Recent "Fish Feast” collab between myself & my favorite fisherman friend. My son caught the salmon! 

I'm a SoCal girl at heart in many ways. One is my love of informality. Family-style meals. Big chaotic dinner parties. Eating at the coffee table, sitting on the floor. Tacos from food trucks. Outdoor living.

 

My mom wanted to send me to Cotillion as a tween. "Over my dead body." I always viewed formality as excessive, uptight, rule-loving and constrictive. It can have those elements — and must have in my world, for me to run so far away from it.

 

One thing I love about living in the States is that we are not so beholden to strong cultural traditions. My husband and I laugh about a common saying he heard growing up in Venezuela: "No te vayas a inventar." Don't go inventing! Literally, don't come up with any thoughts, ideas or ways of doing things that are different than what everyone else is doing. Venezuela is particularly culturally homogeneous, but there are a lot of places in the world where common culture dictates. While in other moments I long for say, the culinary traditions of the French, the U.S. is a good place to start a business, to not fit into boxes, and be free to express your own unique beliefs.

 

And this freedom comes at a cost to our bodily rhythms. I have to admit that my inclination toward things that feel free has probably helped foster a dysregulated nervous system. We are built to co-regulate, and mealtimes are the best moment of the day to do this.

 

At 50, I better understand the intelligence of certain formalities. I'm thinking today about the ones around meals. Snacking culture is wasteful, ruins appetites, promotes bad metabolic habits and can negatively impact dinnertime. Our sugar-obsessed culture is a byproduct of informality too — eat candy midday, don't honor the food groups. It's what I get into this month on Substack.

 

At this moment in time, there is nothing more joyful to me than our whole family sitting down to dinner, everyone hungry and happy to eat what is being served. It's the most basic ritual there is.

 

Now I see the brilliance of meal courses. They slow the meal down and pace the fast eaters. (and yes, more dishes and work for the cook) My ADHD kid has often finished his meal before some of us have taken our second bite. Good luck inspiring him to stay seated until we are all done. Given I didn't set more structure to mealtimes earlier, it's a lot harder to do now. 

 

I wish I learned this distinction earlier. When rhythms are imposed with an iron fist and without reason, they feel like control. When they feel good, joyful, regulating, protective — we are happy to live with them.

 

On a separate note, I am in, what I believe to be the final few months of Perimenopause. (this is the section of the above graph that looks like it was drawn by a toddler)

 

It had been a month of smooth sailing before I got hit with some recent waves of high estrogen. Out of nowhere, I have been bowled over with brain fog, a feeling of being in quicksand, and a lot of histamine activity. Usually it manifests with some sort of skin rash first, but this time the histamine response also impacted my sleep, and my energy and my mood. If you find yourself with a rash, hives or allergies that don't coincide with anything external, (and you are feeling particularly hormonal) it could be higher estrogen levels triggering a histamine response. Here's what I've been doing to lower my histamine response & help my body clear excess estrogen: 

 

After a couple of days of this regime I started to feel more sane. While I know our cycles represent vitality, parts of me are looking forward to being on the other side. 

 

Peppers are going off at the moment. This is hands down, my favorite thing to make with a glut of caspiums. I've been making it for over twenty years. It's amazing on broiled feta, or spooned over grilled or roasted meat and vegetables of all types. the Zuni cafe cookbook is in my top 5 cookbooks. the owner judy rodgers, sadly passed at a young age but her vibrant cafe, memory, incredible cooking sensibilities and recipes lives on. 

 

 

1 ½ T dried currants

2 tsp. sherry vinegar (or red wine if you don't have sherry) 

½ tsp. warm water

12 ounces bell peppers (1 large or two small)

3 tablespoon pine nuts

1 tablespoon fresh chopped basil or arugula

2 small garlic, pounded to a paste

3 tablespoons sweet sherry or sweet Marsala

sea Salt

 

1. Combine the dried currants, vinegar, and warm water, kneading the currants lightly.

 

2. Roasting and peeling the peppers:

Note: Handle the roasting peppers gently – the collapsing cells release moisture, which you want to keep inside the peppers until you peel them. If you puncture the tender flesh, the sweet juice will spill into the roasting pan and dry out, or trickle into the fire.

 

To use the oven method, preheat the oven to 450. Set the peppers in a baking dish and pladce on the top rack of the oven. Turn as the tops grown and blister, and roast until they have nearly collapsed, 20 to 35 minutes, depending on size.

 

Transfer the roasted peppers to a bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Once the peppers are cool enough to handle, slide or rub off the skins – not worrying if some spots don’t want to release (do this over a second bowl, so you can capture some of the delicious juice). Charred skins tend to come off in chunks and bits; dip you fingertips in water occasionally as you remove them. Don’t rinse the peppers.

 

Still working over the bowl, pull off the stems and seeds. Separate each pepper into slabs. Combine the juice from both bowls and strain out skins and seeds.

Lay the pepper slabs on a cutting board, brush away any remaining seeds, and scrape or peel off any remaining large patches of skin with a paring knife. Again, don’t rinse the peppers, as you would only be washing away the flavorful syrup.

 

3. Assembling the relish:

Cut the peppers into small dice and combine with their juice. You should get about one cup.

While the peppers are roasting, set the pine nuts in the oven, if using, or in a small skillet over low heat to warm through, a few minutes at most. Coarsely chop.

Add the currants, pine nuts, basil or arugula, garlic, oil and Sherry or Marsala. Salt to taste.

 

 

Do you long to decipher the truth your body knows? To understand & resolve mysterious symptoms that crop up from time to time, or continue to slowly add up? To feel you understand and know how to tend to your gut health? 

 

Let's chat.