Adventures in Eating Well

My CrossFit affiliate, the awesome CrossFit New England, began a summer shape-up challenge on March 1. From March 1 till July 1, participants keep a food journal, eat well, sleep well, take their fish oil, stretch daily, and, of course, workout at CFNE. Winners get stuff – I don’t really care what the “winners” get, since I’m not in it to win it for that purpose. Nope, I’m in it to try to see what eating even more healthy will do for me, my body, and my mental well-being. Now this isn’t something I could have easily done if Amy weren’t on-board. Why? Well, she’s the main (exclusive?) cook in our household, to the point where I wonder how I fed myself between ages 22-32! But Amy IS on-board, and even joined CFNE last week, so off we go on a grand adventure!

The “eating well” in this case involves eating the following foods:

• lean meats
• fish
• eggs
• almost all vegetables
• fruits
• nuts and seeds
• good oils and fats

It does not involve eating these:

• grains
• legumes (peanuts and soy) and starchy veggies (potato: I’m looking at you)
• dairy
• processed crap
• beer (sigh) and most other alcohol

Fortunately for me, I had a doctor’s appointment right before this began and I had (among other things) my cholesterol level checked, so I’ll go back and get it checked in July to see if eating differently makes any difference. I know when people propose cutting grains out of their diet the initial comeback is “BUT YOUR CHOLESTEROL!” So. My cholesterol will be checked again at the end of these 4 months, and then and only then will I listen to that particular concern (if it’s even necessary).

As a start to our adventure, last weekend Amy and I a.) binged on all the processed crap we weren’t going to eat come March 1 and b.) cleaned out and re-arranged our kitchen cupboards. The binge probably wasn’t a great idea, but it did clear some space in the freezer (oh Trader Joe’s frozen pizzas, you are a thing of my past…) The cleaning out and re-arranging was incredibly helpful, though. Now when we open our main food cupboard, we see a variety of nuts and seeds (pecans, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, cashews, sunflower seeds, pepitas, pine nuts), almond butter, shredded unsweetened coconut, tuna, artichoke hearts, some prepared Trader Joe’s “Indian Fare” that adheres to the eating-well principles, Larabars, and a few cans of no-salt-added/no grains/all veggie soups. Gone are: crackers, chips, cereal, mac&cheese, pasta, rice, cookies, and other sweets. The fridge didn’t take much cleaning out or re-arranging – with the exception of eating down the cheese drawer and finishing off the last of the milk and cream. We have always been pretty big on keeping mostly fresh stuff in there.

You might be wondering how it’s going, now that we’re one week in. I have to say: for me so far, great! (I’ll let Amy chime in for herself in the comments.) I apparently don’t mind drinking my coffee black, which surprised me more than you can imagine. I’m loving trying out new ways of cooking eggs and new things to have with it in the mornings. So far my favorite was the big 87-veggie-scramble from Saturday morning, although a hard-boiled egg, a sliced apple, and a glob of almond butter works too. I found a use for all the frozen nearly-rotten bananas in the freezer too: smoothies! Frozen banana, various other fruit, dollop of almond butter or unsweetened coconut, blend, and enjoy…  I’m looking forward to trying to make almond-flour pancakes next weekend. My lunches haven’t changed dramatically – no longer do I bring string cheese, but that’s about the main change. Today’s lunch was what I think will be typical: romaine lettuce with 2 varieties of tomatoes and pecans covered in a homemade dressing of olive oil, lime juice, and red pepper flakes, a hard-boiled egg, and a blueberry/mango/grape salad.

Where this has been really fun so far, though, is with dinner.  Amy really does our menu planning and the bulk of the cooking, based on recipes I find in magazines and online. Last weekend she went through the pile of recipes and pulled out all the ones that fit the eating-well guidelines or could easily be adapted to fit them. And then we talked some and I compromised on some things (yes, I’ll eat more fish even though I piss and moan about it and claim not to like fish that isn’t served raw and on a piece of rice with soy sauce and wasabi next to it; yes, I’ll participate more in the kitchen endeavors) and we set off. Here are some of the things we’ve had so far:

• grilled steak salad with hearts of palm, orange sections, and a mustard dressing
• sauteed chicken with raw fennel and tangerines on a bed of spinach, avocado slices on the side
• steamed tilapia on a bed of lettuce smothered in diced mangoes and a honey-lime dressing
• hearty winter vegetable soup with diced chicken (adapted by substituting cauliflower for potatoes and chicken for chickpeas)

My first eating-out experiment went well too. I ordered a burger (okay, not super-lean, but as close as I could get at a pub to lean) with sauteed mushrooms on it. There was actually an option to get it sans bun, avec salad, so I ordered that. It came with a gigantic mixed green salad and a three-bean salad on the side. The beans are legumes, but I elected to eat them instead of fries and feel like it was a much better choice overall. I admit, cutting out beer will be next to impossible. I just like it too much. And yes, I had one when we went out this weekend. However, I will limit when I drink it – likely either after soccer on Fridays or some one time on the weekend. No more dinnertime beers for me, alas… whatever shall we do with the beer fridge in our basement?

