The business practice of brainstorming has been around with us so long that it seems like unadorned common sense: If you want a rash of new ideas, you get a group of people in a room, have them shout things out, and make sure not to criticize, because that sort of self-censoring is sure to kill the flow of new thoughts. . . .

[Alex Osborn, the 1940s ad man and inventor of brainstorming] thought, quite reasonably, that creativity was both brittle and fickle: In the presence of criticism, it simply couldn’t wring itself free from our own minds. We could only call our muses if judgments didn’t drag us down. Osborn claimed that this very brainstorming process was the secret to BBDO’s durable creativity, allowing his ad guys to produce as many as 87 ideas in 90 minutes—a veritable avalanche. “The brainstorm had turned his employees into imagination machines,” writes Jonah Lehrer in a long, excellent article in The New Yorker. But as Lehrer argues, the only problem with all this is that brainstorming is total bullshit. . . .

• You’re More Creative Working Alone: “Putting people into big groups doesn’t actually increase the flow of ideas. Group dynamics themselves—rather than overt criticism—work to stifle each person’s potential.”
• Criticism Improves the Brainstorming Process: “Usually, inventions often begin when an inventor spots a problem. Good ideas usually don’t hang by themselves, unattached. They come about as solutions. Thus, allowing criticism into a room full of people trying to brainstorm allows them to refine and redefine a problem.”
• Creativity Is About Happenstance, Not Planning: “Too much familiarity bred groupthink. Too little meant that they didn’t have enough chemistry to challenge each other. The most productive groups were those with a baseline of familiarity but just enough fresh blood to make things interesting. . . . Studies have shown that the most successful groups of scientists also work in extremely close physical proximity. Just being around another creative person is vital to the process . . .”

Starting around Christmas time I start to feel a bit overwhelmed. New prezzies (usually) means new books to add to my reading list. Extra time off work means more opportunities to clean up the detritus of the previous year (or longer). That’s a mixed blessing: freeing up space in my brain to concentrate on the right things without actually getting to spend the time doing those things. I’m being much more ruthless about just chucking stuff this year than in the past, and I think I’ll be done soon.

Almost being done is very good, because I have goals. (I don’t go in for New Year’s resolutions. Anything worth doing is worth starting at any point in the year. Why wait for a particular date to have a clean slate?) I tend to keep my goals to myself, but I’m willing to say that one of them involves trying to pimp-slap my out-of-control bookshelf by reading a certain number of pages each week. I figure that even an incredibly slow reader such as myself should be able to average 15 pages/day.

This goal-thinking was (is?) getting me a little down this year. So much of what I want to do in 2012 involves feats of athletic prowess, but my feet were threatening to get in the way of those feats. Lisa, the awesome exercise psychologist of my dreams, is (slowly) helping me see that I am more than my goals and accomplishments, but I still missed running because I really like it.

The week before my injury, I had a wonderful 12+ mile run that took me to the end of one branch of our local rail-trail and then past it into the exurban farmland and acreages of the neighboring towns before picking up the start of the other branch of the trail and following it home. I am eager to get back to that.

For sure, I was was also stressing that not doing these long training runs might leave me ill-prepared for the Around the Bay 30K in late March . . . or possibly incapable of running it at all. Eventually I told myself that I had to stop worrying about whether or not I would be able to do ATB—or the NYC Tri in July or the half-Ironman in August—and just concentrate on getting well. I could still ride my shiny new bike in the basement, there’s always plenty of swimming to do, and on the last day of work in 2011 I got a personalized weight-training program, which I started last week.

Sometimes I need to be reminded to look at the “big picture.”

By the middle of last week my foot didn’t really hurt very much, although I noticed twinges now and again, especially when I moved my foot in particular ways. It kinda sounded like plantar fasciitis, and it kinda didn’t. Everyone I talked to about it had horror stories about how PF messed up a fellow runner for months or years on end, so I was determined to find out what was actually wrong with me before doing anything stupid. I also wanted to find out the right way to start back up when the time was right. I didn’t want to rush into anything, but I could feel myself losing the exercise-every-day-after-work-and-go-to-the-pool-a-few-mornings-each-week habit that I had developed by the beginning of December.

