The Luckiest

"There's nothing like poverty to get you into Heaven. They got a lot of wine and fish up there, and the bread is unleavened. They got a lot of ears that heard a whip go crack, lots of missing toes and fingers and scars upon their backs. Daddy's been working too much for days and days. He doesn't eat. He never says much but I think this time it's got him beat. It isn't that he isn't strong or kind or clever. Your daddy's poor today and he will be poor forever."
-Patty Griffin, A Poor Man's House.

Tucked cozily into a straight-backed bar stool at a hand crafted wooden counter, I scribbled down words inspired by a glorious winter walk while I waited eagerly for the waitress to round the corner with my morning meal at The Village Bakery last Sunday morning. After spending an hour sleepily lulling about a wooded, creek guided trail through dusty snow that glistened up the rays of a rare January sunrise, the butter yellow walls and warming glow fueled by happy diners and wall ovens were more than welcomed. While defrosting my left hand around the comforting curvature of a red mug full of Snowville swirled, organic coffee, my right hand was wielding it's usual black ink pen, writing about love. It is romantic to me to hearken the voices of the transcendentalists, tread out into nature and hear the words for myself; inspirational to say the least. While the smell of sharp, melting local cheddar and sizzling scrambling eggs swirled about me I found myself eaves dropping on the loud conversation to my left, interrupting the flow of my day, between a father and his newly minted Bobcat daughter.

"You don't know how lucky you were, kiddo. Trips to Europe, a new car when you turned sixteen, always getting new clothes and handbags."

This comment made by the girl's father came about ten minutes into their conversation about Athens, college-towns, and alleged hippies. It came about five minutes after they discussed how he didn't know how students survived before the uptown appearance of Chipotle. It came just seconds after he said, "When I was a student at the University of Dayton, there was a college nearby called Antioch. That's where all the weirdos went." It was the comment about luck, however, that hit a nerve within me. Until that point, I was able to retreat into my Cancerian shell, turn off the world around me and delve happily, quietly and alone into griddle cakes and my own thoughts. As soon as my ears noted this particular comment, the switches to my analytical nature were tripped, and I wrote in all capital letters on the top of my earlier scribbling: "What makes a life, a person, an experience 'lucky'? What defines 'luck'?"

Within the context of the situation, it was hard for me to digest the fact that this pair of people were sitting in a locally-owned, locally-operated, food conscious cafe, plagued and ridden with people that probably, based on fundamentals and personal codes of ethics, fell into the previously mentioned category of "hippie" and "weirdo." In fact, they were sitting next to me and while I fit nicely into what the man obviously considers an acceptable social appearance, despite my lack of dreadlocks and body odor, I fundamentally agree with many people who self-identify as "hippies." I self-identify as a hippie.

This morning while reading a chapter in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, this weekend scenario began to replay in my mind. In the chapter I was reading, she began to explore the divide between our unofficial American caste system, or rather the classist division of urban and rural. I know into which caste my breakfast neighbors fall. It is the same one into which I fall: the urban middle-class. However, my hippie friends, and my farming friends (many of which claim both those identities) often fall into the socially deemed "lower" of the classes: the rural poor. While the three of us were sitting over pairs of whipped local eggs, handmade biscuits with locally milled flour, and thick, smokey pieces of bacon from a notoriously local family farm, we were actually caught up in the flavors, the texture, the grit of the cause; we were eating food, and food is ensuring a chronic separation of two Americas- the rural and the urban-and more importantly of Americans themselves, more and more each day.

Barbara says of the modern American farming industry...

"...as the years have gone by, as farms have gone out of business, America has given an ever-smaller cut of each food dollar (now less than 19 percent) to its farmers. The psychic divide between rural and urban people is surely a part of the problem. "Eaters must understand," Wendell Berry writes, "that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." Eaters must, he claims, but it sure looks like most eaters don't. If they did, how would we frame the sentence suggested by today's food-buying habits, directed toward today's farmers? "Let them eat dirt" is hardly overstating it. The urban U.S. middle class appears more specifically concerned about exploited Asian factory workers." (pg. 208, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)

