30 New Things: Fast
As you all know, I'm pretty interested in nutrition and have been reading a lot about it lately. One idea that I keep coming across is that when you eat is almost as important as what you eat. I think the concept of grazing (small meals spaced throughout the day) is the most well-known, but I've also read a lot about fasting, which is pretty much the opposite of grazing. Grazing keeps your body in a constant state of digestion, thought to rev up your metabolism. Fasting follows the famine-then-feast eating patterns of our cavemen ancestors, where a period of undereating is followed by a period of overeating. Some people prefer daily fasts, allowing only a small window of a few hours for eating the day's nutritional and caloric needs. Others prefer longer 24-hour fasts once a week or so. Others go crazy and fast for several days or make up their own personalized fasting patterns.
I've been a grazer for quite a while, but I thought I'd give fasting a try. I started out with a few short fasts, which meant I skipped breakfast a few times. I think a 15-hour fast was the longest I achieved. Yesterday, though, I completed a 24-hour fast.
GC took me out to eat on Tuesday night to the Culinary Cafe, the restaurant of the MU cooking school (part of the Hotel and Restaurant Management Program). The theme for the night was chocolate. We started with white chocolate-wasabi shrimp tempura with a white chocolate sauce. As GC pointed out, it was an interesting progression of flavors, beginning with the immediate sweetness of chocolate and ending with the spicy burn of wasabi. I thought it worked well. Next was a mixed greens salad with dried cranberries, apples and almonds in a white chocolate-citrus vinaigrette. GC really liked this one, but I wasn't so impressed. I think perhaps my vinaigrette wasn't as well-balanced. The citrus tang overwhelmed any chocolate sweetness, making it a bit too biting for my preference. For the entree, I ordered venison osso buco braised in chocolate stout, served with rice pilaf and asparagus. It was rich and meaty, and though there was chocolate in the braising liquid, it was too subtle to be tasted. GC ordered chocolate-chipotle glazed pork loin medallions with polenta and a corn and black bean salad. We traded plates halfway through, and after the unadorned meatiness of my osso buco, his spicy pork was quite a surprise. It was just as spicy as I could handle, any more would have been too much for me. Again, the chocolate was too subtle to be identified, which I think is a good thing for both of these dishes. We each ordered a dessert and split them. I ordered a German chocolate cheesecake, which was sort of weird in that it was layered. The bottom layer was cheesecake, the middle layer was like a dense chocolate cake or cheesecake, and the top layer was the coconut-caramel topping. It was very rich, and very dense. GC ordered the white chocolate-raspberry creme brulee. Though the texture was a bit off and the burnt sugar on the top had softened, it was by far the superior dessert. The only course that didn't include chocolate was the intermezzo, a lime-citrus sorbet, which was fantastic as well. We were each sent home with a pair of truffles, which we're saving for dessert tonight.
I really enjoyed the dinner, as much for the food as for the experience of being a diner in a cooking school restaurant. It was kind of weird to be on the other side of the food preparation. Watching the servers (almost one per table, the dining room was teeming with them!) congregating near the kitchen and talking about their tables made me miss cooking school.
After such a feast, I thought it a good time to begin a famine. I didn't think of it until yesterday morning, after I had worked through the morning, forgetting breakfast. I drank water throughout the day, and kept busy. I got hungry only twice, but a glass of water quickly quelled the grumblings. I did my usual activities, even exercising twice (one a high-low intensity cardio circuit, the other a shadow-boxing workout). I didn't notice flagging energy or crankiness. I did get a lot accomplished. By dinner time, though, I was ready to eat again.
I might add an occasional fast to my diet, but maybe only after a particularly gluttonous feast. I don't think it will become a regular thing.
These last few months of experimenting with diets and eating habits have produced a significant lifestyle change for me. I haven't been baking much at all, my cooking has been basic and now I'm skipping meals. A big difference for someone who loves to bake, cook fancy meals and eat! I like benefits I'm seeing (and some that I can't see: I lowered my total cholesterol by 63, triglycerides by 56 and LDL by 43. I was in the healthy range to begin with, so now I'm in the ridiculously healthy range). But I miss baking and cooking. I need to find a better balance, where I don't bake as much as before, but I'm not deprived of one of my favorite pastimes.