Exeunt

Posted on November 11, 2011 by eliseamiller

I realized today that I can be quite an anti-social creature. Sometimes it takes me a few decades to figure stuff out. This anti-socialness is heightened by the fact that I no longer drink, party or eat baked goods. Or maybe it’s certain moments—those Friday dead battery days when I’ve exerted all I can during the week—cooking, schlepping and supervising, and the wind whips and the temperature drops and all I want to do is huddle in bed with my laptop glowing, entertaining me InstantPlay style, distracting me from the things that overwhelm—things like money, career, book deals, children, marriage and shelter dogs.

Continue reading →

Forgotten treasure

Posted on November 6, 2011 by eliseamiller

This feels like old news now, it being November and all, I mean where did the time go? But I’ll post it anyway in the spirit of closure and results.

School parade. Sweets included. Natch.

Continue reading →

Tricky

Posted on October 27, 2011 by eliseamiller

I was standing in Target a couple weeks ago with Peaches. We were there to buy a Rapunzel costume. We got lucky and nabbed the last wig, but when she saw a one-shouldered pink prism Barbie dress, she had to have it, and so a new costume idea was born. Peaches would now be Rapunzie. Barbunzel. Something like that. I loved the idea. Love that she’s taking something already mapped out and reworking it to invent something better.

This year I am doing the same with our treats.

Continue reading →

cooking with animals

Posted on October 21, 2011 by eliseamiller

A reader named Lauren recently asked me what my chicken feet stock recipe was. I was delighted to share it with her in my comments section and further inspired to post it here, illustrated, Hipsta style. Thanks for the inspiration, Lauren!

Bone broth, stock, whatever you want to call it, is SO GOOD FOR YOU, makes you feel nourished and your food taste fantastic. I’ve been using it in curries, stews, to cook rice for my non-Primal geezers and drinking it in the morning to gently wake up my digestive tract and smooth my skin. Calling it elixir would not be far-fetched.

Continue reading →

Travel, Pizza & Progress

Posted on October 18, 2011 by eliseamiller

Peaches and Spike high on bread

We visited our old stomping ground this past weekend. Meaning Brooklyn. Swamp Chicken grew up in Brooklyn. His parents still live there. My father-in-law is a retired pastor and the church where he preached from 1969 to 1991 was celebrating its 85th birthday. Everyone met at an Italian restaurant in Coney Island to take part in the festivities—balloons, slideshow, DJ… It was just like a bar mitzvah! And I was the token anti-Christ. I mean atheist.

Wait a—did I say Italian restaurant??

Continue reading →

Rewind. Resuscitate. Resurrect.

Posted on October 11, 2011 by eliseamiller

I’m going to level with you.

My vacuum cleaner broke. It was a wedding shower gift. In 1995. It was duct taped together at every sucking articulating orifice and the cord stopped rewinding and the bags were hard to find unless I went to the creepy hardware store, and, well, it finally died. Now I want this one.

Continue reading →

lone free-ranger

Posted on October 6, 2011 by eliseamiller

Life can be so fricking lonely.

I’m a writer. Even if I don’t always get paid for it, it’s what I do. And it’s a really solitary job, even though I get so much creative satisfaction from writing and sharing and hearing from people who connect with my work.

Continue reading →

Dawn

Posted on October 2, 2011 by eliseamiller

: one rigid and humorless mother

It dawned on me this morning that in bashing romantic comedies during my previous post, I wasn’t specific enough. Because, like, I wrote a romantic comedy and I don’t want to denigrate my own work, even if I’m not exactly drawn to the genre so much these days.

Star Craving Mad was published way before I became the obsessed, admittedly rigid and oft humorless Primal mother you’ve come to know and maybe resent.

Continue reading →

Resolve

Posted on September 30, 2011 by eliseamiller

Happy Rosh Hashana. Shana Tova. Happy New Year.

My new year’s resolution—and I rarely make these, by the way. AND I’m a Hebrew school drop-out—is to be less of an asshole about my Primal views.

So far it’s not working. I still bristle when I see smart, lovable people suffering chronic issues while stuffing their faces with crap. And I butt in when I shouldn’t, thinking I know better. Out of love, right? It’s still annoying and undermining. I wish I would stop. So the resolution.

Continue reading →

Journeying

Posted on September 27, 2011 by eliseamiller

Apparently beef kidneys taste like pee. It makes sense if you think about it.

I just ordered my first kidneys from The Family Cow, inspired by their nutritional profile, the price—$2.50 per pound—and the latest Primalesque book I’m reading, Deep Nutrition.

Continue reading →