love and other deep thoughts

On my super fantastic run today in central park in a glorious 57 degrees I got to thinking about love. Being that I am hosting an event on Sunday about the relationship between love and food, I wanted to express a few things about my views on love. I am a hopeless romantic. I fall in love all the time, with people, with ideas. I hurt easily. I get heartbroken over people, ideas, things not working out. I mourn and I get right back out there.

Emotion is a wonderful thing and I have to say to most people who know me, they might not see me as ever showing it. So here to the world, online, I will. Shocking. Well, I have them and they run deep.

Love to me occurs when I put another person’s happiness above my own.  There is this ability that no matter how busy I am, I always make time for the person.  There’s always a point in the day to say, I wonder what that person is doing, thinking, feeling and how they are. Are they happy, sad etc. I find time to call. Technology is great, but let’s face it – there’s nothing quite like human connection and the sound of someone’s voice even if its for 30 seconds.  I remember a while back in a relationship I was in that my partner liked to go to this cheap Mexican bar for chicken wings. I hated the place. Being into healthy food and living, the thought of going to a bar whose main service was beer and wings that it was an abysmal place. Just being seen there could hurt my credibility and there really was nothing to eat. But, it was two blocks from my apartment and their kitchen was open until midnight.  So we ate there a lot. I could not understand how my partner loved these chicken wings so much and how happy it made him to eat there. I experimented with the menu until I could get them to make something that I would eat – rice, black beans, salad and sauteed vegetables. Once they got it and I invented my version of macrobiotic plate, they made it for me all the time and knew by looking at me that it was what I wanted since we ate there all the time. Was I happy eating there, no. Would I have ever gone there on my own? Definitely not. Did I do it because I loved my partner, yes. Did I act like I was happy because I knew how he was, no. I didn’t have to act, I just was happy. I had respect and compassion for the things that made him happy.

Granted there were many things in this relationship where I did things to make my partner happy and he did a few things to make me happy that he claimed he never would have done if not for me. I thank him for that.  He changed me in a positive way, motivating me to choose my career path in health and wellness and I have no idea how or why but motivated me to complete my first triathlon. Despite the fact that there were times we just didn’t mix, perhaps because we were both too passionate and too alike.  There are so many reasons relationships are successful and not successful and at the end of the day, but we can’t overanalyze the reasons things don’t work out, but rather remember, learn and move on.  As a couple we didn’t make it, but there’s always positivity from connections we make with people and I am happy for everything I have learned and experienced and ready for a new relationship. One that is full of love, joy, sharing, happiness and of course disappointments, sadness, emotion and pain. Let’s just hope that the love, joy and sharing outweigh the other stuff.

It is easy to get jaded to the fact that love doesn’t exist. But I know it does. I know it does because I feel it. I feel it in the connections I make with people, one in particular I made yesterday, with a woman who I might do some very important work with.  I’m a very logical person and I can reason away anything. Its very easy to put reason above emotion and push people out.  However, I know deep inside that I don’t want to do that.

There’s something magical about love. There’s something even more magical about love that is requited. So many people are in love with the idea of being in love, but you can’t force a person to be in love with you or love you back quite in the way you love them. Sometimes, that happens, that we love so much and we get disappointed because the person does not return our love and then we try to hurt them or worse make them pay for things by cheating on them or withholding things from them or demanding things like jewelry and expensive meals out. We think this – it will prove his love if he buys me something nice. He didn’t buy me anything for x day (birthday, valentine’s day, anniversary) so therefore he doesn’t love me. Its not true. Love cannot be measured in material goods. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate jewelry or nice dinners out – but love is something that is a connection between two people and it is not restricted to romantic love between two sexual partners.

I love my friends and my family. I can fall in love with women, but not in the same way as men. This doesn’t make me gay, but I have a deep respect for women, certain kinds of women. Attraction is an incredibly powerful thing.  It is what makes things light up in the world. There is truth in the “he lights up when she walks in the room” phenomenon. Just as we light up by certain people, we too can be drained emotionally and physically by negativity.

This is not to say there is no room for sadness in the world. But we all have our right to be sad, to need support, to mourn for lost love. My father died when I was 13. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss him and feel some sadness over something that I can’t tell him or share with him, something I can’t get his perspective on. We look to people often for their perspective.

