How Grateful Am I for Thee?

Let me count the ways (with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning).

1. I am grateful to those of you who read my books and find some insight, solace, confirmation or joy in them. Or just a good story.

2. I am grateful when above-mentioned yous write and tell me how my book(s) made you feel or what they made you think, even when it's not all good. Hopefully some good.

3. I am grateful to all you booksellers and librarians and publisher's reps and sales teams and marketing people and publicists, because you are the ones who convince the vast majority of readers out there to give one of my books a try.

4. I'm grateful to you whose decisions mean I even get to publish books: my agent and editor, the publisher and VPs and so many people I may never even meet.

5. I am grateful to my friends and family and husband for encouraging me to write, for supporting me when I do, for catching me when I stumble and cheering me on when I achieve a small miracle.

6. I am grateful to my teachers, the ones who challenged me and encouraged me. Except for my algebra teacher, but I suspect he doesn't care.

7. I am grateful to you, whoever you are, because you took the time to read this far, and I wish you gratitude and happiness and a large slab of pie on Thursday.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

How to Eat

Food manifestos are not new. I love Michael Pollan’s simple rules for eating only those things that come to us from the earth, not from packaging. I love the phrase “Life is short; eat dessert first.” Food means so many things to we humans that the “rules” are often conflicting. In my second novel, Eating Heaven, the main character Ellie is a food writer with food issues. By the end of a story fraught with figuring out her past, her present, and her unhealthy relationship to food, she figures a few things out. See if Ellie’s 7 simple rules for eating make sense to you, too.

How to Eat

by Eleanor Samuels

Why do most women in our country have an obsession with food, the eating as well as the not eating of it? We gladly feed others, yet we struggle with our own hunger. Is food a panacea to fill our empty souls? Have we lost touch with something vital—say, self-fulfillment, or even just self-acceptance—and all we can do is medicate ourselves with the pleasure of fat and calories (or heaven forbid, carbohydrates)? On the other hand, if we don’t eat and lose weight, might someone love us more? If we’re hungry and our stomachs growl, are we more virtuous than if we’re full and satisfied?

I’m just one woman, with my own variations on the female love-hate relationship with food, but I say, let’s start a revolution. Let’s make food simply food again, sustenance and nourishment, and fun when the occasion calls for it. From here on out, I will try my best to live by these seven secrets of the sane and happily well fed:

1. Eat when you’re hungry, and don’t when you’re not.

2. Eat food that tastes good. Period. No exceptions.

3. Eat food that leaves you sated instead of waiting for the next allotment.

4. Eat food that nourishes your soul as well as your body. Consider it a spiritual quest.

5. Savor every bite. Enjoy every meal. If you’re not fully aware and appreciative of what you’re eating, you’re just wasting it.

6. Eat with friends, with people you love, or with your own good company—anyone who appreciates food, drink, and good conversation as much as you do. (This would not include a TV set.)

7. If you start worrying about eating, stop it. Be happy you can eat.