by Jane Heller
1 large ripe banana, preferably frozen
½ cup frozen blueberries
3 cups fresh or frozen hulled strawberries
1 cup milk, almond milk, or rice milk
1 teaspoon honey
2 or 3 ice cubes, if using an unfrozen banana
Place the banana, blueberries, strawberries, milk, honey, and ice cubes (if using) in a blender. Blend until smooth. Serve right away.
BRUSCHETTA WITH SCRAMBLED EGGS AND ASPARAGUS
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Martha writes: “I eat scrambled eggs a lot more often for dinner than I do for breakfast. This dish makes a beautiful, light supper, and it’s easy to throw together. To get really creamy scrambled eggs, cook them slowly over low heat.”
Serves 4
½ pound asparagus, trimmed
4 to 8 thick slices whole-grain country bread
1 garlic clove, halved
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
6 large or extra-large eggs
1 tablespoon 1-percent milk
Salt and ground black pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon snipped fresh chives
Steam the asparagus above 1 inch of boiling water or until tender, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove from the heat, rinse briefly with cold water, drain, and cut crosswise and on the diagonal into ½-inch-thick pieces.
Toast the bread, rub with the cut clove of garlic, and brush with the oil. Set aside on plates or on a platter.
Beat together the eggs, milk, salt, and black pepper. Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet over low heat. Add the eggs and cook slowly, stirring with a silicone spatula, until the eggs are just set but still creamy. Stir in the asparagus and chives. Spoon onto the bruschetta and serve.
(Advance preparation: Steamed asparagus will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator.)
OVEN-STEAMED SALMON WITH LENTILS AND SUN-DRIED TOMATOES
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Martha writes: “Lentils and salmon are a classic combination, popular in French bistros. Black beluga lentils are a nice choice because they stay intact and their color contrasts nicely with the salmon, but any type will do. In the traditional bistro version, the lentils might be cooked with bacon or a little sausage; here sun-dried tomatoes add a savory layer of flavor.”
Serves 4
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt
½ pound (heaping 1 cup) lentils, preferably beluga, rinsed and picked over
2 ounces sun-dried tomatoes (dry, not oil-packed)
1 bay leaf
Ground black pepper
1½ pounds wild Alaska or Washington state salmon fillet, either in 1 piece or in serving portions
Chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, chervil, thyme
Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan or soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and a generous pinch of salt. Stir together for 1 minute, or until fragrant. Add the lentils, sun-dried tomatoes, bay leaf, and enough water to cover by 1 inch. Bring to a simmer, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the lentils are tender and aromatic. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Using tongs, remove and discard the bay leaf and the sun-dried tomatoes.
Keep the lentils warm while you cook the salmon.
While the lentils are cooking, preheat the oven to 300°F. Cover a baking sheet with foil and lightly oil the foil. Place the salmon on top. Season with salt and black pepper. Bring 3 to 4 cups of water to a boil and pour into a baking pan or roasting pan. Set the pan on the oven floor.
Place the salmon in the oven and bake until the fish pulls apart when prodded with a fork and white bubbles of protein appear on the surface, 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the fillets. Remove from the heat.
Using a slotted spoon, spoon the lentils onto four dinner plates and place a serving of salmon on top. Sprinkle with the herbs, and serve.
(Advance preparation: You can make the lentils 2 to 3 days ahead and reheat.)
TURKEY BURGERS
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Martha writes: “Turkey burgers are a lot leaner than hamburgers, but they can be dry and dull. I moisten these by adding some ketchup and a little bit of grated onion to the ground turkey, and this makes all the difference in the world. Make the patties thin so that they resemble burgers. Be sure to buy lean ground turkey; if the package doesn’t specify this, you might as well be cooking hamburger meat.”
Serves 4
½ medium onion
1 pound lean ground turkey
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
¾ teaspoon salt
Ground black pepper
1 tablespoon canola oil, or use cooking spray
4 whole-wheat hamburger buns
Accompaniments
Sliced tomato
Sliced onion
Iceberg lettuce
Pickles
Sliced red bell pepper
Ketchup and mustard
Grate the onion on the fine holes of a grater. You should have about 2 tablespoons grated onion (and a lot of juice, which you can discard). Place in a bowl with the ground turkey, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and black pepper. Mix together well, using a fork. Shape into 4 patties (the mixture will be quite moist), and press the patties into ½-inch-thick rounds.
Heat the oil in a nonstick griddle or a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. When you can feel the heat when you hold your hand above it, add the patties and cook for 5 minutes on each side. If the patties are thicker than ½ inch, increase the time. Serve on buns, with the accompaniments of your choice.
(Advance preparation: You can make the turkey-burger mix, shape it into patties, wrap in plastic, and freeze for 2 to 3 months. Thaw as needed. The raw mixture will keep for a day in the refrigerator, if it does not exceed the original use-by date on the meat’s package.)
CHAPTER 22
The Exercise Conundrum
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“If you exercise, there’s a good chance that you could have quality of life at a hundred years old. Imagine that. You’d have all that wisdom and experience and still have a fully functioning body and mind.”
