Through the Seasons

In the five or so months I’ve been here I’ve learned a lot about cooking.  I know how to cook and bake things that I didn’t before.  And I’ve focused mostly on the baking because I really enjoy it.

Five pounds and a major loss of energy later I’m thinking I want to learn how to cook better (and bake less). 

I don’t just want to eat to fill my tummy, produce my milk, and keep myself alive.  I want to be healthy and have energy.  What clinched it was that today I woke up tired.  I barely made it to Asher’s nap at 1:30.  I laid there with him for 2 hours and when we got up.  I was tired.  I thought, “What is wrong with me?”  The answer?  I’m not eating food that is fueling me – only food that is filling me.

There has to be a better way.

So what do I eat on a normal basis?

Oatmeal for breakfast every day.  That’s good, you say.  Right.  Except the spoonfuls (and spoonfuls) of sugar I put in it.  (I NEVER used to put sugar in my oatmeal but somehow I got on that kick and it’s hard to go back!!!)  Some sort of baked good for midmorning snack and usually chocolate in some form in the afternoons.  As far as meals, I don’t even know.  Usually leftovers and if not that, egg salad or peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  Dinner.  Well.  I haven’t thought about WHAT I’m eating but what I can COOK.  I’ve been cooking a wide array of things.  Tonight is burgers and tomorrow is pizza.  I’m so happy that I can make this kind of food at home here in Africa that I haven’t thought of how unhelpful it is to, not only me, but to my family as well!

So.

I’m changing direction.  I have no idea where to start really.  I googled “eating for health and energy” but…  Nothing really jumped out at me.  I did see one link to a ”new ground-breaking way to eat”.  Yeah right.  I’m not going on a diet.  I’m not cutting out yummy baked goods all together (and definitely not cutting out m&m’s) but on a regular basis I want my food to be working for my body.  Not against it. 

I’m going to have to go with common sense here.  What do they always say?  Whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats.  It may be a challenge here based on what we can get but I know I can eat better than I am so I’m going to start planning my food better and really focusing on the quality of what I feed myself and my family.  Especially now that Asher will be starting to eat solids!  I don’t want to say, “Eat your fruits and vegetables.  Now excuse mommy while she polishes off this chocolate cake.”  Haha!

So here’s to a new way to eat!  Which is really just the old way to eat…

(Addendum:  I did find one helpful article actually titled:  “Eating for Energy and Health”.  She lost me at “Drink a cup of liquid greens every day” but I caught back up with her at “Eat chocolate”.  I’d say 50% compliance is okay in this case.  )

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Ever since I got pregnant I’ve been able to cry much more easily.  I thought that would end once I had him but it didn’t.  And it still hasn’t.

Last week Asher started babbling again.  He had done it a lot a few weeks before but then abruptly quit.  We’re sitting there one Sunday and there he goes babbling again.  It was everything I could do not to cry.

This is a part of motherhood I never anticipated and I kind of like being that amazed by him.  I wonder about women with a lot of kids – if it’s any less miraculous after a while.  I imagine it’s not.

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The other day I decided to start tracking my calories.  I’m only a handful of pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight but I just want to eat healthy and get more in control of what I’m putting into my body.  So I went to www.sparkpeople.com where you can record your food, set goals, etc and found that I can’t join because I’m a nursing mother. 

Crazy, I thought.  I’m just nursing.  It’s not like I’m pregnant or anything.  But they have a sister site called www.babyfit.com for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and women trying to conceive.  They have guidelines for how many calories you should be eating based on which category you fall into.

Through this I discovered that nursing mothers need MORE calories than pregnant women!  MORE!  It takes MORE to produce milk than it does to grow a baby.  This is just something I didn’t know…

So I only ended up tracking my calories one day.  It is, after all, a lot of work.  I may go back to it though.  I did learn a lot about myself in that one day though.  I can easily eat the calories I’m supposed to but because of what I choose to eat (think about how many carrots you could eat to equal the same calories as a pop tart…that sort of thing…) I end up hungry at the end of the day and that’s when I want to pig out.  Definitely not the best time of day for it – if there is a good time of day to overeat…  The other problem I have is that I’m a little carb heavy.  They do percentages for you and it recommended like 55% of your calories coming from carbs and mine was about 57-58% so not crazy over but still too much of that and too little protein.

