If you listen to your mind and body, it will tell you when to cool it on the butter, cheese and heady sauces.

Oh, how I love them so.

But it is balance — balance, I tell you — that allows you to go a lifetime enjoying even the most diabolical of foods and not have to suffer the biliousness that goes with overindulgence.

I’ve been wanting to use the word “biliousness,” which I’m pretty sure used to mean “indigestion.” Such a cool word. I have a book by Dio Lewis from 1880 titled “Our Digestion or My Jolly Friend’s Secret” that dedicates an entire chapter to the treatment of biliousness.

“Eat for breakfast, until the bilious attack passes, a little stale bread, say one slice, and a piece half as large as your hand of boiled lean beef or mutton. If the weather is warm, take instead a little cracked wheat or oat-meal porridge.” (p. 227)

So strangely comforting.

I can’t even say I have been feeling bilious, just ready to give it a rest. So, I had a humble salad from the garden last night. If anyone out there thinks they can’t grow salad or food in general, let me tell you…you can. I hadn’t raised a vegetable in my life and have since last summer (when I took an inspiring class on organic gardening at Silverlake Farms) grown fabulous eggplants, butternut squash, tomatoes, zucchini, various herbs and really good romaine lettuce.

organic strawberriesThe great thing about lettuce is that you can grow it in a box on your porch as long as it gets sun, and if you just cut the leaves for your salad and don’t pull it up by the roots, it keeps giving.

I forgot to mention that I planted a few strawberry plants few months ago. Chandlers. They are so good.