America's supposed "upper" classes are, by their food choices, nourishing rural poverty. In a country where patriotism runs high and mighty, where red, white and blue are practically bled from the veins of American citizens, the upper and middle classes are monopolizing against the history and tradition of American family farming; against agriculture, the first and largest industry in America's life story. Every meal we purchase at McDonald's is slowly killing one family farmer after another, turning the rural poor into the untouchables. Barbara illustrates how this is happening in a passage about corporate grocery stores purchasing locally grown, organic tomatoes in mid-August in rural Appalachia:

"...when the farmers were finally bringing in these tomatoes by the truckload and hoping for a decent payout, some grocery buyers backtracked. "Not this week," one store offered without warning, and then another. Not the next week either, nor the next. A tomato is not a thing that can be put on hold. Mountains of ripe fruits piled up behind the packing house and turned to orange sludge, swarming with clouds of fruit flies. These tomatoes were perfect, and buyers were hungry. Agreements had been made. But pallets of organic tomatoes from California had begun coming in just a few dollars cheaper. It's hard to believe, given the amount of truck fuel involved, but transportation is tax-deductible for the corporations, so we taxpayers paid for that shipping. The California growers only needed the economics of scale on their side, a cheap army of pickers, and customers who would reliably opt for the lower price." (pg. 211, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life)

Buying organic produce in the grocery store is certainly taking a step in the right direction as far as your health is concerned, but where your community is concerned, buying locally produced goods becomes the determining factor between a home-cooked meal and a trip to the soup kitchen for many family farmers.

It is not that the rural poor wish to become the urban middle-class. After stewing over the idea of luck, and what it means to be lucky for some time, as well as reading this particular chapter of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life, I believe you'd find that the rural poor consider themselves lucky, and that luck is defined and determined solely on our rearing and raising. One does not need trips to Europe, new clothes, or handbags to be "lucky." One doesn't need a new car or any of the other socially deemed "privileged" experiences to consider them self "lucky." That notion of "lucky" exists only in the minds of those who also consider themselves the "have mores," who recognize their status as middle, or upper-class. If I asked my friends who own, work and tend a dairy farm, whose milk is locally processed into half-gallons, into cream, into cheese and yogurt whether or not they felt "lucky," I imagine their answer would involve something along the lines of "We feel lucky every day that we wake-up with our feet on the ground and our livelihood still living." I believe those who we categorize as the "rural poor," (a category which includes many American family farmers) in fact think of themselves simply as being who they are, and every day that they can continue to be who they are, they find themselves steeped in the wealth of luck.

I wish that every Ohio University student who finds them self to be of the middle and upper class, thrown suddenly into rural Southeastern Ohio, who found them self out for breakfast with their folks that Sunday morning of the annual "Parents Weekend," would have eaten at The Village Bakery. If all of us who "have more," could spend our "more," on locally produced food products, it'd be the greatest oath to our nation we could take, it would be an act of great patriotism. We're Americans, our country was carved by plow, driven by tractor and agriculture fed the passing of knowledge, the building of family, the fellowship of community. Even though we also have an industrial, corporate history, we must never forget that even within those contexts we are still a nation of individuals. Ford doesn't pay the bills of the assembly line worker in it's Detroit plant We do. We pay that worker. We're the consumers, and we ought to be smart, caring, compassionate consumers.

Visit a Farmer's Market, buy a locally produced jam, join a CSA, buy locally raised meat once a week, buy eggs from the farm up the road, buy local honey, eat local apples, use pure maple syrup tapped from trees just miles from your house, find a locally owned and operated bakery, and most importantly, if you find yourself in a position that allows you to do any of those things, then count yourself as the luckiest.

(One final note, because sometimes I can't help myself: If you're one of those Americans who is so concerned about illegal immigration from Mexico, if you want to build the fence, if you so desperately want to keep "them" out, then you should probably stop buying produce from the grocery store. You're ensuring that "those people," have a job. Someone has to pick those cucumbers for less than minimum wage, then they have to be shipped to where you live using your tax dollars, in order for you to buy them for next to nothing. Just saying.)

Vittorio's Boun Appetito

Home. Every once in awhile it takes a little more than the physical place itself to make that word resonate within me; to transform it from a word to a feeling, a quiet vibration that hums through my soul and bones. While I spent two days humbled by the presence of the place I call "home," it wasn't until I found myself seated at a familiar table in a restaurant I've been intimately acquainted with for years, did I find myself glowing, singing softly the intensity of "home."

