Cheese was my quintessential comfort food. I was the person who made a beeline to the baked Brie at cocktail parties. Baked potatoes, chili and tacos were merely cheese delivery vehicles, a simple base upon which to heap mounds of shredded cheddar and Monterrey Jack. And don't even get me started on the wedge salad. Sure, it's got bacon, but it was the creamy, crumbly, blue cheese goodness that had me at "hello."
My lifelong romance with cheese came to an abrupt halt three years ago when a new doctor – a naturopath – suggested I give up dairy. I'd sought her help for some ongoing health issues, including chronic pain, fatigue, depression and an inability to lose weight—what many now call FLC Syndrome: Feel Like Crap.
For many of us, no holiday season is complete without viewing beloved Christmas movies. Some are old classics we grew up with, while others have become favorites more recently. Remember waiting for Rudolph the Rednosed-Reindeer to come on the family television? In a pre-VHS, pre-DVR, pre-streaming world, we only had one chance to see it. It was appointment TV, and the annual airing was a pivotal event, one that ushered in weeks of tree trimming, cookie baking, carol singing, and the anticipation of Christmas morning. Our current rotation is an eclectic mix of the sentimental, musical, and farcical, generally culminating in our yearly viewing of the Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Despite knowing the plot and outcome and having memorized much of the dialogue, I look forward to the film each season. The opening titles and music awaken something both novel and familiar, nostalgia, but through the lens of one more year of life experiences, somehow bittersweet, like unwrapping t...
For the last week we’ve been furiously scratching out or backspacing on 2024 and replacing it with 2025 in dismay that the century – the one we fretted so much about back in Y2K – is already a quarter gone. Yes, we know it’s a New Year, that the calendar page has flipped. The capitalistic evidence is everywhere with offers of gym memberships, weight loss programs, and tips for keeping those pesky resolutions. If we believe the hype, those of us who choose to ease slowly into the year are the outliers, while it seems everyone else is primed for success, progress, forward motion. New Year, New Me! Best Year Ever! My mother was a firm believer and practitioner of the seasons of the Nativity, beginning with lighting a new candle on the Advent wreath on each of the four Sundays before Christmas, and celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. Among other things, it was always the day my mom took down the Christmas decorations. Legend has it that Epiphany, also called Twelfth Night o...
A Thing About Writing That Turned Into Something Else Brenkee Photo/Pixabay Maybe you have foodie friends. You know, the ones who are hip to the new hot restaurants, the up-and-coming chefs, and the latest gourmet trends. Then there are the Swifties, who've recently added to their ranks thanks to the blossoming romance between a particular award-winning pop star and a certain tight end who happens to play for my favorite football team. * Enter the “wordies.” We are the foodies and Swifties of the writing world. Some of us are journalists, others are poets, novelists, essayists, songwriters and more. We are the ones for whom words are craft. We get fixated on a random word for no apparent reason, examining it in the way I imagine a potter might do with a blob of clay. We are compelled to get our proverbial hands dirty, to squash that word and stretch it, to pound it flat only to gather it up, fold it over itself, knead it again, observe it from a variety of angles, then decide what...
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