Twenty-nine ounces less of me

Official weigh-in day, and I've lost a bit less than two pounds this week. I weigh myself every day, but in the future I will note only my "official" weigh-in date weight. Otherwise, just too much information.

Two friends, two wonderful women, are making some transitions of other kinds. Diana Black, artist, writer, organizer of so many good works and accomplished at  many things, is no longer going to send us her wonderful Wednesday missives after four and a half years. Although she will be missed in that capacity, she will continue to be involved in so many  projects.

And brilliant pastel artist Margaret Dyer, after a sad, tumultuous couple of years, has come to rest in a warm, embracing place where she can begin to create again. So whether we see her arts in spots in Georgia, nationally, or in France or Ireland, she is vibrantly back with us, and we will all be richer for it.

And I am just methodically carving off my ill gotten gains, and thinking about the scale tomorrow.

That brings me to asparagus. I grew up on five gorgeous acres in central Illinois, with pasture, a creek, an old apple orchards, rows of Concord grapes,  pear, plum, cherry and apricot trees, strawberries and black and red raspberries. A large patch of land was devoted to asparagus, and one of my early memories is picking the tender green and violet stalks along side my great-aunt, her hair bundled up in a kerchief.

In our home, asparagus was prepared this way: chopped into small pieces, cooked in boiling water at length until the chunks were uniformly stringy, then covered in a sauce of butter, milk, flour and cheddar cheese, and cooked some more. My grandfather would fish out a few poor little green chunks before the cheese obliterated them for good, but that aberration was disparaged. I didn't taste plain steamed, or God forbid uncooked, asparagus until I was an adult. Never even thought of it.

I recalled the asparagus episodes of my youth when I moved to Atlanta and was introduced to green beans, not suitable to eat until they were boiled in fatty water and mashed with a fork.  My hostess, considered an excellent  cook, observed my daughter's plate, containing an untouched serving of grayish greens and declared that she apparently didn't like vegetables. My daughter was a vegetarian. Just a few years ago at the GAYA Awards for distinguished writing by Georgians, the lady sitting next to me at dinner pronounced her green beans unfit to eat because they crunched. The rest of the table agreed. 

I am not putting down  Georgians or Southerners or my family. Cooking vegetables into library paste is not a southern prediliction. I suspect it has country roots, North or South. Now a large part of the population all over the country recognizes the superior nutritional value, not to mention taste, of uncooked or slightly cooked vegetables. So, if you still prefer your vegetables mashed and redolent of pork, give unsauced and perhaps just steamed veggies a try. Your body will thank you.