Cleveland will always be my home. My knowledge of the world through the wide lens of Northeastern Ohio is like graffiti on the walls of my heart. The gritty chip of a city deemed nationally miserable, regionally depressed, and locally beloved sits proudly on my shoulder. There is so much more to Cleveland than gray clouds, hard winters and seemingly bitter people. Like every other city in America, Cleveland has a living, breathing culture that penetrates it's city blocks, stretching roots out to the suburbs, and implanting itself in those of us lucky enough to call ourselves "Clevelanders."

There was a time in it's history when Cleveland was a booming industrial center. The now almost century old Terminal Tower shined bright, new, and clean over a city situated perfectly for shipping and trading by sea and land. Cleveland was a destination for domestic and international immigrants alike. Like Detroit, it was a temptation for the gleaming, weary eyes of tired, poor Appalachian farmers looking for better, more productive ways to provide for their families. And like every other booming American city, Cleveland was the recipient of an influx of international immigrants looking for the same things. My Italian grandfather's appreciation of his life in America is something I will never forget. It fuels my patriotism, and further entrenches my heavy cultural ties, knotted to Italy and Slovenia forever.

My grandfather wasn't the only Italian immigrant to call Cleveland home. According to Ohio History Central...

"In 1870, only thirty-five Italian immigrants resided in Cleveland. By 1920, their numbers had surged to more than twenty thousand people. Most of these immigrants found low-paying jobs in factories, as day laborers, or as waiters, waitresses, and cooks in restaurants. Immigrants who were more successful established businesses that supplied their fellow migrants with traditional Italian products or began their own clothing or construction companies. In Cleveland, the Italian immigrants tended to settle in their own communities, preferring to live among people who shared similar cultural beliefs and spoke the same language as they did. By the late 1800s, most Italian immigrants in Cleveland had settled in two neighborhoods nicknamed Big Italy and Little Italy. Most of these immigrants were followers of the Roman Catholic Church."

They came in droves. For me, this meant not only my existence as a human being, but also my roots forming and growing in a city steeped in cultural diversity. It is hard for me to view the world through lenses that aren't tinted with that diversity. My entire understanding of my cultural identity is based on an immigration culture that helped create, paint, and write the majestic city from which I proudly hail. This is precisely why "home" is so much more to me than just the house where my parents live, more than just my parents themselves.

One of the communities where Italian people settled in the early twentieth century was the community where I grew up. An Eastside suburb of Cleveland, Wickliffe was an ideal place for many of these immigrants to settle. It was in perfect proximity to many different employment opportunities, it was accessible to Cleveland by street car, and it was a small, tight knit place with good public schools and promises of a beautiful American life. My mother's family settled there along with several other families from close, similar communities in Italy. Lisa Salotto, the owner of Vittorio's Buon Appetito restaurant in Wickliffe, is from one of those other families. Our familial histories have been intertwined for more than one generation now, and that connection is evident every time I sit down at a table in the utter perfection that is the presence and energy of her Italian restaurant.

This past Saturday night my parents, Uncle and I enjoyed a soul nourishing Italian dining experience at Lisa's charming restaurant. Two dining rooms are dimly lit by sconces, and columns wrapped with glittering strands of tiny clear bulbs. The cozy mocha walls warmly reflect the simple elegance of stark white table cloths and glasses of swirled, breathing red wine. A play list of Italian-American favorites, highlighted by the Rat Pack was just barely audible, as background mood music ought to be, so that conversation can flow, engage, and rise to fill and warm a room. The words spoken at our table over tenderly sweet, flour dusted homemade rolls and a dish of pungent aromatics soaking in pungently smooth olive oil were shared with love, as nothing else can result from such surroundings.


The food at Vittorio's is picturesque, and unlike the cover of Food & Wine or Gourmet Magazine, it's actually there in front of you filling each of your senses with something uniquely Italian-American. I ordered a bowl of what I feel to be, by far, the best Italian Wedding soup I've ever eaten. There is nothing superior to the fullness of the broth, the juicy pieces of chicken, tiny quaintly spiced meatballs and a handful of al dente pastina. This is the soup I want to be fed with care by someone who loves me greatly when I am sick, covers pulled up to my waist, sitting up in bed with a runny nose; it is medicinal.


