Bacon in the morning, bacon in the evening, bacon at suppertime...

I must confess, it's been going on for so many years and it's finally time for me to come clean....I've been having a love affair...shhhh... don't tell Roger, this is just between you and me. He's probably had a clue on more than one occasion, the scent of my love lingering in the air, the smile on my lips after a quick secret rendezvous in the kitchen, my refusal as I shake my head and push away his offerings trying to disguise the satiated glow on my face...I can no longer hide this secret passion of mine.....my lusting after bacon is finally out in the open...and the sad, sad truth of the matter, the thing I feared most is going to happen...I have to share my bacon with him now, there's just no getting around it :(

Since I am all about the confessions today, I may as well own up to one of my other HUGE faults...I don't share my favorite foods very well...and I never have. Yes, I will pull the normal adult-humans-trying-to-justify-their-faults card, and say it's a result of being one of six kids in a large family whose special food treats in life were far and few between. At least that's how this little kid perceived the situation and I'm really not exaggerating all that much when I say we had very little bacon in our house as we were growing up.

Along with being deprived of some of my other favorite foods like fried chicken, chocolate, nuts and hard cheese...bacon did not become my secret lover until I was an adult and found my own way through the grocery store and began to pay for the food that I ate. Not only was bacon a bit on the expensive side for the quantity that I chose to eat, it was pretty darn messy to cook and I've never been very fond of cleaning up greasy pans in the kitchen. Then came the invention of the microwave that allowed you to cook bacon with no fuss and no muss on a paper plate with paper towels to soak up the grease. Guess what, I went right out and bought me one of those new fangled $780 bacon cooking machines and quickly became addicted to the crunchy, salty flavor of my favorite form of pig...and so the affair began. You may be thinking, holy crap...who in their right mind pays that much money for a microwave (it was 1979 and that thing weighed 75lbs and was a huge monstrosity at 30x20), however, we had no choice of models at the PX in Germany, so we put one on lay-a-way, and paid it off just about the same time we took Stacey home from the hospital.


This paid for itself many times over and still worked when we moved on to a smaller more powerful model many years later--I loved my first microwave!

What new mom doesn't need a time saving appliance to help around the kitchen? My daughter-in-law Taryn's favorite coffee maker crapped out the day she brought Hopper home, and has since been making due with daily runs to the Starbucks around the corner.

So where was I.....oh yeah, me and bacon...I LOVED IT, I ATE IT....and then I found out all that fat was not good for me....HUH????? Now that's just not fair :(. I did indulge throughout our child-rearing years, but kept my lusting ways under wraps for the most part. And being someone who was always conscious of eating healthy, I denied myself the pleasure of delicious bacon for years. Flash forward to 2000 when we moved to Florida and reintroduced ourselves to the world of cruising and the much-loved idea of breakfast buffets. Although I almost always abstained at home, I allowed myself the treat while on vacation and was in heaven every single morning of each cruise, as I gazed longingly at those huge piles of crispy all-you-can-eat bacon....and I DID, at every opportunity. Just imagine how much fun I had on our transatlantic cruises with 12 mornings in a row of heaping plates of my favorite breakfast food. I'd run up to the buffet early, just as the sun was peaking over the horizon, to fill up a plate and take it back to the cabin to enjoy out on the balcony, while I watched the miles of Atlantic Ocean disappear behind the ship.




Just me and my bacon making memories to last a lifetime...in case you are wondering, the subterfuge began many years ago on that very first cruise ship when I would leave a sleeping husband behind in the cabin as I'd make my way through the buffet line. He was never the wiser and often times I'd join him later in the morning for a second breakfast with yet another serving of....you guessed it....bacon :)

Interestingly enough, even with such an abnormally large consumption of bacon over the course of each of our cruises, all that extra fat didn't seem to be causing me to gain weight. Could the nutritional researchers and the government have been wrong all along...was bacon and animal fat good for you???? Here I had been denying myself all these years and come to find out, I really didn't have to skimp on the bacon servings. As the honor bound consumer that I am, I've made up for lost years of eating my beloved bacon and cook it now at every opportunity.



