Another branch to break

Please help find James and Kati Kim.

They were traveling in Oregon with their two young daughters when they went missing last Saturday. They were supposed to be back in San Francisco on Monday, and when they didn't show up for work on Tuesday, friends called the police. The last confirmed sighting was at a Denny's in Roseburg, about 160 miles from the Gold Beach hotel where they were supposed to spend the night. They were driving a silver Saab station wagon with personalized plates reading Doe SF.

If you know anyone in the Portland or coastal Oregon area, PLEASE REPOST THIS. It's been a week, and their family and friends are desperate for some sign of them.

http://www.jamesandkati.com

I am frustrated.

Part of it, I know, is that I've been out of my routine. I've changed my eating back to near-normal, after the two weeks of pizza and desserts, but that's only since Monday night. I've been working out -- an hour of pilates Monday, an hour and a half of dance class on Tuesday -- but not yet as regularly or as intensely as I was before vacation and parents.

And yet. I felt like I had made a lot of progress -- not necessarily in weight, but in strength, and toning, and general looking-better-ness. And today my jeans are tight.

It could just be water weight from this time (aka That Time) of the month; I'm going to be optimistic.

But: I have basically stopped snacking, except on red pepper and hummus. The inside-out Reese's I had last night was a treat, not the chocolate-good-formerly-known-as-dessert. The Baked Lays I got at Panera on Monday are *still* in my car, unopened, not instantly devoured alongside my soup. Instead of a baggie of Skittles when I want something sweet at work, I have one miniature Hershey's bar or a single dark chocolate kiss. I have changed my habits a lot, and by and large I don't miss the old ones, but it's easy to wallow in "what's the point?" when my jeans fit the same as they did when I was eating dessert with every meal and buying greasy chips in the afternoons and drinking full-calorie Snapple.

There's also a damn cookie crawl -- 10 cookies for $5 -- in the neighborhood just northeast of mine this weekend. ARGH.

I started reading The Omnivore's Dilemma last night.

While eating dinner.

At Taco Bell.

It wasn't the turkey that did me in. It wasn't even the pumpkin pie.

It was the restaurants.

We've been in a two-week stretch of parental visits here at Fort McPhortensen, and while it's been nice to have all my food provided for, it's been tough to eat healthy. Or eat any semblance of healthy, really. I hardly ever get dessert when I go out on my own; if I'm with Pete or a friend, we might -- might -- split one, not because we're dieting but because we're cheap. So when my parents are paying the bill, why not add the gelato/pumpkin cheesecake/chevre cheesecake/cookies? Argh. Plus cocktails, wine, appetizers .......

If there's a bright spot, it's that my family is as much a fan of tapas-style dining as Pete and I are, so two of our meals have been the six-small-dishes-for-four-people variety, each of us taking one bite off each plate of fish or pasta. I've been able to work salads into most of the meals somehow. And I only felt like I was going to burst after dinner *once*, which is huge considering that used to be how I judged when I was done eating. (That meal, though -- fig salad with arugula and pecans; pasta with three kinds of squash, bleu cheese, currants and brown butter; pumpkin cheesecake -- might have been one of the best meals of my life; see The Girl and the Fig. And I saved at least half of the pasta; it's my lunch today and maybe tomorrow.)

I've really been missing the gym; I was in such a good groove before Vermont. Tonight, I'm taking my mom to pilates (she does it at home and wants to see how my class compares); once I figure out my new work schedule, I'll actually get started with the personal training program I paid for in October. And I'm very excited for my two-mile round trip walk to and from my new job; it will be so much better than my two-hour round trip driving commute right now.

It's been tough the past few days -- a long stretch of parental visits (first Pete's, then mine) started almost the minute we got back from Vermont, and it's brought lots of restaurant food and little exercise. Add in the fact that neither family is full of very adventurous eaters, and we're looking at two weeks of pizza/pasta/sandwiches/etc. Not to mention: Thanksgiving.

So the actual capital-D Diet (if we were to call this such a thing) is on hold until next Tuesday, when all the parents are gone and we're visitor-free for a while. My grad school applications will be mostly done by then, so maybe I can finally free up some time to contact a personal trainer at my gym and get going with that program, because I don't think 24-Hour Fitness has seen my face since before I left for Vermont.

And yet ... I think I'm doing OK. The snacking and the junk food consumption are way, way down -- I had an inside-out Reese's cup on Saturday and some Ben&Jerry's yesterday, and that's basically all the candy for a while. Instead of bringing a little baggie of m&ms to eat with my lunch at work, I'm bringing one miniature Hershey bar or a couple of peanut butter-filled kisses and savoring them. I saved half my gnocchi at dinner the other night, so while cheese-and-potato pasta might not exactly be a diet food, at least I'm getting two meals out of it. And I've essentially stopped eating in the car, which is a major victory -- was it really only six weeks ago that I was routinely downing half a bag of Chex Mix on the way home every night? You'd think that alone would be making a difference in my weight, but that's not how my body works -- it needs to be shoved, not just tapped on the shoulder and told to put down that soda.

