From Elizabeth:” I adored my mattress from the first night. You will feel amazing – a new diet, new bed, excellent sleep level 2. By spring, you will be reborn.”

I appreciated Elizabeth’s post on Facebook. It feels like something of a rebirth; I am putting my life together differently, including the blog, my creative soul and home, and my photographs, my art. Thanks, Elizabeth; I loved this post.

I don’t know if it’s possible to be reborn, but I do think it’s possible to be better. I’m headed there.

A better understanding of food and health is moving along: I’ve never enjoyed the food as much or eaten in as healthy away.

Maria came up with the idea for a vegetable soup made with Miso as a base and vegetable broth and tofu and seven or eight different kinds of vegetables all chopped up – onion, kale, rice noodles, carrots, celery, string beans, and four or five other vegetables.

Many of these vegetables are ones I would ever eat before but mixed with barley or brown rice or quinoa or old oats they work, and they taste great.

I did the cooking. I put the vegetables in one pot with tofu, the vegetable broth and Miso were in another pan, I cooked the rice noodles separately. Then I put everything in the broth and stirred and heated and cooked, and we ate.

I stir carefully and turn off the stove when the vegetables are still crispy.

It was delicious, one of our better experiments; Maria has a good time coming up with different ideas, moving around and beyond the Mayo Clinic meal plans. Creativity helps.

I am having a good time learning how to cook vegetables, something I never did know or wanted to learn. I did some vegetable shopping today, I’m figuring out what we need.

I mentioned yesterday that I might be drifting towards being a vegetarian. I’m not prepared to give up fish, and I like chicken or sliced turkey once in a while. I think I’m done with red meat, but I don’t think this makes me a vegetarian, not yet anyway.

This new relationship with food does make me healthier and eager to shop, cook, eat and weigh myself on the scales. I have a long way to go before getting where I want to go, too soon for celebrations. But I’m off to a roaring start on the Jon Katz Improvement Program. And thanks to Maria for supporting me so eagerly.