what I wrote to a friend who scoffed at my cooking

Hi D,

Consider this. My diet = my cooking, so I use the terms interchangeably. I know my cooking is A-rated because my bloodwork was perfect, too, just like yours. The culinary community wants people to think that there's only one right way to do things and that their cooking is "best" for everybody just because it's the most popular in restaurants. But in fact, if one's diet is right for him, it doesn't matter how popular it would be in a restaurant. It's the best cooking he can do.

Consider what I'm trying to do with things like dry-roasted veggies, plain steamed legumes, coarse chopped raw root, al-dente spaghetti, fibrous, un-sweet bakes, mild-tasting ice cream without too much chocolate and stuff, oatmeal that's just cooked for 30 seconds and not at all soft -- I'm trying to get the nutrition my body needs and avoid the stuff it doesn't need. For example, al dente spaghetti the way I fix it doesn't need to be strained because the water boils off. This helps the sphaghetti retain valuable water-soluble nutrients such as some vitamins and all minerals. To reiterate: straining the spaghetti is bad (for me.)

If a dish is good for me, I quickly learn to love the taste. Function over form. I toss berries, fish, chunky cheese and big chunks of raw garlic in a salad, and I seldom do any dressing. When I do dressing it's very little -- a spoonful versus those big tubs they serve in restaurants. I learn to love the taste because I get a good blend of aminos without the annoying overdose of fat...

That's right. There's nothing wrong with a little fat, but I have my preferred foods for fat (cheese, nuts...) and I can pretty much tell when I've had too much. My face is broken out and I haven't been hungry at all once since early Wednesday morning. I'm pretty sure I've had too much of the good thing that is dietary fat. So I can't eat "their" way for days on end.

Some dishes I make have mass appeal (turkey burgers, baked salmon w/ asparagus...) but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to cook the best I can, which means making the best diet for me, not "them." And I think I have had it together for eons in that department. Just ask my nurse practitioner.

--D.

Letter to Mikulski

I just got an email from some fringe hack that said, "The great currency collapse has begun." Oh, he wishes. Can't these guys be tried for treason??

(To make my own stand clear, I understand Keynsian economics, so I naturally approve of stimulus and don't mind a little healthy inflation, especially when it's about to help us pay off all debts public and private. What I hate is people getting alarmist about sound economic measures and trying to undermine faith in the currency.)

Brain Dump

Oh, man. Another cold day in April. April and May can be a real drag this way. You want it to be warm. You're expecting it to be warm any time. But the warm days could end up being few and far between. A girl in my grammar school class pointed that out back in the day. Another thing that sucks about spring is afternoons that are briefly warm or almost warm, followed by cold evenings, nights and mornings, so that you get four hours of nice weather and 20 hours of chill.

I made a huge to-do list and ... suffice it to say I have a lot to do today. I do mind the Sabbath, but healing is lawful on the sabbath, and healing is what I'm doing. My mother is healed when I clean the house and such. She's rather frantic when I don't.

A craving for potatoes has set in. Am I experiencing a mineral shortfall of some kind?

If you're reading this you're probably wondering where the good stuff is. There are some nuggets in every blog, and mine is no exception. Today I'm going through and adding the keyword "nugget" to everything I think might interest strangers in "I Can't Complain." Well, OK, maybe not today. Today is busy enough as is...

I want to bake some fish and potatoes, clean the stove top, finish mopping, vacuum, empty the dishwasher (an under-used dishwasher-- we do a lot of dishes by hand around here;)put on some laundry, get medicine from Target, round up some supplies, put out the compost and take down my phone messages.

Fruit, nuts and cereal for brunch was probably not the best idea. I wish I had had more protein.

Last night I stayed awake until 4:00, stuck in that strange dynamic where I'm trying to wind down while also trying to steel myself up for various nighttime chores, while somehow the list of chores keeps getting longer.

Now I crave potatoes and cottage cheese. I guess this really is a mineral thing.

I have a friend who wants me to come back to Pennsylvania to visit, another who wants me to come back to Seattle to visit, and one who wants me to accompany him to Greece for a couple of weeks next year or whenever it works out. The Greece thing will have to wait until I have the money to support myself abroad for two weeks. The person who invited me is not the type I would want to have in charge of all my needs for two weeks (although that is what he offered.) I know from hanging out with him that if I get thirsty or cold, he doesn't always want to help out. That's something I can deal with if I'm close enough to home turf or if I have a few bucks in my pocket. A weekend at the beach would be worth hazarding. But half a month abroad is out of the question until I can stand on my own two feet.

The Pennsylvania thing is always doable. I go home to Pennsylvania every other week, so why not stop by and hang out with a good buddy?

It is Anwar who wants me to go to Seattle. Right now I can't see leaving my family with all my problems while I take off for a holiday. But eventually it would be nice to go back, hang out, meet his wife and child.

Tazo Organic Iced Green (green tea)

This tastes terrible! I can't believe I used to enjoy this. 18 grams of carbohydrates per serving = 36 grams of carbohydrates per bottle. That's got to have a negative impact on taste. It's irritating to have my taste-buds overstimulated with sweet taste. I just had my first Tazo Organic Iced Green in about a year, and probably my last ever.