So, anyway, its probably because I finally got to go running and get deep into thought – something I love about running, its very meditative for me. I wish you all love. I implore you to look at the relationship with your parents. See through the nagging and complaining and remember this is the person or people who gave you life and one day they might be there and you WILL miss them. Show love to your siblings and your siblings in law even if they don’t show it back to you.  This is incredibly important. We grow to be transformed as humans in our way to show compassion and respect to people. There are a lot of people in this world I don’t like and very few I do like, but I try to see that there is something in a person – that they are a human being with loves, desires, hopes, wants and dreams – even if they are an antisocial axe murderer (well, maybe not) that I need to respect. Perhaps I don’t understand people who do drugs or have affairs or leave their children. I can’t judge their acts. I don’t necessarily need to have them in my close circle of friends, but I can respect their choices and not attempt to force my opinions on them.

There are so many moral arguments and as society we constantly want people to see things they way we do and be right. But we don’t have to. I started writing a novel 10 years ago about Israel. I modeled my main character after a woman I met in college whose family moved from Scranton, PA to Jerusalem when she was 14.  The novel became fiction after that, with many characters representing figments and pieces of people I met, people I dreamed, people I never met and wanted to and strangely, a character I wrote and then met a very close incarnation of. Life is funny that way. If the novel ever gets published, I’ll leave the recognition of the characters to the people in my life and those who have left it. You may recognize yourselves and you may not. They are just figments and pieces.

Anyway, the book is about love, my character experienced a lifetime of loss and a crisis of identity – but still like I in her many years of evolution finds love, loses love and finds it again remaining hopeful as do I that love is out there and love is multidimensional. In the middle of the story of the character I set a very subtle understory of two men who meet at Harvard (shocking I know). I hope the reader will see the men are the future leaders of some sort of one state solution that joins Jews, Arabs and other ethinc groups together in love and harmony. At the end of the day in a very silly movie with Adam Sandler this was proven. What are we fighting for. Can’t we all just get along.

Perhaps you see me as idealistic or a hopeless romantic, but if you’ve read this far, I think you see that there is some magic about bringing more love into your life and that you see as humans why we are really here. Success, money, accomplishment – these are great things, and as a driven entrepreneur I don’t think we should ever stop pursuing our dreams, but we need to make a little room for people, for love and of course, for ourselves.

Sunday’s event – A delicious affair in the afternoon

Check out this week’s time out page 38. An advertisement for my event appears.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/events/own-this-city/270100/an-afternoon-to-spread-the-love – explains it far better than I can.

Expect to be dazzled by controversial conversation, food, drink, laughter, new friends and all you’ve ever wanted to know about food and sex. Too bad there’s no lab. But feel free to take what you learn off to your new adventures

this week’s greenmarket finds – blue potatoes

I’ve never before seen a blue potato. A few weeks back I saw them at the union square greenmarket. I fell in love with them. First of all they taste nothing like a potato. Not a white potato or a sweet potato. They are unique in flavor, like nothing I can describe. They are also blue. Incredibly blue. I guess I’ve seen blue potato chips, so they can’t be a complete mystery to me, but these potatoes – small in size and decadent to nibble are quite different than even the chips I’ve sampled so many years ago.

In my love affair with color I got some yellow and orange carrots (I was hoping for purple ones, but alas could not find any), burdock root – which is wonderfully cleansing for the liver, salsify (which is black, but white on the inside), celeraic and some chicken pieces. On my stove now simmers: the roots, chicken pieces, some lamb stock from a previous night’s dinner, dried figs and a melange of spices. I can’t wait for it to be done. I’m sure its going to be delish.

Your mouth watering yet? A recipe you demand?

Here’s the best I can do:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 white onion – local if possible, chopped

1 large orange carrot, chopped

2 stalks of local celery (hard to find in these rough NY winters – can skip), chopped

about 1 pound of chicken parts (I used breast and thigh meat, just a personal preference)

1 cup stock (chicken, beef, lamb, whatever tickles your fancy – I used half chicken (boxed) and half lamb – homemade)

1 yellow carrot

2 blue potatoes (small, the size of fingerlings, each quartered)

1 white turnip (quartered)

6-8 Brussels Sprouts, halved – little stem chopped off

2-3 tablespoons of fresh dill

black pepper

curry powder about 1 tsp

lots of love

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a cast iron stock pot. When smoking add mire poix (carrots, onion and celery) and stir 5 minutes until softened. Add chicken and sear on both sides until slightly browned (2-3 minutes). Add stock, root veggies, spices and other ingredients. Cover and cook 45 minutes to one hour until cooked through, roots are soft and your kitchen smells unbelievable. You will just know. I don’t cook with salt, but if you like salt, you can add some when you add the pepper. If you need a bit more spice – add some more curry powder. The dill and the black pepper and the taste of fresh vegetables in the stocks usually do it for me. I also added just a touch of butter when I put the vegetables in before I set the simmer.

