Getting fresh

The Fu Man Dumpling House on Greenwood Avenue in Shoreline makes absolutely exquisite food. The fresh-made meat-filled dumplings, served with a fresh garlic-ginger dipping sauce, are legendary. But just about everything else on the menu is exceptional, too. A complex hot-and-sour soup. A won ton soup with a peppery chicken broth base. A complex fried rice done with a light, almost buttery, oil, with fresh peas and some of the tastiest shrimp I've had in a long time. And I didn't go wrong tonight by ordering a little seaweed-in-garlic-sauce side dish, which combined the cold seaweed with cilantro in a slightly sweet dressing.

The distinctive element at Fu Man Dumpling is the quality and freshness of the ingredients they use. Realizing this is making me a bit less grumpy about paying top dollar for organic, heirloom, and local produce for my own cooking. It makes such a difference.

Ouch! My toe

Grrr! I stubbed my second toe yesterday, and this is going to keep me out of fast-moving exercise classes — though only for a few days, I hope.

It's down on the yoga mat today, doing Susan Powter's Trailer Park yoga. I purchased Susan's new yoga video, and was impressed with the quality of the workout. However, it covers only about 20% of the moves we were doing in her Seattle class. I'll have to keep doing those on my own until she does an advanced yoga video.

Diet or exercise?

Ten years ago, while editing a magazine for a major healthcare system, I asked several doctors which they would prefer their patients do, watch their diets or focus on exercise.

The doctors all said "exercise."

Mike Howard at the excellent Diet Blog reports on a study that compared people on diets with people on exercise programs, measuring not just weight loss but body fat percentage.

I was betting that exercise returned the best results, but what the study found was far more complex.

Unfortunately, the criteria I was most interested in were apparently not part of the study -- measurements of hips, waist, chest, upper arms, and thighs.

Out of the fashion loop

Am I missing something, or has fashion sort of flopped recently?

All the clothes I see this summer look pretty much like the clothes I saw last summer. So, while last year I was excited about all sorts of trends, this year about all I have to say is that The Gap's curvy dress pants (they sit just below the waist, not too low) are fabulous. And they must be good sellers, because they never go on sale.

If there's some hot casual or officewear trend this season, would someone please tell me about it?

Summer salad sandwich

When the thermometer creeps into the 90s, I pretty much lose my appetite. Which is bad, because shortly thereafter my energy ebbs, too. No, three tall glasses of sugared, lemoned ice tea, no matter how wonderful the black tea used to make them, are not nutrition!

Wandering out in the garden to water some parched plants, I noticed my lettuce and greens. Went back in, chopped some Walla Wallas and started them sauteeing. Then went back out and picked the lettuce, arugula and mustard greens. Chopped them, tossed them in with the carmelizing onions, sprinkled on salt and pepper, toasted a sesame-seed hamburger roll, and there was lunch. Well, I also added a dollop of a very plain goat cheese to the sandwich.

This recipe comes from somewhere back in my New Haven days -- perhaps one of the vegetarian restaurants? A nice ingredient to add, sauteed with the onions, is finely chopped celery. Or you can get that flavor by adding some celery seed.

Yoga with Susan, again

I just opened Susan Powter's new yoga DVDs and am incredibly excited to see that one of the DVDs has exactly the routine she developed with our Seattle group last year. Well, it's the beginner version, but one that can be easily revved up to a higher level.

It's a bit amusing to hear the new age music in the video, since Susan always worked us out to a fairly raucous combination of rock, club/dance, and hip-hop. But it's just so great to hear Susan, saying those things like "big huge oxygenated movements" and "stay in breath." I can hardly wait to put the PowerBook in the dining room tomorrow morning, roll out the mat, and do yoga with Susan again.

Some notes on belly dancing

I've been belly dancing for the past six or seven months, and I'm trying to decide what I think of it as exercise. Here are a few observations:

• Beginning classes (for technique and basics) aren't much of a workout.
• Power belly classes (the basic moves done in rapid succession while wearing a 10-pound weight belt) are pretty effective as aerobic, fat-burning exercise. And they are very easy on the joints.
• Two-hour performance classes (done for endurance and skill) can be quite strenuous. They're good for burning calories, but watch out for repetitive stress injuries (and other injuries) to feet and ankles if performances are done on non-studio surfaces, such as concrete or asphalt.
• Performances are exhausting. Even your face muscles will hurt from smiling for two hours.

I haven't tried tribal-style belly dancing, but based on my experience with mainstream belly dance performance classes, I have high expectations of them for aerobic benefit. Tribal troups do a lot of fast traveling across stages.

Belly dancing twice a week has not kept my muscles as toned as a similar amount of Vinyasa-style yoga did, so that is a disappointment. But it certainly can and does burn fat. I'm going to try to do it once a week as a good (fun) workout to mix with yoga.