I followed that by ordering Eggplant Roulades as my entree. Wafer thin slices of grill-marked, smoky eggplant doused in oil and herbs found themselves wrapped around rich, creamy, salty Italian cheeses and baked happily on a bed of nothing less than ancestral marinara. A glass of Merlot and the opportunity to look into the eyes of three people who love me unconditionally, to make conversation with them and share a few moments sharing our lives, and my soul found itself humming the sounds of home.


If you find yourself on the Eastside of Cleveland and you're craving just such an experience, a plate of Vittorio's pork parmigiana, a glass of wine, or just the feeling of being at home, then I highly recommend you step into Vittorio's for a round or two of Frank Sinatra and good old fashioned love, done Italian-American style. Buon Appetito. Enjoy.

100 Miles or More: Part Two

Temptation is the furthest thing from a simple joy. Temptation cannot exist without consequence. While not all consequences are bad, without careful thought and patience they will be. We are undoubtedly the writers of our own sagas, the wielders of pens that scribble out the narratives of our daily lives, we are creators. We must create good consequences for ourselves. When I found myself sitting down to write this next chapter of my own story, I found myself contemplating temptation and consequence existing as a cause. I have never faced temptation without seeing the bad consequences and creating the good shortly after. Grappling with temptation has been a cause for me, and where there is a cause of something there exists an effect and for me, a subsequent solution.

McDonald’s would like you to think that temptation is just a simple joy. I have been so bothered recently by their latest ad campaign for their chicken nuggets. A ridiculously good marching band drops from formation, one by one, tempted by bags and bags of McDonald’s chicken nuggets. We are in an economic recession, and we’re retreating to simple, to basic, to the uncluttered. We are retreating to joy as a source of pleasure, rather than the pleasure money used to buy for us. McDonald’s knows this, and they want you to believe that the temptation you feel at the sight or smell of a box of chicken nuggets is a simple joy. Not, of course, that the food itself is a simple joy, because even the advertising executives at McDonald’s know that is so far from reality they couldn’t sell it in a ad, but rather the temptation of the aroma of day old grease and manufactured, frozen pieces of batter-slathered chicken chunks. Temptation is the name of the game when it comes to America’s relationship with food. We are a country of excess, where we can eat almost anything we want, anytime, and yet we still need to be tempted?



Watching this commercial, I cannot help but think of the first days and weeks spent on my journey to improve my health. Like any other great journey, I learned as I went. Lewis and Clark had no idea how many supplies they’d need to head into an uncharted wilderness of unknown expanses. They didn’t know how far they’d go, how long they’d be gone or what they would face. The first few weeks, I imagine, were spent learning how to live, to function and simply exist on their journey. They stumbled and faced uncertainty. They reached for help in order to help themselves. Those first few steps are precarious and can transform the feet, yards or miles that lay ahead of you. Temptation dwells in my shadow, just where the hue turns to black and I can feel its presence close to me. It has always been and will always be there. I spent those first few weeks learning that I cannot face what I cannot see. I could not outwit what I did not understand.

I had lost seven pounds during the course of Lent in 2009. That Easter Sunday was transfiguring for me. While I certainly enjoyed the cakes and pastries of my family’s traditional celebration, I saw them in a new light. I was exalted for the first time, out of a place where I felt powerless over my health and my body, and raised to a place where I could see myself more objectively. Those weeks of keeping my Lenten promise had proven to me that I not only had control over my body, but they proved to me that I wasn’t treating it well. It was made absolutely clear to me that the simple joy I found in decadent sweets was disconnected from my body’s actual physical experience of nourishment from them. My body did not enjoy them, my brain did. Just like the gender roles I’d spent so many hours reading about and studying in college, my affection for dessert was nothing more than social, cultural construction, as was my guilt over eating it.