On Friday, I went to my podiatrist, who said (again), “Boy, your feet are eff’ed the fuck up . .  all loosey-goosey and flat and shit.” And then he went on to say, “You don’t have plantar fasciitis, but you’ve gone and slightly fucked up the long tendon that connects your calf to your big toe via your heel. It’s amazing you’ve been able to get way without this kind of shit for so long. You need expensive orthotic shoe-inserts to keep this from happening again. Now, let me teach you some calf stretches and recovery techniques. You should start popping Aleve like a fiend, too. I’ll tape up your foot, and you can go running tonight if you want. But don’t go for any PRs or bullshit like that for a little while.” (I’m paraphrasing just a wee bit here.)

So I’m quite relieved. I’ve gone running twice since visiting my not-at-all-potty-mouthed podiatrist. Each run felt good, foot-wise. The left one isn’t 100% in the hours afterward, but it’s 10x better than the days after I injured myself. The runs also felt shorter and more difficult than I remember them being a month ago. Even so, these short, difficult runs were awesome.

Speaking of amazing things. I’ve been out on my road bike twice this new year already, and each time I wore shorts. New Years Day was the first time I’d been out since early October, and the lingering chill on the thawing roads couldn’t bring me down. Saturday morning’s sunny, 50°F, 25-mile ride had no chill at all. By way of contrast, at this point last year we had more than 30 inches of snow on the ground, and we were in for 60 more.

So I guess there’s that, too.

Oh, and there’s swimming! The Friday before Christmas I got up super-early despite not needing to go to the office. The pool was open, and I had the chance to get a full hour-and-a-half swim, instead of my typical 40-or-so minutes. The last time I had this opportunity, I swam two miles, and I wanted to give it another go, testing my blood glucose along the way. The results were very much like last time—better actually. My BG stayed almost constant; my 250-yard split times were fairly consistent throughout; and I swam a quarter mile farther in the same amount of time.

Now that I’ve written this, I’m reminded how fickle I can be. Yes, winter can be a cold, dark, lonely, depressing, snowy, stir-crazy-making time of the year. But it seems that all I need is a good report from the doctor, a run or two, an outdoor bike ride, a nice swim, and the constant loving support of Lisa for me to feel like a good spring is just around the corner.

p.s. I guess I should add that last night Lisa and I watched a documentary about U.S. athletes in the Beijing Olympics. It wasn’t the best thing ever, but it sure looked beautiful on our new high-def TV. I can barely wait to see this year’s games. Hurry summer don’t be late.

And tomorrow morning, I’m going back to the pool for the first time since last Friday. I had such a great swim a week ago that I planned to write that evening about how awesome it was. Except, by the time the evening rolled around, I couldn’t raise my left arm high enough without pain to use the computer. After five days off, I probably could have gone back yesterday, but I didn’t want to push that either.

Being injured was hard. Being doubly injured was ten times worse. I’m so happy to be well enough to get back to training. *touch wood*

(I’m not a superstitious or magical-thinking thinking kind of person, though I am known to indulge in two things. When things are going really well, I don’t like to talk about it. Everything could suddenly change. Why? Hubris, of course. It’s best to just keep going quietly as long as things are going well, all the while expecting that bad things could happen at any moment. . . . I also throw salt over my shoulder when I spill some, because throwing salt is fun.)

Friends, I am not good at being injured. The first few days were the most difficult. On Monday, I definitely had my cranky pants on. I tend to arrive at the worst possible conclusions: I’ll be injured for a long time; I won’t be able to do the events that I’ve signed up for; I won’t be able to achieve my goals; I won’t be able to be who I want to be. I’m a very goal-oriented person, and I derive a lot of my self-worth from setting and meeting them. (Lisa and I debate whether or not this is not a good way of thinking. At any rate, I need to remember to take the long view.)

