The Original Original Pizza Cookery

In those days, we used any excuse to stop by The Pizza Cookery. Friends visiting from out of town? Let’s take them to The Pizza Cookery. Need something from Fry’s? Let’s stop by the Pizza Cookery. Driving through The Valley for any reason at all? Let’s stop by The Pizza Cookery.

The Original Pizza Cookery, back then, was a vibe. Tucked into the corner of a shitty strip mall on Topanga Canyon Blvd., it was exactly what you would expect when you walked in the door. Sawddust sprinkled on the floor, Christmas lights strung around every inch of the walls, and complimentary peanuts at your table. 

The pizza wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but the complimentary rolls were to die for, the quantity of food was unrivaled, and the atmosphere was unlike anyplace else. Even the Northwoods Inn – the only other restaurant I’m aware of with sawdust on the floor – couldn’t compare to the vibe that was The Original Pizza Cookery. The anticipation of going to The Original Pizza Cookery back then was palpable.

Have A Baby They Said…

Sadly, we didn’t get to go to The Original Pizza Cookery that day. At the appointment, the doctor dropped a bomb on us, “We’re going to have a baby today,” he said. I’m sorry. What? I’m afraid there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. We’re here for a checkup, not to have a baby. The baby isn’t due for another couple of weeks, not to mention the fact that we have plans for lunch!. Our plans, however, were not to be. 

We were ushered upstairs, where Bonnie was put into a hospital gown, needles and tubes were shoved into her skin, and we were left to wait in a severely decorated room with a TV mounted to the wall that only played public service announcements about raising children. One of them was a warning about the dangers of shaking a baby. It was so silly and melodramatic that any message would surely be lost in its absurdity, but it had exactly the opposite effect. To this day, we still quote the deep, booming voice warning us to “Never shake a baby.”

We spent eighteen-odd hours in that room, listening to that TV. I’m not sure what the harm would have been in letting us duck out for an hour to grab a bite to eat before settling into that drab little room until the sun came up the next day. We really began to regret having skipped breakfast that morning. Bonnie especially. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, and she wouldn’t get to eat again for three days. 

The New Original Pizza Cookery

We would eventually eat at The Pizza Cookery again and with our children. I don’t, however, remember the last time I ate at the Woodland Hills location. I hadn’t been in years, though, when it moved to the Thousand Oaks Inn in Thousand Oaks. It seemed out of place there. The Thousand Oaks Inn had always had a coffee shop called Dupar’s on the first floor, next to the lobby. A coffee shop is more appropriate for a hotel than a pizzeria. Coffee shops serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and while I understand that many people enjoy cold pizza for breakfast, I don’t think anyone is willing to pay for it at a hotel. 

Nevertheless, overcome by hunger and nostalgia, I couldn’t resist popping in for lunch as I passed by. I walked into the main entrance, though there was nothing to indicate that it was the main entrance. The single, unmarked, non-descript, darkly tinted glass door looked more like the side entrance to the bowling alley that used to be next door than the main entrance to a reputable and shockingly expensive restaurant.

The little door opened up like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory to a spacious but poorly utilized foyer. There was a podium to the left that held menus, so I knew I was in the right spot. An assortment of shit cluttered the wall to my right. I wasn’t sure if it was tat for sale or tchotchkes for ambiance, which tells you that neither was working. Straight ahead, a young, average-looking blonde woman and an older man were having a discussion about Jesus. I stood patiently if not awkwardly, waiting for someone to acknowledge my presence. 

Will Customer Service Ever Recover From COVID?

Eventually, after what I felt was an inappropriately long time to have to wait during an obviously slow period in the day, the blonde girl approached me and asked in an almost offensively patronizing tone if there was something that she could do for me today. Taken aback that my purpose for being there wasn’t blatantly obvious, I was momentarily dumbstruck. I stuttered and stammered, waving my arms in a way that she correctly interpreted as “I want a fucking table.” She said, “Oh. Dining in today?” As though everyone she encounters at that little podium has a different agenda. Then, she pulled a menu out of the podium and led me to the first table in a series of five comically tall booths that ran the length of the front of the restaurant. 

The booth sat against the wall, so it was very dark and sad. The hostess was either adept at reading people’s faces and body language or she frequently had customers requesting to be seated somewhere other than the dungeon because, without me saying a word, she asked if I would rather have a table by a window. Of course, I didn’t want to sit alone in the dark. I wanted to be able to look out the window while I waited for my lunch. She led me past the next table, where a father and daughter were already seated, and sat me at the table on the other side of them, next to a window.

Who Was This Booth Made For?

I laughed when I saw the window. The majority of it was frosted, and what little of the glass wasn’t frosted had hearts painted on it. Little did it matter because the window faced a stone wall ten feet away, so there was nothing to look at anyway. Perhaps that’s why the window was frosted in the first place. I climbed up onto the booth as the hostess laid my menu on the table. As she was walking away, she said that she would get me some rolls. I quickly replied, “No rolls.” She seemed a bit surprised but didn’t say anything more. She just returned to her bible study. 

The Original Pizza Cookery At The Top Of Jack’s Bean Stalk

I didn’t pick up my menu straight away because I was distracted by the height of the booth. It was so tall that my feet didn’t come anywhere near touching the floor. I’m 5’11’ with a 32” inseam, and my feet didn’t even reach the bar around the base of the table. As the edge of the booth cut into the back of my thighs, cutting off circulation, I couldn’t help but wonder who exactly these booths were made for. Did they find some 7’ tall carpenter on Craigslist to build these things? I cannot overstate how uncomfortable the booth was. My legs were all pins and needles when I finally left the restaurant. I’m happy to report, though, that since my visit, they have lowered the booths and tables to a human height.

