Vows:

I realized today that I've been writing for this blog, and saving drafts, wimping out, writing recipes without sharing for the past year. Noone is following this blog, and yet I'm scared lest anyone drop by! I know we're all afraid to put ourselves out there, but this is the year the change happens. I've got a nasty habit of self-sabotage , and it ends here and now. Not for invisible nonexistant readers, for me. So, I'm going to turn this into a bit of a food diary: I'll post starchy meaty recipes that I make for my guy, and I'll post meat-free gluten -free experiments I make for myself--both the good ones and the gawdawfuls. Heh.

I've been experimenting with food for awhile now. I became fully vegetarian when I was 17--18, which makes this year my vegetarian "legal age"! Atww, I should treat my good habit to a whiskey; you know, for balance! I've known for awhile that bread and pasta made me feel.. well.. not good.  Girlfriend in a Carb Coma was the running joke in our house apartment. . . until the joke lost it's humor this year. I fell really ill in January, much more ill than I realized at the time--partly because it came on slowly, and partly because I got frequent migraines at that time, which gives a different perspective to pain.  Long story short, I either have a severe gluten intollerance or celiac disease. I don't know because I have no health insurance, and the local free clinic gave me a 30 day wait. At that time I was sleeping about 22 hours a day and acting like a zombie the rest of the time.. 2 months with 6 days off from migraines, joint pain that made me walk like I had osteoporosis, a spleen so swollen you could see it, and that's not even talking about my stomach issues, which all boiled down to one thing: I was suffering from malnutrition because I was unable to absorb fat.

In the past 8 months, every 2 or 3 months my body goes through another "flush", I get wild mood and temperature swings, migrains, fatigue, weakness, in/somnia issues, and when it's over, my belly's about an inch smaller yet again. The first 2 weeks left me with 5 pounds gone. Since then I've lost no weight and dropped about 4 pant sizes. Not only am I not sensitive to milk/bananas/avocados anymore, I've been craving and eating healthy fat like crazy. Obnoxious amounts of eggs.  At first I just thought I was craving the protein, but  now I realize it was the fat soluable vitamins in the yolk-- ADEK-- that my body was previously unable to absorb (let's just say the symptoms that revealed that are..ugly) & now was loudly demanding!!

I literally feel better about myself and the world all of the time, every day, even when I'm bummed out that it's difficult to eat out at restaurants, even when I can't try certain new ice creams anymore.. even when I desperately miss the smell of freshly baked crusty bread!!!   And i do, I really really do miss those little things.   So I'm going to stop worrying about what others think, and stop being lazy and write down the new and old foods I love, the recipes I've made that others love, and I'm going to live by my favorite french authoress : 


Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard. " Helene Cixous,  Laugh of the Medusa 

oh! How delicious! In looking for that quote, I stumbled upon the more-timely-yet writer's command

"And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. I know why you haven't written. (And why I didn't write before the age of 27.) Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, it's reserved for the great - that is, for great "men"; and it's "silly". Besides, you've writtena little, but in secret. And it wasn't good, because it was secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn't go all thw way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension of it, just to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty - so as to be forgiven; to forget, to bury it until next time.

Write, let no one hold you back, let nothing stop you: not man; not the imbecilic capitalist machinery, in which the publishing houses are the crafty, obsequious relayers of imperatives handed down by an economy that works against us and off our backs; not yourself"

Yes, ma'am!  For me, for you.. I will, from this day henceforth, write myself, my body, breath, speech, myself.