I’m trying to be better at handling the occasional injury, and I feel grateful that each of my recent issues were very minor in the great scheme of things. And I need to start working on my injury prevention.

So what was I going to write on Friday? Given that I already injured myself, there’s no fate to tempt by talking about how great my swim on Friday was.

I’m not very fast yet, but I’m consistent during my workouts. I also think I’m improving my technique: I have started to feel my catch more, and I’m starting to see how to generate power during my stroke. Despite these improvements—which may or may not have caused my shoulder problem—I was starting to wonder whether I was actually getting faster or not. After all, the whole point of working on technique is to reduce my times, and I was much faster in the open-water over the summer than I ever have been at the pool. But what about my times just at the pool?

I went back to the historical record (a.k.a., mapmyrun.com). Turns out, I am swimming faster—and not just a little. Last Friday, I swam a bit over a mile at 36:12/mile pace. That’s two minutes faster than on Halloween and more than three minutes faster than just before my first triathlon. At this time last year, I swam at a 43:00/mile pace . . . and I wasn’t even going a full mile. This is a great trend, and I hope to keep it going. (And for the record, the first time I went to the pool, I swam six lengths in twenty-five minutes. That’s 277 minutes per mile.)

See you at the pool!

Let’s start with the big disclaimers. First, this is what (kinda) works for me. Your diabetes may vary; it likely will. Second, this has only recently started working for me; it could all change tomorrow. Third, it assumes that you use an insulin pump and that your basal and bolus rates are correct-ish; mine are getting there. Finally, I can’t consistently reproduce what I do in training when I’m racing; something always seems to happen.

Remember, three big things impact BGs during exercise: insulin, food, and intensity. (There are other things, but these are the big ones that you can control.)

Active Insulin: I tend to workout when I have no (or, at least, minimal) insulin on board. For example, I swim and do my long running/cycling first thing in the morning before any boluses. And when I workout in the afternoon, it’s been 4-5 hours since my lunch bolus. This means that there’s very little extra insulin to bring down my blood sugar. When I do have rather high BGs (but no ketones) because I misjudged a meal, for example, I will sometimes give myself a little insulin. I’m really conservative doing this, though, since it usually brings me down more than I think it will.

Basal Insulin: I am starting to think that changing my basal insulin has less of an effect (for me) than I had originally suspected. This might be because my basal rates are fairly low now, or it could be that my body is better at using fat and carbs together than it was in the past. Who knows? Anyway, when I run or ride my bike, I set a 30% reduction 1-2 hours before I start. Usually longer in the afternoon and shorter in the morning, since I like sleeping. When I swim, I set a 0% basal rate (i.e., no insulin) starting 45-or-so minutes before I hop in the water. There are three reasons: (1) I’m skittish when it comes to insulin and water, (2) it’s similar to what happens during triathlons, where I need to detach from my pump to leave it in transition before hopping in the water, and (3) it seems to work.

Food Before: Food is not the best part of the three for me. I want to eat more before I train, because food is fuel, and I hate running out of steam. (We’re remarkably like people without diabetes in this respect.) Food normally means insulin, which violates that whole “minimal insulin on board” thing. But I’m working on getting myself in a mindset where I can experiment with small amounts of insulin to cover pre-athletic carbs. High glycemic foods still spike my BGs when I’m working out, often more than I would like. Lower glycemic things do better, but quantity counts; 20g of carbs from Greek yoghurt about 10 minutes before I did a two-hour run worked well yesterday, the first time I tried it. Be careful here.

Food During: I tend to eat like I don’t have diabetes when I bike or run. It’s just how it works for me. I eat an energy gel every 45 minutes to keep up my energy. I also carry a full tube of glucose tablets with me, just in case. And I drink water. Water is important.

Food and Insulin After: I find that I always need to give myself insulin after I’m done exercising. I haven’t yet figured out how much to give, but I usually bolus the full amount of any correction I would need (or enough to bring me down 25 mg/dL [1.5 mmol] if my BGs are in range). After really hard workouts, I like a protein-rich snack with carbs. (Odwalla’s Chocolate Protein Monster is my favorite.) These carbs and protein are important for recovery, and I find it necessary to bolus the full amount for this snack, even though I will eventually be more insulin sensitive for the next 24 hours after big workouts.