The Gluten-Free Game Is Strong At The Original Pizza Cookery

I was so preoccupied with the absurdity of everything about this table that I completely forgot to look at the menu before my server came by to take my order. I already knew that all I wanted was a salad – The Original Pizza Cookery is sort of known for their generously sized salads – so it was just a matter of skimming the salad selection for the one that I wanted. Still, I wish I had taken the time to peruse the menu because then I would have found the gluten-free section, which I only found later on their website.

They have the largest selection of gluten-free options of any restaurant I’ve ever been to. I wouldn’t count on all of their offerings to be 100% gluten-free, though. For example, they have fries on their gluten-free menu but breaded mushrooms and mozzarella sticks on their regular menu, so the chance for cross-contamination is high. I was, however, impressed that they have two different sizes of gluten-free pizza, something I’ve never seen before. I ordered the Italian house Salad with blue cheese dressing and confirmed with her that it didn’t come with croutons. Before walking away, she confirmed that I didn’t want rolls, and I again said that I didn’t.

Italian and Gluten-Free Aren’t So Compatible

I seldom feel the need to explain to anyone that I can’t tolerate gluten, but I have learned that it’s best to make sure it stays out of my food. One day last week, I was eating lunch at Presto Pasta, and I forgot to ask if the salad came with croutons and, consequently, it arrived at my table covered with croutons. I picked them off, but the cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots also had crumbs stuck to them. So, I picked off all of the visibly contaminated components and placed them on a napkin next to my plate. An employee came by later to check on me and clear my dirty dishes, and I saw her check out the random pile of vegetables, croutons and the slice of bread accumulated on the table with an inquisitive look on her face.

I don’t expect people to read my mind, but if I were in their shoes, I like to think that I could and would pick up on little clues, make deductions, and extrapolate the information before me. If a man were to order his chicken piccata with the only gluten-free pasta on the menu, for example, I would assume that it wasn’t a preference but a dietary restriction because nobody prefers anything to be gluten-free. So, I would confirm with him that he has an allergy, and then I would be sure to send out his salad without croutons and his entree without a giant slab of stale garlic bread sitting right on top of his gluten-free pasta. But, hey, that’s just me.

We Just Lived Through A Pandemic, People!

Before she left me, the waitress took my drink order. I asked for a Pellegrino, and she asked if I wanted lime with it, which impressed me because rarely does anyone think to ask that, let alone proactively bring limes out with the drink. My impression turned to disgust when she set my glass down on the table by the rim. Why don’t you just stir the lime in my water with your fingers while you’re at it? She didn’t only carry my glass that way, either. I saw her place other glasses on other tables that way, too.

Imagine what she’s spreading from glass to glass by handling the rim of the glass that way. Someone has a cold sore; she picks up their glass by the rim to refill it, returns it to the table, picks up a glass from the next table by the rim, refills it, returns it, and before her shift ends, everyone in the place has herpes. Of course, I realize I’m in the minority of people who disdain straws and choose to drink from a glass like a proper adult, but it doesn’t make the way she handles glasses any less gross. I even saw her set down a mug by the rim. A mug! It had a fucking handle for fucks sake!

While I waited for my salad to arrive – which, by the way, took significantly longer than I felt it should have, considering it was just one whole head of lettuce, a handful of mozzarella, half a can of garbanzo beans, and one slice of nasty looking very unripe tomato –  I took in the scene that is the new and improved yet, somehow, Original Pizza Cookery.

Pizza Shouldn’t Be Political

The word that came to mind as I looked around the dining room was WASPY. Perhaps it was the Jesus talk when I walked in the door that tinted my perspective or that everyone in the joint was white and conservative. Whatever it was, I simultaneously felt at home and behind enemy lines. Later that night, Bonnie reminded me that during the lockdown, the owner of The Original Pizza Cookery, refused to shut down. Their disregard for public safety would explain the server’s filthy fingers all over the rim of my glass.

The More Things Change…

There were two tables off to my left, occupied by old ladies who could have easily been the same old ladies who sat in coffee shops and restaurants in Thousand Oaks when I was a kid. There’s something about old ladies in Thousand Oaks that I’ve never seen anywhere else. They share the aesthetic that comes with aging comfortably in relative affluence. They all look like they walked out of a brochure for an assisted living community, and they always have. For all I know, these were the same old ladies eating lunch here thirty years ago when this was Dupar’s. Someone periodically comes out of the back and updates their clothes like the animatronic characters at Disneyland.

Daddy Daughter Day

Since there was nothing particularly interesting going on in the dining room, and since they were sitting directly in front of me, I found myself drawn into the conversation between the father and daughter seated at the next table. The father was sitting with his back to me. He was probably in his early fifties, and what remained of his hair was gray, almost white. He had the familiar horseshoe of male pattern baldness, but his was fine stubble that had grown back since his last shave two or three days earlier.

When I was a kid, guys with the horseshoe hairline carried on like they had a full head of hair. They didn’t shave it. They grew it out like they did when they had hair. It was never a flattering look, but when more than half of the men you know all look that way, you only have the men blessed with a full head of hair to compare yourself with. Then Bruce Willis went bald and started shaving his head, and balding men everywhere followed suit. Even men with odd-shaped heads looked better without the weird furry ring, which, before long, became a novelty of old pictures and home movies, like wood paneling and bell bottoms. 

