food

I know Valentine’s was a week ago but I don’t follow the same time-space continuum as most. Anyway…

This. This freaking post. I wrote it back in 2016 as an homage to our love. And truthfully, to show off our oh so glamorous life. Now, it has become, BY FAR, the most popular and most requested of any other almost 1700 posts I’ve written! 
I’d like to think it got traction because of the story, or the writing, but I know it’s because it has the word “poop”  is in the title.
That’s okay, If you’re here to read about poop—I still love you.

Carry on, xox JB

“Bird poop brings good luck!
There is a belief that if a bird poops on you, your car or your property, you may receive good luck and riches. The more birds involved, the richer you’ll be! So next time a bird poops on you, remember that it’s a good thing.”
~Bird Poop Expert

What about if a single bird poops on your head while you’re driving in your car? You know, moving target and all. That feels like a whole lotta good luck coming your way—along with super silky hair, right?

I’m about to talk about poop, a lot!
Bird poop to be exact, so if you’re eating your eggs, best to put down your fork right about now. Or oatmeal or yogurt for that matter. Maybe you should just stop eating until you’re finished reading, okay? Studies have shown that reading while eating can lead to something serious that could render you dead, like choking while laughing, so in essence, I just saved your life.
You’re welcome.

And now, back to the bird poop.

Many people the world over believe that if a bird lets loose on you, then good things are coming your way. One idea is that it’s a sign of major wealth coming from Heaven (the place where ALL real wealth resides). And based on the belief that when you suffer an inconvenience (like a head full of bird shit), you’ll have a whole lotta good fortune in return.

The most popularly held belief is that if a bird hits your noggin, it is so lucky, so random and rare (statistically speaking it is rarer than being hit by lightning), how can a lottery win be far behind?

A Case in point — and a true story:

Can a head full of bird poop be lucky, you ask?
A Bay of Islands man swears it is! After winning $100,000 on an Instant Kiwi ticket, the man disclosed that a bird had recently pooped on his head and that his friends had insisted it was a sign of luck coming his way.

“I thought it was a load of shit,” the man admitted, (pun intended) “but when I was in a Lotto shop I had $5 left in my wallet so figured I would buy a scratch-off and test my luck.”

“I could not believe it when I scratched the right numbers and realized I had won $100,000,” the man told NZ Lotteries.

“It is such a great feeling! I plan to start a new life with this win. I want to wipe my debts and just enjoy life.” The man, originally from Christchurch, plans to move back down there, undeterred by the recent earthquake.

“This win gives me the funds to be able to get down there and be able to help out in any way I can in the city’s rebuild,” he said.

Let me just start by saying that the man in the story is WAY more altruistic than I’ll EVER be. Or maybe not. After he pays off his debt and relocates, how much city rebuilding can he do? I’m worried about him and his financial planning acumen. He has to make that money last and $100,000 doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe he’ll have the free time to volunteer. Okay. I feel much better now.

Anyhow, on Saturday the hubster and I decided to get a jump-start on Valentine’s Day being that we had flaked, waiting until the last minute and all the good ideas for Sunday were taken. Left to our own devices, we hopped into the car, put down the top, and decided to drive really fast out of the beautiful, summer-like temperatures and head into opaque whiteness of a foggy abyss, the beach. Faced with the choice of putting the top back up or leaving fogville altogether and going for a big lunch—you guessed it THE BIG LUNCH WON! (No surprise there.)

Winding our way through the tree-lined upscale neighborhoods at a brisk 40 mph (oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, it wasn’t a school zone and besides, it was Saturday. Nobody drives below 40 mph. on Saturdays), on our way back into town on our search for the perfect kabob, I felt something clobber my cranium.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, hands on my head looking around like a freak. You have to admire my economy with words. Don’t feel bad. I’m a writer.