Enjoy with someone you love!

visit www.sobelwellness.com to learn how you too could have meals prepared like these in your kitchen!

poaching eggs

I got some wonderful eggs from the union square greenmarket. They are from anacara chickens. Each egg is a different color – some pink, some brown, some blue (I am not kidding!). In my attempts to cook them more healthfully I invested in a commercial egg poacher.

I do not understand commercial egg poachers. Maybe its the fact that my stove has two settings – power cook and wimpy cook. I tried power cook for a few minutes and the egg did not cook. I mistakenly left the plastic cups with no eggs in there (because I only tried to poach one egg) and the other plastic cups melted. I walked away for just a few minutes to let the egg cook, but instead of cooking – all the water evaporated and the plastic started to melt! What idiot creates a pot with meltable cups. Perhaps I should have removed the cups that didn’t have eggs in them. That’s it – metal only from now on. I think I’m destined to fry or scramble my eggs because so far poaching just isn’t working. Perhaps I need some more classes or more patience with eggs…but so far my plastic egg poacher looks like its a candidate for the landfill. I wouldn’t even know how to recycle it as its mostly gooey black plastic.

Advising the great chefs

I went to a fantastic dinner a few nights ago.  However, I was not full. There was no dessert. There was no meat and it was winter. The meal tasted delicious and I knew it was healthy…but I being a type O blood type was missing my protein. As well all the food was from local sustainable sources, but cooked for a long time where frankly much of the nutrition was lost through cutting the food finely and cooking. 

Last night I went to dinner at a regular, non-sustainable or locally sourced restaurant. Missing my protein, I went for the hanger steak. I haven’t had steak in months…the steak I usually have is grass fed and I know where it comes from. But coming from the meatless meal and practically a meatless winter where I’ve actually been craving meat, I wanted the steak. But it was a corn fed, fatty piece of meat. Hanger steak is usually leaner than most other cuts, but it wasn’t. I found myself bloated several hours later. I slept heavy and well, but too well. Something I always advise my clients is not to eat large amounts of protein.

Today I had a wonderful lunch, but no more than 20 minutes later I was hungry again.  Was it the flourless chocolate cake that sent me to the pantry for carbs or was it the miniscle portion of short ribs, even by health counselor standards?

There are many restaurants attempting to provide local, sustainable and organic food. Many do it well, but the plates aren’t necessarily balanced. As humans, in winter especially, we need some protein, not too much. It should be as “raw” as possible (or lightly cooked) and plant protein is effective, but doesn’t always “fill” us up. That’s because we often need fat to fill us up. I find I am most full when the fat, carbohydrates and protein come in a balanced package – usually from the purest ingredients possible.

3 ounces of steak doesn’t seem like a lot – but its pretty much a good portion 4 ounces would be an ideal portion. 6 times a week if you have that little, 3 times a week if you have 6 ounces. 10-12 ounces – 1x a week makes more sense. What do you eat? Vegetables. Its Winter, Meredith, what grows in winter?

Rutabagas, turnips, beets and other roots as well as many green things such as 3 or more varieties of Kale, Collards, bok choi, pak choi and its cousin tak choi. Apples and pears are bountiful at greenmarkets and citrus is in its prime in florida right now, but there are arguments as to whether we, not living in Florida, should be consuming it.

I had some wonderful rutabaga with buckwheat honey glaze, ginger and pak choi. The honey and ginger are bound to help alleviate colds and digestion. There’s much work to be done and great foods at your market. Balance it out!

If you find the job of balancing your plate too daunting, I can do it for you. I am offering a green meal delivery service that is inspired by New York City’s greenmarkets and local farm produce.  At different price points you can enjoy basic vegetarian cuisine that is local, sustainable and organic. For a few more dollars you can enjoy the best meats, cheeses and other delights 100 miles from New York City has to offer. I’ll use a few other health affirming items such as coconut milk and olive oil that might come from a bit further away. Check out my website: www.sobelwellness.com and click on the tab for meal delivery to find out more. I also offer customized chef services and catering in your home or rented studio space. Contact me for more information.