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Authors: Ellen Kanner
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remaining 1 teaspoon cardamom, and the cinnamon. Stir gently until just combined.
Fill the pie pan with the apples and top with the crumble mixture, lightly packing the crumbs on top. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the crumble is bubbling, golden brown, and fragrant as hell.
GENTLE NUDGE the THIRD: DUMPING the DUDS
Our relationship with food is a metaphor. It reflects our relationship with everything else. Nasty food habits, toxic life decisions. If you’re treating your body — your fabulous, one-of-a-kind body— like trash, how are you treating your family? Your friends? Your community? Your planet?
A bad food relationship is just as awful as a bad romantic relationship. You meet someone, it starts out great, violins, fireworks, hot sex. Then comes the letdown. Turns out Mr. Wonderful has an irritating habit of breaking dates, an interfering mother with whom he currently lives, and a somewhat unresolved relationship with his ex.
Maybe you cut him some slack at first, because that’s the kind of person you are. But come on, how many times are you going to be taken in by some fool offering you that grin that’s not as disarming as he’d like to believe, along with the pretty promise that this time things will be different, baby? (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.) You wouldn’t keep dating a loser, darling. So ditch him.
Alas, taking away someone or something we love — even when we know it’s bad for us — stinks. Of course, we all know this on some level, but our dog taught me the lesson all over again when, in her naughty puppy days, she chewed off the head of her favorite plush toy. As I preferred her not to eat wads of cotton stuffing, I tried to take it away from her. Bad idea. Growling and snapping ensued.
Deprivation may make saints of some, but it makes the rest of us mean, small, creepy, and generally unpleasant. Plus it doesn’t work. Take away our toy, and we will turn to something else. Your shoe, perhaps.
So what does work? Slow, gentle change and a little distraction. The only way I could extract the mauled dog toy without being savaged was to offer her something else. Look! For you! Pretty new toy. Nice doggie.
Can’t live without ice cream? Enjoy it. But try eating just aspoonful or two less than you did last night. Serve it to yourself in something pretty; you deserve it, babe. Then when you’re out of ice cream, don’t buy more. What the eye can’t see, the heart don’t grieve, as an Aussie sweetie told me once. Breathe. You don’t have to commit to doing this forever; just try it now, just get through now. Distract yourself. Coconut milk ice cream, frozen yogurt, and pure fruit sorbet are luscious and offer less fat and fewer calories than ice cream. Pretty new toys can be good for you, too.
Not only will you have dumped a bad habit — a major coup — you’ll be creating a positive new one. There’s neurological evidence that repetition of new behavior can rewire a scrambled brain. Even yours. Once you pave the way for new neurocircuitry, it seems to green-light other changes that once seemed impossible. Think of it as psychospiritual feng shui.
Getting rid of duds, whether dietary or live-in, takes time, patience, and the absolute and abundant belief that you deserve better. And you do. You deserve to be the healthiest, hottest, most joyful you possible. You may find over time you can ditch your old dud of an ice cream fix and feel terrific about yourself besides. Häagen-Dazs may suffer, but you won’t.
* Less processed than white sugar, evaporated cane sugar looks similar to light brown sugar. It’s sold in natural food stores and in many supermarkets. It’s the go-to sugar in all Feeding the Hungry Ghost recipes.
* Pomegranate molasses is available at Middle Eastern markets and many gourmet stores.
We think of flowers as pretty. Nature wants us to, arranging them in pleasing, symmetrical shapes and decorating them in a whole mad paint
Fill the pie pan with the apples and top with the crumble mixture, lightly packing the crumbs on top. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the crumble is bubbling, golden brown, and fragrant as hell.
GENTLE NUDGE the THIRD: DUMPING the DUDS
Our relationship with food is a metaphor. It reflects our relationship with everything else. Nasty food habits, toxic life decisions. If you’re treating your body — your fabulous, one-of-a-kind body— like trash, how are you treating your family? Your friends? Your community? Your planet?
A bad food relationship is just as awful as a bad romantic relationship. You meet someone, it starts out great, violins, fireworks, hot sex. Then comes the letdown. Turns out Mr. Wonderful has an irritating habit of breaking dates, an interfering mother with whom he currently lives, and a somewhat unresolved relationship with his ex.
Maybe you cut him some slack at first, because that’s the kind of person you are. But come on, how many times are you going to be taken in by some fool offering you that grin that’s not as disarming as he’d like to believe, along with the pretty promise that this time things will be different, baby? (Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.) You wouldn’t keep dating a loser, darling. So ditch him.
Alas, taking away someone or something we love — even when we know it’s bad for us — stinks. Of course, we all know this on some level, but our dog taught me the lesson all over again when, in her naughty puppy days, she chewed off the head of her favorite plush toy. As I preferred her not to eat wads of cotton stuffing, I tried to take it away from her. Bad idea. Growling and snapping ensued.
Deprivation may make saints of some, but it makes the rest of us mean, small, creepy, and generally unpleasant. Plus it doesn’t work. Take away our toy, and we will turn to something else. Your shoe, perhaps.
So what does work? Slow, gentle change and a little distraction. The only way I could extract the mauled dog toy without being savaged was to offer her something else. Look! For you! Pretty new toy. Nice doggie.
Can’t live without ice cream? Enjoy it. But try eating just aspoonful or two less than you did last night. Serve it to yourself in something pretty; you deserve it, babe. Then when you’re out of ice cream, don’t buy more. What the eye can’t see, the heart don’t grieve, as an Aussie sweetie told me once. Breathe. You don’t have to commit to doing this forever; just try it now, just get through now. Distract yourself. Coconut milk ice cream, frozen yogurt, and pure fruit sorbet are luscious and offer less fat and fewer calories than ice cream. Pretty new toys can be good for you, too.
Not only will you have dumped a bad habit — a major coup — you’ll be creating a positive new one. There’s neurological evidence that repetition of new behavior can rewire a scrambled brain. Even yours. Once you pave the way for new neurocircuitry, it seems to green-light other changes that once seemed impossible. Think of it as psychospiritual feng shui.
Getting rid of duds, whether dietary or live-in, takes time, patience, and the absolute and abundant belief that you deserve better. And you do. You deserve to be the healthiest, hottest, most joyful you possible. You may find over time you can ditch your old dud of an ice cream fix and feel terrific about yourself besides. Häagen-Dazs may suffer, but you won’t.
* Less processed than white sugar, evaporated cane sugar looks similar to light brown sugar. It’s sold in natural food stores and in many supermarkets. It’s the go-to sugar in all Feeding the Hungry Ghost recipes.
* Pomegranate molasses is available at Middle Eastern markets and many gourmet stores.
We think of flowers as pretty. Nature wants us to, arranging them in pleasing, symmetrical shapes and decorating them in a whole mad paint
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