Beginning of this year, I had a health scare that was going to have me on medication I didn't want to be on, and on for the rest of my life. I rather knew my health was trending towards needing the meds, but I really thought I had another 20 years before I would need to take them. I have friends on these meds, I hear about some of what happens with the med, and I really didn't want to be on them. After the January test results, my doctor said, "you're going on," and I asked, "Could you give me six weeks?" She seemed quite skeptical, but agreed to 2 months. If my stats didn't improve, I was going on the drugs.

My dad and I have a lot of the same health issues. If you asked me which side of the family I take from, oh, gosh, I am so a Hodsden, at least back to my father's father. I have a lot of his health issues, too, as well as some of the ones from my father's father's mother. Genes, they can be a bitch. As for my health scare, my dad had the same problem. With sheer stubborness, and a giant diet change, he brought his numbers down to where he didn't need drugs. If my dad could do it, GDI, I could do it, too.

Christian and I have been talking about health issues for a while now. He'd recommended a number of books to me, and I've read them. He still sends a lot of research papers that I'll dig into, read, and consider, many of which have also altered my view of what I ate. Which means, I pretty much landed on the vegan diet.

Years ago, when the ex and I first started dating, I had told him I was a vegetarian. I pretty much never lived that down, even after my diet obviously changed, to the extent that he mentioned I said that as late as earlier this year.

So, when I started telling people about my diet shift about six, maybe eight, months ago (it's November, so who knows exactly when I started telling people), I was cautious. The shift was sudden and dramatic, how would they react? Because, well, you know, when one is a vegan (especially suddenly), a large number of friends will look askance at you and wonder what happened, what they could feed you, and would they have to give up tasty, tasty piggy in front of me (answer: no). My friends and family started doing exactly this.

When one friend heard about my diet shift, she asked me, "If I give my chickens a good life, and there is no rooster, eating their eggs isn't bad, is it?" In that moment, I realized, that no, I was not a vegan, and I had to figure out how to describe what I eat. Especially when my answer to her was, "Hell, no, it isn't bad, eat those eggs! Don't waste them!"

So, what was my actual diet shift? How do I describe it succinctly?

When at home, I am a strict vegan. When I'm at a restaurant and given a choice, I will order a vegan dish. If the restaurant doesn't have a vegan option, or the option is a salad lacking protein or only pasta / starches, I will order the best I can, even if the dish I order has meat. When I am at a friend's house, I will eat whatever they feed me. If you made me food, I am eating the food, even if the food is a block of beef or chicken (with sauce, please!). And if I'm at a restaurant with a tasting menu, feed me your dishes (unless they contain licorice, then replace that shit).

Which definitely makes me not a vegan. Vegan-adjacent maybe?

I eat a vegan diet, by default. I think that's a great distinction: I'm not a vegan, but I eat a vegan diet by default. I like it.

On my I-am-not-a-vegan-but-I-eat-a-vegan-diet-by-default-and-will-eat-what-you-feed-me diet, I successfully lowered the blood test markers by 30% in 3 months, taking me out of "we are giving you drugs now" crisis. I also lost and successfully kept off for months my Canadian 15, the functional adult-equivalent to the Freshmen 15 one experiences the first year of college, which I gained while dating the ex. The other changes I've made in what I eat have also been good in other ways: I'm eating the lowest amount of daily sugar in my adult life. Just try to find a vegan dessert - it's hard! Not impossible, but the effort makes saying, "No," to dessert much easier. Next up: ensuring enough protein (hello, legumes!) and expanding the vegan recipe library.

One of the travel rituals that Jonathan and I developed when visiting new cities together was to visit a new coffee shop each morning. We would look up places that had espresso drinks, walk to the shop, order drinks (he would have an espresso drink, I would have a tea), and have a lovely start to the day. We toured a lot of coffee shops. I would leave reviews on the coffee shops about their tea selection and how good the teas were. I would often try Jonathan's drink when he offered it to me, but continued to nope out of the coffee culture. I was the most-learned non-coffee-drinker espresso expert you could find.

Eventually I drifted towards actively asking to taste Jonathan's coffee drinks, always a cortado, tasting them, and noping them back to him. Over the last 7 years, I had had 3 cortados that were not sour (Portland, ALLLL your espressos are sours), and not bitter (pretty much every place that isn't a third-wave or doesn't specifically care about their espresso quality). Matthew and I discussed espresso modifications in Japan, with his many years of practical experience removing some of the gaps in my book knowledge.

I've continued the ritual of visiting espresso places. These days, I order a cortado and a tea drink for myself, continuing to taste and toss the cortados and enjoying the tea drink. Every once in a while, however, a cortado won't be too bitter, and I will have a bit more than a taste, a bit more than a sip. Every once in a very rare while, I will actually finish the drink. I am surprised every time these happen. If I can, I go back to the cafe to see if the perfect cortado was a fluke. Mostly, they have been, with repeated cortados being good, but not perfect.

Here in New York City this week, I recruited coworkers on my espresso adventures. "You want to go to a different place this morning? What was wrong with yesterday's?" they ask. They have yet to ask why I keep tossing the drink. "I don't like coffee."

I did have one repeat yesterday, however, when I slept in and was going to be late for a meeting. We met up at 787 Coffee, which is close to the office and a find for the regulars. "How are you finding these places?" "How didn't we know about this place?" No idea that last one.

This morning, however, none of my coworkers were going into the office, so I was on my own. Which worked just fine for me, as it gave me a chance to visit two shops today. They were both highly rated by multiple map apps and city guides. First up was, unsurprisingly, Seven Grams. I had been there with Jonathan before in June, it was highly rated on all of the apps I checked, even the ones that are dying next month, and close. I was quite delighted when I saw their cookies, too. The cortado, as my tip from June says, varied by barista, with this one being just slightly on the side of bitter. The bitter flavors were, however, a lovely deep chocolate flavor. I sat and drank half of the cortado, noting how the flavors changed as it cooled (and, let's be real, I developed saiety of taste). If I liked coffee, I'd have finished this one.

Before the coffee got cold (heh), I left the cafe to go to Stumptown closeby. This one confused me a bit, being a Portland coffee shop to me. I guess if Blue Bottle can have a NYC presence, Stumptown can have a NYC, too. This one was next to the Ace Hotel, so I have walked by it I don't know how many times on trips to NYC with Jonathan. I finally ordered a cortado there.

The cafe was full of a lot of people, so I masked up and didn't stay past receiving my order. I tasted it outside, and again, had a not-that-bitter cortado.

I feel both of these cafes had their espressos this close to being dialed in, a phrase I'm not thrilled about when mountaineering, but makes COMPLETE SENSE when making espressos. Or maybe they had their espressos dialed in to a taste that I don't like? Matthew commented that one of my cortadoes in Osaka was sour, when I thought it was a hint to bitter (I finished that one). So, maybe my preferred taste is complete neutral as Defined by Kitt™. Who knows.

After having most of a cortado from Seven Grams, then most of a cortado from Stumptown, I had clearly a over-caffeinated experience walking back to my hotel. Working in this state is A THING. I giggled remembering when Jonathan first brought his espresso machine home and made 12 espressos the first day, drinking many of them fully, before realizing that maybe that wasn't such a good idea, drinking all the practice drinks.

Work for the next couple hours was productive, at least.

*pull*

*gentle toss*

https://days.to/until/6-december

I am so delighted that my morning commute here in NYC is along a block with greenery. There are plant and flower shops next door and along the block, both sides, that pile plants and flowers outside along the sidewalk, narrowing the sidewalk for walkers, but SHOVING their faces into the greenery. This makes me so happy.