the idiot's guide to cravings

I've distinguished two types of cravings. One type you should listen to, because your body is infinitely wiser than your mind. Your mind can trick you, but your body will always tell you the truth about how you're feeling or about how healthy you are. So listen to it. That said, I experience two types of craving: basically, cravings for junk food and cravings for real food.

My junk food cravings are mostly for sugar, I've had a terrible sweet tooth all my life that I basically kicked after reading Energía sin limites de Deepak Chopra. I still crave sugar a lot, but much less than before. As a sidenote, I was at a healthy weight before I read this book, but lost 5-10 pounds after reading it, because I cut back on my sugar and flour intake and instead began eating more whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, mote, oats) and white rice. I still indulge in sugar from time to time, but not on a daily basis.

My other cravings are for coconut milk, mote, vegetables, whole grains, chocolate (with very little sugar), etc. I can tell they are real cravings because 1) these are healthy foods and 2) I feel better after eating them. Whereas when I indulge in eating excess sugar, I later feel heavy and lazy, leaving me with low energy. So there you have it. Trust your body's healthy cravings. If your body feels better after eating what you crave, it means you needed the food. You can train your body to crave healthy foods. Just start adding more vegetables and wholegrains to your diet and your body will get used to them and crave them. This way you use cravings to your advantage.

I do sometimes crave sweet things that my body really wants and I eat just a bit, and feel better afterwards, but this happens maybe a couple times a week and I only eat a little, because my body is just craving a bit. I always have something a bit sweet after eating a meal with garlic. I don't know what it is about garlic, but I always follow this with something sweet.

saturated fat-packed coconut milk: the new diet food

I've had a hunch since I was 18 that eating fat actually helped me maintain a healthy weight. I basically stopped trusting what the media said at that age when I realized that eating fats was actually really satisfying and my body thanked me after eating them.

So I indulge on fat-filled coconut milk quite often. Since I crave it so much, I thought I'd look up its nutritional value on the internet. Since modern science hasn't been studying coconut milk like it has been studying tumeric, the media still hasn't informed us of all the healthy qualities of coconut milk. But I'm not waiting for the newspapers to begin pumping this food before I start eating it. I found a bit of less "official" info on internet. So, according to this article while coconut milk has as much fat as cow's whole milk, unlike whole milk, coconut milk helps you lose weight! Ha! I chug coconut milk all the time. More reasons to drink coconut milk:

• Promotes loss of excess weight by increasing metabolic rate.

• Is utilized by the body to produce energy in preference to being stored as body fat like other dietary fats.

• Helps prevent obesity and overweight problems.

You see you shouldn't trust the media with their myths and stupid repetitious ideas that fat is soo unhealthy? Now that I've said that if you eat lots of flour, sugar and other processed foods, or eat too much in general, coconut milk might not be the solution. Because there is no panacea for weight loss beyond exercising and a healthy diet. You can't just take a pill and become healthy and thin.

I would drink coconut milk daily, but I feel ethically it's maybe not the best to drink sooo much of it, since it has to be shipped to Chile from Thailand.

I have thought of making my own since they often sell Panamanian coconuts in the street here.

The one-size-fits-all utopic panacea happily ever after

I feel like gringos are always looking for the panacea solution to every problem that they have. This "panacea" manifests as the new gringo fad of the year: low fat diets, adkins diet, low carb diet, green food, green production, green everything. I feel like your average gringo is always following this illusion that the panacea solution will come to them from the media and businesses in the form of consumerism. We consume food, material things as well as knowledge. We can read infinite articles about the benefits of Omega-3s and antioxidants, etc. But can we assume we will ever know more about the minerals, vitamins, nutrients our bodies need than just the very tip of the iceberg? I feel like following my intuition and listening to my body, I will feed myself infinitely better than I would just reading the new SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY that says tumeric might prevent colon cancer. I was eating tumeric long before it was labeled as "HEALTHY" by Newsweek. Because I trust my taste buds and Indian food is my favorite. While, obviously science has its usefulness, I feel like science took the place of religion a few centuries back, and literally became the new religion. I do think US culture is becoming aware of that, slowly.

Like Lori says, gringos need to focus inward. I think it helps to see what our bodies tell us, our minds, our souls. Focus on what our bodies crave (beyond sugar and salt). Down deep, what are we craving? Are we scared to focus inward? What might we find? I remember last July I was feeling really exhausted for like three days straight. And I remember the whole time I was craving mote, this typical Chilean grain. I finally bought some, cooked it and ate a ton. And I felt sooo much better. Later I had a hunch and read up about mote on the internet, and sure enough, it was a good food to eat in order to combat fatigue. Point being my body is sometimes much smarter and more aware than my mind. Perhaps some obese people are out of contact with what their bodies really need? Maybe maintaining a healthy weight/body means being able to dialogue with our body's needs. Listening to what our bodies really want and giving it to them.

