Whole 30 Day 5, the stumble

Call it a failing, but I think social grace is important. Important enough that I've been known to drink well water in rural Ghana when it was offered to me by a family that had nothing else to offer. Important enough that today I accepted honey-sweetened tea and a slice of freezer-case torte from someone newly-arrived who provided them as a gesture of hospitality in the hopes of founding a friendship.

I didn't feel well afterwards, and I still don't, but I'd probably feel worse if I'd refused the food.

Whole 30 Day 4

I'm curious to know if I'm having die-off symptoms or if I'm just training to be an old fart, but man am I noticing a smorgasbord of symptoms!

Whole 30 Day 3

I saw in the Saturday flyer avalanche that a grocery store I don't usually frequent will have piglet belly this week. Intriguing. Then I stumbled over this post about brining your own uncured bacon. Serendipity is a funny thing; now I have to go get some of that piglet belly to try this out! I`ve missed bacon since leaving Anglo culture - there are more than enough pork alternatives in Germany, of course, but food is a primal thing and I was raised with bacon, not schnitzel.

Whole 30 Day 2

My child, at 2 years, 1 month and 3 weeks of age, spontaneously told me she loved me last night! Parenting is the only relationship where you'd tolerate being physically stressed, your life inverted and sleep deprived, and hang around for more than two years before you get that big high. Or is it? How's your relationship with your body lately?

Whole 30 Day 1

My blogging time is while A is sleeping after lunch, so all daily menus will be dinner-breakfast-lunch. As Cheeseslave recently pointed out, families don't tend to appreciate it when dinner is held/cooled off so photos can be taken. I also don't want to be judged on my presentation, so you'll have to imagine what it all looks like!

Whole 30

I just found a food challenge on someone else's blog that, for once, looks interesting to me. Maybe signing up for something with a large following (which contributes support and - more importantly - tips and recipes) will keep me on this d@mned bandwagon. Maybe a full-coloured banner in my sidebar will intrigue others to join up so we can support each other. I've GOT to kick the yeasties to the curb, and that means NO grains, NO starch, NO milk. A year ago I would have given them up in the reverse order, but these days I love my SOLE cheese. What's stopping you from giving the Whole 30 diet re-boot a go?

Giving our power away

I've noticed a mini-trend in posts around the blog trapline lately. Maybe it's an end-of-winter rally against apathy, or maybe a reaction to whining about failed New Years resolutions. Either way, the idea of taking back responsibility for our choices and regaining the power that this confers is cropping up here and there like croci, and seems to respond to recent events in my life too.

Food freak

I've always been rather medicine-wary. I grew up in a family where pill-popping was scorned, and I've always felt that pharmacological intervention was emergency intervention.

for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion

Some of you will be aware that my father-in-law was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer immediately before Christmas. He is a determined man, and he is determined that allopathic medicine will provide his only treatment. Allopathic medicine gives him unimaginably long odds of seeing another Christmas.

Recipe execution fail - sole in walnut crumb

I've been having a run of recipe fails this week. It's getting discouraging, I must say. Partway through prepping macarons yesterday the egg whites wouldn't whip. They just went all glossy goopy and stayed that way, no matter what I did. I can honestly say I've never seen that before. But with the oven preheated and a toddler expecting cookies any second, plus the fact that I was making the damned things to use up 8 egg whites I had leftover after making this molasses custard, I just dumped them in and hoped for the best. Bad move.

In the beginning

Post Number One; how momentous. Or not, considering that I'm writing to myself.