Sometimes I want dinner to be easy. That’s usually when I go the breakfast-for-dinner route and make a smoothie bowl or eggs.
Other times I like to challenge myself — make something I’ve never made before — pick a recipe with lots of ingredients ’cause the playing and measuring and perfecting of the flavors is soothing. I find cooking to be truly therapeutic.
Making these lamb chops with greens and salsa verde was one of those times. It was the first time I ever made lamb at home and it definitely won’t be the last. I don’t know why we always gravitate towards chicken, steak, and bacon, because lamb is delicious, too. I guess because it’s easy. It’s familiar. It’s going the breakfast-for-dinner route.
It’s fitting, then, that this recipe is from Seamus Mullen, from April’s Bon Appetit, because he is someone who has never taken the easy route. Those close to me know that Seamus, the award-winning chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, is the reason why I went to see Dr. Lipman, who helped him get off all of his medicine and cure himself of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He’s the reason I believe that health begins in your gut and why I no longer eat grains or sugar, and instead focus on healthy fats. He’s also one of the reasons why I am sososoclose to getting off my arthritis medicines.
Last year at this time, when I first met Seamus, and later, first went to see Dr. L, I was taking 14mg of prednisone (steroids) a day; now I am taking 4.
Four is so close to zero. But I still have a ways to go. Good health (and more specifically for me right now, getting off my medicines) is a marathon, not a sprint.
Seamus recently spoke at Mind Body Green’s Revitalize 2015, and in his talk, he mentions hearing about Ari Meisel, who cured himself of Crohn’s disease through a combination of diet and exercise. He said he saw Ari’s story and said to himself that if he can do it, I can do it. That sentiment resonated with me because the same thing happened when I first read Seamus’ story; I said to myself that if he can do it, I can do it. And I am so close.
If you watch the video (he starts speaking at minute mark :23) — and I hope that you do — you’ll hear him talk about making a plan with Dr. L for how they were going to get him better. He says that for the first time, “I went from being a patient to an active participant in my well-being.”
I love that — an active participant. So many of us (wrongly, in my opinion) believe we can go to the doctor, get some medicine, sit back, and let it work its magic. Poof, you’re better. But it doesn’t happen that way — at least not in my or most peoples’ cases.
So, Seamus, this one’s for you. Thanks for the inspiration (and the delicious lamb).