He would have looked like a nerdy software engineer if he grew his hair out. Not the young hipster software engineers of today’s Silicon Valley but the kind with Coke bottle glasses and pocket protectors that created the industry those young nerds occupy today. The daughter was pretty but in a forced, artificial way. Beauty didn’t seem to come naturally to her, but she was at an age and socioeconomic level that afforded her access to the progress of the feminine beauty industry.

Hot Tea At The Pizza Cookery

She explained to her dad that her man was traveling to Chicago for business. I didn’t catch if they were married or just living in sin. The way she spoke about him, though, it didn’t sound like she was married to the love of her life. It sounded more like a legal partnership or a marriage of convenience. He is an investor, she explained, with a firm based in Chicago and has found that showing up to certain events in person has benefits of some sort or another. It sounded to me like she was making excuses for him and that she didn’t really believe them herself.

The Service Begins To Slip

As I finished my lunch, I began to get impatient. My server had fucked off somewhere after bringing me my salad and never came back to check on me. I would have liked another Pellegrino, but now that I was done eating, I just wanted my check. I saw her stopping by every other table but mine. She finally came by my table and asked me if I wanted anything else. I told her I just wanted the check, and she said she would be right back with it. But she wasn’t right back with it. She went back to waiting on every other table in the place. 

While I was waiting, the conversation between father and daughter turned to grandchildren. It seems there was trouble with the ol’ baby makin’ factory. A year ago, they thought that they would be pregnant by now, but it’s just not happening for them. She and her man were checked out, and they’re both working properly. I got the sense that her man was more disappointed that they weren’t pregnant than she was. Even her dad seemed to be a little more disappointed than her. It sounded like she was more disappointed about letting him down than disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant. 

It surprised me to hear that she was trying to have a baby because the way she was talking about what her man does for a living sounded more like first-date recap information than I-share-a house-with-a-man-who-I’m-also-allowing-to-drop-loads-in-me information. I also thought it was strange that she was sharing so much personal information with her dad. They must be really close. I wonder what it’s like to be that close to a parent. 

I Live Here Now

My waitress finally brought my check, but I wasn’t quick enough with my card. She just dropped the tray and ran. I feared it would be another twenty minutes before she came back to pick it up again and who knows how long before she brought it back. Pride of The Original Pizza Cookery she was. I was beginning to fear that this booth was my new home, and I was never again going to know the feeling of my feet touching the floor. Little difference it would make. With the booth cutting off circulation to my legs I wouldn’t be able to feel my feet before long anyway.

This Woman Will Give Birth Before I’m Able To Leave

Meanwhile, the daughter started talking about how difficult it had been to get pregnant. “There’s a 10% chance every month,” she lamented, as though the odds of getting pregnant are so long that it’s a miracle anyone has managed it thus far. I realize that it’s harder for some people to conceive than others, but there are so many millions of people who have a harder time avoiding conception that blaming your struggle to get pregnant on “the odds” seems a bit self-absorbed. It’s like when Bonnie complains that it’s too hot at 75º or too cold at 73º, and I remind her that it’s not too hot or cold; you’re too hot or cold. 

My waitress came right back with the check which was equally surprising and welcomed as the restaurant was starting to get busy, so I was glad to be on my way. As I was signing the receipt, I heard the daughter say, “It would just be nice for me to be the first not to have any medical intervention.” Apparently, getting pregnant doesn’t come easily for anyone in her family. Ironic, I thought, as I walked past her on my way to the door, my feet tingling with each step. Twenty-two years earlier, without even trying, Bonnie and I conceived our first son just upstairs, in this very hotel that is now home to The Original Pizza Cookery. What are the odds?

The post The Original Pizza Cookery Has Better “Tea” Than Service appeared first on RetroActiveLifestyle.

Besides sangria recipes, autumn is reminiscent of so many things, like the changing of the leaves on the trees and the chill in the air that people inexplicably describe as crisp, but I’ve yet to understand why. There are elaborate Halloween decorations outside homes (that started appearing in August this year,) trick-or-treating, jack-o-lanterns, and scary movies, and that’s all just the month of October. Then we move into November, when the deep autumn begins just as daylight saving time ends. It’s colder now, darker, blustery. Christmas music is playing in all the stores, and the more exuberant exhibitionists are replacing their 12’ tall skeletons, their inflatable Oogie Boogie’s, and their orange string lights with Christmas-themed 12’ tall skeletons in Santa hats, Christmas inflatable Oogie Boogie’s in Santa hats, and multi-colored lights. Christmas is still six weeks out, though, and barely on my radar. 

The crown jewel of the “holiday season” for me is Thanksgiving. When I think of Autumn, I think of spending a long weekend with family, talking, drinking, and, of course, eating. In fact, most of my autumnal warm fuzzies revolve around food. As Thanksgiving draws near, I hear people groan about turkey. I suspect these people have never had deep-fried turkey or, as I discovered last year, smoked turkey, for if they had, I believe they’d change their tune. And then there are all of the glorious side dishes: mashed potatoes, au gratin potatoes, green bean casserole, and glorious, glorious rolls for those who have not yet been cursed with an inability to process gluten. 

We’re Getting To The Sangria Recipe

Of course, a holiday meal with family wouldn’t be complete without booze. Unless that is, you’re Bonnie’s side of the family. Mormons. Amiright? Beer, wine, liquor, they’re fine utilitarian, pedestrian, any time of year libations, but the holidays call for something more, something special. That is where Bonnie’s delightfully, dangerously delicious Autumn Sangria recipe comes in. The recipe is very simple and can be tweaked as necessary to suit your tastes, but why mess with a sure thing?