This week is going to be a huge vacation, because there's stuffing and pumpkin chiffon pie and wine tasting and a chevre-and-pomegranate cheesecake at Brick with my name on it. These aren't everyday foods, and there's no sense of depriving myself during their once-yearly appearance. So I'll do what I can, and eat well when I get the chance, and enjoy my meals the rest of the time, and pretend the miles I walk while shopping this week count as exercise. (... they do, right?)

What's your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
Submitted by Brennan.

Stuffing! Specifically my mom's stuffing, which consists mainly of Pepperidge Farm crutons, diced apples, onions, and raisins that I pick out. It's gooey and just as good warm or cold, with gravy or without. I don't really need the turkey, to be honest -- just the stuffing.

OK, let's face it: If I came back fat from Vermont, at least I'm fat and happy.

Burlington, as it turns out, has a big microbrewery scene. There's also one road -- Route 100 -- where a bunch of the touristy food factories are. And so my trip was, in essence, three big days of:
- Beer at the downtown brewery
- Fruit wine (as in, wine made entirely from blackberries, tart cherries, pears, etc.)
- A whole lot of cheese samples at Cabot
- Apple cider and cider donuts at Cold Hollow Cider Co.
- Pumpkin cheesecake ice cream with caramel sauce at the Ben & Jerry's factory

And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

I've always been more of a Skittles, Gobstoppers, Mike&Ike kind of girl.

But I must say: Hershey's, you're going to kill me.

First there were the filled Kisses, one of the only things that could get me to eat milk chocolate. Caramel, peanut butter, coconut cream ... yeah. So yummy, so lovely, so hard to resist.

But now -- now -- I get my first glimpse of the Holiday 2006 collection.

Candy cane Kisses!
Cherry cordial Kisses!
And the big disaster: the mint miniatures pack, featuring mint milk chocolate, mint white chocolate, and mint "sweet mint," aka my beloved Special Dark with mint.

Dying, here. Dying.

I passed up the candy cane kisses on the grounds that it's way too early to buy anything even a little bit candy cane, but I couldn't help myself with the mint minis. At least they're mini, right?

Somebody's been hanging restaurant menus on the door handles in my neighborhood again. So today when I got to the gym, there was a flier from Brooklyn Pizzeria attached to the door with a rubber band. Heh.

Also: 159, dudes! Actually, more like 158.5. So that's three pounds. Granted, it's more like a return to my typical weight, minus the effects of a vacation week with lots of food and no exercise ... but it still marks my first ever successful attempt to lose weight, so hey.

Lately I've been making deals with myself: You can eat those chips -- as long as you go to the gym. You can have that beer -- as long as you don't have a soda tomorrow.

It's working: I've been to the gym every day this week; I even ran for 15 minutes the other day. And I really haven't been eating many sweets, or wanting them. I stashed three peanut butter-filled Hershey's kisses in my desk drawer earlier this week; two are still there. I did have an iced sugar cookie last night, and election night was pretty much an all-out junkfest, but I guess that's how it goes when you're not technically "dieting." If I don't have a piece of pizza in one hand and a pumpkin ale in the other while watching election returns on CNN, well, that's barely living.

Lunches have been a struggle this week, only because I've been waking up too late to make a sandwich and we haven't been eating dinners that produce leftovers. Mostly I've been getting small portions of one of the prepared salads at the grocery store down the street and then snacking on cashews. Not the best, but certainly not the worst -- better than, say, going to Baja Fresh or Quizno's, which is what I had been doing. I have hummus in the fridge at work now but ran out of veggies earlier in the week. Healthy lunch/snack ideas are welcome, if you've got 'em. I get up at 5 a.m., so things that can be prepared the night before or purchased (cheaply) on the fly are best.

I've been mentally tracking what I've been eating (actually thinking, at some points, "don't eat that -- you'll have to write about it later") but not actually typing it in this little box. Um, Tuesday I had the same sandwich I had one day last week (marble rye, thin-sliced salami and provolone, a dab of mustard and fat-free miracle whip) and then ElectionFest (two slices of thin-crust cheese pizza, a piece of garlic bread, a pumpkin ale, red pepper slices). Wednesday I ate my usual yogurt and apple in the morning, then about a cup of grocery store pasta salad with roasted red peppers and some cashews for lunch. Dinner was a taco - small corn tortillas, some chicken, red pepper, onion and shredded cheese - and a frosted sugar cookie for dessert. I think.

I'm going to Vermont this weekend; don't expect restraint if we tour a cheese factory.