40 Days of Macrobiotics: Day 6

Writing is a struggle against silence. 
~ Carlos Fuentes
Last month I confessed my obsession with the perfect phrase.  I resolved to write more, even if the end product was not as "perfect" as I thought it could be.  But like most sinners ~ or wayward writers ~ my good intentions dissolved and I fell into the two cardinal sins of writers: procrastination and laziness.

The only way to get over a bad habit [not writing enough] one must practice the opposite good habit [writing more] for at least thirty days.   For me, this means writing every day.  So six days ago, I embarked on a Lenten journey of eating only whole grains and vegetables and resolved to blog about my culinary adventure.  By doing so, I take my confession a step further.  Not so much by doing penance as making amends for all the posts, poetry, prose and lyrics that never saw the light of the computer monitor because they were not profound or perfect enough. 

My macrobiotic venture is about more than food or healthy living.  It is about being accountable: to both myself as a writer and to you, my readers. And being the lazy, procrastinating writer that I am means I need a good excuse to do that.  Hence, for the next forty days I have a built-in excuse. 

Perfect.

Except…..what in the world do I write about today?  I am not cooking tonight because I was so good and did most of my cooking yesterday.  Panic ensues.  Fingers freeze, waiting for brilliance to drip from my pen.  And only....silence.

Don’t get me wrong.  Silence can be healing.  A chance to grow closer to God [or whatever name you give to the Infinite Other or Higher Power].  An opportunity to dig deeper into why we do the things we do or react the way we do.  But the point of silence is growth outward. 

And then I remembered: another point of silence is patience.  Sometimes the fruit needs to stay on the vine a little longer for the wine to be sweeter.  In my case, I just needed to mull things over on the commute home and stand in my kitchen for a nano-second for the rest of this post to pop in my frying pan ~ literally.  Yes, I was good yesterday ~ I cooked enough for myself for the next three days. 

But I was going to my book group tonight and as everyone knows, you cannot read a book with a group of your girlfriends without having food be a part of the mix!  But now that I am macro, how was this going to work?  They were used to me bringing fried chicken and chocolate!  Even I have to admit that next to that, brown rice sounds as exciting as a trip to gastroenterologist. [Which you will have to do a lot of if you do NOT eat enough brown rice, by the way.]

In the end, I made a brown rice, kidney bean, garlic and onion dish with a dash of Cajun spices and yellow curry and let the dish speak for itself.  They oohed and ahhed over it and even my friend who is a picky eater went back for thirds.  They may grow tired of hearing about the macro way of eating, but they won't get tired of eating my macro creations!  Ahhh ~ it is good to know I have not lost my culinary "wow" factor.

Or the ability to make the ink dance across a page.

Oremus pro invicem,
~ Mikaela