Eat Real Food!

Eat real food! I cannot stress this enough. Eat real food!

I love to cook and I love to eat. More and more I have found that the more food is processed, the worst it is for you. For example, the great "Butter vs Margarine Debate". To make butter you churn milk and cream until it becomes the consistency, of well, butter. Add some salt and viola, the best thing to happen to bread since slicing it. To understand how to make margarine, you need to have a chemistry degree. This video explains it pretty well, I think.

I choose butter!

  

If possible, grow your own vegetables. You know exactly what has gone into the soil and plants to bring you the natural yumminess that is nature's bounty. I know this can be hard, especially considering space and willingness. Plants need tending and are sometimes mysterious in their special needs. One way to combat this is a great idea I found on Kickstarter.

I can't wait until spring. I am going to knock the socks off of my over achieving gardening neighbor on the corner!

As much as possible, cook your own food. In the long run I have found it to be cheaper, and far more tastier. There is also something very satisfying  about feeding your friends and family the fruits of your own labor, from your garden and from your kitchen. Seriously, even if it just a salad from the tomatoes and romaine that you grew yourself, there is nothing quite like the silence of satisfaction from your family and guests around the dinner table.

Can't talk. Eating.

Now compare this picture to a picture of how food really looks from McDonald's.

No wonder Foster went crazy in the movie Falling Down.

Finally, travel the world and see how others cook their food. If I had a bucket list, eating my way around the world would be on the top. My dream job would be to do exactly that.

Anthony Bourdain has my dream job. 

 

Eat Real Food!

Whistle While You Work

What is so essential about happiness that we chase it all of our lives? Why are we willing to switch or abandon career tracks (something we invested considerable time and money into achieving) to chase down that illusive dream? Happiness means that little things don't add up to big things. Happiness means little to no boredom. Happiness means that you have your health, the love and support of family, and the desire to be more and achieve more for others. Happiness means you have the emotional capitol to spare to care about others.
People can do some crazy things to find what makes them happy. Some people leave everything behind and go out with nothing into the wilderness.

He dies in the end. I wonder what his answer would be, if we could somehow ask him, if it was worth it.

I am still not sure how I can reconcile being happy and working at the same time. I believe that I am on the right track, but I will never know for sure until I am actually out and doing. Right now I am going back to school to gain the training and knowledge to succeed out in the real world (hopefully) but they don't teach a course on happiness at my JC. Although, they do teach a Happiness class at Harvard. I wish I could attend, it is the most popular class there.

Wow!

We are coming out of an era of thinking that basically boiled down to, "Work to support your family, if you love them it is ok if your job sucks. Deal with it and put food on the table and a roof over their heads. That is the only self-fulfillment you deserve to ask for." I, for one, am glad that our current generation isn't willing to settle for being a corporate drone. We want recognition and adequate compensation. Now, when management threatens to show us the door for our requirements to achieve happiness in the work place, we actually walk through it. If that happens often enough, management is the one that thinks they need to change their current attitudes and practices.

I think one of the greatest achievements the Millennial generation can leave for the next is the right for people to be happy and the acknowledgement that we all deserve the chance to find it.

What do you think happiness means? Are you willing to go after it?