Remember, All This Drivel is Why You Were Able To Find This Sangria Recipe In The First Place

Bonnie has many different sangria recipes for various occasions and seasons throughout the year, and they are all equally delicious and deadly. Make no mistake, this is no beginner or even intermediate cocktail. No, this concoction is meant for seasoned alcoholics. Not the ones so far advanced that they eschew anything but straight vodka, but the ones who still drink socially and enjoy imbibing a little variety; the ones who have been at it so long that they gauge their consumption not by the glass but by the bottle.

Bonnie’s Dangerously Delicious Fall Sangria Recipe

Serving Size:

4 – 8

Time:

10 Minutes

Difficulty:

Super Easy

Ingredients

• 1 Orange
• 1 Apple
• 2 Pears
• 1 Cup Frozen Cranberries
• 1 Cup Cinnamon Whiskey
• 1 or 2 Bottles of White Wine
• Apple Cider

Directions

1. Keep the cranberries in the freezer until you’re ready to make the sangria recipe, so they will freeze and keep the drink cold without watering it down.
2. If you’re going to make your own cinnamon whiskey, you should do that ahead of time as well. Place a few cinnamon sticks in a mason jar, fill the jar with your favorite whiskey, and wait.
3. Start by cutting the fruit. Slice the oranges, and cut the apples and pears into wedges.
4. Put all of the fruit in a pitcher.
5. Pour in 1 cup of cinnamon whiskey. If you didn’t make your own, Fireball will get the job done, too.
6. Pour in 1 or 2 bottles of white wine. This is an excellent time to get rid of that bottle of Chardonnay your mom gave you for your birthday because she doesn’t know you at all.
7. Top up with apple cider. For an extra deadly batch of sangria, use hard cider.
8. Enjoy!

If you’re more of a visual person, you can watch Bonnie make her fall sangria recipe in action below.

The post Sangria Recipe To Salve The Soul This Fall appeared first on RetroActiveLifestyle.

It was Spring 2020, and after two months spent in isolation, not working, exercising, or socializing, nothing mattered. We whiled away the endless days with food and drink until they all melded into one continuous, meaningless blur. Day in, day out, we ate and drank seven days a week for two months until, by the end of May, our sloth and gluttony were showing in ways incontrovertible.

Denial is a powerful drug. It can persuade you that your scale is broken or that you’re only imagining that your belly used to be smaller. You might even convince yourself that you could never see your penis past your belly when you looked down. Still, when your pants, which required a belt to stay up just two months earlier, will no longer stretch around your fat belly and close, you cannot deny the problem before you without damaging the fabric of your mind and drifting towards insanity.

That was my moment of clarity, my rock bottom. I had no pants that fit, and I don’t mean they were a little tight on me; I mean, I could not button them. Any of them. No amount of sucking in my gut or tossing myself on the bed for leverage could get my pants to close. I even had Bonnie sit on my belly like a suitcase, but nothing could reduce the distance between button and hole. Little did it matter while we were stuck at home, but with the stay-at-home order soon to be lifted, I might actually have to reenter civilization. Something had to be done.

How I Ended Up On The Cabbage Soup Diet

YouTube could sense that I was in trouble. My feed became an endless stream of weight loss videos. One video, in particular, caught my eye because it claimed, incredibly, that I could lose fifteen pounds in seven days. I know nothing about weight loss, but that seemed like an impossible and totally unreasonable claim that needed debunking, and who better to put it to the test than a newly minted middle-aged fat guy? Besides, there wasn’t anything else to do.

I told Bonnie my plan, and she decided she wanted to join me on the cabbage soup diet, not that she was invited, mind you. I was perfectly content to do the diet on my own, but having a partner in misery might enrich the whole experience, so I didn’t put up a fight. Resolute in our endeavor to shed 30 pounds between us, I copied the shopping list from the video description, and then we hopped on our bikes and rode to the grocery store. 

There was no way to know just then that I was about to unleash a week of torture upon myself, which was for the best. At that moment, I was in the mood to try something new, and I was excited about this diet. The following day, we woke up and started the cabbage soup diet.

The novelty wore off before the weekend was out.

Starting the diet on a Friday guaranteed to ruin an otherwise perfectly good weekend, Memorial Day weekend, at that. Not that there was any sort of delineation between the week and the weekend at this point, but forty years of indoctrination into the rat race doesn’t fade away in just two months. Weekends still brought with them a reprieve, but now, instead of being a reprieve from work, they were a reprieve from the guilt and shame of the day drinking that was starting increasingly earlier with every passing day. It hadn’t yet crept into the morning hours, but it was getting dangerously close. 

We were going to lose a weekend to this awful diet no matter what day we started it, but starting on a Friday meant that the diet would be over in time to fully enjoy the following weekend and all that it entails. That we were already thinking about our future gluttonous exploits before the diet even began did not bode well for the efficacy of this diet and showed that we were not fully committed to our health. For the moment, however, we were fully committed to this diet, if for no other reason than to prove to the other that we could finish.

Let The Diet Begin!

It’s hard to say which day was the hardest – actually, it’s not. It was Day 6. Day 6 was the hardest. The first day would be high in the running for the second hardest, though. On the first day, we could only eat fruit in addition to the cabbage soup. We spent half of the first day making the cabbage soup, though, so it wasn’t available to eat until sometime in the early afternoon.

All I had to eat until the soup was ready were apples and bananas. It may not sound like a great tribulation, but you have to remember that not 24 hours before, there was no restriction to my daily caloric intake. None. Now, all I could eat was fruit that didn’t satisfy or fill me up the way carbs and sugar did. I would have to summon some serious willpower if I was going to get through this diet. Fortunately, I had a superpower: experience.

