Jesus and Wine

 
Title of one of the chapters in my father's most recent book.  It's called Jesus and the Pleasures and has three sections: Jesus and wine, Jesus and women, and Jesus and song.  Perhaps you recognize the Martin Luther reference.  Anyway, he's a New Testament professor but this one is written for a more general audience, and you can order it now on amazon.com, just search author = J. Christian Wilson.

And why am I telling you this in a blog that's supposed to be about CR?  One, because it's my blog and I can plug my father's book if I want to.  But more importantly because drinking good wine has always been a tradition among my  family and friends, and one of the big adaptations I'm making to CR is cutting back on my wine consumption.  I've for quite some time been a "one little glass of wine at night with my bedtime reading" person, and my friends tend to drink quite a bit when we go out.  When I first started back in March, I cut out mixed drinks in favor of red wine (see resveratrol in yesterday's post), started measuring my night time glass to make sure it was no more than four ounces, and stopped trying to keep up with my friends when we were out, splicing in seltzer water between glasses of wine and just plain sipping slower.  But as I'm cutting down from 1200 to 800 (there was a lot of 1100 and 900 in between, as I've covered in previous posts), I'm realizing that I just don't have the spare calories.  However, I don't want to give up wine entirely or stop going out with my friends.  So I'm dropping my little glass at night with my bedtime reading, switching in a cup of iced green tea (it's very hot here, I'll drink the tea hot again in the winter), and limiting my wine drinking to social occasions that specifically call for it. 

Last night I popped to the store after work and met up with some gorgeous skinny asparagus.  I adore asparagus, so I steamed it up and added just a dash of lemon pepper.  That plus a tiny ripe tomato from a friend's garden made a delicious dinner, and easily kept me under 800 for yesterday.  No little glass of wine, just a lot of water to make up for the dehydration I seem to experience when it gets over 90 here (how did I ever grow up in the South?  I hate heat!!!  Though my heat tolerance has greatly improved with CR, and now I can walk my four mile course in 90 degree heat without minding too much.) 

Today I was hungry, so I ate a hard boiled egg (100), a cottage cheese (110), about 40 of steamed broccoli, and a tiny salad of romaine, green pepper, and tomato with a droplet of lemon vinegarette on top for lunch.  Can't have been more than 300 total, so I have 500 to play with tonight at dinner.  That's good because I'm going to be on the road with a co-worker who is a big fan of red wine and Italian food, so I know we'll go out to dinner.  I was having angst re: Italian restaurant dining, when I tuned into Mary Robinson's blog at www.crdiary.blogspot.com.  Sure enough, she ate at an Italian restaurant last night!  The ability of CRON folk to be thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time is amazing to me.  So now I know what to order because she figured it out... clams with red sauce!  No pasta (at 800 I can't afford it) and a green salad on the side.  She eats hers without dressing but I'll have a touch of vinegar, no oil.  That way I'll get some protein without having too many unnecessary calories in the form of pasta. 

I'm not sure when I'll be able to blog again since email access is sporadic while on the road.  But I'll catch up once I'm home.