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09/05/2000 Archived Entry: "I'm Back -- Big Time"

You may have wondered where I’ve been.

I mean, I’ve been on the radio almost all summer but I haven’t written a Maven’s Diary entry since late June. A few of you, including my brother-in-law Milton Alexander, have scolded me for not putting up some explanation, not even a “Gone Fishing” notice, and you are all right. All I can say at this point is, “I’m back!”

And new things are about to happen around here.

My fall personal appearance schedule is, this week, being put on the site by my wonderful webmaster, Ben McCullough.

The software that runs my subscription list is inadequate to the job of contacting all of you at once, so that will be changed next week. That’s the email address list that allows me to contact each of you directly with important messages and notices. Having new software will require you to re-subscribe in a box on a slightly redesigned home page. I’ll remind you about that. (I’m afraid the new subscription software will carry advertising on each email I send, but that is the price we have to pay so I can get it for free.)

The website’s “search” software will either be upgraded or changed. I find it frustrating myself. I know something was entered in the Diary, but the search engine can’t find it for me.

Finally, finally, after months of saying it will happen, my annotated list of restaurants in Naples will be put on the website – with photos of Naples that I took myself. Coming soon is my annotated list of restaurants in Campania, those places around the region outside of Naples.

A new section of the website will soon be devoted to cookbooks. The first part will be an “Essential Cookbook Library,” the books I deem indispensable to cook from, for fact look-ups, for good writing and reading, etc. As time goes on, I will be adding impressive new books to this section of the site. All the book reviews will offer sample recipes (where they apply) and will have hyperlink connections to Amazon so, if you wish, you can order them with ease – if you don’t already own them.

While I am away from Sept. 11 to Sept. 24, on the WOR trip to Naples and the Italian and French Riviera cruise, the special recipes that my group will be eating at dinner, and that I will be demonstrating at the one class on board the ship, will be running in the Maven’s Diary. Because the WOR group only gets one meal at each port – lunch (we eat breakfast and dinner aboard the Radisson Diamond) – I’ve provided the ship’s chef with recipes representing each port that we are visiting. He will prepare them the night of the day we visited that port. My group will be getting these recipes on paper. You can get them here.

Okay, okay. What have I been doing all summer instead of writing Maven’s Diary items? I have been going to the gym and spending a lot of time NOT EATING, or, I should say, eating much better than I had been. When I had to buy the largest size of pants ever, my feet and knees started giving me trouble, and I feared other weight-related health issues were possible, I got back to the gym and I started eating better. Both of these take time. The result is that I have lost more than four inches from my waist. I don’t weigh myself, so I can say for sure how much weight that represents. My guess is 25 pounds or so.

I know that I say Food Talk, my radio program, is a “Diet-Free Zone,” but I never said this website was. So, you may, on occasion, be getting some diet advice from me here. I know how to do this because I’ve done it before. For the moment, let me tell you to make sure to eat breakfast and to drink more water. I now start the day with two 10-ounce glasses of water. I just guzzle them down as soon as I wake up, while I am drawing water for coffee. I make sure to drink another quart while on the air at noon, and at least one quart while I am at the gym, which is either in the morning or the afternoon, depending on my schedule that day. That leaves only another four or five glasses to drink during the rest of the day. I may guzzle one or two before I leave for the gym, then drink the rest at dinner time. When you see how, if nothing else, your complexion improves from all that water – a gallon a day – you will become addicted to water and it won’t be a hardship drinking that much.

I’ll be back tomorrow. Promise. And have I got a great recipe for you!