I had spent those first few weeks beginning to tear down the siding, breaking out the windows and removing the shingles of the building that represented my desire for and the satisfaction I derived from certain foods. I realized that perhaps all of my life I’d been told that dessert is at once a temptation, a source of privilege, and therefore something I should desire. The place held by dessert in our culture is more than evident in the language that surrounds it. Marie Antoinette told angry, impoverished, starving French peasants to eat cake when there was no bread. Dessert is saved for last, because we are led to believe it is the best part of the meal; that is has more value than the other portions of the meal which serve only a nutritional purpose. Stressed is desserts spelled backward, don’t you know? Dessert after every meal is still seen as a measure of wealth, and the lack of it a shameful mark of poverty. I was never eating cake because I needed the sugar for a boost of energy. I was never eating pie because I thought I could use another serving a fruit that day. I never ate one or two cookies for a quick snack when my stomach was rumbling. I was eating dessert because my gluttonous American mind believed it to be measurable, as though it added to my substance, my personal value, and paid away some of my anxiety.

I was slowly beginning to learn how what I put into my body correlated with the way my body and mind felt. While my body bears and displays the physical changes I’ve made over the past two years, my mind bore the brunt of the revolution. The construction of guilt is another piece to this puzzle. Our common relationship with food is so far off of what is natural and normal for human beings that we crave what we do not need, then wrecked with guilt for eating it. Guilt, like temptation exists with both good and bad consequences. It has taken me the entirety of my journey to build a healthy relationship with guilt. For those first few weeks, developing this relationship was my constant battle. Walking for fifteen minutes inside my house everyday was a great challenge and I had to develop such a fine tuned sense of guilt that I wouldn’t—no, couldn’t not do it. I had to teeter past the opposite edge of a healthy relationship with guilt, and I had to have the self-control to manage it without falling off the cliff. While most of my friends and family would assure me that it was okay for me to skip a day of walking, or it was okay for me to eat a big piece of pie, I absolutely had to believe that it wasn’t okay…and then I had to keep myself from developing a mental disorder. It is a game to learn, a fine line to walk, and it is far from easy. It is more than just a lesson learned in honing self-discipline. It is actually doing just that—mastering self control.

As the spring of 2009 carried on, as days got warmer and short hikes and walks outside became more accessible, my partner and I would venture outdoors for exercise. I lost another eight pounds by learning my way through temptation and guilt, through self-control and over-indulgence, by eating the foods I’d always eaten, but in moderation instead of excess. We were planning on moving home, settling, working and making a life for ourselves. In May of that year, everything seemed to be soaring. I was drifting on cloud nine, and my spirit was going nowhere but up. What I didn’t see then was the imminence of summer’s thunder, of heat and lightening, of a slowly developing hurricane that would change my life.

The following is a recipe from that time in my life, to give you an idea of the beginning of the changes I’ve made to my diet. While I probably wouldn’t make it this way anymore, I would modify this recipe again to fit my lifestyle now, and I may just do that. This salad was inspired by the grilled chicken salad from Sonic. There was something so delicious at the time about a heavy onion ring atop a bed of greens and grilled chicken coated with melting cheddar cheese. This was my “healthy” re-invention, circa Spring of 2009. While this is probably not the healthiest recipe I’ve ever created, it was what was working for me at the time. Slow and steady wins the race, and this is a vast improvement from the salad from Sonic itself, for my body, my wallet and the local economy. Enjoy.

Revamping our favorite Sonic Salad
Serves 4

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 TBS. good honey mustard
1 TBS. apple cider vinegar
½ TBS. olive oil
Dash of garlic salt
Dash of black pepper
One medium sized head of romaine lettuce, chopped
A hefty handful of mixed mesculin greens
Eight strips of turkey bacon, microwave cooked until crispy
2 hard boiled eggs, peeled and sliced
Two avocados, chunked
One package of grape tomatoes
Two large carrots, shredded
One red bell pepper, finely diced
½ cup of raw almonds
4 oz. shredded, local Cheddar cheese
One recipe of Ellie Krieger’s Oven Baked Onion Rings
Newman’s Own LIGHT Honey Mustard Dressing

1. Start by getting the chicken ready. Heat a large skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. In a small bowl, whisk together the honey mustard, cider vinegar, olive oil, garlic salt and black pepper. Cut the two chicken breasts in half length wise, leaving you with four thin pieces of chicken. Brush them with the honey mustard mixture and cook thoroughly in the heated skillet, turning once, about 5 minutes on each side. Remove to a cutting board to rest and cool slightly, then cut into strips for the salad.
2. In a large bowl, or on a large serving plate, pile the lettuces, bacon, eggs, avocado pieces, grape tomatoes, carrots, pepper, and almonds. Top with the slightly warm chicken, then top the chicken pieces with the shredded cheddar. Then top with the oven-baked onion rings. Serve and dress individually with the dressing.

