07 03 2021

The day before a food event where I’m traveling the next day, I’ll start preparing dishes to bring, that way my last minute to do’s and forgotten things won’t require the host’s oven or detract from their kitchen space. This morning I picked up some groceries, as I hadn’t gotten to shop for a couple weeks and have been working off existing food. As I assess what I had on my grocery list, I’m not keto anymore, not in the method of prescribing to the high fat to lower carb / protein ratio.

I feel like I’d been doing lazy keto as a sort of way to impart carbs and plant fiber back into my diet, and also I am experiencing weight loss by calorie/meal tracking through Noom. I’ll still continue to eat no/low sugar and use keto flour when baking and eat fewer processed carbs as a general guideline, as those principles were key in preventing spikes in my blood sugar that led to an unending habit of mindless snacking to keep up with the hunger pang caused by that sugar crash. I feel more in control of eating at this moment in time, and I’m excited to get to eat a wider variety of foods.

The idea of fiber acting as a rolled up ball of bubble gum and the pieces of lint and dust bunnies on a floor as cholesterol, that fiber bubble gum is able to stick itself to the cholesterol as it rolls across the floor and remove LDL / HDL from my system, which I’m excited to get to work on. As a result of the high fats in my diet over the past year, my most recent blood work revealed higher than normal cholesterol, which is another bigger reason why I’m moving away from a higher fat diet.

For this weekend’s feast, I made pickles. My best friend gave me the recipe and I find that adding different herbs is a fun experiment. This time I used rosemary sprigs with:

2 Tbsp Swerve granulated white sugar

grated ginger

rice vinegar w sesame seeds

pickling cucumbers

water

I let them set a day in advance and eat them within 3 days.

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11/21/2020

Last night a friend came over for a get together. It was a relief to get to visit for a bit. This was the second time we’ve seen each other during covid times and the first time we’d seen each other since our birthdays. Earlier on in the day I was feeling bakeful so I put together a lasagna in three layers:

1. Instead of pasta I sliced thin steaks of cabbage
2. a layer of pasta sauce mixed with the rest of the mushrooms sliced with a few chopped cloves of garlic
3. the layer of cheese is a container of ricotta and a bag of three cheese blend: parmigiana Reggiani, asiago, and parmesean (usually I’d add an egg, but did not have any)

Cooked in a pyrex casserole dish on 350 degrees F for an hour covered with tin foil.

After the hour, I uncovered the dish and sprinkled some thin slivers of asiago and cooked it for 15 a final minutes to let the cheese melt and get crusty over the top

When my friend came over, we had parm crisps (zero carb cheese chips), green olives, dill pickles, caramelized figs, cheese roll, salami, pepperoni, prosciutto. We packed up the food and she microwaved a poblano bowl that she brought with her. After that, I offered her the lasagna. I was not expecting her to try it, but was so pleased when she cleaned her plate, which is high praise.

This morning, I opened the card that my friend left me. I opened it not expecting much. I had been standing with her in the parking lot of my place as she penned it before she got in her car to leave.

Earlier on that night we had been talking about advanced directives and death, and how hard it is for people to talk about death. Two summers ago when my aunts and uncles came to visit, I sobbed trying to explain how I wouldn’t want a funeral, wouldn’t want to be buried. How can you feel so bold but then not be able to say it out loud?

My friend would want a Viking funeral, and she laughed as she spoke it. “Send me out to the ocean.” And we’d shoot a burning arrow, and then you’d burn. In the instance she wouldn’t be able to enjoy life or live without medical assistance, she would want to go. She is an only child with no family and no children of her own, so she does not owe anyone anything. I spoke up and said she owes me something, and she would owe her friends something. Yea this would be if something changed and I wasn’t able to live life the way I wanted. She said she has always lived her life as a heathen, as she has made different choices in her life than others.

On the envelope she drew a fake stamp, fake postal markings with a future year on it.