As I said, I’ve cut things out of my diet before. In 2016, I quit drinking alcohol and reduced my sugar intake to less than 25 grams per day, so what I was feeling wasn’t a total surprise. Bonnie and I also quit all carbs just a few weeks before the COVID lockdown started, so I knew it would take some time for the cravings to stop. In my experience, it takes three full days of abstinence from sugar before the jonesing stops.

This time around, it was different, though. Not only was I abstaining from all refined sugar and other carbs, but also alcohol and meat. It only took a day to figure out that all those things were what I used to cope with stress and anxiety. I found myself stuck in a loop. Detoxing from the garbage I was used to eating made me anxious, which made me want to eat garbage to cope with the anxiety caused by detoxing from the garbage. I was suddenly and acutely aware that I had a toxic relationship with food, which went undetected for decades because I was active enough to stave off any adverse effects caused by over-eating.

The cabbage soup diet illuminated how I have been using food as a coping mechanism since I was a teenager, and I didn’t even know it. It was like stopping for the night in an unfamiliar place. When you wake up in the morning and look outside, the landscape is revealed. It was as though I were seeing myself for the first time.

I’ve Been Here Before

The crazy, stupid thing is, I’ve been here before. When I cut out sugar and alcohol back in 2016, I felt better than I ever had. It was easy to see the connection between what I ate and how I felt. The hard part was all of the triggers. We would go on bike rides that always ended up at 7-Eleven. We would get a treat and ride back home. Going for the ride but not getting the treat was hard, especially when everyone else was getting a treat. At least there were other comfort foods that I could eat and other things to do to distract me.

The cabbage soup diet was different. There were no distractions. I gave up all the food I used for comfort, which caused me more stress and no comfort. My cravings for wine, cookies, and pizza were unlike anything I’d ever experienced. On top of everything else, we were in the middle of a global lockdown, so there was nowhere to go; there was nothing to do except stay at home and confront my demons. So, confront them, I did.

I don’t think this diet would have been as productive for me if Bonnie hadn’t joined me in misery. Every morning during the cabbage soup diet, we would sit out back, choke down our cabbage soup, and talk. We talked a lot about food and our relationships with it both now and when we were younger. Talking about my relationship with food when I was younger helped me see patterns I was blind to for so long, and that is essential for making lasting changes.

Day 2 was frustrating. On Day 1, we were only allowed to eat fruit in addition to the cabbage soup. On Day 2, though, we were only allowed to eat vegetables with the cabbage soup. All I wanted to eat on Day 2 was fruit. I can’t be sure why, but I suspect that after more than 24 hours without copious amounts of sugar, my body was withdrawing, and since the fruit was the closest thing to sugar that I was going to get for the next week, nothing sounded better than a banana on Day 2. 

Day 3 might have been the easiest day. I was acclimating to the diet, and we could eat fruits and vegetables. Day 3 was when I started to come to my senses about my health. I realized that I would rather change my relationship with food than do stupid diets like this cabbage soup diet.

I’ve seen the cycle of dieting secondhand, but I’ve never seen a perpetual dieter ever get any smaller. Bonnie’s mom is a perpetual dieter. She spent the better part of three decades doing the Atkins diet. It was really just an excuse to eat as much meat as she wanted without having to eat any vegetables. Once, when she was about seven, Bonnie asked her mom for apples while grocery shopping. Her mom said, “No, I can’t have apples on my diet.” There’s a whole lot to unpack in that sentence, but that’s for another story.

In the 25 years I’ve known her, I’ve never known her not to be “trying” to lose weight. I use “trying” loosely because she diets the way one might watch TV or crochet. It’s an activity to fill time during the day, not an endeavor with a plan, a benchmark, and a goal. Even at 82 and with dementia well settled in, she’s still obsessed with her weight.

A while back, she gave up gluten for ten days because she decided that she must be allergic to it. She stopped eating bread and rice. Yes, rice. After ten days, she was down two dress sizes. A remarkable feat, considering she spent a whole week of her gluten-free diet eating banana bread my son made. Clearly, she has no idea what gluten is – or what a diet is, come to that. There was always room on her Atkins diet for bear claws, pastries, or just a ball of butter rolled in sugar.

Having had a front-row seat to this one-woman show of self-delusion and self-destruction, it only took two days to decide that dieting was not for me. I would rather take care of myself continuously than try to catch up in fits and starts. That was the conclusion I came to on day three, and I could very well have ended the diet there and come away a little smarter and a little better for my effort, but something much bigger and more important was awaiting me at the end of the diet. Information that would literally change my life was just days away. 

Day 4 was the strangest part of the diet. In addition to the soup, we were to eat eight bananas and drink eight glasses of skim milk. Before the diet even started, I told Bonnie there was nothing in this world that could get me to drink the milk. I’ve never liked milk. It’s repellent in every way: the taste, the smell, the origin. There was no way I was drinking a drop of milk, let alone a half gallon.

Bonnie insisted that we replace those calories, though. Her solution was to substitute the milk with a plant-based protein shake. In her mind, that was a better alternative to milk. She made me try the shake that she made the morning of day four. She was wrong. The shake was just as disgusting as milk. I ate my eight bananas and cabbage soup, and Bonnie made me eat a salad to make up some calories, but not a drop of milk passed my lips that day. Bonnie discovered, after about four bananas, that she was allergic to them. Her tongue swelled, and the roof of her mouth was itchy. Who knew a stupid diet made to help people who are too fat for heart surgery drop weight quickly could reveal so many things about ourselves?

