A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

"Natural" Wine vs "Organic" Wine

 

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I'm usually a martini girl when it comes to alcohol but there are times when a nice glass of wine makes me feel lovely. While I don't profess or even begin to hint that I am an expert on wine by any means, I do have an insatiable curiosity when it comes to all things imbibable.  Like Alice in her Wonderland, if it says "Eat me" or "Drink me" I can usually be found there.

Lately, along with all the other organic foods, I've been noticing wines in the same section being advertised as organic and/or "natural".  Organic is the term used for foods grown from non-genetically modified origins without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, or chemical additives. That's straight forward.  While the FDA has no definition of the term "natural", the intent seems to be almost literal in an attempt by a small amount of avant garde growers/winemakers to get back to nature, so to speak, to return the process to its more simple, natural, minimalist beginnings.

The One Perfect Pancake of my Lifetime of Making Pancakes (And it's Whole Wheat too!)

 

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Isn't it pretty? All perfectly rounded, sitting just inside the inner rim of the place, the perfect golden brown. Okay, that's one perfectly round pancake I've made in 40 years of cooking! Usually, no matter how hard I try to spoon the pancake mix or twirl the pan all chef-like there's always one edge that sort of globs out all retarded and freakish-looking.  One.  Out of 40 years. 

I can live with that. 

This pancake has a hidden secret.  It's actually good for us!  Eating healthy has become a journey for me over the last couple of years. As in so many things in my life where instant gratification is is never realized, I finally realized that pursuing healthier habits in all parts of my life are about baby steps, not about throwing out the old and emerging from my bed a new person on a designated day. (Which is usually how I'd try to do it in the past.) I'd start a new "diet" by saying to myself at bedtime "Tomorrow I will start eating only healthy wholesome perfect foods and exercising for one hour and do it every day for the rest of my life."  Waking up in my new frame of mind, I would be that perfectly perfect wholesome creature up until about 10 seconds after my first breakfast before I had my Hobbit second breakfast of a slice of processed cheese and a Coke.  C'est la vie. Literally, that is my life!