Frequency: It helps to have a regular frequency, usually three or four times per week (or more). If I workout at least this often—although I can’t remember the last time I did less—my insulin sensitivity stays much more “normal” than if I don’t. Consistency is key.

Supplies: I bring these things with me on my workouts.

• A full tube of glucose tablets
• My pump (enclosed in a Zip-Lock bag to keep perspiration from killing it)
• My BG meter when I go on longer runs or when I’m curious about what’s happening on shorter outings. I use the OneTouch Ultra Mini just for exercise.
• Energy gels. I’m not very brand-loyal; I like vanilla and chocolate Gu and Clif Shots and just about any Hammer Gel flavor.
• Water (in a FuelBelt Sprint Palm Holder)
• I also carry about $10-15 with me in case I need to buy some extra food.

There are some other things I like, but they don’t have anything to do with diabetes preparedness. I have a Petzl Tikka headlamp, which is great for running on these dark afternoon; I’ve never had a jacket as nice as my Asics one; and I need shorts and pants with pockets . . . and a drawstring. (Without the drawstring, all of the extra stuff in my pockets makes ‘em fall right off.)

Good luck! And just remember, do whatever works; there’s no single right way.

My first job out of college was as a “Customer Service Ambassador” at PlanetAll, a startup in Cambridge, Mass. Before there was Facebook, there were MySpace and Friendster. Before there was Friendster there were PlanetAll and SixDegrees. We were bigger and more successful than our rival, but you’ve probably never heard of either of us.

PlanetAll was an early online community, possibly the earliest social network site. It wanted to be Facebook, but it didn’t know it. Like LinkedIn, it let you keep track of your professional details and make connections. Like (early) Facebook it let you join groups and post messages to the group and share information about high school reunions and useful stuff like that. (If YouTube had existed, it would have let you share links to cute pet videos.) Unlike Facebook it was thought up by a guy after his graduation so that he could keep in touch with people. (Unlike Zuckerburg, who invented FB as a college student so that he could keep track of people down the hall.)

It had good press, back in the day when magazines like PC World and Wired mattered. It had lots of venture capital. It had a shit-ton of newly minted MIT CompSci grads to write code for the web site and for an app to synchronize contact data with your Palm Pilot. (Remember those?)

But what it never had was a profit. In the six months in 1997-1998 that I was there, they burned through a lot of cash. And then one day—just after Christmas—there was a staff meeting telling us about the half of the staff that they let go (including my boss and 2/3 of my customer service cronies).

That’s when I started revising my résumé and checking out who was hiring in the Boston area. It’s good that I left, but it was hard hearing the news a few months later that Amazon bought PlanetAll along with another company for $280 million. True, I had exercised what few stock options were available to me before I left, but if I’d stayed a little longer, I would be writing this trip down memory lane in a house that I could have paid for in one shot.

Why did Amazon buy PlanetAll? It’s because of you and your friends and everyone that you know. Amazon wanted the customer list of PlanetAll to fold into its then-emerging community features: think wishlists and recommendations. And they wanted the idea behind PlanetAll; Amazon used PlanetAll as part of its patent application on social networking.

Basically Amazon saw the potential of PlanetAll better than the executives in the company did. The people running the company thought in terms of “contacts” and always-up-to-date “connections” and hoped that these early social networking ideas would encourage you to come to the web site often enough and long enough so that they could make enough ad “impressions” to turn a profit one day. Unlike Facebook, the web wasn’t mature enough to keep you on the site long enough or to make you want to come back. It just wasn’t interactive enough. No chat. No posting of photos or videos. No good way to see a stream of status updates.

They web just wasn’t ready to be used as a platform. In fact, the primary way of communicating was the pre-Web: e-mail. They built a “mail cannon” to deliver all of the status updates and class newsletters and jokes-of-the-day and swingers ads and whatnot. While you did need to visit the site to make new connections or join new groups, the tools for finding people to link were primitive, and it never got a critical mass of users.