Anyway…

At first, I suspected it might be space debris or a tiny piece of meteorite. It was only when hubby, with his two bare man-hands, picked a rather large and thankfully solid piece of avian excrement out of my hair—that I realized my good fortune. Lottery WINNER!

Can I just take a moment to thank my husband for his courage, strong stomach, and lack of any real hygienic awareness? (He’s French). You are my hero and I will split the money with you AFTER I rebuild a city.

Needless to say, when the laughter subsided, (thankfully we share the same warped sense of humor that causes us to laugh at another’s misfortune—and poop), we hightailed it to the diviest Liquor Store we could find (because everybody knows THAT is where REAL wealth resides — not Heaven) and bought us some Power Ball, Super Lotto and Mega Millions tickets —and a box of Triscuits—the rosemary and olive oil kind.

Then with big shit-eating grins on our faces (not literally, that’s an idiom, mind out of the gutter people!) we drove to lunch.

Lottery or not, nothing says LOVE like picking bird poop out of your beloved’s hair—so I’m already a winner!

Love you my Big Handsome!

I know. You guys envy my life of glamour and romance. What can I say? I’m one lucky girl.

Carry on,

xox

Hey guys,
I get texts and emails all year around requesting this post which is consistently in the top five most viewed every year.  “Re-post the one about your husband stealing Thanksgiving from your mom!” They’ll write. Or, “What is the name of that one about your husband and his disrespect for the turkey?” 

But mostly they request his recipe for the leek bread pudding (which, unfortunately,  I am not at liberty to reveal since that recipe resides in his head and that is a neighborhood too dangerous for me to visit!)

Anyhow, I like to wait for the appropriate time of year‚ which is now, to lovingly harass the big guy.  So, take a look. If you know him you’re going to smile and if you don’t, well, I think you’ll want to.

Here’s to my big handsome. That French guy who stole my heart — and then hijacked my favorite meal!
Cheers!

PS. REAL men always use pink rubber oven mitts! 

Carry on & Happy Thanksgiving!
xox

JB

It happened over several years, with the subtle finesse we’ve come to expect from the French.

He entered our family just under twenty years ago.
He is a gourmand extraordinaire and an accomplished cook in his own right, but he ingratiated himself in the beginning, acting as the sous chef for my mother who is the culinary queen of our family—then slowly, skillfully, and sneakily—He hijacked Thanksgiving.

The only demand he acquiesces to is that it must be an ORGANIC turkey.
“No antibiotics, no hormones…no taste,” he sing-songs sarcastically under his breath as he places the order every year.

I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t decided to switch fowl on us yet. Next year it could be pheasant or duck in the center of the table.

See, that’s the thing, we, my siblings and I, we LOVE and crave all year ‘round, my mom’s traditional Thanksgiving feast. The one we ate as kids. The meal whose perfection is so sublime it should never be messed with.

EVER.

Yet…the now reigning chef in our holiday kitchen—the one with the red passport—HE  little by little, year after year, has modified each dish so completely that it bears little if any, resemblance to the original.

And my mom doesn’t give a hoot!
She’s just so thrilled that someone has taken over the culinary heavy lifting, along with the fact that I finally found a husband—and he’s French—that she sits back and happily eats what she is served; doling out the compliments like Tic-Tacs at a cigar shop.

Benedict Arnold.

This European guy feels no sense of urgency—he doesn’t start the turkey until late morning.

I remember waking up as a child, the entire house already heavily scented with the aroma of a turkey that had been in the oven for hours. Now, I sit and watch the Thanksgiving parade, eyeing him suspiciously as he lingers over his coffee and Sudoku.

You can’t rush the French—about anything, most especially cooking—it shows disrespect and they just won’t stand for it.

And yet…he shows the old hen no respect. He’s rude to her, slathering her with butter and olive oil and then flinging her, breast down, legs in the air (the turkey, not my mother) into a 500-degree oven for the first twenty minutes.

