I'm Lucky Lucky Lucky!

I've always considered myself a lucky person and if I were to make a list of reasons why I can make such a proclamation, it would be very long and you probably would get bored reading it. That's because the things that make me lucky are often miniscule non-events that are overlooked by others.

Here's a recent example of how the Universe shows me love: A couple of months ago I found out that I have sensitivities to eggs, dairy and goat milk. Although dairy hasn't been a big part of my life for a few years now, eggs and goat cheese have. Actually, the introduction of goat cheese in my diet allowed me to bid farewell to my best friends Cheddar and Mozzarella fairly easily. When my naturopath handed me the results of my blood test, the capitalized, red-inked, bolded "AVOID" beside goat's milk stunned me. I barely managed to say, "But I eat goat cheese every day!" as if that would change anything. In fact, that discovery probably explains a lot. In any case, after a few weeks of sticking to a hypo-allergenic diet, I began to get BORED which only made me resentful and unhappy.

I do believe that living to eat can get you in to far more trouble than eating to live, but I hated the idea of life being so boring...my culinary life anyway, which is a big part of my daily thought process. I thought about this a lot just prior to my recent trip to Ottawa, where a teeny, tiny incident happened that has tipped my happiness scale in the food department.

At the mall on my second to last day in Ottawa, my friend Krista pulled out a book from her bag and said, "Here, you can borrow this and return it to Amanda when she visits next month." Sharing books is something I do a lot of with friends and it truly is one of life's purest, sweetest pleasures. I looked at the title "The Conscious Cook" and smiled. "It's a vegan cookbook." Of course it was. It was just what I needed. Not just the recipes and helpful tips from a renowned vegan chef, but a gesture from the Universe transmitted to me in this way. Support. Love. A basic You Can Do This! The cool part was I hadn`t even told Krista about my boredom and resentment regarding my new diet.

So, if you had seen this scene play out in front of you, it would have looked like any ordinary moment in two friends lives. But to me, it meant the world and a renewed sense of joy and excitement with this new chapter in my health.