Okay, so that was a bad idea. I knew better. But I was awash in a sentimental fog and it seemed like an interesting way to figuratively connect with my dearly missed mother. As noted in this blog post, I recently found a note she had written in the mid 1950s about a "4-Day Diet." It was all real food, food I like eating: eggs, steak, lamb, grapefruit, cauliflower, all the black coffee I could drink. No cottage cheese or celery sticks in sight. I even bought the requisite pineapple juice for one day's lunch and stocked up on the green beans that were part of half the meals. There weren't any portions sizes listed, just "steak, lettuce, applesauce." So I couldn't chide myself for cheating if that steak was 9 ounces instead of the intended 5.

Though I wholeheartedly refuse to diet, per se, I am a conscious eater. Far as I'm concerned it's all about calories-in vs. calories-out. I'd rather exercise 5 days a week than give up the occasional dish of ice cream or ribeye steak. I know that having a couple glasses of wine with dinner gives the meal a calorie jump. I most always opt not to butter my morning toasted English muffin, because I've surely cooked my scrambled eggs in butter. I go for the "all things in moderation" approach. I just don't do it by way of a prescribed diet.

But four days. How hard could that be? Hard enough that I blew it after two. I was pretty good the first day's meals. But a powerful hunger set in come lunchtime. And I was just unsatisfied enough after dinner that I cheated with a small glass of red wine.

Day two, I was never without that low-grade, slight achy feeling that comes from lingering hunger. And I completely recognize that it may have been a psychosomatic, visceral response to the mere idea of inviting a diet into my life. I padded breakfast, adding a small bowl of healthy whole-grain cereal. I padded lunch with an apple. And tried to subsist through the doldrums of the afternoon with a hard-boiled egg. And still I was hungry, getting grumpier by the moment. Three strikes, this diet is out.

I celebrated my dietary downfall in spirited fashion, with a glass of Woodford Reserve bourbon that I brought home from my recent Kentucky trip. "Just tea and lemon at cocktail hour," my mother's note had said. In the 1950s? On a Navy base? Really?? I wish I could ask my mom today how long she lasted on this darn 4-Day Diet. Geez. I'm just not built for that kind of hardship.

Speaking of bourbon and Kentucky. What a great introduction I had to both on a July trip to Lexington and Louisville. Not that I was unfamiliar with bourbon prior. But it was my first occasion to go to the source, visit some distilleries, taste the sour mash, see the limestone that so astutely filters the local water, take the whole bourbon culture in in full spectrum. It was such a good trip, in fact, that I returned mid September for some further research and a chance to go to the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. You'll read more about that later. With any luck in some glossy magazine!

Louisville. I really had no expectations about what this city would have to offer. I didn't realize it was going to be flanked by the Ohio River, looking straight on over to Indiana. And I guess I knew once, but had forgotten, that this was the hometown of the Louisville (duh) Slugger baseball bat. The museum was just around the corner from our hotel, saw lots of folks carrying mini baseball bats to commemorate the visit. Honestly, I thought they looked like cocktail muddlers until I put two and two together. You can't make a mint julep without a muddler, right? Made sense to me.

The biggest impression Louisville left me with was that of artiness. Creativity. Color, with a certain edginess. Two key factors contributed. In town for a board meeting, my colleagues and I stayed at the 21C Museum Hotel just a couple blocks from the river. Wow. Art really is everywhere you look: lobby, meeting rooms, elevator nooks, guest rooms.... Their signature red penguins actually move about, 2-foot-tall pieces that might be in your hallway one minute, in the lobby the next, in an elevator with you. Service here was really top-notch, nice folks, great attention to detail, above-and-beyond helpful. Highly recommended.

The other dazzling display of creativity we saw was the show of art cars on a block adjacent to the hotel. Our visit happened to coincide with the 7th annual Kentucky Art Car Weekend. A couple dozen cars embellished in amazing fashion. Baby doll heads (slightly disturbing), dentures and toothpaste tubes (um, interesting?), one big huge red telephone. Anything, clearly, goes. A popular favorite was the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir car, an animatronic-singing-bass-and-lobster covered Volvo.