His mashed potatoes are loaded with creme Fraiche, truffle salt, and a pound of butter…yet oddly enough—not a single calorie. Oh, the French.

His vegetable of choice is the brussel sprout. The recipe is so elaborate, with all of the shredded bacon and Gruyère in a balsamic reduction that he’s only allowed to make them every other year. That allows us to have the green beans in mushroom soup with the dried onion rings on top for the alternating years. He would never deign to eat that slop. We, on the other hand, squeal with delight in gleeful anticipation of this mushy mess of soupy goodness while his face assumes that pinched look of French disapproval.

But maybe the worst atrocity against the holiday is the stuffing—or lack thereof. He was raised in France. They don’t know from stuffing. They have bread pudding.

This year he is repeating the mushroom and leek bread pudding that he served last Thanksgiving. It really is delicious, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my mom’s stuffing and it doesn’t go well with gravy—if you can imagine that.

As long as we’re talking gravy. His gravy is ridiculously smooth and savory, I’ll hand him that. No one can figure out how he does it and I still haven’t caught him in the act of making it. I’m convinced it is delivered to the back door by Trappist monks just before we sit down to eat.

Yams and sweet potatoes are not his things either (he insists they’re baby food) so he’s given us the okay to make my mom’s killer Sweet Potato Casserole. It is heart-stoppingly delicious. I die a little every time I taste it.  Like the French say, La petite mort— it is THAT good.

Hi guys,

There was a time back in 2013 where I would sit up in bed, in the dark, first thing in the morning, and write down whatever came to mind. Often, it was poetry. I’m not kidding. Like, rhymey with a message kinda stuff.

I’d marinate in this early morning creative soup and jot down my notes for about fifteen minutes and then get on with the rest of my completely ordinary life.

I say that because even though they were just this side of craptastic as fine poetry goes, it felt special and rather extraordinary and I regret not doing it anymore. These days you can find me practicing my tandem snoring and drooling routine until the last possible minute because, well, I want to medal when it becomes an Olympic sport AND I write all day. The poetry has a myriad of entry points in twenty-four hours—so why write in the dark?

But lately I’ve been thinking…maybe I should pick up this habit again. Couldn’t hurt, right?

This one made me snort-laugh. I hope it has the same effect on you because:
Everything can be reduced to a food analogy.
And nothing too serious is going on here. Just livin’ life.

We all need to remember that!

Carry on,
xox

Whilst sitting and lamenting that your life is in shreds,
Tis no faux pas, there’s been no flaw,
Even though you’re filled with dread.

Get up, and make coleslaw instead.

The Universe may leave you for dead,
Life’s thrown up in the air, there’s water to tread,
You keep ruminating, worrying, running it through your head,

Don’t do that, make coleslaw instead.

Now, you can take lemons and make lemonade,
Or you can find problems that sour your day,
The choices are easy when acceptance is present.

Get up and make coleslaw instead!

On my way to meet my friend for lunch on Tuesday, as I rushed my face off because I had totally spaced and the only thing that got me away from my computer was her phone call at 12:15, asking me where I was, and did she have the wrong day? 

As an aside can I just say right here and now that I can’t believe I’ve turned into THAT girl—the one who forgets about plans because she’s chasing a dangling participle around a particular paragraph, or worse yet—she gets sucked into a FaceTime vortex that morphs time and spits her out somewhere inappropriate. And late.
Lord. Have. Mercy!

Anywaaaaaaaaayyyyyy…
I was traversing a crowded parking lot when I observed with my own two eyes, something so perverse it filled me with rage.

I saw two millennial men, strolling to their car(s) eating ice cream cones! On a random Tuesday! In broad daylight! 