In a similar way, it's like the whole "Let's be green" fad is a bit of an illusion to cover up the fact that maybe we'd be better off not consuming so much, not shopping so much. With each "ching ching" of the cash register, I'm contributing to pollution. How organic is that cotton? 100%? No plant was harmed during its production? Yeah, that fuscia color looks like it was made from some super organic dye. Technically, if greeness is what we want, wouldn't we be better off to stop production for a while? Stop producing more clothing, objects. I mean, really, do we need any more clothes or objects in the States? Granted I'm aware if production stopped lots of people would lose their jobs and the economy would probably go into recession, etc. So it may not be the solution. But who are we kidding? Green industry. Is this not an oximoron? Pollution will still happen. Hopefully at lower levels, but it will exist. Can we call a spade a spade? or does everything always have to seem like it came out of a fairy tale?

I was reading about how solar panels can be produced at much lower cost nowadays, and the article listed some of the chemicals used in the process of producing solar panels. While clearly this is better than carbon, how green is it really? ....I kind of think if we want green, we should listen to Rousseau with his idea of the "noble savage", and how, the further away from nature we are, the more corrupt we are. While this is utopic and all, if we want to be "green", wouldn't we be better off running around in the woods/jungles dressed like Adam and Eve. That would be GREEN. I'm just pointing at this illusion that everything in the future is going to be so GREEN. Green factories. Yes, it will probably be better. But we'll still pollute. Obviously consumerism won't just stop, so, yes, the best solution seems to make it greener. Why don't we all just admit we are in denial? We could at least be honest with ourselves: WE CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT CONSUMERISM, IT'S TOO SATISFYING. Things, useful or not, all rapped up in nice little packages. Yuppie is the new bourgeois. Ha!

On the optimistic side, I do think gringo culture is slowly becoming more aware of its impact on the world and on itself. FINALLY.
Oh, wait, we're not the only country in the world? Shit, now what?

"The one-size-fits-all utopic panacea happily ever after" would make a really good t-shirt slogan. Maybe Walmart could mass produce them for me on organic cotton at a factory operating on biodiesel made from McDonald's used vegetable oil. Never been greener.

quinoa apple bread (queque)

Last night I made quinoa apple bread following a recipe I found on the internet, well, I sort of followed it.

apple quinoa queque

• 2 whole medium apples, cored and coarsely grated (about 1 cup lightly packed or 200 g.) - ionly had one at the time
• 1/2 cup miel de palma (though perhaps honey and bananas would do the trick
• 1/2 cup (125 ml.) sunflower or other light-tasting oil
• 2 cups (160 g.) cooked quinoa
• 2 tsp. (10 ml.) finely ground flax seeds
• 2 tsp. (10 ml.) pure vanilla extract (I had a bit of vanilla and added about 3/4 tsp of almond -- almond extract is really strong tasting)
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) wine vinegar (recipe called for apple vinegar, but in Chilito there's much more wine vinegar)
• 1/4 cup (40 g.) sunflower seeds (I substituted chopped almonds)
• 1/4 cup (40 g. ) raisins (didn't have them on hand)
• 1-1/3 cups (160 g.) whole oat flour
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. (2.5 ml.) baking soda
• 1 tsp. (5 ml.) ground ginger
• 2 tsp. (10 ml.) ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. (10 ml.) or less, to taste, cardamom
• 1/2 tsp. (2.5 ml.) sea salt
• 1/4 cup whole oats

Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Grease a 9″ square pan, or line with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, mix the grated apple, miel de palma, oil, quinoa, ground flax seeds, vanilla, vinegar, sunflower seeds and raisins. Set aside.

In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, soda, ginger, cinnamon, cardamon, and sea salt. Add the oats. Add the wet mixture to the dry and mix well.

Pour into prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool before cutting into slices.

Makes 9 breakfast servings or 12 dessert servings. Best eaten the day it’s made.

granola bars/cookies

I made granola bars the other day, or tried to. They turned out tasty, but they weren't really bars. They turned out more like a gooey mass, which sort of defeated the purpose. I tried to avoid this by using chancaca as one of the sweeteners. I thought this would sort of glue the bars together. But no. My idea was to be able to eat it on the subway, for example. But that just makes for a really big mess. So now I'm pondering the idea of granola bar cookies...or more like semi-sweet cookies made with oats and whole wheat flour, like to eat as a snack/breakfast wherever I may find myself hungry.

coconut milk: heaven on Earth

I am sooooo addicted to coconut milk. It's incredible. I mostly eat it in curries and desserts. I just came up with an orgasmic dessert that uses this tasty product:

Mote, coconut milk and maple syrup. Stir and enjoy.

Mote is the grain used in this typical Chilean dessert..mote con huesillos. It's sort of like bulgur wheat, but bigger and better.

mote con huesillos caliente?

I miss the mote con huesillos. In the summer, the paseos (ahumada, estado, huérfanos) are full of mote con huesillos vendors. Unfortunately, we are in winter (kind of) and these people are gone. The main vendors now sell "nuts for nuts". Cuak. Why doesn't just one of the vendors serve it in the winter, and hot? Yes the Chileans would probably be weirded out, because they are used to drinking it cold. I prepare it hot at my house. It makes a really good breakfast, snack, or dessert. Ñami.