Nothing Like A Cabbage Soup High

I woke up on day 5 of The Cabbage Soup Diet, and I felt better than I have ever felt in my entire life. I was alert, energetic, and happy. I’ve never been a morning person, but I woke up that day at 5:45 a.m. and practically leaped out of bed. It doesn’t matter what time I get up or how much sleep I get; I’ve never leaped out of bed before. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so good. Did other people wake up feeling like this? Do those naturally perky people who drive you nuts in the morning feel like this every day? 

The feeling stayed with me all day and into the next. I woke up on Day 6 feeling just as good, maybe even better than I had the day before. I have no doubt it would have carried over into the final day of the diet, except that I got a little overzealous and made myself sick.

We went grocery shopping for food to eat when the diet was over. Grocery shopping on bikes is nothing new for us; we’ve been doing it for years. It was a beautiful, warm, 85º Spring day. The perfect day for a ride. Perfect, that is, for someone who has not been highly restricting calories for a week. When we got home from our 16-mile ride, my legs were jelly. I was shaking all over, and I felt awful. All I wanted to do was to lie down and try not to throw up. I drank a Gatorade – pounded it, actually, and then I sat down to rest.

I wasn’t down very long, though, before the Gatorade returned. My Cabbage Soup high was gone, and it would not return. To this day, I still have never felt as good as I did on days 5 and 6 of the diet, though it’s not for lack of trying. Chasing that feeling in December 2021, I ate nine bananas in one day, hoping to feel that way again the next day.

What I found super interesting was that after banana four, I had this massive energy surge, like when Doc threw his homemade Presto Logs into the fire, and the engine lurched forward. After about an hour, I expected to crash, but the crash never came. I just continued to feel fantastic. This was the answer I was looking for! Perhaps, but we’ll never know. The next day, I woke up feeling awful. I was coming down with something. Bad luck, bad timing. 

Thursday morning, I woke up feeling normal, which was a bummer. It was like I had a superpower the previous two days, and now it was gone. Feeling normal again felt worse than usual. I’ve felt like shit for as long as I can remember, at least since I was 12. I’ve never had any energy, I’m always racked with anxiety, and I’ve never understood why nobody else seemed to feel the way I did. Then, I got a taste of what feeling good feels like – it tastes like banana – and I wanted it back. I did have a consolation, however. It was the last day of this godforsaken diet.

This Stupid Cabbage Soup Diet is Finally Over!

On Friday morning, we weighed ourselves. I don’t think either of us was surprised to learn that we didn’t reach our goal of fifteen pounds each. Bonnie lost less than eight pounds, and I lost nine and a half.

Pre-diet life resumed immediately after the weigh-in, and I’m ashamed at how quickly I fell back into my old routine. It only lasted three days, however. By Sunday, I was feeling like my old self again, which wasn’t a good thing. I wanted to feel good again, at least how I felt at the end of the diet, if not how I felt on Day 5. I began to connect the dots. After a week of eating copious vegetables and fruits, no sugar or bread, and very little meat, I felt great! After three days of eating bread, sugar, and meat, I felt sluggish and gross.

Then it hit me. I can’t process gluten! I immediately cut gluten out of my diet and instantly began to feel better. Not eight bananas a day better, but better than I had in a long, long time. I had energy, I could think clearly, and my skin cleared up. It was like the opposite of a miracle pill. Abstinence was my miracle pill. After a lifetime of feeling awful, I finally knew why. It was a tricky road to navigate at first, and I accidentally glutenized myself several times during the first five months of my new gluten-free diet. I knew gluten came from wheat, but I didn’t realize that barley and rye also contain gluten, so I wasn’t looking for those ingredients when reading the labels on food packaging. I also learned the hard way about cross-contamination at restaurants, but things have gotten much easier. 

It’s been three years since the cabbage soup diet, and I am happy to say that we’re still on track. I haven’t glutenized myself in almost a year, and although I did gain back more than twice the weight I lost after the diet, I have since lost 40 pounds just by making better choices. I’m only eating two meals a day, I limit my sugar intake, and I quit drinking. I feel better than I have in years, and I’m more focused and productive than ever.

You Never See The Change A-Comin’

I could never have imagined, at the start of 2020, how radically different my life would be 12 months later, let alone three years, but here we are. I feel like I have taken the first big step out of a rut and am back on flat, solid ground again. We’re not complacent, though. Health takes work to maintain, and we’re ready for it.

For the first time in many, many years, I am optimistic for the future.

Cabbage Soup

Serving Size:

1

Time:

3 hrs

Difficulty:

Easy

Ingredients

• 1 Large Can of Stewed or Whole Tomatoes
• 1 Envelope of Onion Soup Mix (optional)
• 4 Cups of Water
• 6-7 Beef Bullion Cubes
• 1 Head of Cabbage
• 1/2 Stalk Celery
• 2 Bell Peppers
• 2 Onions
• 5 Cloves of Garlic

Directions

1. Into a large dutch oven or stock pot, add 1 large can of stewed or whole tomatoes.
2. Add 1 packet of Onion Soup Mix
3. Add 3-4 Cups water along with 6-7 beef bullion cubes and mix well, then heat mixture over medium-high heat until boiling.
4. While the mixture is coming up to a boil, cut up your vegetables and add them to the pot. Once the soup is boiling, turn the heat down to med-low for a slow roiling boil and cook with lid on until vegetables are tender (30-90 mins.)