So we’ll see how this all goes and I’ll report back periodically. And when July rolls around I’ll see if my doctor will recheck my cholesterol and I’ll report of that as well. My hope is that in July I’ll feel better physically and mentally, and I’ll lose a little weight and get faster and stronger in the gym and at hockey. Wish me/us luck!

How Not to Reply to a Yelp Review

I just got the following comment from a business owner in my Yelp inbox:

Sorry you did not enjoy your meal and felt the need to post it on the internet. We have a manager and owner on call and on site at all hours. Reviews like yours are very sad. FYI, the [food] is the most authentic you will get and also the ones you get in [European city] from the vendors are days old…they are made and sold days old because the tourists “may never come back so whats the difference” Have a good day.

Here is my response, with the name of the business removed:

I’m assuming you’re referring to my review of [your restaurant] in [town] from 2008.

Yelp is a service that all business owners/managers need to be aware of and monitor regularly. It’s a way of finding out what’s going well and not going well in their businesses. People don’t always like to talk with managers and owners directly – you have to go where the feedback is to find out what you need to do better. No, I didn’t talk with an owner or manager in 2008 when I ate at [your restaurant]. I wasn’t impressed with the food, but I also didn’t feel the need for a refund or for an opportunity to come back and try it again. In my experience, that’s usually what happens when someone talks to an owner or manager. Instead, I turned to my network to tell them about my experience at the restaurant. If it in some way hurt your business in the two years since I posted the review, well, I hope you have been reading and learning and improving, and that you understand that my experience was just that – MINE. I haven’t read the reviews of the restaurant since I left mine; perhaps others are better. If that’s the case, you likely have little to worry about.

As for your FYI, I appreciate that you felt the need to correct what I experienced during the months that I lived in [European city] and completely dismissed the fact that I actually watched some of the street vendors making [food named above]. No, I didn’t post all that information in my review. It didn’t seem necessary at the time, since I really never expected to be challenged about HOW the street vendors I knew made their food; my review was about [your restaurant] not [European city] [food] vendors. But whatever. If you feel the need to tell me that what I experienced was something other than what it was, go right ahead. Make the assumption that I was only there for a very short time and don’t know what I’m talking about.

I really hope you understand that your message to me was a ridiculously rude way to try to change my mind about the restaurant. However, if you were to edit your message and re-send it to me, this would be a much better and more positive way to get my attention:

“Sorry you did not enjoy your meal two years ago. We would love it if you would try [our restaurant] again; in particular, the XXX is something most of our customers rave about. After your meal, our manager and/or owner would love to hear from you directly, to find out if your experience was better than it was 2 years ago. Have a good day.”

Do you see the difference in tone in those two emails? The edited version is from someone who actually wants a customer to visit again, while your version is from someone who is telling the customer that her experience was invalid. Not a great way to make me want to come rushing back.

Honestly, if you had sent me something like the edited version, I WOULD have tried [your restaurant] again, and I would have spoken with the manager and/or owner, and if the experience and food had improved, I would have written another review here on Yelp saying so. But given what you wrote me (ridiculously rude, remember?) I won’t be re-trying [your restaurant] any time.

Sincerely,
–Megan

So besides the fact that  I’m  completely passive-aggressive in parts of this message back to the person who wrote to me, I have to say I’m pretty happy with the bulk of this message.

Small business owners: If you are getting onto Yelp or another review service for the first time, a few words of advice.

1. Read my message above. If you must respond to feedback about your business, consider using something like my edited message.
2. Pay attention to the dates the reviews were initially posted. Maybe you had different management then, or different servers, or a different chef, or SOMETHING different. Use that as a point of reference to encourage the person to come back.
3. For the love of customer service mavens everywhere, don’t tell folks that they didn’t experience what they say they experienced. Ever. It just makes you look defensive and honestly, kind of like a jerk.
4. Do follow the lead of the person who wrote to me, though. Message the person directly, don’t post responses as a review of your business. I will say, that is one thing this person did correctly.

That’s all. Getting off my soapbox now.

Happy New Year, 2010 edition

How did I do on last year’s resolutions? If you’ll remember, they were to read at least 50 books, find at least 20 geocaches, score 2 points in hockey, bike more, and move/lift. Well, I read. Some. And then apparently stopped once August came rolling around. Fortunately I was able to read a few more books over vacation (thus far) and finished the year with 46 under my belt. As for geocaching – nope, not even close. I think I’m going to have to take caching off my resolution list, as it doesn’t seem like I’m doing it for fun, but rather out of obligation. In hockey, I had 6 goals and 19 assists – 2 of those assists in Nationals! – so I definitely accomplished that resolution. I biked some this year. It definitely helps to have a decent bike! And I more than “moved” because as you’ll recall, I joined CrossFit New England and have been kicking some serious butt.