It wasn’t National Ice Cream Day (I, of all peole would have known) so I had trouble wrapping my brain around what I’d just witnessed. 
Here is just a snippet of my internal dialogue —aka—food rage (maybe you can relate):

Me: Huh. Must be nice. Look at them, they probably think by walking to their car they’re working off the calories.
Men.
I’d have to walk to Nebraska and back just to justify the sugar cone. 
I wonder who’s idea that was? Did one guy say ”Gee, let’s get an ice-cream cone,” and the other guy said “okay” without any argument? Without reciting all of the reasons why that was a bad idea? What are they, nine?
Women don’t do shit like that! We insist we’re full when in reality we’d trade our first-born child for an ice cream cone. Everyone knows women don’t do spontaneous dessert! We have to have an excuse! Like a bad break-up or being on vacation. And even then we feign disinterest.
Me: “Oh, look, a new ice cream shop. Should we go check it out?”
Everybody’s Fucking friend Sheila: “Oh, I don’t know, ice cream, really, we just had lunch.”
Me: “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I say, wishing a car would jump the curb right then and put us both out of our misery.
But not these guys! They’re clearly making no excuses!
And it’s obscene the way they’re flaunting it! Strolling like that! Like they’re in some fucking piazza in Tuscany! They have some nerve!!

As much as I wanted to, I could not become the better version of myself. Things started to snowball downhill to a bad place. I wanted to trip them both for acting so carefree, sending their cones splatting onto the pavement. Nobody needs to see that shit out in the open! All it does is makes us feel bad about ourselves! Or better yet, I wanted to accidentally stick my face, tongue extended, into their cones, you know, for quality control purposes…That’s when I almost got hit by a car which pulled me out of my food rage because that’s what happens when a woman of a certain age spirals out of control on account of ice cream. 

Question: Can anyone relate to this or is it just me who’s carrying this deeply buried, unexpressed dessert rage?

Carry on,
xox 

Is this creepy? It feels a little creepy to me. 

The other day I found out that I’m allergic to basil. Not in a peanut allergy, drop dead kind of way, but still! That’s like being told you’re allergic to puppies or Oprah. I mean what did basil ever do to anybody besides inspire the invention of pesto and be delicious?

Apparently, for me it was symptom-less. Sneaky. On the sly, late at night, it caused gut inflammation that only some fancy blood test dared reveal. And as we’ve all been brainwashed into knowing, inflammation is the leading cause of evil in the world. You may have thought is was global warming or Alex Jones, but I’m here to tell you—it’s inflammation. 

Inflammation has other talents too, it masquerades as belly fat and belly fat not only causes your pants to fit tight in the waist but baggy AF in the ass (which can make the jean-buying experience even more harrowing than it already is, and causes a serious slide toward elastic waisted yoga pants)—it is a precursor to heart disease because let’s get real here—the heart is a drama queen that can’t be ignored, even for a second, lest it suck all the oxygen out of the room. (Sarcasm intended.)

I’m heartbroken that in order for my heart to mind its own business and my pants to fit properly I’ll have to live a Caprese salad, pesto free life. But I’ll live. And the next time I go to Italy none of this will count. 

Next on the list was soy, but that one I understood perfectly!

In most bodies soy just turns to poop, but in other bodies, soy can turn into estrogen. My body took that little suggestion and ran with it while completely ignoring the other suggestions like the one about chocolate triggering an endorphin that makes eating it as good as sex (it’s not—unless your partner is covered in it—then maybe) and red wine having an anti-aging property (if that were true I’d be fucking Benjamin Button).

Nope. My body is a fucking mad scientist where estrogen is concerned. The Magic Merlin of this hormone laden secret sauce. A Jessica Rabbit look-alike alchemist gone awry. Estrogen makes you…womanly, whatever THAT means. My body heard ‘boobs!’ and interpreted that as something womanly women everywhere must want (they don’t) so the moment it heard that thing about soy it/she became overzealous and indiscriminating— turning EVERYTHING I ate into estrogen. 

Soup. 

Pringles.

Airport sushi.

green tea.

Churros.

Fucking EVERYTHING.

My doctor and I had a of decade of good laughs about this. 