Plus the technology often failed. Everything was hacked together. I learned SQL so that I could fix database problems and restart stalled processes. I learned shell scripting so that I could relaunch the mail cannon after deleting lots of unset messages. (Sorry if yours was one of them.) And I learned SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) so that I could pretend I was a computer and debug why the mail cannon wasn’t working.

In a nutshell, PlanetAll was a good idea that hatched before its time. It failed to thrive in a web ecosystem that wasn’t nourishing enough to keep it going. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t successful or important. Part of $280 million is a lot of loot just for an idea. Then again, PlanetAll’s part of $280 million is a minuscule fraction of all of Facebook’s $100 billion current valuation.

A recurring thought in my mind is what would have happened if I had been born 20-25 years earlier than 1974. Would I have been a protester, a marcher, a sitter-inner, a free-lover, a Weather Undergrounder? Or would I have been a “Get a job, you dirty hippy!” kind of guy? I can see both streaks in me, each conveniently made moot by time and a blanket of post-Watergate political apathy.

In high school I was comparatively liberal and a bit of a spacey free spirit. In college I was comparatively conservative, lacking in small-liberal-arts-college savoir faire and cultural sophistication, and rather disdainful of the sloganeering of the politically active folks on campus. Don’t just tell me, convince me. And, no, shouting loudly (or taping over your mouth in symbolic protest) is not at all convincing. If I had been in college in the late 60s and early 70s, which way would I have gone?

In 2003 I went to the one big anti-war protest in Boston that I heard about before it happened. (Was it just me or did the media do a terrible job covering pre-war dissent?) But I treated it as a sort of anthropological exercise, since I felt very ambivalent about the invasion. Looking back now, of course, I feel like a big dope for ever believing the administration. I took a lot of photographs of what I saw, but I think I missed the point that most of the people there were basically like me, just with more conviction.

So it was interesting when I was in France to hear a few of my fellow travelers relive a similar debate from an earlier generation. The woman whose husband was an Air Force wing commander during Vietnam argued that if we had helped the French with materiel and support at Dien Bien Phu, we would never have needed to go to war in Vietnam. On the other side was the former member of Students for a Democratic Society, who took time off school to protest and was ready to go to Canada to avoid the draft. He obviously saw things a bit differently. In the middle was the thermonuclear physicist who didn’t express much of a political opinion at all but just argued the facts.

That’s me. I’m the thermonuclear physicist, just 20-25 years younger.

So now that we have Occupy protests/camp-ins going on everywhere and local officials and the police moving against them in scenes straight from 1972, I’m torn again. I support the message of the Occupy folks. (I’m the 99%, too.) And I support many of the progressive causes that have glommed onto the original anti-plutocracy movement. But they’re often being presented in a way that makes them seems to me (at best) uncoordinated and (at worse) silly, vapid, elitist, or out-of-touch.

Maybe that’s it. I probably would have been a marcher but not an occupier/draft-card-burner. I can see myself having gone to protest along with the sensible people that I know and respect, rolled my eyes at the hippies, and then gotten on with the rest of my life.

Whew. I’m not a reactionary or freeloader (but just barely).

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about bilingualism. For political reasons, Montréal is outwardly very French, but English is right there everywhere you listen. Half the people walking down the street are speaking French, the other half English. When we walked into a shop, often we were met with “Bonjour/Hello.” And often we were just greeted in English. (I guess we look American or anglophone—or maybe they heard us talking. Who knows?)

Lisa doesn’t speak French, and it seems rude to carry on a three-way conversation with a bilingual person in a language she doesn’t understand. (It’s Canada, not France, after all.) So I was happy enough to use a little French here and there, to speak with people en français when it was easiest, and to read plenty of French throughout the day. (I even picked up some new words.)

But it got me wondering about how to navigate the English/French divide. What’s the most appropriate way to initiate a conversation or interaction?

