for iron and only in the morning, plus a few more for menopause management, but no medications, no aspirin, no aloe vera, no calcium/vitamin D (although I don't suppose that one would hurt me).
    Well, anyway, there'll be lots more, I'm sure, now that I've got this started. I can just pop in and publish at will. This is also being advertised, by the way, over at Playing with Food. And, it is included in the search at that site. I may split them, later, but, right now, I don't think it's necessary.
    So, now I'm up and running on at least four wheels. How strange this journey has been for me. How strange, I think, it will continue to be.

Labels: cocoa by the cup, dementia and mom's food preferences, mom and cooking, mom's food history, personal recipes, purpose of this journal

- posted by Gail Rae @ 01:29  0 comments   email...this post