About me--Melissa!
I am an Azorean-American gal living in an itty-bitty state in New England.
What's Azorean?? Well, I'm glad you asked! (My husband would say "Oh, God, don't get her started..." Ha!) The Azores are Portuguese islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. We eat a lot of the same foods as mainland Portugal, but have some additions to our cuisine from the Dutch, Flemish, Italian, and French peeps who also settled in the region. (Like, really amazing Flemish cheese. YUM.) We're also descendants of sea captains and sailors (this is when my husband's eyes start rolling) who traveled from the Azores to Morocco, India, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Japan. All of those ports-of-call have left their mark on Azorean cuisine. Some good examples: alcatra, from Morocco, and the purple-skinned sweet potatoes I grew up eating (really from Japan).
My family recently emigrated to the U.S. and landed in a little state where we rub elbows with other immigrant groups from all over the world: Italians, Cambodians, Chinese, Thai, Dominicans, Peruvians, Mexicans, Ethiopians, Cape Verdeans. And because we live so close, none of these groups are isolated islands. Instead, they intersect everywhere: I see hoards of Italians at the Peruvian restaurant. My Dominican students love Italian, Chinese, and Portuguese food. The food here is outrageously amazing.
Okay. So, I'm a little into food. Enter My Dilemma.
I don't want to give-up food. The word diet is all-too-close to the word "dead" in my book. (My book has a a little hyperbole in it, sure.) I want to try to still love food and not allow this love to become addictive and destructive. Can I take my creativity and apply it towards creating exciting, delicious food that fits my food plan and not become a blimp? This blog is my journey and my experiment. It may completely fail. But, it may actually be doable...I guess we'll see.
What I know for sure is that what I've been doing doesn't work. My struggle with my weight has been life-long. Recently, a stressful job put me under a tremendous amount of strain and I started making some REALLY bad food choices. Mostly provoked by exhaustion with a fair share of "after-the-day-I've-had-I-deserve-some-tortilla-chips-dammit" dysfunctional sort of rationalizing. It took just 10 months of this bad behavior for me to gain 27 pounds, and to lose my self-esteem and well-being.
My goal is to gain my well-being, restore myself to sanity, and hopefully lose these 30 pounds.
My hope is that I can bring some of my love of food and cooking into this and create for myself an eating lifestyle that I can maintain indefinitely.
I'm not looking for a diet. I want my life back.
--Melissa