Melissa's blog

A couple of years ago there was a study that posited that a genetic variant was responsible for the fact that for some people cilantro (known as coriander leaves in some countries) is delicious and for others it tastes extremely bad. Many of the people in the latter group characterize the bad flavor as something like "soap." The study has been making the rounds again lately with this article.

When I lived in NYC I was a member of a food swap group. The mission of the group was "To build community by sharing and trading homemade foods, recipes and tips." It involved bringing your homemade pickles or cookies or whatever you made and swapping it for someone else's homemade goodies. One of the people who runs it, Meg Paska, now runs a small farm.

Me shoveling seaweed in Scotland on the Isle of Mull, where it is used as a soil fertilizer and conditioner

Last year I was kicked out of physical therapy, which was my primary form of exercise at the time, because well...I got better. Before that I did Crossfit, I don't know if that was part of me being in physical therapy though. I just had chronic neck and shoulder pain. The physical therapy, consisting primarily of gentle upper body and core exercises, was fairly effective for that. I was disappointed though that it didn't seem to do much for my posture. 

So the media (including me at Chicagoist) has been covering the FODMAPs/wheat study pretty heavily. But what is someone who isn't intolerant of gluten but is intolerant of fructans (the main FODMAP in wheat) supposed to do?

Early on in this blog, I did make some comments about diet and nutrition conferences I went to. I didn’t have the courage to say it outright, but I was hinting that the people at these conferences were fat. The reason I mentioned it, is because frankly I felt threatened. Here were people who ate diets like mine, diets I thought were the solution to being fat, that would help people lose weight and certainly not allow them to gain weight in the first place. And people eating this way, they were fat. 

"Were you close with him?"

Since I was named the editor of the Food & Drink Section at Chicagoist, I haven't had as much time to blog here. A lot my writing there isn't going to be particularly interesting unless you live in Chicago, but I have a scattering of pieces that might appeal to a broader audience I will highlight here from time to time with commentary. 

I admit I used to be one of those grinches who used the term "Candy Cigarettes" to describe so-called "paleo" desserts made with nut flavor rather than regular flours. My own reasoning was

I'm finally updating this page, which I hadn't updated in almost a year. Not that much has changed except I have less meat since I haven't had time to source for meatshare lately. Fewer vegetables because it's still the dead of winter and I only go to the farmer's market in the winter sporatically. Another change is that there is a ton of fermented and canned stuff, to the point where I have almost no room for normal stuff. 

Here are a few of the things I've made lately