April of 2009, seven pounds lighter and already happier.

Comfort Food Sunday

Only the most dedicated of local food patrons braved the weather yesterday to stop by the chilly tented Athens Own booth in search of creamy cheddar cheese, hot coffee, a bowl of piping thick oatmeal, or a pound of ground beef certain to be brewed into chili later that afternoon. Snow was swirling down in flittering drifts from the clouds, and being windswept in horizontal sheets across the barren, ice caked parking lot of the Market on State where four lonely vendors withstood the cold to deliver their precious goods to local Athens customers. Needless to say, in my knee high boots and intricately woven pink and purple Thai scarf, I was one of those frost-bitten customers.

As a point of appreciation, and also my desire to be an active member of the vibrant Athens food community, I am slowly but surely working my way to a first name basis with many of the market’s locally famous producers. While some people are excited to meet celebrities of musical or cinematic fame, I am excited to meet the farmers I see at the Athens Farmer’s Market every week, year in and year out. For a long time, it would never have crossed my mind to introduce myself to one of the weathered, smiling faces with which I would have weekly business interactions. In fact, I wouldn’t have introduced myself to anyone and no one introduced themselves to me. Confidence can do wonders for a personality. It is rare lately that someone would not smile or say hello to me, as I try to do the same. I notice more often than not that people look at me, smile, and give me kind expressions. Yesterday, this quality helped me meet Constantine.

When I found myself at the entrance to the igloo like structure Athens Own had constructed for their array of products, I also found myself peering into the back of the tent for a package of beef stew meat. It’s been “that time of year,” for quite awhile now, and I still haven’t made one of my favorite winter staples: Beef Stew. Yesterday was the perfect day to dream up a recipe, and gather the ingredients with bone-chilled knuckles clenched around delicate mushrooms, dirty potatoes and pungent onions. I crafted in my mind a loose idea for a locally rich stew, made in the style of Beef Bourguignon, but lighter and steeped in the root and soil flavors of Appalachia’s deep winter. This is where Constantine entered my life, because alas, there was no stew meat.

Constantine owns Athens Own, where I buy infamous Cheddar Cheese, and addictively good sweet beef bologna. With a graying mustache tickling the edges of his lips, and matching beard that followed the flow of his words, he introduced himself to me and then explained that stew meat isn’t his most popular cut, but that it was available at a local grocery store. Through round, metal rimmed sunglasses and the cloak of a hooded sweatshirt he took the time to tell me about the different producers he uses, as well as the difference in the grade of beef. He suggested I try to the more expensive, 14 week dry aged stew meat, even though many people say the flavor doesn’t matter for stew. Constantine had my number, because I, for one, certainly know that the flavor matters and that the quality of the beef will make the difference between any old stew and an epic stew. He was delightful and I look forward to seeing him again soon and continuing to become familiar with and embed myself in the Athens Food community.

So for Constantine, who told me to let him know how the stew came out, here is the recipe for my Midwinter Beef Stew, served up hot with homemade buckwheat-corn bread and chased with a slice of homemade apple pie.

Queen Honeybea’s
Midwinter Beef Stew
Serves 6
2 TBS. extra virgin olive oil
1 lb. locally raised, dry aged beef for stew (rinsed and patted dry)
Salt and black pepper
2 cups chopped local mushrooms
1 cup chopped local yellow onion
2 cloves chopped local garlic
2 TBS. dry red wine
4 cups organic, low-sodium beef stock
2 TBS. pale ale honey mustard (or any pungent mustard you like)
1 TBS. red wine vinegar
6 small local potatoes, peeled and chunked
2 organic carrots, peeled and sliced into ¼ inch chunks
1 cup local green beans, snapped into 1 inch pieces (Mine were frozen from August)
1 tsp. salt
½ tsp. black pepper
2 TBS. dried parsley
A pinch of ground thyme
A pinch of ground rosemary
A pinch of Hungarian paprika