I didn't return to Louisville on my latest trip, too busy on the bourbon trail this time around. But I'd be happy to get back to Louisville some day to get to know other sides of the city's personality. Maybe even visit that museum devoted to a baseball bat!

There's still time for you to join us for what will surely be a festive, delicious evening on October 16, 6:00 to 8:00 pm. I'm a member of the Seattle chapter of Les Dames d'Escoffier, an international group of professional women who raise money and support for women going into the culinary field. The organization has produced a cookbook for the first time, Cooking With Les Dames d'Escoffier: At Home with the Women Who Shape the Way We Eat.

To celebrate the release of this book, which is being published by hometown Sasquatch Books and was edited by Seattle food diva and fellow Dame, Marcella Rosene, we're holding a fundraising event at Kathy Casey Food Studios. A number of local members who contributed recipes to the book--including Lisa Dupar, Braiden Rex-Johnson and Leslie Mackie--will be on hand, serving their recipe, talking with guests, signing the cookbooks. Money raised this evening will go toward the scholarship and endowment funds that we make available to Seattle-area students and career-changers joining the culinary realm. You can find out more about the event and buy tickets here.

Imagine, if you will (because I didn't take a picture and this is all you're going to get) lifting the lid on a pot you've just taken from the oven. Up come gentle wafts of aromatic, slightly spicy steam. Inside are 2 sizeable lamb shanks that have been braising quietly, gently for a few hours. The shanks are surrounded by a chunky mahogany-colored mixture of onion, tomato, spices, cooking liquids, with pale little chickpeas bobbing about. If I do say so myself, it was a really tasty dinner a few nights ago. Just for the two of us. On a Tuesday.

I admit that despite the hundreds of recipes I've developed in my career, the countlesscookbooks that surround me in my office and the creative juices I apply to my work hours - on many nights I'm as stuck as most of America about what to cook for dinner. I get in ruts and fall back on the familiar. Roasted chicken with herbs. Pork tenderloin that I might slather with Dijon mustard. Just everyday stuff.

But lamb shanks jumped out at me recently and inspiration hit. I seasoned the 2 shanks generously with spices, salt and pepper. I used ground cumin, coriander and a couple Moroccan spices I happen to have on hand, from hometown Mustapha's (poivron rouge and ras el hanout). You could use paprika (oooh, smoked paprika would be wonderful here), or just stick with cumin and coriander. I browned the shanks in olive oil, then set them aside. Into the pot goes 1 chopped large onion, 1 can of diced tomatoes (with its liquid), 1 chopped yellow chile I had from the farmers market (I think it was a yellow wax, you could use most any kind to suit your taste) and 1 small fiery chile from the same vendor. And a few glugs of tomato juice (remainder from that awful diet experiment!). Return the shanks, on goes the lid and into a 300 degree oven. A few hours go by, until the meat gives way with a little pressure. One rinsed can of chickpeas went in during the last hour.

I lifted out the lamb shanks and set them on a plate, covered with foil, while reducing the liquids over medium heat for ten minutes or so. Ta-da. Delicious lamb shanks with aromatic, slightly spicy sauce. The big treat was leftovers the next day. I chopped up remaining meat from my shank, blended with leftover chickpea-tomato sauce and added a splash of tomato juice for moisture. After gentle warming, I spooned this over a toasted pita. Sure beats the canned soup or bowl of popcorn I lunch on most days.

This simple recipe takes the glory that is the basic grilled cheese sandwich and raises it to lavish heights. The recipe, from my Crab cookbook in the Northwest Homegrown Cookbook Series, is inspired by one of the signature items at the Bait Shop in Ballard. It was a very simple cafe, a walk-down from street level to water level just west of the Ballard Locks. A favorite lunch spot when I worked at Simply Seafood magazine, the owners sold the place a few years back.

This recipe is only the slightest bit more complex than classic grilled cheese, served open face after getting all bubbly and melty under the broiler. For some reason, beer comes to mind as an ideal partner here. A distinctive Northwest ale, like Manny's Pale Ale or Pike Pale Ale. Boy, that combo does sound might tasty right now!