We documented the week of our cabbage soup diet experience, and you can watch it here:

The post Cabbage Soup Diet: My Life Changed In A Week appeared first on RetroActiveLifestyle.

My Quest For Gluten-Free Wine

Personally, I can attest to having been glutenized by wine. I have been gluten-free for a full year now with the exception of 5 accidental glutenings in the fall of 2020. (At least one of which was caused by wine.) What I have learned from those episodes is that the effects are much stronger now that I have no residual gluten in my system and if I ingest gluten now I will be sick for at least 5 hours. So I prefer not to take chances with wheat, rye, and barley.

My aversion to glutenization caused me to abstain from wine entirely for several months after one bottle got me really good. I am particularly heartbroken about it because it was my favorite wine: The Robert Mondavi Private Selection Cabernet Sovinougn – the one that’s aged in bourbon barrels.

I suspect that the bourbon barrel aging may be the source of the gluten, but I cut out all wine just to be safe until I happened upon a wine that stated right on the label that it was in fact gluten-free. That piqued my interest, and my hope, to learn if there were other winemakers pursuing a gluten-free process but I didn’t come up with much. Barefoot says all of their wines are gluten-free but that’s hard to get excited about. I also found a handful of small vintners that said their wine is gluten-free as well. But it doesn’t do me much good to know about gluten-free wines that aren’t available in my area, does it?

How The Gluten-Free Wine List Started

Once I learned that there were some safe wines out there I started trying new ones. To keep track of what I tried I started snapping a picture of the bottle and jotting down notes about whether I liked it or not in my Notes App. The result is a living list of safe wines. It’s been 7 months since I last ate or drank anything that glutenized me so I don’t know if I’m on a lucky streak or if the large majority of wines are in fact totally safe. Perhaps there are just a few hangers-on to old wine-making techniques that we, who are unable to process gluten, should avoid.

Which ever it is, I will continue to be a guinea pig and try new wines and report back to you my findings.

My List Of Gluten-Free Wines

And so without further ado here is my list of wines of which I have personally drunk at least half the bottle without glutenization. As I come across new, safe wines I will add them to the list so check back often.

1. Corte Corsano – 2018 Chianti Classico

Not good but didn’t seem to affect me.

2. Criss Cross – 2016 Petite Sirah

Not even as good as the Chianti but didn’t affect me.

3. Frei Brothers – 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon

Decent.

4.Bonterra – 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon

Just plain good. This was the first wine I took a bet on because it said Made With Organic Grapes and I thought there was a good chance it was gluten-free. I was right!

5. The Collection – 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon

Tasty. Kind of fruity for a cab.

6. Riunite – Lambrusco

Everything that you would expect from a sparkling red wine, in a magnum bottle, with a screw cap. 

7. Erath – 2018 Pinot Noir

We selected it only because when we googled what wine goes best with Mahi Mahi tacos we found that an Organ Pinot paired best with grilled Mahi Mahi. We didn’t fully appreciate how well it paired though until we ate taco leftovers later the same night with the Simi Cab and discovered that there really was something to this Pinot. And this wine is gluten-free to boot!

8. Simi – 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon

When paired with Mahi Mahi tacos the wine leaves a sort of earthy, smokey, wood aftertaste that leaves you longing for the more compatible, and significantly cheaper Erath pinot.

9. H3 – 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon

Claimed to have a cocoa finish but I didn’t get that. Also said deep berry flavors which was a spot on characterization.

10. Line 39 – 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon

For a $10 bottle of wine, Line 39 never disappoints. You’re won’t be raving to your friends about this bottle of wine is but you’re also not going to complain. 

11. Clos Du Bois – 2018 Pinot Noir

It sort of made my lips tingle and go numb. My first glass had almost no taste like drinking water but then had a grape juice finish. Not exactly what I would call award winning but by the fourth glass who’s to judge.

12. Barefoot Bubbly Brut Cuvée Champagne

For a few years, this was the king of grocery store champagne with its light, fruity, non-champagne-like taste. But in the past 1 or 2 years, the king has abdicated his throne and joined the ranks of mediocrity beside Cooks and André. But hey, it’s gluten-free wine.

13. Underwood – 2019 Pinot Noir

It had a very astringent taste and I didn’t really enjoy it but it didn’t affect me so it’s good in my book.

14. Wine Cube – Pinot Noir

I know that boxed wines have a sort of a less than classy reputation and rightly so. I would, however, argue that they play a very useful role in the life of the budget minded wine lover. You can start the evening off with your favorite, pricier bottle of wine. Then, when your taste buds are dulled, you can move on to the old reliable, and significantly less expensive box on the counter. This way you’re not wasting expensive and delicious wine that you’re not even really tasting anyway. This Wine Cube Pinot Noir fills that role nicely. It’s not bad as the first glass of the night either. I also recommend traveling wine wine cubes on road trips. They’re perfect for staying in hotels and airbnb’s because they last for days and you never need a cork screw.

15. The Naked Grape – Pinot Noir

I hate the look of this box. It reminds me of 1990’s wallpaper and smooth jazz. If Frass Canyon were a real vineyard I think they would use this design. Your mom’s douchey, new-age boyfriend, who also happens to be her supervisor at her new job that she had to take after your dad left, would buy this box because of the design. The wine inside isn’t much better. Unlike the Wine Cube, you’re definitely not going to want to start the night out with this thing. In fact, you might want to kill 2 bottles before you start slumming it for the night. The only reason I bought this box of wine was because it was marked down from $15 to $3.75. I was going for the Black Box Cab when Bonnie called me to the end cap of the aisle where 2 of these boxes were relegated. I’m glad I didn’t I have to pay $15 to find out I don’t like this wine. $3.75 is a fair price point though so if you can find it for that go ahead and feel good about picking one up.

