What's for dinner? No really. What the hell can I eat...

When you grow up, you take responsibility for what you do in life. Reaping, sowing and all that. Catch yourself if you make excuses at this age, it's not your color. If you say you "don't have time to..." but you're all caught up on the newest shows on Netflix, you just don't "make time" for whatever you're trying to get out of. That's cool, just own it.

And since you've been feeding yourself for decades, it's time to take responsibility for that too. If you eat sugar and donuts and yum yums and then skip meals to save calories for Wine Time, there should be no surprises as to why you're sleepy and chubby. Just own it.

I've been cooking professionally most of my career and I've been asking, Where Did That Come From? about ingredients for about 20. So what have I learned? A lot. Have I figured it all out? Absolutely not.

So here's where I am 20 years in. Former chef, recent farmer, organic, female, peri-menopausal. Human. I've been coming back from a pretty long journey of bottomed out health which is why I do what I do now cuz there is a lot of conflicting info and even less help from conventional doctors. So here's what I've learned.

Is this forever? Part 2

Because I realize blog posts aren't supposed to be Tolstoy sized, I'm breaking things up. TLDR (too long didn't read) was an acronym that not only offends me, but jars me into reality. I get it. I don't think I should shorten stuff if YOU are too lazy/busy/burnt to read it. Read it on the toilet. Don't read it at all. Many options. Anyway, here's the second part.

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"So is this FOREVER?" the namesake of this post...comes from a friend who I haven't talked to in over a year or more. Sent me a recipe for Mahogany Chicken and I said, 'sounds good...can I make it vegan?'

And lots of NO WAY! What??!!??!! ensued.

Less impressed with my dropping of wine or smoking. Meh. But MEAT??? What about your Cassoulet? Duck Confit?

Well I can still cook...but I'm not eating that stuff. And also, it's late July in Georgia. NO ONE should be eating these sorts of rib sticking heavy pork laden peasant recipes! Gazpacho? Yes.

But here's the thing. There are MANY many ways to be. I know people who don't drink because they spent 20 years of their life putting vodka in their Starbuck's and lost it all at the track and their marriage dissolved. And some of us just don't drink because we are 50 and we don't like it anymore. And that's okay too. When people say, Good For You for being Sober! I mean, whatever. I was never not sober, so I don't think labeling is a good way to get over the peer pressure. Can you drink a glass of wine at a vineyard in Italy on vacation with dinner? I dunno, do you want to? It's not all black or white. The exact kind of socially acceptable "wine time" mommy's little helper wink wink peer pressure that makes it OKAY to scarf a bunch of wine, is the same kind of pigeon holing that makes Good For You, feel insulting. It's not a struggle, I'd be lying if I said it was. It was absolutely time. And the Universe supports you when you go with the flow.

I got rid of a LOT of things that weren't serving my highest and best self. Including but not limited to:

1. Clothes, friends, old contacts, furniture, haircuts and family members that no longer fit
2. Heavy meat based cuisine and a total bacchanal at every dinner
3. Extra real estate
4. Zappos shop/return/shop/return
5. Vitamin overload

I'm truly serious when it comes to simplifying my life and ditching the burdens to my body and soul and giving myself the best chance I can with good health.  If you take a long hard look at all that shit in the garage, seasonal storage, your pantry, shoe rack---you're taking care of a lot of stuff. Little benign habits need care and feeding too. Drop 'em.

Is this forever?? (Part 1)

I'm not sure, but I think I'm having an anniversary.

Last summer I stopped eating meat. Stopped drinking alcohol (yes, even wine) and dropped dairy a few months later. As my palate cleared up, I found that oils and fats tasted heavy so I stopped those too. I had been on a Paleo low carb high fat diet for 4 years and I couldn't stomach one more tablespoon of coconut oil in my coffee or floss one more meat string out of my molars.

Plus, like any cult, it started going off the rails. (Pizza crust made of pork rinds for example) and I felt like it went against all my passions of real food and beautiful cooking. And the obsessive restrictive behavior made me feel funny. Any woman who's cured a PMS flip out with a couple of boiled potatoes knows that carbs aren't really pure enemy territory. Are we talking ice cream carby? Pasta carbonara carby? Or having a Yam. The fact that alcohol was allowed but an organic sourdough bread was not? I call foul. And book selling agenda. And bullshit. And it clearly is about "looking" good and being thin, no one cares about what's going on inside.

But, we're not sharks.

For weeks I was searching for raw horseradish root for this "master tonic" elixir thing I was making. I went everywhere. It's one of those ingredients I don't use a ton of but I feel like I see it all the time. Grocery stores, Asian markets, indie farmers. Nope.

One produce manager told me that they'd been trying for 5 weeks to order some and no one had any!

Prepared horseradish has stuff in it like soybean oil and it comes out more like mayonnaise, can't add that to my tonic. I used to make bloody mary mixer at the Cantina, didn't I always have this on hand?

Because I have the Mind of an Entrepreneur, (which at its best is clever and strives always to fill a need in the market---at worst is an irritating backseat driver who is always thinking about business even whilst sleeping) my first thought was:

I'm Going to Start Horseradish Ranch.

The Hare Brain?

I've always loved symbolism in literature. Foreshadowing is great but what makes reading great authors transcendent (above let's say, internet click bait content generators) is symbolism. The Art of Analogy can demonstrate how effective your own imagination really is. Metaphor, simile, all that stuff we learned in high school. For me it was the only thing that made school tolerable. It sure wasn't gym class. It was lunch hour comedy hour with the Jewish boys and finding hidden meaning in Shakespeare. The subtext IS the message. Ohhhh, I get it. One of the few things I discovered as a teen that had nothing to do with the terrifying plunge into nudity and birth control that was hormonal development. Which, looking back, I acknowledge was a tragic pre-occupation and an overrated pursuit.

Who's the Boss?

So you think you want to be your own boss. Make your own hours. Get to take credit for all your own ideas. The dream of small business!

You can do all of that. You'll also be responsible for writing your own checks. Finding your own clients. Dealing with customers and all their weird requests. Doing your own marketing, networking, invoicing, web design, inventory, phone answering and having no one to blame but yourself for running low on printer ink.

But you knew all that. Me too. The one thing that I wasn't prepared for was that I hate BEING THE BOSS.

Not my Circus, Not my Monkeys

Yesterday I listened to a man talk about how his back hurt so bad he couldn't bend over and tie his shoe. Twenty years ago he had an accident and the subsequent surgery left him in unbearable pain for which he still took demerol. He only takes that on the weekends because he can't work on the drug. I decided to skip the questions about how you can have a script for demerol for twenty years and just listen. Gave him arthritis. It was hard to work. Nothing works on the pain. Leg gave out the other night and he fell and broke his glasses  and that's why his face was all cut and bloody.

Have you tried Acupuncture? Massage? Chiropractic? Physical therapy? Stretching? Calcium Magnesium? Turmeric? Epsom salt baths? Hot tub?

No.