“It can be a blessing,” she said one day after looking at my estrogen levels which could have given a thirty-year-old’s a run for her money. 

I was fifty-two at the time. 

“Your skin will stay moist… and you won’t dry up like an old lady,” she reassured me with a wink, wink at fifty-five.

Meanwhile I was growing a baseball team of fibroids who soaked happily in bubbling hot tubs of estrogen the mad scientist kept replenishing. 

All that to say, soy has never been my friend. I may have had skin supple enough to baffle the dermatologists, (or it could be my mother’s genes, the DNA test hints) and yet, I remained one edamame away from a hysterectomy which finally happened because someone couldn’t practice dietary self-restraint. 

I’m not sure I like these fancy tests that tell you all about yourself. I think I was better off not knowing what I know so I don’t have to feel bad about not listening to any of it. Besides, being afraid of inflammation is highly overrated, don’t you think?

I mean sometimes a stomach ache is just a bad burrito. Am I right? 

Carry on,
xox

This is the dating “us” circa 2001.

Last night was the 18th anniversary of this extremely fortuitous, change-my-life-in-every-way-possible, blind date. And BTW, we’re still together … and I like food!
xox

I met my husband through the most old-fashioned of means—the blind date.
I know in this time of hooking up via the worldwide web this sounds as antiquated as sidling up to a bar and ordering absinthe. Oh, wait, that’s a thing again, isn’t it?

Anyway, here’s how it worked. Friends fixed us up.
My friend Sharon was dating his friend Bert, and when she met Raphael she thought of me. Nice, right?

Being the curious type I’ve often wondered about that. How does that work exactly? How much thought is put into a friend’s fix-up?

I wondered if it was pondered thoughtfully, carefully… like a wine pairing? Or was it knee-jerk, impulsive like, “You read books and Harvey mentioned that he read a book once, so…”

In our case, my friend knew I liked European men and his friend knew he liked big boobs, so, yeah, what our fix-up lacked in depth and substance it made up for in that personal touch—two people who actually knew us and thought that we might be able to sit across from each other for an hour without gagging.

His friend Bert was a serial fixer-upper and at the time that ours was suggested, Raphael had a serious case of blind date fatigue. Nevertheless, when Bert uttered the code words, big boobies, it triggered a deeply embedded Pavlovian response in Raphael which overrode all of his reservations, and prompted him to ask for my number and give me a call.

Now, on dating websites I’ve heard that hours of careful curation are devoted to crafting a personal profile. I’ve known people who’ve hired a ghostwriter in order to convey just the perfect blend of desperation and disinterest.

As far as the photo goes, I have friends who have been known to enlist the services of a professional photographer. As I understand it, good lighting can make or break whether someone swipes right or left. There is one guy in town who has a waiting list as long as one of Donald Trump’s ties because he manages to give everyone that “bewitching hour” glow.

You know, the kind that renders you unrecognizable to your own mother.

Giving our friend’s good judgment the benefit of the doubt, without the ability to Google each other, or the benefits of viewing each other’s carefully crafted social media narrative in advance, (because neither of those things existed), we agreed to meet at a bar in Brentwood. Here is a frame of reference for you: Brentwood happy-hour was used as the basis for the movie The Hunger Games. It is savage. It is every man for himself. Your main objective is to escape with your soul intact—and nobody eats.

That is except for me.

I was the new improved, fully revised, 2.0 version of blind-dating Janet, which meant that after surviving nearly twenty years of this contact sport I had decided to reinvent. To adopt a new and audacious persona.

I had decided to just be myself.

So, after nursing a glass of wine while we exchanged pleasantries, I determined that I liked this Frenchman enough to sneak out and let the valet know he didn’t need to keep the car running—and because I was STARVING I also agreed to have dinner.

