.SOMETIMES RAW.

Joel: Why do you go to work?

Me: They pay me a salary.

Joel: …..

Me:…..

Joel: I don’t even like celery.

My son eats pretty voraciously: eggs, hummus, even steak but sometimes when I clean up after dinner, I notice the vegetables left on his plates. No tomatoes, no cucumber, no thanks. He is very strong and tall for his age and needs quite an amount of food on a daily basis. I try to change things up as much as possible because I know that nutrition is important; especially at his age. But, when my child asks what’s for dinner, usually, the answer doesn’t matter. Sometimes he reacts like I am about to feed him marinated monkey brains.

A giant tray of roasted vegetables, no matter how expertly cooked and seasoned, will never send my child running to the dinner table. My general philosophy when it comes to feeding him is to cook what I crave, then find ways to add bait that will bring him to the table. For example, a salad with tomatoes, olives, carrots, broccoli, mozzarella, arugula, nuts will be enjoyed when I add salmon, beans or crispy pita bread.

Sure, you are thinking, but it is still a plate of vegetables with some salmon. Hold on! I am not done sprinkling on some more kid bait. First is the aforementioned pita bread, salmon or beans. Those lead me to bait number 2: marketing. When my child asks what’s for dinner, “pita salmon salad” will beat out “healthy winter vegetables” every time. Or I cut zucchini into French fry shapes and call them “zucchini fries.” I rebrand veggies to make them sound yummier or cuter. Brussel sprouts are “baby lettuces”. It will make all the difference. When it comes to food, I like to keep it simple, nutritious, healthy and comforting.

In an effort to make sure he gets all the vitamins he needs, I figured out some other ways to encourage him to eat the good stuff. This is what works for us if you would love to read.

I sometimes serve veggies first. That way, he will eat those before filling up on pasta and bread. With this method, he actually asks for a bowl of cauliflower or broccoli to snack on sometimes. We don’t always eat whole, organic food, but mostly. When it comes to meat, I prefer organic and grass-fed. Balance is key! Mom at the playground: My kids eat organic snacks only. Me: Cool. My son eats candy off the floor. Also, there is little difference in how a horse eats hay and the way my child consumes spaghetti with meat sauce.

My son: How much of this meatball is meat? Me: Probably like 90% because it is organic and grass-fed. Son: So it is 10% balls? Me: spits out food

Or I don’t say anything. A study reveals that serving food “without giving any message about the goal” (health/strong bones, vitamins) maximize the consumption of healthy food. I just put them on the plate and wait, and watch.

I make it a game. I got him to eat certain vegetables by asking him to close his eyes, take a bite and see if he could guess the right color. This way, he would end up eating a bunch of bell peppers in red, yellow and green. I also did this for foods such as cauliflower and peas. Marinated monkey brains come to mind again.

I make sure he is hungry. As Karen Le Billon says, “hunger is the best seasoning.” Also, if I serve a smaller main dish (let’s say, just a bit of pasta), he will eat more of his side dish (say, steamed broccoli) because he will still be hungry. I avoid to let him snack all day long.

I stay at the table longer and we eat together without distractions (phone, TV, etc.). When he is done eating, we usually hang for a while because I want him to know the joys of sitting around the dinner table and chatting. I will start conversations I know he will be interested in (how great it will be to spend time at the beach, to go to the bookstore and which books he will pick). I have noticed that a great side effect is that he often ends up absentmindedly munching the food he had originally refused. We also eat slowly. No need to rush through a meal.

I teach him to avoid emotional eating and treat chocolate and sweets as dessert and something special. As a parent, I am in charge of my son’s food education. I have to teach him what is healthy and what is not; and when to eat and how much. Pizza is fine and so are donuts, but not every day. I asked him the other day if he wants a piece of really good dark chocolate. He nodded so hard that he fell over. So, yes, I am sure he is mine.

One rule is: He has to taste it but he does not have to like or finish it. I want him to enjoy food.

If all fails, I sneak it in. Obviously, I want my son to love, revel and seek fresh vegetables as much as I do. But there is nothing wrong with dropping a few frozen vegetables or mixing them into smoothies.

Currently, I am helping my son search for his chocolate that I ate last night.

Stay happy. Stay healthy.

“How brittle and fugitive is all life, how meagrely and fearfully living things carry their spark of warmth through the icy universe.” – Hermann Hesse

I moved many times in my life. I have never felt more at home than being back in Europe and in Vienna. I also started my new job and could not be happier. I am very fortunate to be able to live in a great apartment building in Vienna where everybody is super friendly, too. My neighbor, an elderly lady, comes over for tea and cookies sometimes. So sweet. 2020 started out great for me.

Throughout my life, I encountered many peculiar characters, many in small doses and some in this-it is-a-huge-mistake-dose. In New York, for example, there was the queen of my apartment building who never failed to slip me the side-eye and refused to touch the elevator buttons with her bare hands because they are not sterile. There was the building super, who strutted around in a white ribbed tank top and silver chain, chain-smoking while fixing a water leak in my apartment. But the person I remember most vividly, and with the most affection, was the doorman.

Whether I walked into the lobby at 10 p.m., giddy from a goodnight kiss, or drunk at 1 a.m., he would greet me with a warm and welcome and polite chit-chat. He had the distinct ability to engage people past the superficial: He remembered birthdays and referred to pets by name. Although the conversations never lasted too long, they always stayed with me, lingering in my mind like a catchy refrain.