Some mornings I eat traditional bacon and eggs with my own personal twist by adding greens

Apparently I've passed my love of bacon to our children, in particular my son and I share our passion for finding organic, humanly raised pigs to source our bacon. I love bacon at any time of day, and have been known to wrap it up with some avocado in a lettuce leaf for a quick snack. In most instances for Brian, it's a breakfast choice, and the bacon fat left over in the pan is a prized possession set aside for cooking later in the day. Yes, he is a good cook and appears to enjoy preparing food and taking a turn in the kitchen to feed his family. Stacey loves to cook and is also extremely comfortable and competent in the kitchen, but that's a story for another day.

Now that I have finally opened up the door to introduce you to my "hidden" secret, I thought you might be interested in seeing first hand, my morning ritual of "loving/cooking and eating the pork"


Whole Foods in a pinch when I'm out of Amos' good farm fresh pork--thank goodness on Monday we fill up the freezer again!



Brian introduced me to this thick variety


I like to chop it, cooks easier in the pan



A seasoned cast iron frying pan...nothing better




Spatter shield...always important!





My favorite green to cook up with bacon...it gets just as crispy as the bacon if you find the right variety



Chopped up into bite size pieces



The bacon is almost done...



Snap crackle and pop--the water in the Kale reacts to the hot grease




And it's quickly fried up and ready to eat


Time for breakfast!!!

So when you are thinking about cooking up a yummy meal any time of the day...just remember...bacon in the morning...bacon in the evening...bacon at suppertime...it's all good!

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Everything's betta with butta! Episode 1

So back in March, when I took an obvious but unexpected hiatus from writing this blog, a very simple decision I made one day, resulted in me taking a good hard look at something I had always taken for granted...my love-hate relationship with the f-word....FAT!!!! Not body fat...but instead food fat....which many believe are one in the same...but are they really??? For as long as I can remember, we've been conditioned to turn and run the other way, when we were faced with full-fat food options....do I choose healthy (low-fat) or unhealthy (full-fat)??? Well, even though I don't have any complicated weight issues, I'm still very conscious about what I eat and unbeknownst to me.....I've recently come to find out, we've been doing it ALL wrong for a very long time.

After months of research, an almost 180 degree reversal of how I previously viewed food, and a radical change in our shopping and eating habits, I've finally decided to begin writing about this new addition to our culinary life. We've reintroduced ourselves to the wonderfully delicious world of whole fat organic foods. I had actually considered starting an entirely different blog related just to food, (entitled what I instead chose for today's title and future episodes) and then I realized that eating isn't actually a separate part of my life. Try cutting the idea of the consumption of food from the rest of what happens to us on a daily basis...and you are missing a large portion of who we are as human beings. Not only does food sustain me 24 hours a day, it is my lifeblood and allows me to to sit here forming ideas in my head as I write. What made me think that this subject needed and/or warranted it's own individual "stream of consciousness" forum. I've written about food before during my daily ramblings...and even dedicated an entire travel blog to the food I consumed on a European cruise...quite frankly that's more than enough in my book. If the food lover in me can't quietly (yikes, did I just use the word quiet to describe something about me????) continue to co-exist with the writer/blogger in me, then "Houston, we have a problem"

So, putting all that potential psychoanalysis aside, I'm gonna keep on writing about all the "stuff" going on in my life as I have in the past...like it or not...please try to follow along regardless of the subject matter. I promise you nothing much out of the ordinary, except it might seem like I am focusing on our recent return to natural eating till the cows come home....and speaking of cows...have I mentioned the organic farm where we now get 50% of our food?

You will realize in a very short period of time, that my passion for this eating lifestyle takes up not only a very large space in my head, but also a very large space on the page. There is more information out there than even I thought possible, and I've been studying food, and our body's relationship to it, for as long as I can remember. My rekindled love of all things fat-related has opened up a nutritional world completely unknown to me in the past, and one that I have willingly entered into...I mean really, who doesn't love the taste of fat??? Let me just tell you if you haven't already figured it out for yourselves, fat tastes good for a very important reason....we need it to exist and not in the very small portions that we were led to believe. Mother nature isn't stupid (in the famous words of Tom Naughton-I'll formally introduce you to him later), foods rich in healthy fat appeal to our taste buds because the human body will not function properly without it...plain and simply, that's a FACT!!! So stick that in your low-fat vegetarian smoothie and drink it....sorry to be so harsh, but I was one (a vegetarian) and it's the worst thing we can do to ourselves.