In France, if you just start speaking to someone in English, it’s very rude. In fact, even a simple «bonjour» and «Parlez-vous anglais?» is usually enough to negotiate the “I don’t speak your language well, so please bear with me” barrier with sensitivity. And when I spoke the French that I knew, it got me through quite well.

Quebec being bilingual, though, is different. If you answer a «bonjour» in kind, you invite continued conversation in French, just like in France. That leads to that eventual moment when your partner in conversation realizes you don’t really speak French as well as they do. At one such moment, a friendly clerk at the HMV, where I was buying francophone music CDs, kindly said, “You can just speak English; we’re all bilingual.” But I’ve had a few conversations where it’s clear that not everyone speaks English . . . or that their English is only about as good as my French, and that French would be better for everyone.

So, my dear Canadians, Canadiennes, and fellow travelers to Quebec, what is the “right” way of getting by? Do you just start out in the language you want to speak? Do you ask whether they speak English? Do you start in French and go until it becomes painful? Something else entirely?

The morning started with a tired me getting my game face on only to show up at the school and find a bunch of cars in the lot. (Well, a bunch for 5:40AM.) Inside I found all of my swimming peeps standing outside the locked door to the pool. Fortunately I was able to keep this thought inside my head: “So, this is what y’all look like with your clothes on.” Eventually Pool Lady showed up, still sick with bronchitis and cranky.

A few minutes later out on the pool deck, Pool Lady plunked the sign-in clipboard on a small table. “If you’re a member, just check the member box. Don’t also check “resident” or “nonresident.” And if you’re a member, I’m not going to look up your number for you anymore. Either remember it or bring your card with you.” I was standing behind her, and I think a few people saw my WTF/mreow! face. We cut you some slack today, Pool Lady, because we know you’re sick and because you were sweet (to me, at least) when I left for the day.

I picked a lane and hopped in. And by “lane,” I mean one of the five lanes that doesn’t permanently have the floating lane markers separating it from its neighbor. I think they just keep one lane divider up so that people could have a place to swim laps during evening open swim, but we all treat it as Dara’s domain and always let her have it. I swam one lane over from Dara this morning—not because I’m fast but because it was uncrowded.

A few minutes later, as I was going through my drill routine, I noticed Pink Suit swimming in my lane. Okay, everybody has to swim somewhere. Then I realized that there was a lane divider on each side of me. It seems that Pink Suit was swimming up and down lanes attaching lane dividers. I had my lane back to myself; all the better for doing drills. About five minutes later there seemed to be extra people on the pool deck.

Eventually I realized that there were a bunch of young women standing at the end of my lane. I figured the high school girl’s swim team could use my lane more effectively than I would, so I hopped down a couple of lanes to share with a guy who’s roughly the same speed as I am. (When I left, there were six girls sharing my former lane. Yikes! But also, Well Done! for respecting our need to swim, too.)

By the time that I moved over I had already had my breakthrough. After several weeks, I was staring to wonder whether I would ever be able to transition from bringing my hand into the water with my arm fully extended (the wrong way) to driving my arm into the water when my elbow is inline with my ear, spearing with my hand so that my arm comes to full extension underwater.

Proper freestyle hand entry. The Guardian article I lifted this from is very useful and even distills all of the wisdom into a one-page PDF file.

I had been working on this diligently, and I was so happy to realize this morning that I was actually starting to do it. I’m sure it’s not anywhere near 100% correct, but this is significant progress in unlearning what I was doing wrong.

Hope springs eternal!

I read this Jenny Barringer Simpson quotation from Running Times early this morning before going to the pool. You might remember Barringer Simpson from that awesome photo of her winning the 1500m. It’s kind of what I needed to help getting me going today.

First, I had the daytime off, so I could travel around the Portland area and do lots of outdoorsy things in the Columbia River Gorge and Cascades. And (2) because I didn’t join the union—I was just working for the summer, and the managers paid me a little more if I agreed not to join—I get to spend the rest of my life wondering exactly how I feel about unions. They went on strike a few weeks after I went back to school, so the question is moot about what stance I would have taken, but I think about it a lot. We’ll just leave it there.