Based on all this and some general observations I think I’m going to try to eat less at each meal (I’ve been trying to eat larger meals and not snack in between which doesn’t feel very good) and choose healthy snacks.  I just have to figure out what those would be and take the time to make them which is probably the hardest part.  I could either grab a handful of m-n-m’s or scramble up an egg…  The m-n-m’s usually win out.

Oh and I’m also going to make exercise a bit more intentional.  I find myself tired a lot so I end up trying to sneak rest in all day but it would be nice during one of Asher’s awake times (which is a lot of the day now) to go with him for a walk.  He loves it outside and I think it would do us both some good to get the fresh air.

So here’s to taking control!  I created a budget and feel more in control of our spending.  I created a meal plan and feel more in control of my cooking.  Now it’s time to bite the bullet and really pay attention to what is going into my body.  After all:  Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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Do I love Asher?

Well…  Love is a funny word isn’t it?

I love chocolate.  I love Nascar.  I love pizza.  I love wearing make-up.  I love traveling.  I love going to the spa.  I love chick flicks.  I love high heels.  I love purple.  And pink.  I love Autumn.  And Christmas.  The mountains.  The beach.  Arizona.  Alaska.  Getting my hair colored, cut, and styled.

Do I love Asher?  Hmmm…  There should really be another word for it.  I more than love him.

Do I love motherhood?  I do. 

Do I always love it?  Well.  I don’t.  Can I be honest?  It’s hard!  It’s very hard.  And when I feel like I’m failing I no longer like it.  Okay, so my real issue isn’t with motherhood but with perfectionism but this particular condition colors all areas of my life, unfortunately.

Motherhood is the ultimate lesson in selflessness isn’t it?  I thought marriage was pretty good at that but being a mother blows that out of the water.  What’s even harder is being a wife first and a mother second when your baby is more dependent than your husband (well, let’s hope so anyway) and now you have both of them to think of before yourself.  

But.  We’re supposed to think of ourselves completely last, aren’t we?  Do we ever really accomplish that?  Not without the Holy Spirit’s help for sure.  But it’s possible.  Surely.  With God’s power anything is possible and I believe that is a prayer He would love to answer.

That’s why I’m crying out to God for more and more and more help the longer I live.  What I ultimately want is more of Christ, less of me…

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Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.

~Lin Yutang

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The other night we had Mama Imanueli, her husband, their 4 children, and another small child of the family they are currently caring for over for dinner.  I decided to really treat them to a nice meal.

First we had salad.  I don’t think they’re used to salad because they weren’t sure about the whole “dressing” thing using only a little then picking at the lettuce and veggies.  The custom in Tanzania is to eat all the food set before you so Mama and Mchungaji (her husband’s title, “Pastor”) ate all of their salad and then the kids one by one started giving their salad to them for them to finish theirs.  Jonathan finally told them not to worry about eating everything given and that more food was to come. 

So next was garlic bread.  Mama and her oldest girl, Upendo (also the cook of the family), went on and on about the bread.  I told them it was butter, garlic and bread.  They kept asking…  “Garlic, butter, and bread only?  Really?”  Really!  So I imagine they’ll make that at home one day.

The main course was a baked ziti with ground beef in it.  They ate and ate and ate.  No one put parmesan cheese on top.  They weren’t so sure what that was about either.

But then came the cake.  I cut big ol’ slices of chocolate pound cake with chocolate icing.  And they tried to eat it.  They really did.  Haha…  But they just couldn’t manage it.  So we sent them home with the uneaten bits of cake along with the other half of the cake which hadn’t yet been touched.

We also had a lot of drinks to choose from.  Soda, of course, which is usually a favorite of people here but Jonathan also made fresh pineapple juice, orange juice, and lemonade.  They drank ALL the pineapple and orange juice but wouldn’t touch the lemonade.  Drinking lemon juice didn’t quite make much sense to them.