1. In a coated Dutch Oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Sprinkle the rinsed, and dried pieces sparingly with salt and pepper. Sear each piece of meat on each side until lightly browned, turning to ensure all surfaces are cooked. Remove the meat to a paper towel lined bowl.
2. Add to the Dutch Oven the mushrooms and onions, stirring almost constantly to keep them from sticking to the pan. Sautee, stirring for five minutes, or until the mushrooms and onions begin to sweat. Add the garlic, stirring, for 20 more seconds. Add the red wine, scraping the bottom of the pan to get all the goodness up into the stew. Cook for another minute or two, or until the wine is reduced.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients in order, along with the reserved pieces of beef. Stir to incorporate and slowly bring the mixture up to a boil. Reduce the heat to very low, and cover partially. The stew should be slowly simmering. Stir occasionally and taste to adjust the seasoning as needed. Simmer slowly, covered for at least one hour and uncovered for at least one hour. Ideally, simmering covered for 2 hours and uncovered for one will yield a nicely flavored stew with a thick but not too thick broth. Serve piping hot with crusty bread.


This stew was absolute perfection. Not to toot my own horn, as if I’d ever dream of that, but it truly was a simple masterpiece if I do say so myself. The beef was incredibly tender and had such a decadently soft texture. I can’t thank Constantine enough for his recommendation. I also have to give credit to Roger Graves at Yankee Street Farm in Vinton, Ohio for the beautiful, dirt coated potatoes I bought from him at the market, which turned into little pieces of pearl colored velvet in my stew. I was surprised that when I reached the bottom of the bowl there were just potatoes left, as I was saving the best for last. I hope you make this stew and enjoy the same sort of hearty romance I did, as I sipped its silken broth and nuzzled into the corner of my couch on a cold winter’s night. Remember, of course, to always buy local.


My apple pie chaser. Mama pie and baby pie. My half-and-half crust, fresh local apples, organic sugar, cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg, a hint of lemon zest and lots of patience and love. Pies are an art for me, I adore making them.

100 Miles or More: Part One

I was still just over an eighth of a ton, and my body was more than vocal about its unhappiness. Two hundred and fifty-seven collective pounds don’t want to pick blueberries from the branches of a bush dwelling twelve inches off the ground. It’s more than just the knees. While I had shed thirty pounds, and was seemingly holding that position steadily, picking blueberries required energy. Years and years of High School science class, and one of the few things I remember is that energy is required to move mass. My thighs cannot power me upwards, thrusting at the knee, without the required amount of energy. I also know that moving mass becomes more and more difficult when the mass is greater and greater. When I think of my body this way I imagine that level of Dante’s inferno where the man is pushing a great rock up the hill, only to have it roll down again. And like the consistency of daily life, the rock must always be moved again. It cannot be sedentary at the bottom of the hill, it must always be moving. I was twenty-three years old. Quitting my life was not an option that was presented to me. I would be moving the rock again.

I wrote these words recently about the summer of 2009, now eighteen months ago. I have been asked so many times about my journey of reinvention that I decided to start writing about it regularly, in hopes of compiling something coherent, logical, and poetic eventually. The complexity that weaves this process is enormous and entangled, and the thought of unwinding the fibers one by one in order to tell a complete, tightly woven story is daunting to say the least. While it will be impossible for me to recall every moment, every event, every passing word and fleeting action that led me to this contentment where I now dwell, I have promised to share at least a portion of it with you, in order to help my friends and family understand how someone goes from 287 pounds to 189 pounds in a healthy, transformative way.

I could spend several paragraphs now detailing the changes I made to my eating habits, and explaining the different kinds of exercises I have tried, done and re-done to lose this amount of weight, but that would be like giving someone a basket of ingredients and asking them to create a specific dish without also providing them with a recipe. There is a story behind every great success and every great failure. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I love words, and like my literary heroine Baroness Karen Von Blixen, I love stories and understand their importance. For anyone who is reading this thinking they’d like to make positive changes to their lives, I encourage you to think about why you want to make these changes, and to understand that you have a story of your own, so make it personal to you and envelop these changes within your own pages.