It's going to be very difficult for me to disseminate all the nutritional information that I've found over the last 4 months in this one blog post. So, in Episode 1, I'll start you off in the same way I stumbled upon the subject matter back in March...I found and watched the movie "Fat Head" which lead me to where I am today. Tom Naughton, a comedian and writer originally made a simple disclaimer movie regarding his views on what Morgan Spurlock purported to be the truth about fast food. This little idea Tom had, in a miraculous turn of events, has become the catalyst for movie watchers across the country to become more conscious of their unhealthy eating habits. I don't believe he originally set out to uncover all the unbelievable truths regarding just how important nutritious natural fats are for us. Who knew that eating fat could lead us to become so much more healthier than alternatively, although blindly, following the misinformation that the government and the medical industry has been "feeding" us for the last 20 years.

If you are a member of Netflix, you can stream the movie live, or order it to watch the DVD at home. If you have access to a computer, Hulu offers a free viewing of the movie online. Or as a last result, pay the $20 and order a copy. I've watched it so many times, I've lost track and although I initially viewed it through Netflix, I also own two copies and regularly loan them out to friends. It's information you will want to share with every person you encounter because it's that important! So, do yourself a favor and WATCH it now! I can promise you will never look at food in the same way again :). Here is the link to the website for further reading.

http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/about/
As I mentioned, there is too much info for one post, so stop back in again soon and I'll fill you in on how Amos and Annie help us to eat all manner of yummy foods...and don't forget...everything tastes betta with butta!



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Communication...put one word in front of the other...

At a very young age, before we are even able to move our lips in a way to make ourselves understood...we hear words. We are not quite sure what they mean, they fly through the air around our little ears, and yet they seem to be repeated over and over from the moment we are born until we take our last breath. We begin at a very slow pace to recognize those words, then we slowly begin to understand those words, then eventually we are able to say those words, and lastly, we are able to communicate what we mean to others with those words. Here's a question that has been baffling me for more years than I care to remember....why don't we actually use our words more often to communicate????

I'm sure you are familiar with the phrase...."out of the mouths of babes" and there was also a tv show years ago hosted by Art Linkletter in 1959 and then resurrected by Bill Cosby in 1995 called "Kids Say the Darndest Things". I know I enjoyed the pure innocence and loved to sit and watch these young children freely, honestly and with very little concern, say the first thing that popped into their heads when asked any manner of questions. We were entertained simply because those kids were able to say things we would never dream of repeating as adults. Most of us were taught as we grew up to either be quiet or to censor almost everything that came out of our mouths for fear of saying the wrong thing and never mind the truth or what is actually on our mind.

Interestingly enough, as we age and find ourselves in the last years of our life, we somehow revert back to our childhood habit of blurting out what ever is on our mind and we find the honesty in our words once again. Except by this time in our life, we are considered doddering old fools who just don't care what anyone thinks about us anymore. It's almost as if we have one last chance to tell the world how we really feel after a lifetime of pussy footing around the truth.

Human beings are the only living species that have been given the gift of speech and we muck it up during almost all of our entire adult lives. We don't say what we mean, and therefore we don't really ever know what the truth is and we never truly learn to actually communicate in the true sense of the word. We know in our hearts how we feel, and a good portion of us have continuous one sided conversations with ourselves and keep 95% of how we feel under wraps. Why.....because that is what we are taught and we think badly of others that speak their mind. Or perhaps we are jealous of how honestly and freely they state how they feel and/or we think less of them for not holding their tongues.

As adults, we judge people everyday by the words that come out of their mouths, and yet we wait with baited breath for those first few spoken syllables uttered by our children. And then sadly, once they've mastered the human language, we teach them to watch what they say and slowly swallow the honest words that come to their lips. What is wrong with this picture and can't we plainly see that we have become a society of polite people who are frustrated by holding back how we truly feel for fear of upsetting those around us.

I once saw a movie written and directed by Ricky Gervais called "The Invention of Lying" which affected me more than I could imagine. By using his comedic genius, he brought to light how as a society, we choose false statements over truth during more of our life than we care to admit. Or, as in most cases, we just don't say anything at all....because that is exactly what we were taught..."if you don't have anything nice to say....don't say anything at all" sound familiar???? Sadly, it's how I've actually lived my entire adult life, and I still do to this day. We are so concerned about hurting other folks feelings, and putting everyone else's concerns before our own, that we get lost in who we are or what is best for us. They say honesty is the best policy, however, no one really wants to hear the truth if it has the potential to be hurtful to others, regardless of how it makes us feel. So in essence, we are unable to be honest with ourselves, which keeps us in a vicious circle of a life without truth. How sad...and yet true.

