A Few Things I'm Excited About (and one thing i'm ambivalent about): Fall Naval-gazing Edition!

Bulletproof coffee. I’m not sure about the “health benefits”, but I was looking to add a little more fat to my breakfast (to avoid my customary 11am RAGE CRASH), and oh my god if isn’t the most delicious thing.

I add a ½ teaspoon of (hippy organic grassfed) butter and a ½ teaspoon of coconut oil to one cup of very hot coffee and blend it with my immersion blender in a mason jar (to avoid spillage and also for hipster reasons) until it’s frothy.

 It tastes like the latte of my dreams—really strong, high octane coffee flavor rounded out by a creamy dairy smoothness. Just one more step in my slow and steady march toward becoming That Guy. I’ve made my peace with it.

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So I bought the latest issue of Garden and Gun. I am ambivalent, and not just because the name is stupid. Pictures—awesome. Celebrating Southern food—awesome. John T.Edge—obviously awesome. And yet.  It doesn’t represent the South I know—the one rooted in a sense of constant struggle and flux as well as abundance and deliciousness.  I don’t mind a lot of the seersucker, bowtie, lastname for firstname stuff in the right context, especially if hushpuppies are involved, but presenting the good stuff without the struggle is dishonest and weird (and maybe, also, distinctly Southern).

I love the South, and I try to love all of it. And the South loves a good time with good food. In Louisiana they say “laissez le bon temps rouler”, in Georgia, “How sweet it is”, in North Carolina “Best in the world”. But what makes all of that real is the act of saying it in the face of an ugly past and a difficult present. Garden and Gun captures none of that (although I can see Edge pushing toward it in his column).  I think I’m asking too much of a magazine. I liked reading it, but I probably won’t buy it again.

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Now! More frivolity! Kind of! I don’t want to make myself sick (especially given all the linkage of aluminum toxicity to neurological illness) so I quit antiperspirant. I am a human being, so that made me smell disgusting! On multiple recommendations I bought Soapwalla’s Deodorant Cream and YA’LL IT WORKS. 90 minute yoga class in an 80 degree room—no stink. And it smells like lavender. It's not cheap-- the equivalent of forgoing four trips to the coffee shop. If you have a birthday coming up, you will be receiving this as your gift, because I care about your level of neurotoxicity.