Macho Chef: Time for a change

Just like everyone else wandering around on this ball of dirt we call home, I sometimes take a look at myself and notice those small errors and system-wide problems that seem to permeate one's life. We each want to be good looking, smart, successful, popular, influential, happy and organized.

Who wouldn't?

With that in mind, I am always searching the bookstores and websites of the world for a manual that would finally transform me and my fellow human beings into the persons we were meant to be, or at least what we would like to be.

It usually happens in the second half of December, when the end of the year comes around, and I once again put forth the effort to find the perfect self-help book.

And just like everyone who falls asleep reading one of those books, I wake up each morning, and I am still the same drab, befuddled, struggling, relatively unknown, powerless, occasionally unhappy and constantly disorganized schmoe that stumbled into bed the night before.

For some time I thought I was one of only a few people who supported the self-help industry by trying to improve himself by the simple act of reading a book. But then I discovered my mother-in-law has a thing for diet books. Where I find books that promise to turn me into a cool powerhouse of success, she finds books that will solve all of a person's social, emotional, physical and psychological health problems through the simple act of eating.

Or not so simple, especially if you share a household with your mother-in-law, as we did for several years.

The first wrinkle in Grammy Outlaw Chef's compulsion to practice the perfect balance of nutrition at each meal is that she tends to include the entire Chef family in her plan. It started off with the Atkins Diet. Which was fine for a few weeks, because I liked meat. But I have learned from experience that even an endless diet of steak cannot overcome the yearning for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a heaping plate of spaghetti.

Then there was the Color Diet, which helps the dieter determine their food choices based on the colors of their foods. When the family went shopping, we would all stand ten feet away from my wife's mother, pretending we didn't know the odd lady who was examining the fresh produce by comparing each choice with a swatch from her fan of color samples, squinting at her diet book and muttering to herself.

The Raw Food Diet was a particular low point in our culinary adventures. That one requires a person to keep the temperature of their food below 116 degrees in order to preserve mysterious enzymes that are necessary to become an über human. I think what finally brought that diet to an end had less to do with endless varieties of beef tartar, and more to do with the horrible taste of lukewarm coffee.

It wasn't all bad. The Mediterranean Diet was a nice phase in the Chef household and so was the Eat What You Want Until You're Full diet.  They didn't work, but they were tasty.

I've learned to appreciate Grammy Outlaw's nutrition crazes. Her quest for the best diet is a little like my own search for the perfect self-help book. Whatever we find might be unable to transform us into the person we wish we could become, but it does give a person a reason to try something new.

Nouveau Noel Date Log

WHAT YOU NEED

1/2 pint heavy cream

1 lb of chopped dates

1 lb of graham cracker crumbs

1 lb marshmallows

1 lb of nuts like pecans, almonds and cashews

WHAT YOU DO

1. Using scissors and ice water, dip the scissors in the water and cut the marshmallows into small pieces. Dip the scissors between each marshmallow. Mix the cream and the marshmallows and set aside.

2. Chop the nuts, dates, and grahams. Add to the marshmallows and cream, and thoroughly mix it all up with your clean hands.

3. Fork the mix into two pieces of aluminum foil. Roll up the treat in the foil to form two logs that are as thick as your wrist. Refrigerate for a day. Slice and serve.