—MIKKI REILLY, certified personal trainer and author
I’ve never belonged to a gym. Here’s why:
∗ You have to talk to people.
∗ You have to sweat in front of people.
∗ You have to wear spandex outfits in front of people who look better in them than you do.
∗ You have to pay for the privilege of rolling all over a medicine ball that somebody else has just rolled all over.
∗ You have to act like you know what you’re doing while trying not to get your shoelaces caught in an elliptical machine.
∗ You have to do all of that and come back again the following week.
I used to own a treadmill, but it ended up being the place where I stacked manuscripts and files and the foreign editions of my books. I used to have a stationary bicycle too, but its handlebars were far better suited to hanging my bathrobe. I played tennis with genuine skill, but that was before I tore both rotator cuffs, which resulted in frozen shoulders and toothpick arms and the upper body strength of a butterfly.
For a brief period, I had a personal trainer who came to my house and forced me to do crunches. For a brief period, I had a yoga instructor who came to my house and forced me to stand like a tree. For a brief period, I worked out to a Tracy Anderson DVD in order to acquire the body type of Gwyneth Paltrow. What I’m saying is that none of my attempts at exercise took.
In recent years I became a power walker. I discovered that I loved finding scenic settings where I could pop in the earbuds of my iPod and do three to five miles every afternoon. The walks were my refuge from the computer and there was no bette
r way to clear my head—except when Michael was having a medical crisis.
If he was in the hospital, all bets were off, and I’d tell myself one of the following:
“I can’t walk because I have to stay at his bedside.”
“I can’t walk because it’ll be too dark by the time I get home.”
“I can’t walk because I need to make up for lost hours at the computer.”
“I can’t walk because I’m tired and deserve a rest.”
“I can’t walk because I’d rather curl up on the couch and suck my thumb.”
Once in awhile, I’d take a walk around the neighborhood of the hospital while Michael napped, just to stretch my legs, get some air, tell myself I was doing something beneficial for my body, but mostly I was sedentary—for months and months while he went through one complication after another. And it cost me. I felt awful, physically and psychologically.
“People ask me, ‘Why do I need to exercise? I’m doing okay,’ ” said Mikki Reilly, a certified personal trainer in Santa Barbara and the author of the forthcoming book Your Primal Body: The Paleo Way to Living Lean, Fit and Pain-free at Any Age. “But those who exercise are in better condition and have a better sense of well-being than those who don’t.”
Mikki doesn’t buy into the “I’m too busy” routine—not for a second.
“Everybody’s busy—whether they’re taking care of a family member or running a business,” she told me. “People have to make fitness a priority, to carve out time for it.”
I started to protest that caregivers are the busiest people on the planet and, therefore, deserve a pass. She wasn’t having any of it. She doesn’t think anyone deserves a pass.
“We’re living many, many years older than we did years ago,” she said. “But the reason people start to decline as the years progress is not so much about age; it’s about disuse and muscles atrophying. If you eat properly and exercise, there’s a good chance that you could be in amazing condition at a hundred years old.”
Okay. I’m not counting on living to be a hundred, but I wouldn’t mind having a fully functioning body and mind while I’m getting there. Where do I sign up?
For starters, Mikki advises that those of us with loved ones in the hospital should change the way we sit in that visitor’s chair.
“You want to learn how to use good posture,” she said. “Straighten up and don’t slouch. Think of your spine as a string of pearls and gently pull all the pearls up. Or think of it as you’re raising your chest up and dropping your shoulders down and back—while tipping your butt back at the same time.”
The next thing Mikki suggests is that we sprint. No, not through the halls of the hospital but rather outside, in an area with very little traffic. How does she define “sprint”?
“Like you’re running from a tiger that wants you for lunch,” she said.
“Seriously?” I said.
“Yes. Use the second hand on your watch to time yourself,” she said, “and sprint for thirty seconds, let your heart rate come down for ninety seconds, do eight or ten more sprints, and finish with a five-minute cool-down. When you do an all-out sprint, your body will secrete 530 times the amount of growth hormone—the antiaging hormone—than it normally does. That’s a great thing. If you’re really pressed for time, use the steps in the hospital. Just run up and down.”
Hannah Goodfield, also a certified personal trainer in Santa Barbara, agrees that sprints are effective but suggests that anything that gets us to move our bodies is worth doing.
“Whether you’re working out at a gym or playing tennis or whatever you choose to do, it’s your special time to feel better,” she said. “Exercise decreases negative thoughts because of the endorphins.”
Endorphins. They sound like something you’d order at a seafood restaurant with extra tartar sauce. What are they, exactly?
“Imagine that you have your favorite kind of ice cream and you take your first lick off that cone and go, ‘Ahhhh,’ ” she said. “That’s the equivalent of endorphins being released during a workout. Or think about having that martini and going, ‘Ahhhh.’ It’s like having an orgasm.”
Um, what?
“It is,” she insisted. “It’s that extra push when you’re exercising and it’s exciting.”
Well, all right then. I’ll exercise.