The post Gluten-Free Wine List For Gluten-Free Wine Lovers appeared first on RetroActiveLifestyle.

In the summertime, it feels nice to walk into the cool store and escape the heat outside. In the Fall, it’s filled with seasonal smells and foods that you might not buy again until next year, like those crispy onions you put on green bean casserole and candy and other goodies that you can purchase year-round, but in the Fall, dress up for the holidays to bully you into buying them with fear of missing out on the unique, limited edition packaging; black and orange through October. Brown and orange through November, then in December, everything goes red and green. And then, just after the silver, black, and gold New Year’s decorations go on clearance, everything becomes pink and red a month too soon. It’s like clockwork. You can rely on it. I suppose that’s what’s comforting—the routine.

The Routine of the Grocery Store

As a kid, I enjoyed that routine. Every week, we’d park, get a cart, go inside, walk down the same aisles, and pick out the same foods: sandwich bread, bologna, pudding pops, cereal; always meandering through the same loop around the store, we’d grab a sample if they had them, and then check out. 

At almost every single register was a familiar face. Each cashier had the number of years they had worked for the grocery store printed on their name tag, and I always looked to see how many years they had been working there. Anything over five years was unfathomable to my young mind. As I grew up, the same faces were still at the registers. The numbers on their name tags were getting big, their hair was getting a little grayer, and their faces were beginning to betray their age.

They were a lot like teachers when I was young. I wondered who they were, what else they did, if anything, or did they just live in the grocery store. I never saw any of them outside the store. Come to think of it, I never see them outside the store now, either. It seems elitist and wrong. It’s an indictment of suburban homogeny distilling our neighborhoods into socioeconomically segregated islands the help can’t afford to live on. So, interactions with people above and below your own social status are limited to business transactions like checking out at the supermarket. 

The Supermarket Sweeps Away Your Cares

After checking out one time when I was about 7, I was pushing the cart as we were walking away from the check stand, and I ran over the back of my mom’s heel with the front of the cart. Not on purpose, but because I had the spatial awareness and attention span of a 7-year-old. She turned around and smacked me across the face in front of a dozen or so unfazed customers and cashiers. And yet, even after that totally unfair and unjustified moment of public humiliation, the grocery store remains a fixture in my mind of good memories and warm fuzzies that come and go with the seasons.

There For Us Even In Hard Times

Every week, every month, every season, every year. The grocery store is there; the routine is there. And it’s a very privileged thing, isn’t it? It’s a sign that you have a minimum level of wealth and status, but whoever stops to think about that?

When the shelves were bare in March and April, I didn’t hear anybody saying that they were grateful that the grocery stores were still open and that they were able to continue to buy food to feed their families. They just complained about what wasn’t on the shelves. Nobody had to resort to hunting the neighborhood squirrels. Even in an unprecedented time of crisis, the grocery store was still there for us in a significant way. Sure, our routine was interrupted, but it wasn’t lost. It was temporarily altered. We couldn’t buy all of the things we are used to buying, and that can be a stressful thing when we rely on our routines of consumption to comfort and soothe our troubled minds. It forces us out of our comfort zone when we must make even a small change to our routine.

That’s why diets don’t work.

They replace the most fundamental routine of our day with new foods that don’t work to comfort us. Then, when tensions rise, we retreat back to our old ways. Routine 1 – Diet 0.

Henry David Thoreau warned us to “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” I say beware of all diets that require new food. Not that I have anything against trying new things. But temporarily changing the food you eat will not change YOU. Sure, I’ve cut things out of my diet for extended periods of time; Sugar, alcohol, dairy, but it’s never for very long. They always come back because, like Jerry Seinfeld said, “a diet is what you eat, not something you do.”

Diet Dogma

We all know the meat and potatoes guy who wouldn’t be caught dead eating a vegetable lest anyone think he was less than a man. He’s not on the manly meat and potatoes diet; he just has a limited palate. Everyone knows a vegan who would never eat any animal products, but that’s considered a lifestyle, not a diet. I would never eat that fermented shark they consider a delicacy in Iceland, but you wouldn’t say I’m on the no rotten shark diet. I even know someone who claims that they can’t eat a salad because of a GI disorder, but they drink Dr. Pepper by the gallon. Are they on the Dr. Pepper diet? No, they just have a touch of Munchausen.

A diet is what you eat, not something you do. And, at least, in Western society, what we eat has somehow become entangled with our identity. We cling dogmatically to our diets, sometimes to the detriment of our own health, which is why the only diet that works, the only diet that will actually stick, is to make a complete lifestyle change. 

I didn’t know it while we were following the path we’ve spent the past 20 years wearing into the floor of our local grocery store, but that’s exactly what I was about to do. 

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The Ingredients Make The Pizza Bagel!

As with any recipe, the right ingredients are everything. I learned early on in the process that all bagels are not the same. I would imagine that making my own bagels from scratch would make the very best pizza bagel but that wasn’t an option as there was a run on flour during the lockdown and the 50-pound bag that we buy every two months had just run out. One of the great phenomenons of human nature that confounds me is everyone deciding they’re bakers during this pandemic.

So now you know how to make the absolute best pizza bagel. I’m sorry that you’re not a better person for it. There’s nothing I can do about that. Maybe try getting out of the house once in a while, and get some sun on that pallid face. Do something with your life. Even the roaches that live under your mattress are judging you. They want a break from you too.

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