You know how you wake up in the morning and sometimes you look gorgeous and other times you look like you got hit by a mack truck? I realized that my mack truck is food. If I have no sugar, yeast or wine, I have no undereye bags and my skin is perfect.

When I have any sort of diet that's high in sugar or yeast, I would find that my body would be very much out of whack.

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.

After my pregnancy I discovered I have an allergy to yeast. Problem is all the food I love has yeast in it. So I have to relearn how to cook.

You know how you wake up in the morning and sometimes you look gorgeous and other times you look like you got hit by a mack truck? I realized that my mack truck is food. If I have no sugar yeast or wine I have no undereye bags and my skin is perfect.