Sophie À La Carte!

Hey friends, First off, wanted to say thanks for your support regarding my last post about losing weight, eating healthy, all that jazz. A lot of you reached out to me after I wrote that massive ramble about my 11 months of hyper self-control, and it means a lot to me! So, if you recall, in the months post-counting, I was still very much focused on eating wholesome foods with limited sugar and limited processing. It was easy when I had my own kitchen and bought my own groceries. Of course, post-diet I allowed myself to splurge every once in a while, but that's what it was: allowance. I hadn't figured out how to find a normal relationship with food yet. And of course, this story didn't end when I left for Europe, but it definitely changed its tune. I went from being very in control of what I cooked and ate to practically no control in a matter of days. When I worked at American Village, the camp in France, for two months, counselors had easy access to camp food, and we...

This post has practically nothing to do with travel, and everything to do with food. Now that I've "settled down" for a couple of months, I'd like to take the opportunity to talk about my constant obsession with cooking and food, rather than simply updating you on my travels and tossing in a memorable meal or two every now and then. As some of you probably know, I embarked on a massive lifestyle overhaul in 2014, with the initial goal of losing a bunch of weight. As the year progressed, I learned more and more about nutrition, dieting, and fitness- more than I ever thought I would, in some ways to the point of obsession. Losing weight became my hobby- I was reading books, articles, and blogs; weighing myself every week, tracking every step I took or workout I completed, and counting every calorie I consumed- for eleven months. It was a pretty crazy journey, and I haven't made the time to reflect on it, so today, with all the time in the world, I figure I'd j...

It's been about two weeks since Allison and I arrived in Bod, and I already feel as if I've been here for ages (well, I suppose relatively two weeks is "ages", given the last five months or so). Colin picked us up from Brasov station in his Land Rover and drove us 30 minutes north to his house in Bod. For a week, Allison and I plunged into a crash course on house sitting, Romanian, and village culture. The house has a storied history, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. It's been added to over the years, so it's one long structure, where you need to pass through each room to get to the other. Colin moved the kitchen and renovated it to fit his 6'5ish frame, so Allison and I feel slightly like hobbits each time we wash dishes or chop veggies on the counter. Don't even ask us the process for getting wine glasses off the rack, which is bolted to the ceiling. Colin purchased his Saxon home almost ten years ago. The house was built in ...