Camp NaNoWriMo word count: 43,032 by early Monday morning, 29 April 2019

The light was coming as I typed on Sunday, early-early.

Food52 is promoting a new cookbook that recommends buying small and often, using everything up as you go along, and yes! that is what I have been trying to do lately. Most of the Food52 article is common sense advice I already follow, but confirmation is always welcome. My crisper has only one lemon and some apples. I supposeI should make some sortofapple tart, preferably without sugar. Last night I thawed out the next-to-last last season’s pesto and made a pizza to use up the fresh mozzarella. Years ago when our fridge died I tried earnestly to get by with one of those tiny dorm-sized fridges, the ones about the size of a generous waste-paper basket. Milk and cheese and butter filled it. No room in the tiny freezer compartment for berries or peppers or anything beyond either an ice cube tray or frozen peas. One the other, not both. Condiments were a huge challenge, and my family thought I was mad. I argued that we really could not afford a new refrigerator at the time. That was not entirely true. Eventually I gave in and we bought a new fridge. There is this attitude that we must have twenty cubic feet or more of chilled storage, but many Europeans manage with tiny refrigerators or none at all by purchasing what they need for a meal and then using it up. Americans tend to gather stuff in the their fridges until they could condiment a regiment and the crisper goes sodden and has to be emptied directly into the trash. I have too many spices too. I dumped a jar of very-much out-dated dried Italian herbs the other day in order to have the jar for an herb I use frequently. I am wondering if my herbs, spices, and condiments should be marie-kondoed like my clothes closet—taking note of what flavors spark joy and discarding the rest? 

I have emptied both crispers now, used the sourdough start for the pizza dough, and consumed the recommended daily amounts of fruit and vegetables. The cheese drawer still contains seven cheeses. There is real bakery bread waiting to be toasted. (The stuff sold in plastic bags bears almost no resemblance to actual bread. Even the “whole wheat” slices smash into a lump the way we once turned Wonder Bread into a ball as if it were raw dough.) 

A TNYT story reveals the impact of our poor diet on mental health because “most Americans are overfed in calories yet starved of the vital array of micronutrients that our brains need, many of which are found in common plant foods. A survey published in 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only one in 10 adults meets the minimal daily federal recommendations for fruit and vegetables — at least one-and-a-half to two cups per day of fruit and two to three cups per day of vegetables. Nutritional psychiatrists like Dr. Ramsey prescribe antidepressants and other medications, where appropriate, and engage in talk therapy and other traditional forms of counseling. But they argue that fresh and nutritious food can be a potent addition to the mix of available therapies.”  We all need, as my mother would say, to take better care of ourselves. 

Inhale a bit of a horror story and found a market to submit it to. Tuesday is the final day for Camp NaNo. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will finish this task and move on to something else.