Pâté Saturday!

I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred,
I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is probably nothing better than a glass of red wine and a slice of French bread with homemade Pâté! This may be one of the most romantic combinations of food available on the face of Estero Bay! Fodder for poetry, just begging for a breathtaking sunset accompaniment . . . Hemingway would be jealous!

Red wine contains many wonderful antioxidants. For women, one glass a day is all that you need. More than one glass a day increases your risk for heart attack, stroke, and breast cancer, and any number of horrible ailments. For healthy wine drinking, I refer to a culturally appropriate book, French Women Never Get Fat. The author describes the French effort of conscious consumption, taste awareness, and sensual appreciation.  And French bread is not hard to celebrate! There is some wonderful bread available locally: La Parisienne, Carlock’s Bakery, and the Old Cayucos Bakery and Deli to name a few!

Pâté may be harder to find, harder to understand the celebration if you’ve never tried it, but certainly worth the effort. Pâté usually includes chicken liver cooked with mushrooms and herbs then pureed and chilled into a sliceable and spreadable constitution. Liver, an organ meat, is extremely rich in fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E & K, essential fatty acids, and trace minerals, copper, zinc, and iron. Clearly, it is best to buy organic, free range, grass fed liver as to avoid any stored toxic substances that the liver may harbor.

Unfortunately, pâté is not sold in any store around here. Trader Joe’s carries it on the winter season only. So, I made my own today!

Not a bad snack! Bring a notepad and pen because this meal is sure to have you hearing La Vie En Rose, smelling three different varieties of fresh ocean air, and falling in love with your taste buds all over again!

How to Look at the World

One of my patients is an artist. I mean, a real artist…like, with paintings in galleries. Not just a hobbyist. She is radiantly beautiful. She glows with an inner calm, a spirit of peaceful harmony with life and the land. In some minutes of openness, she shared with me how she developed thinking, knowing artist eyes. Her grandmother, also an artist, took her out of school on special days and they would walk the land and look at trees and flowers and grass. And “my grandmother taught me how to look at the world.”

It is not a philosophical or religious question. Well, that is not fair, because maybe it is. But, it is meant to be a health question. How can I live the healthiest life available to me? We look at the world whether we think about how we do it or not. Clearly, some outlooks are healthier than others. Did we learn to look at it? Did I look at it the way I’ve always looked at it? Did I take any different steps in my looking? Were there any new vistas? Are there any new colors or shapes?

Since I’ve started examining how I look at the world, I’ve noticed that playfulness comes easier. There is more room for humor and even failure. What would it be like to have a purple dog? How about green eggs and ham? And almost as quickly as I can come up with these endless possibilities, I want to share them with someone else. This presents a problem akin to the tree falling in the forest. If I don’t post it on facebook, does it really exist?
George Berkeley (1685-1753) talked of objects ceasing to exist once there was nobody around to perceive them. Old George would probably be overwhelmed with the amount of information available at our fingertips today. The internet, while fraught with cyber-pollution and cyber-noise, may not exist if I don’t look at it.

My artist patient is a Baby-Boomer. I’m a Gen-Xer. Everyone born after 1980 is a Millenial. At some point, we all decide how to look at our world. Perhaps more of my days could be “special” days in which I take time out to observe, revere, appreciate, listen, describe, and find peace. Maybe I can pass it on to someone else the old fashion way: in person, face to face, with a bright radiant gift smile.

~Lauren