Hannah offered the following workouts for us caregivers. I’ve tried them all and they’re kind of fun. I’m still waiting for the orgasm though. If anybody has one—say, during the “Inch-worm”—please let me know.
HANNAH GOODFIELD’S EXERCISES FOR CAREGIVERS:
GOOD, FAST, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME
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Burn 130 calories and boost your energy in just fifteen minutes with these routines. Pick five, and switch it up each time.
SPEED SKATER
∗ Stand with feet hip-width apart, arms by sides.
∗ Lunge left leg out to side, keeping right leg straight.
∗ With back flat, hinge forward from hips, reaching right arm to left toes, extending left arm behind you.
∗ Staying crouched, hop left foot next to right; then switch sides, lunging right as you sweep left arm toward right foot and right arm behind you to complete one rep.
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STAR SQUAT
∗ Stand with feet together, arms by sides.
∗ Squat low, placing palms on floor in front of feet, directly under shoulders.
∗ Kick feet straight behind you, landing in push-up position (balancing on palms and toes, back flat, abs engaged).
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HIGH-STEP LUNGE
∗ Stand with feet hip-width apart, arms by sides, elbows bent.
∗ Lunge forward with left leg while swinging right arm forward and left arm back.
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RUNNER LUNGE
∗ Stand with feet hip-width apart, arms by sides, elbows bent.
∗ Lunge back with right leg while swinging right arm forward and left arm back.
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SUMO-SQUAT WALK
∗ Stand with feet hip-width apart, toes turned out slightly and elbows bent by sides, fists in front of chest.
∗ Take a large step out to left with left foot and sink into a wide squat.
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ANKLE POPS
∗ Lightly bounce off both toes while keeping the knees very slightly bent.
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KNEE HUG
∗ While walking forward, hug your left knee into your chest.
∗ Step and repeat on the right leg.
∗ Continue with alternate legs to loosen up glutes and hips.
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QUAD WALK
∗ While walking forward, pull your left heel in to your butt.
∗ Step and repeat with the right leg.
∗ Continue with alternate legs to loosen up quadriceps and hip flexors.
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LOW LUNGE
∗ Step forward with your left leg into a lunge position (ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders facing forward, torso upright).
∗ Try to place your left elbow on the ground as close to your left heel as possible.
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OVER THE FENCE
∗ Facing in the opposite direction to the way you want to travel, raise your left knee as high as possible.
∗ Rotate it behind you as if you were trying to walk backward and step over an imaginary fence.
∗ Repeat on the right leg and continue with alternate legs.
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INCHWORM
∗ Assume a push-up position on the ground.
∗ Walk your feet close to your hands while keeping the legs as straight as possible.
∗ Return to the start position and repeat, making sure your hands and feet never leave the ground.
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PLANK
∗ Begin on all fours, palms down, hands be
neath shoulders, knees under hips.
∗ Push up and back until body is in a straight line from shoulder to heel.
CHAPTER 23
Sex? Romance? Is Anybody Getting Any?
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“Caregivers can be in a vulnerable state, needing the validation that they’re not just the nurse.”
—MICHAEL SEABAUGH, clinical psychologist
In 2010, on the day Michael was hospitalized for the fourth time in four months, his bowels in an uproar, his body bloated with steroids, his temperament as foul as the smell in his room, I got an e-mail from an old boyfriend. Talk about irony. Talk about timing. Talk about temptation.
The e-mail was out of the blue, after over a decade of silence, and not from any old boyfriend either; this was the old boyfriend with whom I’d had a passionate relationship that began after my first marriage, resumed after my second, and ended only after I met and fell in love with Michael—an old boyfriend who’d been hard to resist, in other words. The e-mail was merely a “Hello, how are you,” but it nearly made me pass out with excitement.
I read it for the first time after I got home from the hospital that night. I was sitting at the computer, checking my inbox, and there it was on my screen. It might as well have been written in Scarlet Letter red ink.
I was so taken aback that I read it again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Had this man (we’ll call him Tom) really gotten in touch with me after so many years?
Yep. There he was, back in my life, if only in a cyberspacey way, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
For months I’d been feeling like a drudge, a drone, a hag, a crone, a person without a passionate bone in her body, much less an actual libido. I was a burned-out caregiver with neither the time nor the interest in anything other than coping with my husband’s medical disasters.
And yet, I was vulnerable. A hot guy from my past was saying hello and I found the whole thing thrilling. Never mind all the other e-mails I had to answer, the bills I had to pay, the family members I had to contact. I focused on that one e-mail and whether I should answer it, how I should answer it, what would result if I answered it, would I be cheating on Michael if I answered it. Oh, the drama.
It was amazing how the thought of the e-mail perked me up. I went straight to my makeup case and put on lipstick, even though I was alone in the house and even though it was ten o’clock at night and even though I was aware that I was being an idiot. And then I regarded my reflection in the bathroom mirror to see if I still had anything going for me in the looks department. I was ten years older since this guy had last seen me. Was I still desirable? Did I have any juice left? Did I even want to have any juice left?