How did we go from small children encouraged to use our words to adults that don't know how to complete a sentence that is 100% truthful. We avoid subjects, skirt the issue, play mind games and leave most of what we are thinking unsaid. In an effort to avoid being labeled "outspoken" or someone who has diarrhea of the mouth, we clam up and suck in our words before they are able to slip through our lips. We make statements under our breath, or chastise ourselves for thinking such unkind thoughts all the while knowing full well that we are being honest, if only in our minds. We learn to "keep it to ourselves" or share our thoughts with a few trusted like-minded people in our inner circle.

Is it possible to find a happy medium in our lives and speak the truth more and lose the urge to cover up or suppress it. Is honesty really the way we want to live our lives, or is it truly beyond our reach as humans trying to cope with the decisions that we've made. We joke and make light of things in an effort to show a glimmer of the truth lying just below the surface. I believe this is a common defense mechanism that all of us defer to when overloaded during certain types of situations. Could we possibly live and prosper in a world where truth was the only option and our communication skills were never questioned or lacking.

If there is one lesson I take away from all of this, it's to be more honest with myself and others, and to continually be able to convey those thoughts in a way that is beneficial to everyone. I can only hope that my children will teach their children that it is key to communicate and be honest with others, if you are first true to yourself. It's as simple as putting one word in front of the other....



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Life as we know it...

So many of my friends have been trying to describe to me just what being a grandparent feels like...and it's true what they say on so many levels, as I recently experienced and finally found out for myself. Well, actually...let me back up here a minute...I'm pretty sure I've known all along that it would be incredible to share the love of having grandchildren.

First of all, they start out as babies and I've always been in love with babies, no matter who they belong to...like most of the human population of the world, I'm a sucker for those sweet little faces. Although, I have to say, it goes a bit deeper than that, I'm very comfortable around babies and have no fear about my ability to care for them. Even with my own infants, there were rarely doubts in my mind that I would not have what it takes to raise them in the manner that would ultimately lead to their individual wellbeing as they grew up. I was confident that I could make sound decisions and had the necessary parenting skills to assist my children in the first 18 years of their lives before sending them on out into the world. Did I stumble along the way....of course I did, nothing else teaches us how to improve on our technique like a big bump in the road...and I had my fair share of those. However, the proof is in the pudding as they say, and now as we finally welcome the next generation of our family, I watch my adult children beginning the cycle once again.

Brian, Taryn and Hopper live in Chicago...and no one in the immediate family lives nearby, which at times is a hard pill for all of us to swallow. Ironically, it's a situation that we are dealing with, in pretty much the same way our parents did when we lived overseas and had our first child. We raised our children to be independent, make rational decisions about where they want to live and always hoped they would find a way of life that suits them, and each of us...parents, grandparents and great grandparents, have found ourselves doing exactly that. Across the miles....from Massachusetts, to Illinois, to Connecticut, to New Hampshire and Florida...each of us a pinpoint on the map and adding up the frequent flyer miles as we travel from one home to another. The reality that none of us will live in close proximity to the other, is one we have grown to accept, but not entirely without regret. The independence that we nurtured in our children, similar to the guidance we received from our parents, can at times, be a double edged sword.

In retrospect, I also see the benefits of a couple standing on their own two feet as they form a new family unit, without the constant intervention of the preceding generations. I myself know that I matured greatly in my growth as a new mom by not always having my own mother close at hand. I've witnessed grandparents over the years, of close knit families who live physically near each other, struggle to step back from influencing and assisting their grown children in raising grandchildren. In some instances, I have found the situations to be unhealthy for all parties concerned. There is a fine line and/or gray area in all family relationships that can be difficult to maneuver through, especially with addition of new members, whether it be children or extended family. As we continue to add branches to the family tree, the connections can be tenuous at best and new growth takes time to strengthen over the years.

Only three years ago, the first hint of things to come began to give us a glimpse of what is now our reality. First in the summer of 2008, with Brian and Taryn's engagement and then their fall wedding in 2009....followed in 2010 by Stacey & Scott's engagement and the news that our son would soon be a father in the spring of 2011. We are planning another fall wedding this year and recently welcomed our first grandchild, Hopper Higgins LaFlamme to the family on June 20, 2011.









As we encounter each change in our family dynamics, we continue to grow ourselves...taking on new roles and finding our way through the never ending challenges of life as we know it.





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