On the first day, the deli manager told me to try each thing over the first week. So the best part of my job was that I learned a lot about meats and cheeses: what they taste like, how well they work in the slicer, what pairs well together, etc. Spiced meats are delicious. Corned beef, pastrami, salami, and hard sausages . . . mmm. [1] And take it from me, brand-name products, such as Boar’s Head meat and Alpine Lace cheeses, really are worth the extra price compared to the store/no-name brand.

(Just FYI, a good deli clerk will make a slice, show it to you, and ask if that’s the right thickness. They have the slicer, but you have the power. Also, after just a couple months, I could weigh things by hand to within an ounce. If your deli is always giving you more meat than you asked for, well . . . now you know the truth.)

When it comes to deli meats and cheeses, I’m something of a gourmet. The distance between just “okay” and “perfectly delicious” is enormous, and it has everything to do with the quality and freshness of ingredients. A little extra effort (and just a few more dollars per week) makes all of the difference.

I had forgotten that this applies to things beyond the deli case until we went to Provence. I had always assumed that really good restaurants made better food than what we bought/prepared because people who knew what they were doing were making the food. But it turns out that the ingredients are more of the reason. Sure, you have to know what works well together, but that’s what recipes are for.

When I got back from France, Lisa and I decided to try something new. We’d both become quite bored with our regular menu, and the cookbooks we bought after my diagnosis in 1999 did not reflect the awesome things that we were looking to eat. (Although they have some pretty kick-ass desserts!) Because we were bored, we started to get unhappy. Eating out or having pizza delivered didn’t fit well into our weight/diabetes management plans, so we did the only sensible thing: We bought a new cookbook, one with excellent-looking recipes full of flavor and calling for fresh ingredients, but it had to be food that we would actually eat and recipes that we could fit into our busy evenings.

Tomorrow marks the start of the second week with the Good Housekeeping Fast Weeknight Favorites cookbook. We’re trying to be sensible and mix in new recipes alongside our favorites from the recent past. We’re not getting rid of them, just making it so that we don’t have to have the same five things every damn week. It looks like we’re trying a couple new recipes each week, selecting what sounds goods and keeping the ones that really move us. I bet that we don’t try everything in the book, but I hope that we push our gastronomic boundaries a bit. Last week we tried something with broccoli rabe in it, and I grated ginger.

Last week we—and by “we” I mean Lisa with plenty of my help—made a penne, sausage, and broccoli dish, as well as chicken tikka masala. I’m a bit of an Indian food aficionado, so I think it was actually more of a chicken korma without cashews than a tikka, but it was good nevertheless. Up this week: a Mediterranean swordfish salad and Tex-Mex chicken with green chile dish.

The house smells a little different these days, and we’re eating more leftovers. We’re also shopping more in the produce section. I hope that eventually I’ll have more of an idea of what things taste like and what works well together, just like I did after working in the deli. And maybe we’ll have expanded our palates enough that I can apply those new flavor skills—along with some actual cooking-from-scratch practice—and actually try making Provençal and French dishes. Maybe.

1 — We only really worked with sliceable cheeses, which totally makes sense. There were the old standbys: Swiss, Provolone, Cheddar, and American (which I still maintain is not really cheese). Havarti and Munster, which are both delicious, were about as soft as cheese got in our case. There weren’t any of the “eat with a fork” French cheeses or fantastic Italian hard cheeses that you use with a grater. It has taken me years longer to figure out which cheeses I really like, and I’m still doing what I can to figure it out; you will often find me eying the cheese case at our local Stop & Shop. (The 122nd & Division Albertsons wasn’t really a “cheese case” kind of supermarket. It was more of an “occasionally we chase Gypsies out of the store” kind of supermarket.) Even though you won’t find it in our store—believe me I’ve looked—I think Stilton is my current favorite specialty cheese, although Comté is coming on strong. I will happily take recommendations and give them a try. [Back . . .]