This sent a shockwave throughout all of Brentwood and any “wood” within a twenty-five-mile radius. You see, as I would come to find out, women in the metropolitan Los Angeles area do very little eating on first dates. And if by some magical twist of fate you DO find yourself seated across from a man by the dinner portion of the evening—you do the sane thing—you order a salad.

Leafy greens.

Never carbs. Carbs are strictly forbidden. They are horrible and terrifying, and they scare women to death.
You may as well order a bowl of live snakes.

I could tell I’d broken a cardinal-dating rule by the puzzled look on Raphael’s face as I dug into my pasta entrée with gusto.

As soon as the shock of this spectacle wore off enough for him to speak, he educated me on the dating habits of the West Los Angeles female in the 20th century. It started off with this pronouncement: “Oh my God! You EAT!”

He continued, “I am SO SICK of watching a woman push a piece of salad around a plate. Honestly! There is so much incredible food out in the world to share!” He shook his head, bewildered, as he tore off a piece of the warm focaccia and dredged it through the pungent, green, extra-virgin olive oil.

I nodded enthusiastically while at the same time sucking a stray piece of linguine drenched in the most delicious clam sauce through my puckered lips.

Sensing he was in the presence of a fellow foodie he went further. “Or… they order the most expensive thing on the menu, poke at it and take it home. What is with that?” His lightly French accented voice was filled with genuine curiosity.

I couldn’t answer because well, my mouth was full.

“You eat with appetite”, he declared, a huge smile hijacking his entire face. “I like that!” Then he said something so perverse I almost dropped my fork. “I like women to look like women”, he said, “To have a little meat on their bones. None of those skinny-waif, teenage boy looking women for me.”

Had I heard him correctly?

Well, you’re in luck mister because I am none of those things…well, except for the meaty woman part… I thought as I smiled back broadly, daintily dabbing at my lips with the cloth napkin. Damn. Who knew this being myself stuff would reap such immediate dividends?

Then it hit me. The swoon.  I swooned. Or at least I think I did. Having never really swooned before I did my best impression of a swoon. It probably looked more like I had gas.

Undeterred, he continued, “We share a passion for food, that’s obvious.” His swoon-inducing sweet-talk continued while he deftly reached for the bottle of wine. “I’ve always felt that passion translates into every aspect of life. Work…play…even sex.” His eyes sparkled as he re-filled our glasses with the hearty Cabernet.

“Cheers!” I toasted in agreement as our crystal glasses clinked together melodically. “Salute” he replied, locking eyes with me in a charmingly wicked way.

We have been savoring life together ever since.

The moral of this tale? Ladies, order the damn pasta!

Carry on,
xox

“I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up until the day he killed himself.”
~ Johnny Carson

I had a startling realization about myself recently, I am to the diet/health connection what the deniers are to climate change/global warming. I know that all of the studies are true—it’s just so fucking inconvenient!

Case in point.

I love to eat. Food makes me happy. Almost happier than good sex with bad boys.
Most of the time I try to eat healthily but I’m far from fanatical about it. Unless you count donuts. Donuts are my Kryptonite and they are banned from entering my house lest I devour an entire dozen, naked and dripping in raspberry jelly in the space of an hour. And here’s the thing, my body doesn’t react in a negative way at all, at least not in an overtly obvious way. I’m sure the blood sugar spike is off the charts, I just can’t see it so it doesn’t exist. The only thing I CAN see is the shame on my face in the bathroom mirror so that is deterrent enough for me.

Denial. That has been my default setting up until now.

Last week my husband and I did a cleanse. Not one of those highfalutin celebrity cleanses that promise you clear skin, shiny hair and an ass you can bounce a quarter off of. Nope, my husband absconded with some literature (basically, the how to’s—whys — and what for’s) of a client’s wildly expensive, doctor supervised cleanse.

Never ones to take things at face value and because we happen to be as cheap as the day is long, we decided to follow the basic tenet of the program—but morphed it to our liking.

Instead of their spendy protein shakes twice a day (at breakfast and dinner), we drank what we had on hand, our old faithful, Shakology.
We also included coffee.
And pumpkin pie.

