“And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”
― Meister Eckhart
Some people are naturally born singers, or runners, or have outstanding intellect. Not me - I'm a natural eater, born of a long line of eaters. My mother is Italian, and my father is Polish - two cultures who absolutely celebrate the joy of food to an extreme. If that wasn't enough, I picked up a Thai stepmom along the way, who is also an outstanding chef. In fact, she owns her own restaurant, where she makes Thai food so damn good that I can never really appreciate it anywhere else.
My grandmother's secret recipe is frying everything in onion butter. It works on pretty much everything. If I close my eyes and think of her cozy Port Jefferson home, I can hear it sizzling and smell its intoxicating odor creeping into every cranny of her comfy little house, the promise of fresh homemade pierogi lingering in the air.
I like to say that my family's centralized focus on all things edible makes me a designer-bred world-class champion eater. While children in communist countries are trained from birth for the Olympics, I've been trained for dinner. I can pick out obscure flavors in items that have dozens of ingredients on the first bite, I know exactly which flavors go with what, and I can smell if a panang sauce has been made properly from across the room. Of course, the complication of your talent being eating is that if you're not careful, your talent may swallow you whole. The is the story of how I kicked fat's ass without sacrificing my love of food. It's not a gimmick, it's not a fad - and it's sure as hell not a diet. It's my life, and I love every moment.