After all of those festivities we had “Zawadi time” (”Gift time”).  We received a box from my parents that afternoon and in it were gifts for Mama’s family.  I presented a bit at a time and each gift I brought out (hair clips, pencils, pencil sharpeners, etc) they would all clap and cheer – even when it was for someone else in the family. 

So that was our treat to them.  Unknowingly they had a treat for us as well.  They all sang a beautiful gospel song a cappella followed by Mchungaji reading from his Bible and thanking us for our love for them.

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How long have I been doing this now?

I don’t even know but I’m consistently following my plan now.  I have much less changes than I did at first.  And I’ve started planning 2 weeks ahead and then at the end of the first of those weeks I alter that next week and prepare the plan for the second week…

This is hard to explain…

Let’s say it’s the end of September.  I sit down with my calendar and will have already written out a tentative plan for the first week of October so at this point I alter that week and make a plan for the second week of October.  Hopefully that’s clear.

My next steps are to:

1.  I think for certain dishes I may make two, freezing one for later.  This should make less work for me each week.

2.  Make a menu list of commonly made meals that I can refer to when I prepare each week’s plan.  Right now I’ve been doing a lot of new recipes so I just need to start typing them into a list and then adding each meal we consider “a keeper”.

I’m excited and, if it’s allowed, proud of myself.  For someone who prefers “just add water” and “take-out” purely for convenience I’ve changed and grown a lot in this area.  And I’ve actually found that I’m starting to enjoy it!

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Okay, here’s how the sourdough adventure has gone…

I made 2 sourdough starters.  In one I put flour, water, and yeast.  In another I put flour and water only.  I left both of them out on the counter in the kitchen for about 3 days feeding them both every day.  At that point I put them in the refrigerator. 

It took me 3 tries with the starter with yeast to get it right but once it was right it was great – according to Jonathan which is why I’m trying this sourdough thing in the first place.

The starter without yeast didn’t start at all though so I poured it out and made a new one, again with just flour and water.  I let it sit on the counter, feeding it daily, for a full 6 days.  On Saturday I used it to bake bread and here is the result:

The loaf on the left was the one we kept.  We sampled it before giving the loaf on the right to a couple who invited us over for tea Saturday afternoon.  They had never heard of sourdough so I hope they enjoyed it.

The only problem with sourdough at first is that every day when you feed it, you throw half away first.  Instead of throwing it out I’ve been saving it but now I have a lot of starter.  Because of that I emailed the others in Mbeya asking if anyone wants sourdough starter.  So far I only have one taker.

I’m also looking at other things I can do with sourdough such as:  croutons, bagels, biscuits, unleavened bread, banana bread, pizza crust…  And this morning was pancakes. 

If nothing else, a lot of people are going to get sourdough bread as gifts.  Mama calls it “special bread for Baba Asheri” – haha – so she usually doesn’t eat it when it’s here but I’m going to have to change her mind on that one!  Of course I’ve let her continue to make regular white bread for her family and I probably won’t make sourdough bread extremely often.  We can only eat so much bread without it affecting our waistlines…

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I’m so excited.  One of the biggest challenges here is church.  There are many Swahili churches to choose from.  But.  They’re in Swahili.  Haha.  Not only that, the teaching is sometimes…off…  (Such as…  One preacher claimed the point of the Good Samaritan is that you shouldn’t be out walking alone…) 

But we just found out they are starting an English Christian Fellowship which means it is run by the “ex-pats” (Westerners) in the area.  It will be every other week on Sunday afternoon.  Us mothers have a plan to maybe rotate kiddie duty so we don’t all miss the service every week.  I mean, we can still pay attention to the service but it would be a treat to be able to fully focus on worship for an hour a month.  (That doesn’t seem like too lofty a goal, does it?)

So I’m grateful to God for providing this opportunity for the English speakers in this area.  I pray the locals here who also don’t speak Swahili as their first language will one day be able to worship God in their own language as well.

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