Just kidding, No pie.

The rest of the day you are required to juice and I know how lazy I can be, especially when I’m in full victim mode, like during a cleanse, so I went to the grocery store (ours has a juice station in the produce dept.) and bought some juices to go so I’d have no excuse.

The cleanse advocates a healthy lunch of fish or a lean meat and filling up on tons of fresh veggies and fruit. My husband was great about that especially since the dinner of a protein shake loomed large for him.

Me, not so much. Once I get in full deprivation mode I tend to run with it in a religious pilgrim kind of way. I swing to an unhealthy extreme. If I was into pain I’d self-flagellate.

I know, what can I say, I need help.

All week for lunch I switched between albacore tuna out of a can, a baked sweet potato, or raw apples and celery. Instead of juicing them I ate them raw so I had something crunchy to gnaw on in lieu of my own foot.

We were both diligent. Our stick-to-itiveness impressed even me and I have impossibly high standards.
He was dropping weight at a slow and steady rate. I don’t weigh myself (long, violent story. A lot of scales were killed along the way so I won’t tramatize you with the details). Suffice it to say my skinny jeans moved out of the torture device category and back into fashion where they belong.

Then this happened. Nothing. At least not what I expected.

I didn’t get tired. I was filled with energy.
I slept great. I woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (I finally know what the means).
I wasn’t angry about anything. My moods stabilized, giving me a perpetual skip-in-my-step giddiness.
I barely pooped and when I did it smelled like violets (okay, maybe a slight exaggeration).

I figure it even changed our character a little. We didn’t cheat. Not even little. And we kept on going through the weekend which is unheard of for us. It’s just a thing we’ve silently agreed to. We use the weekends, which of course start Friday night and last through Sunday, as neutral territory. Nothing sticks. No fight, no diet, and no freaking cleanse. Duh.

Except for some reason, this one lasted until a baby shower we were both required to attend on Saturday late afternoon.
I was reluctant to eat. I felt tentative around the crudites. Skittish. I eyed the cheese with suspicion.

He piled his plate with fresh bread and a perfectly ripe camembert but passed on the red wine.

Did you hear me? He passed on the red wine!

Who were we?

We were the freshly cleansed. That’s who.

After the smell of the dark, freshly baked bread took up residence inside my nose, hanging drapes and laying carpet, I caved too.

Cut to a couple of hours later with me in the car, prone, my pants unbuttoned, moaning.
I felt like shit. Worse that shit.
I felt like the foul smelling shit on the bottom of shit’s shoe.

When we got home I went straight to bed without my shake. So did he. It was 7:30.

Never in my long and illustrious life as a foodie have I noticed the connection between food and how it affected the way I felt more than I did that day. It made me a believer. A convert. And now a zealot.

I’m currently on a writing vacation with my tribe, happily eating my way through Nashville but I have to confess– I can’t wait to get back to my cleanse and the way it made me feel.

Has this ever happened to you? I need to know.

Carry on,
xox

Hi guys,

There was a time back in 2013 where I would sit up in bed, in the dark, first thing in the morning, and write down whatever came to mind. Often, it was poetry. I’m not kidding. Like, rhymey with a message kinda stuff.

I’d marinate in this early morning creative soup and jot down my notes for about fifteen minutes and then get on with the rest of my completely ordinary life.

I say that because even though they were just this side of craptastic as fine poetry goes, it felt special and rather extraordinary and I regret not doing it anymore. These days you can find me practicing my tandem snoring and drooling routine until the last possible minute because, well, I want to medal when it becomes an Olympic sport AND I write all day. The poetry has a myriad of entry points in twenty-four hours—so why write in the dark?

But lately I’ve been thinking…maybe I should pick up this habit again. Couldn’t hurt, right?