I have to begin this story honestly. I will not lie to you and say that it was divine intervention, or cosmic karma, or that something specifically struck and inspired me one day in the mid-winter of 2009. I remember the day well, and I remember the first decision I made to which I actually adhered, but I have no recollection of why I made that decision, or why it realistically worked for me that time. I know that I had tried and tried so many times before. I had tried since I was eleven years old, when I began to hit puberty and realized that my body wasn’t going to develop into an hourglass, or even a tender, ripe pear. I realized that my body was already large, it was fat, and that I wasn’t going to embody the hyper-sexualized image into which all of my friends’ bodies would be maturing. Until that February day, two years ago, I hadn’t been able to commit to making any changes concerning my body. It was therefore surprising to me when I decided on February 24, 2009 to give up dessert for Lent, and when Easter Sunday morning dawned, I hadn’t broken my Lenten promise. Not only that, I had lost seven pounds.

That’s where it all began. I specifically remember eating two prune paczki on Shrove Tuesday, then bagging the other four from the box and throwing them into the freezer. I don’t know what rennet caused that decision to separate from the rest of the so-called decisions I’d made in the past. It was different, however. This decision led to another decision soon after. Instead of spending my long, unemployed days sitting around doing nothing, I’d try to start exercising a little. As I sit here in the shortest skirt I’ve ever worn in my life, legs crossed with sheer black leggings stretched tightly across my thighs, I can’t help but be taken aback by the evolution of my exercise routine. I remember sitting in a baggy pair of navy blue sweatpants, an over-sized neon orange Cleveland Browns hoodie, and pair of worn, old pink and gray Vans sneakers on my living room floor, thinking that walking for fifteen minutes was exhausting.

My mother walks in circles around our house. It’s good for her knees, and more comfortable for her all around. My Mom has had a lot of success. When I was living in Athens my house was set up in such a way that I could also walk in circles around it. I tried to walk for 15 minutes every day. I had no motivation to do it, but for the first time in my life I forced myself to do it. I wish I could explain why or how I did. I have theories, certainly.

At that point, there were so many things about my life that were slowly eroding. The previous June I’d graduated from Ohio University with no job prospects. That September the economic recession hit. By the time February rolled around, I’d spent eight-months without work. It wasn’t just that I was without work, but rather without ever working. I hadn’t had an opportunity to take that important step into adulthood and I was feeling worse about myself every single day. It was far more than just not having a job, and not being able to support myself. It was constantly thinking that what I’d studied in college, which I thought to be so important, was thought to be useless by so many people. After hearing it so many times I began to believe it and I began to resent the university, resent my degree and resent the idealistic values I’d set. My confidence was plummeting to a place from which I never thought I’d be able to resurrect it.

Simultaneously this, along with some other outside factors, was causing strain on and within my long-term relationship. While delving into the most intimate and personal details of what happened isn’t the point of this blog, it is a part of this story. I believe anyone can relate to how changing relationships affect our lives in one way or another. When you feel something that you once held securely begin to slip out of your fingers, you grapple for control. There came a point in my relationship, much later than where this story is beginning, where I was losing it. My deep-seeded mission of crafting and changing my body gave me a sense of control over at least one portion of my life. When the relationship finally ended, and my focus was able to shift solely onto my own needs is when I really dove head first into this journey and started making major changes.

That brings me to the last thing I want you to understand about making changes to your life. While you may start with one goal, one plan, or one course of action, it’s highly likely that it’s going to be altered, shifted or changed. On that February day when I threw the paczki into the freezer, my goal was to not eat another one (or any of its decadent kin) until Easter Sunday; it wasn’t to lose a hundred pounds. My goals evolved, my routine evolved, and the path by which I traveled evolved. For me, it was essential to be open to changes. In the end, it benefited me greatly. If I was still eating the way I used to eat, only omitting dessert, and walking for 15 minutes a day, I would still be unhealthy and probably unhappy. Life is about change, growth and development, so embrace it.

Because this is a story, I’m going to break it down into chapters. It wouldn’t serve well for me to simplify it too much, to try to squeeze it into one blog post, without giving it proper credit. This is the beginning: one small decision, leading to another small decision. That’s where I started.