This year’s numerical summary:

• Books read: 46
• States visited: 6 (NH, VT, ME, NY, MN, CO)
• Countries visited: 1 (Mexico)
• Hockey games played: 86 (being on 3 summer teams will do that…)
• New gadgets: 1 (a Droid Eris)
• Dogs: 2, still.

This coming year, I again have some modest resolutions.

• Continue with Crossfit and achieve the goals I set there each month.
• Knit more: 3 hats in January, finish the Janda sweater, Bruins gloves, and the fingerless gloves I started in Maine.
• Keep my weight under my magical number all year long.
• Play more games! Bananagrams is at the top of that list, for sure.
• Read more books in 2010 than I read in 2009.
• Learn to can fruits and veggies.
• Travel to more places in 2010 than I did in 2009. (Already on the calendar: Mexico, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and potentially California for a work conference – would like to get to Florida and Michigan this year too.)

Should be easy to do, right? Well, check back NEXT January 1 (that’d be in 2011, y’all) and see how I do!

Happy New Year to you and yours in 2010.

Megan and Amy, New Year's 2010

November’s Done, Bring on December

Happy NaBloPoMo 2009, y’all! As happens every year, I’m likely to go back to less-frequent posting starting tomorrow.

This year’s stats:

• total posts: 30
• by category: knitting – 1, friends – 2, hockey – 4, food – 4, the dogs – 5, tech – 6, life – 7
• total comments: 46
• posts with substantive photos: 16

So all in all, a pretty normal blogging month (if you actually blog every day, which I don’t normally do).

I’m really happy that December is tomorrow. Yesterday was the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend here, so I pulled out the Christmas decorations and got them up. I’m ready for Christmas to come! Yes, that is a penguin on the top of our teeny, tiny, fake tree. I love it.

My goal for December? I’m going to try to make an Advent calendar. I have some ideas (like this, this, this, this, this, or this). Should be fun!

The Eris Update

As promised, I’ve used my new Eris for a couple of weeks now and want to report on the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good

See my post called Eris to the Rescue. Seriously – the location-aware stuff is supremely useful. I can’t wait until the Eris gets updated to Android 2.0 so I can download Google Navigator!

A bunch of apps, including:

• Apps Organizer – organize my apps into folders (the mornings, talk talk, locations, google, tools, and camera icons on the main screen on the right are all folders created in Apps Organizer)
• Seesmic – best Twitter client out there for the Android OS, as far as I’m concerned
• FxCamera – mess around with your photos, apply fun effects
• Google Maps – where are you? where do you want to go?
• Google Sky Map – what stars are in the sky tonight?
• GeoBeagle – integrates with geocaching.com, haven’t used it yet but looks very promising
• Places Directory – fire it up and it finds banks, bars, coffeeshops, gas stations, parking, restaurants, shops, and more near your location
• wpToGo – lets me easily update my Wordpress-based blog from my phone

The Android Forums. Pretty much every question I’ve had about the phone I’ve Googled and the Android Forums always comes up at the top of the search results. So I just created an account on the forums and have been poking around there to find out more about the phone.

Phone call quality is as good as it was on my non-smartphone. Not as good as my landline, but no cellphones have ever been that good.

The bad

The camera quality isn’t great, most noticeably in low-light settings. It’s much better in brighter, natural light. This means I’m still tied to bringing a camera with me when I go someplace where I want to take photos. Fortunately, though, I don’t need to do that on a day-to-day basis, which means my bag now weighs about .3 pounds less.

The battery doesn’t last quite as long as I’d like. I’m hoping that a few more cycles of charge-discharge all the way-charge will do the trick. If that doesn’t work, there are a million threads in the forums on how to increase battery life (one of which may be: bring my USB cable with me to work and plug the darn thing in during the day).

The ugly

I have a really, really hard time with the touch-screen keyboard after having used the more sensitive and accurate iPod touch keyboard for over a year. Does anyone who is an Eris/Droid/etc. user have a recommendation for a better on-screen keyboard, preferably free? Do I need to get rid of the screen protector?

So many notifications! I should probably uninstall a bunch of apps (hello 4 Facebook and 3 Twitter apps anyone?), which would definitely help in that regard. But I’m still trying to figure out which apps I want notifications for, and which I’d prefer to not know about. I also think the notifications are probably feeding into the afore-mentioned battery issues… So it’s mostly my own fault, but still. No centralized place where I can manage ALL my notifications is causing me some frustration and confusion.

Overall assessment

I’m happy with the Eris. Apparently there is going to be some big update on December 11 (rumors are about an upgrade to the  Android 2.0 operating system), but in the meantime I’m quite pleased with this phone on a whole lot of levels. If you’re new to smartphones, this is a good entry-level machine. If you don’t want to go to AT&T/iPhone, this is a nice choice. For those of you who have used the iPhone and/or Blackberry, I’d recommend going to someplace that sells the Eris and the Droid and comparing them and selecting the one you like best.