My mother is visiting for the holidays. This is great! Besides the fact that I love spending time with her, and with my dad, and the rest of my family and friends, I am also an activist when it comes to New Orleans. New Orleans usually gets such a bad rap in the national media. I love any opportunity to share with people why I have fallen so hard for this city.
There are so many reasons for this. The most obvious one might be that this sensual city shares a multitude of elements with the love of my life, the one I’ve been most adamant and passionate about, since I first experienced it as a junior in high school. Yes, New Orleans has quite a lot in common with Italy.
Two of those elements are food and culture: would either of those spectacular places be what they are without them? And, at this time of year, the tradition of the Reveillon menu is an important part of New Orleans culture. Reveillon, traditionally, is a very late-night many-course meal which takes place after midnight, in the wee morning hours of Christmas day. And New Orleans, oh how it loves excess and decadence, is a place where, if it’s good to have one Reveillon dinner, it’s even better to have a few. So throughout the month of December, restaurants around town have their own special Reveillon menus.
This is great for two reasons: my mother loves to dine out, and, although I consider myself a local, having moved here nearly two years ago now (two Mardi Gras ago, actually), I’ve not yet had the privilege of ensconcing myself within the inner social circle which invites recent transplants to the city to home-cooked, authentic Reveillon dinners.
So tonight my mom and I went to Commander’s Palace for their take on Reveillon dinner.
It was grand. It was wonderful. Mom and I both enjoyed it.
And it was sooooooo not macro.
I haven’t decided whether Reveillon is on the yin end of the spectrum or the yang. I can say that the portions weren’t all that large (compared with, say, to Jacques-Imo’s). However, my body is not digesting it as easily as it does with my macro meals. As a matter of fact, it seems to be pouting, and on strike. An hour after we left the restaurant, I’m still feeling full, rather than energized. Though, generally speaking, I’m still considerably more energized, on a day-to-day basis, than I would have been had I not had the advantages of eating macro most of the time. I realize I’ve accumulated the benefits of eating macro over the past four or five months. But my body feels like it is still expanding. Does this mean Reveillon is an expansive force, rather than a contracting one? Ha.
I would like to say, for the record, that I do not feel guilty. I feel happy. We had a nice time. We had good conversation. Experiences mean more to us than material things, so I feel very good about making the decision, and the effort, to dine out with my mom.
Also, as an added benefit of the macrobiotic lifestyle, I have also learned to trust in balance. Whereas before, I might have freaked out by now, and felt guilty for having gone off my ‘diet’ (a word which, I’ve been told, means only ‘way of eating’ in the original Greek), and vowed to some samurai version of chaste food-worshipping discipline, I find I feel at peace. Despite my blooming middle. Despite the fact that I will, most likely, not sleep as well tonight as I usually do, when what I eat aligns with my macro path. Being on the macro path means, it turns out, that I don’t need to freak out about eating things tonight which would never be served at the Kushi Institute.
Tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it…. (yet). Ha..