“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” – Henry Miller

I have been reminded of his talent when I walked the long maze-looking hallways at my workplace. A place where small-talk demands grow taller than the Rockefeller tree. Or the random chit-chat when my son found a tampon on the street on the way to work. “What’s this?”, he asked. “It is a tampon,” I replied. “What is it for?” Initial silence because it seems like a loaded question. To understand tampons means first understanding menstruation, which means understanding the whole life cycle. Not in the mood for a Friday morning chit-chat about all that. “Well, you know how babies are made, right?” “Not really, mom. Cameron told me that two people have to be naked and rub against each other.” It is not even 7.30 a.m yet. How should I respond? I begin to talk around the edges but could gladly pause because he saw two squirrels chasing each other.

I love words. I love to talk to people or to myself but not in public. I am not a chit-chat-pro but I know how to talk. To anyone, really. In order to glean some wisdome in chit-chatting, I will share some tips that help me keep my chit-chat in tip-top shape. This way I can walk into any situation with my head held high and comfortable. In my experience, it is not always the choice of words that matter, but how you say them.

Start the conversation with a compliment. If I feel you wear something nice, I am going to tell you just that. The same goes for nail polish, hair, make-up etc. This usually always opens up a conversation even if it is a superficial one about a product the person uses.

Be willing to veer into unexpected topics. The trick to making small talk is letting myself be surprised by the conversation. I try not to have a rehearsed conversation outline in my head because it closes me off to make an actually organic connection. I think a lot of people enter these types of interactions with an idea of how it’s going to go, and that ends up limiting the conversation. If I truly just enter with an open mind, people will usually really surprise me (for better or for worse).

Ease other people’s anxiety with a warm smile. I realized that when entering an unfamiliar space, some people can be very withdrawn or nervous. So, I smile. Not a fake smile. A smile and a kind greeting have the power to immediately make someone feel welcomed and comfortable.

I use each exchange as an opportunity to learn something new. I enhance their experience and walk away having learned something new. I treat everyone as my teacher. Because they are. For example, I ask people what they read, watch, or listen to. What inspires them, what makes them happy. I usually do myself a favor and skip the weather. Most boring topic. Ever. For me, it works to stay in-tune with current events, media, books, movies, travels, etc. I am also highly observant of people around me, but casual. I pay attention to how they react, the sound of their voice, how they dress, what they read. How they react toward me. Anything can slowly engage or spark small talk. I love to look people in the eye while they are talking and listen. No matter how little they have to say, I just never know how lending a listening ear can impact someone’s day.

I remind myself that this is about them. I don’t take anything personally. Usually, small talk is inherently brief, so most of the time a person’s reaction is not about me. And last, I tailor my topics to the person I am talking to. I am not talking about my divorce if someone just got married. I don’t bring up death to someone who just had a baby. Well, maybe I do. And I absolutely do not forget to listen. My goal is to have an impact or influence on someone with just a few memorable words. And to make some happy because I am interested in their stories.

Trust your instincts. Go with your gut! Regardless of the vernacular, I love to romanticize intuition. The feeling, which many call “a deep knowing”, is characterized by understanding something with little to no explanation. It is why some people avoid specific alleyways, why others turn down seemingly perfect jobs, or why two lovers marry after six months: Some just know. But what about the times when I don’t have that level of clarity? What if I ask my intuition for guidance and get nothing, or worse, conflicting answers? Is it as simple as looking inward? How can I decipher something so illogical and yet so crucial?

A couple of times, I was debating whether to stay in a relationship or not. Breaking up sounded horrible, but it felt good. Something told me that the relationship just wasn’t right. But this feeling was quieter than anxiety and rather a hum of a clothes dryer as opposed to a shrieking kettle and thus hard to trust. Over time, it downright tormented me. I wanted to know whether the voice I was hearing was fear, anxiety, my gut, my brain, or simply something else. In talking through the predicament with a friend, she asked, “What does your gut say?” Though well-intentioned, the question led to a different type of torment. Intuition became my obsession. I read books, research articles and more but everything always led me back to the same conclusion: My relationship was not working. This bothered me, and I so badly wanted to prove it wrong, a contradiction of emotions that fueled my anxiety, making it more difficult to take action.

The dictionary’s definition of intuition is “being able to understand something immediately, without any conscious reasoning.” I interpret this as no pro-con lists, no asking friends for guidance because I just know. The feeling is sometimes difficult to distinguish from fear, which is defined as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.” Though technically quite different, both feelings stem from a place of protection and can be experienced in similar ways, like for example fear of abandonment. So how can I tell the difference? Am I leaving because I am afraid or because it is the right thing to do?

I stumbled across an article by psychologists at the University of New South Wales in Australia who ran a series of experiments in an effort to quantify intuition and analyzed how much “nonconscious emotional information” dictates our decision making. The study illustrated that intuition increases one’s accuracy in interpreting and outcome, but it also revealed that similar to using logic or reason, we become better at using intuition over time. The psychologists suggest that the best way to reintegrate intuition is to have a dialogue with it, to pay attention to our random, seemingly nonsensical hunches that tell us when something is wrong when to call a friend, or even when to wear a certain outfit.

Eventually, the gut feeling regarding my relationship became too strong to ignore, and we broke up. But once I was out of the relationship, I worried that it had been the wrong decision to leave, and strived to rekindle that sense of knowing that led me to end the relationship in the first place. Shouldn’t I have had more clarity after I researched the f*** out of intuition? Apparently not. And during moments of crisis, it can be harder to hear intuition speak because I was obsessed with making the right decision and choice.

So, I guess intuition is steady and rational, while the response to it might not be. Decision-making such as calling our texting an ex, might also spur anxiety, which can ultimately separate from the calm hum of intuitive thought. In this case, I guess it might be best to take action and know that intuition will come when and where it needs to. I may not be 100 percent sure about a decision but sometimes 70 percent is enough to pull me to a save shore where uncertainty is okay. It is not about having all the answers, but rather using the information I have to make the best decision I can.