This one made me snort laugh. I hope it has the same effect on you because:
Everything can be reduced to a food analogy.
And nothing too serious is going on here. Just livin’ life.

We all need to remember that!

Carry on,
xox

Whilst sitting and lamenting that your life is in shreds,
Tis no faux pas, there’s been no flaw,
Even though you’re filled with dread.

Get up, and make coleslaw instead.

The Universe may leave you for dead,
Life thrown it up in the air, water to tread,
You keep ruminating, running it through your head,

Don’t do that, make coleslaw instead.

You can take lemons and make lemonade,
Or you can find problems that sour your day,
The choices are easy when acceptance is present.

Get up and make coleslaw instead!

I should be ashamed I love these things. But I’m not.

Not really. I suppose I should be because they’re not the usual suspects like spring in Paris, babies and puppies but hey, how boring would that be? We all love those things.

No, these are specific to my twisted brain. What I feel the least bit of a tinge of shame over is the ferocity with which I love these things. It’s the way I love them. The love is mad and runs deep. So, even though I know you weren’t wondering, without further ado, here they are:

1. Grilled cheese sandwiches. And not just any grilled cheese sandwich. It has to be just so. The trick is to use nice, thick bread and then butter and grill both sides. If that much butter bothers you order a salad instead and by-the-way, I don’t think we can be friends.
2. Words. Well, certain words like, pomplemousse, inert, tiddlywinks and hippopotamuses. I like the way they make my mouth feel when I say them.
3. Homemade croutons. Made from stale sourdough or better yet, brioche bread.
4. False eyelashes. (No secret there.)
5. The very rare natural redhead with brown eyes. My niece is one and people literally fall all over themselves staring at her hair. I had blue eyes (still do) when my hair was dyed red—so yeah, I was batting zero for two.
6. Pink champagne. Does this need an explanation? It shouldn’t. It’s magic.
7. Straws in my drinks. No umbrellas and please, no plastic monkeys (okay, just one).
8. Hikes with trees. Like a forest hike, not those dirt trails where there’s no shade and the terrain resembles Death Valley.
9. Science Fiction ANYTHING. Movie, book, TV show, it doesn’t matter.  I repeatedly tell my husband that in my next life I’m coming back as an astronaut/archeologist/deep space explorer. I’m pretty sure that won’t be for a while since I don’t want anything to do with our current space program. I want to be on a ship with gravity. Where I can run around, not need money and replicate whatever my little space exploring heart desires. So, see ya in 3033.
10. The chinese chicken salad at Joan’s on Third. There is only one that is better. My mom’s. Hi mom.
11. Jeans. Don’t you love jeans? I just love that I live in a day and age where pantyhose are no longer required and if they’re not faded and you wear them with a black jacket and nice shoes, you can get away with jeans almost anywhere. Except maybe a funeral. Wear a black dress or real pants to a funeral. Show some respect.
12. The chocolate pie my friend Ginger made for my birthday. ( Are you sensing my love affair with food?) She made two and we had a least one piece a day for my entire stay. I didn’t ask for the recipe because I’d like to fit in one airline seat the next time I fly.
13. Flashmobs. I will scream and cry if I ever see one in person. They make me crazy! You can surprise me with one anytime.
14. Nora Ephron movies. My favorite is You’ve Got Mail, but I also adore Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Michael, Silkwood, Julie And Julia and…

So…what do you love with a fiery intensity that you might never admit except here, as an anonymous reader in front of tens of  my other readers?

Carry on,
xox

This is reprise from last year that my friends still quote back to me. Ha!
Carry on,
xox

Hey guys,
Here’s a holiday favorite that this year I’ve been able to put on the Huffington Post.
Take a look. If you know him you’re going to smile and if you don’t, well, I think you’ll want to.

The big French guy who stole my heart — and then hijacked my favorite meal!
Cheers!
PS. REAL men use pink rubber oven mitts! Bam!
xox

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/how-my-french-husband-hij_b_8547286.html