One Foot in Front of the Other

The day is waxing. I need to get a plan. What do I have to do? I have to get the laundry done, take the dogs to the vet, purchase my supplies and go to Annapolis. What do I do first? Well, after cleaning myself up it would make sense to start with the laundry. Start. Just start. Soon. Well, I also have to do some research on the stuff I want. I want that blackout hat with the SPF 50. Since I don't tolerate sunscreen very well, the hat is my last chance to be able to help my mother with her garden design business. I've been getting some bad exposure out there.

Brain Dump

This is just an exercise in getting my head together. What do I think or feel? What do I need to do in the near future? ...

I feel tired. Maybe it's my fault for not exercising enough in general. (Still, I do exercise some. I walk the dogs and all.) I'm sure I'm not anemic. Sure it's not Epstein-Barr. I'm still on the rag; that could have something to do with it.

Shopping... Online: I want to get a blackout hat (SPF 50, because I can't seem to tolerate sunscreen,) a cob construction handbook, and some Medifast shakes. Towards that end I should research Medifast -- are the vitamins therein cold processed for efficacy?

Yeah, I've decided to continue losing weight. At a top weight of 170 lbs a year and a half ago, I decided to lose about 35 lbs. I lost 25 and stabilized over the winter, gaining back only 1 or 2 lbs. Now I want to lose the other 10. It's Medifast time. Time to stop mucking around fixing food and consuming substantial meals so as to justify the time I spend preparing them. I want to forget about food more often but still get my proper nutrition. Medifast. Can't be beat.

Lots of people are popping up and getting on TV and saying, "I got skinny. You can too. Being older is no excuse." How empowering. I thank them. Now the people who said older people should be content to be fat can sit down and shut up because they've been squarely reproved. Thank you, Valerie et al.


About my friend who gave me the key to his house -- It's really nice that somebody likes me that much. I should make an effort to be especially nice to him.


Man, how can I down 20 ounces of coffee and 12 ounces of yerba mate / tea mix and still be so laid back and sleepy!

Tuesday I'm going to the census place to take the census. Why there and not at home? 'Cuz I don't think my sister is going to enter my information on the form that was mailed to our house. She's made it pretty clear that she wouldn't, without actually saying as much.

If I get up to speed tonight I want to do some of my freelance writing. Oh, good luck.

Pursuant to Previous Post

The friend I mentioned in the previous post offered me an alternative perspective on people misreading one another which encouraged me to stick it out and keep the key. I'm not happy about people making up stuff about one another, mind you. And I believe he reassured me that I was never caught doing it. At least I've got that. I think the world would be a better place without the prejudice but a micrometer of tolerance is all I need to hang in there just now.

In that substantial conversation (which I hope I will get a chance to write more about) he mentioned that he was at a crossroads in his life and that he believed I was too. "How could you not be?" (How could anybody not be, at any time?) I suppose people are up for trying something a little differently every now and then. So I'm going to try to get in on this advertising deal he has. If I could submit bids for the kind of work I want to do, my livelihood could really come up to snuff. I need that extreme home makeover before the roof caves in, after all.

Now, what could he have been talking about? When you're at a crossroads you want to abandon your old direction. Is he criticizing my whole trajectory here? No trajectory changes will take place unless it's for the sake of my relationship with God. Why would I invest the aeons in my current pattern if only to abandon them at length for who knows what worldly reason. All I want is some dough to fix the house with and some reassurance that I'm saved. And here is Easter. I should pray for the reassurance and maybe also pray for the money. But I can try new tricks in pursuit of money. I've got to get in on that advertising deal...

Prejudice

Did you ever have the experience of someone thinking something bad about you without any hard evidence? That's one of the many ugly heads of prejudice, and it's hard to fight, because people who make lame assumptions have no idea they're doing it. How can they possibly stop when they don't even know they're doing it? If someone be capable of inventing the truth, good luck trying to get through to him.

A friend of mine revealed a prejudice lately. To wit, he thinks I must necessarily suck at office work because I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. Why he chose office work and not actuarial statistics, teaching, or janitorial work I'll never know. In fact, I've held my own in the office for many years despite the difficulties posed by my disorder. (This probably wasn't the best thing I could have done for my health, but for what it's worth I did it.) I proved myself to no avail, however, because prejudice lives on.

It got me thinking in two different directions. On the one hand, it probably isn't healthy for me to spend too much time with people who show this particular prejudice. And that really sucks because I've already promised to accompany this person to Church for Easter and model for his art project. A few days ago he gave me the key to his house. What can I possibly say when I hand it back to him? I'm hopelessly enmeshed for the time being. I need to find a way to painlessly extract myself and grow away from the man, just for my own emotional well-being.

On the other hand, I was thinking about the nature of impediments versus limitations. Anyone familiar with the dynamics of iterative equations knows that they're not the same thing. You can take a detour or march through mud and still reach your destination. If you run full bore or manage some other parameter(s) you could even make good time! I was thinking about people who may have sacrificed their best destinies to dispel prejudice -- the speech-impaired people who became news anchors, for example. As I walked down the street sobbing, I imagined what I hoped such a person would say to someone who asked, "How could you do this to us? I read your ideas and you could have done our community a lot of good if you had followed them and brought them to fruition. Instead you chose the most challenging route available to you, becoming a one-legged running champion." I hope the person would say that he had sacrificed his ideas and aptitudes for the sake of every disabled person in the world (including the nice lady writing this story,) so that prejudice would be overcome.