Sugar + Salt

"Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity."
Shauna Niequist

I love food.
The author I just quoted, Shauna Niequist, isn't actually talking about food here. But I'll get back to her in a minute.

I love new food.
I love old school comfort food.
       cheesy mac and cheese or chewy chocolate chip cookies

I love discovering new dishes, I love landing in new-to-me restaurants (thank you Yelp), creating marvelous recipes, finding new food blogs.

I love looking at pictures of food - yay Instagram! and binge-watching Food Network. I think I've actually lost some years.

Ironically?

I hate cooking every day.
I hate deciding what to cook or deciding where to eat next.
And...
I hate thinking that I’m demanding or being all diva about food now.

Peanut butter and jelly should be enough - except for the whole gluten-free thing my body really needs.
A simple scrambled egg or chicken and rice.

All of This. that I'm talking about?
It's opened up a whole new can of worms …
Gluttony.
If you look it up - the true definition. I'm living smack in the middle of it.
So let’s just say I will write about that soon.  And it's sure shootin' not as easy to talk about as you might be thinking.

Back to food.

I love sweets … but oh my!what sugar does to my aching, fibromyalgia-ridden body. I’ve paid for it.
I love baking sweet things, and just thinking about what I could bake, or driving across town for a Side Car Doughnut or a Susie’s Cake slice of heaven.

I love salty, that’s kind of a new thing for my tastebuds. Probably some deficiency or other.
Crack open a fresh bag of chips.
That first bite of tri-tip, grilled to perfection.
In the end - what I love is a beautiful marriage of the two.
Salty-sweet
That’s tastebud heaven.

About a month ago, I read this excerpt from a book called Savor. I don’t own the book, yet. I probably should, so I’m putting the link to Savor here for all of us to check out.

In this sweet devotional Shauna Niequist talks about the "bittersweet" (often much more of the vinegar and less of the honey, I’m afraid).

Such great perspective.

"The idea of bittersweet is changing the way I live, unraveling and reweaving the way I understand life. Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity. Bittersweet is courageous, gutsy, earthy. So this is the work I’m doing now, and the work I invite you into: when life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow."

Shauna Niequist

Savor

Is it just me, or is that not just awesome.
"Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity."

I do love beautiful.
I love my vegetables, trip tip and a beautiful slice of coconut cake.
I love my people - a little ornery, a lot of sass with plenty of quirky mixed in.

I’m grateful for life - a God-given life with it’s moments and days dripping with molasses and syrup, and it’s drenching days of balsamic vinegar and aromatic seasonings.

I realize I can’t live on sweet anymore, where my teeth rot out of my head and the inflammation in my body says Enough Kathy!
I definitely can’t live on just salty, or bitter. I lose bits of my self and I struggle to hang on to hope.

But the combination, sometimes at the same time, mixed in the same bowl of popcorn.
A beautiful pot roast meal, and always leaving room for a delicious bowl of blueberries and cream (heaven) or a slice of key lime pie.