You would think, as a restauranteur, that on my days off the last thing I'd want to do is cook. However, I never cook anymore. My chef is amazing and talented, and also a workaholic, so the beautiful shiny kitchen is his domain. I get all the other jobs, from paperwork to running the music system during events to schmoozing the customers. I give good schmooze, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I feel a bit detached from all the delicious local food coming out to the tables.

So, it's Sunday, and I just got back from the health food store with local bread (Black Crow Bakery's Rustic loaf...yum), Brie, Dried Apricots, a head of red lettuce, carrots, tempeh, and a bottle of berry-flavored kombucha (that's just a treat...I don't cook with it). My boyfriend and his daughter are coming over tonight to watch my high school production of "Sweeney Todd" (bf's daughter just saw the new movie and really liked it), and I thought I'd cook, if I can remember how.

My plan includes:

1: Baked Brie and Apricots - maybe baked in the bread itself, or maybe baked alone, then spread on the bread.

2: Lentil Soup with carrots - save the tempeh for another day; I haven't had beans lately.

3: Wine

Oh, and a salad, of course.

I think I may have some issues with food allergies...sigh. So, next month, after the spring wine tastings are over and I have set my wine list for the summer, I'm planning a month and a half elimination diet. This, if you've never heard of it, is a diet that removes potentially allergenic foods from your diet for a length of time, so as to allow your body to recover from the effects of those allergies. Then, you add those foods back into your diet one at a time, while keeping a record of how you're feeling, to figure out which foods set off symptoms.

Symptoms of food allergies include: fatigue, body aches, stuffy nasal passages and overabundance of mucous (yum), indigestion and stomach pain, headaches, and a host of other problems, including mental confusion. I pretty much have all of these symptoms, and some I've dealt with for much of my life. A lot of the issues I'm dealing with now are probably stress-related, but diet could certainly be a factor.

So, on the elimination diet, I cannot eat: wheat and other grains, milk and milk products like cheese and yogurt, eggs, legumes including soybeans and peanuts, vinegar, wine, and other fermented or yeasted foods, alcohol, drugs, caffeine!, and any food that I regularly eat more than once per week. Thank the gods that spring is sprung, and we'll have green veggies soon!

Yeah, pretty much everything I like to eat and eat regularly is a no-no. This better make me feel better, damn it. And also, help me lose 10 pounds, cause, if I'm suffering, at least I want to look good doing it.

 You may have noticed some changes here.

There's a beauty contest going on, dontcha know. So, I've been prettifying, a bit. You know, changing the sheets, getting out the "good" china, etc. Mostly having fun with my pictures, blowing them way out of proportion (as we do so many things), chopping them into tiny pieces, sewing them back together.

Very appropriate, considering I just changed over from the old "look and feel". Which was just fine for me, young whippersnapper. These computer-thingys confuse and frighten me quite enough, without "modules" and "themes" and new-fangled stuff like html to distract me. Right-clicking is about as sophisticated as it gets in my world.

But I digress. While very much a work in progress, what you see here is my attempt at beauty in super-amateur webdesign. I had no help with all this (except for the bits of oil painting in the header - that's something my boyfriend painted that I messed with a bit), and all the pictures were taken by lil' old me. I should also say - my design tools consist of Microsoft Publisher, Paint, and Picture Manager. Yay for cropping and color manipulation!

I'll probably be fiddling with it a bit for the next few days. I think folks can't vote until May 7 (and that's only if I'm a finalist), but if you think I'm pretty...ahem...my site is pretty, you should go to relaxolgy's site and tell her how sweet and nice and talented I am, and how much I deserve the attention winning a contest would give me.

But I digress. Vote for me, because I defy definition, and because my dog matches all of my outfits.