Eating with the Blackbird.

One thing you'll learn about me is I believe we each must determine what healthy is for our own individual journey. Healthy may be one thing to me but for someone who is managing their diabetes or Celiac disease, what I do may not be the right choice. Our own journey is as individual as our finger prints. Sure there is probably a common theme of "move more, eat less" but how we do that is individual based on multiple variables. The hard part about being healthy is in the end we each are responsible for figuring out what healthy means to ourselves. That's my opinion - yours may differ. While I don't boast clean or non-processed eating 100% of the time, I do love when I can find opportunities to eat food not scientifically created in a lab.

Enter Blackbird Restaurant:

Situated on a bustling corner in South Minneapolis, you'll find Blackbird Cafe. While new to me, Blackbird Cafe has been around for awhile although not in its current location. Reopening a little over a year and a half ago after a fire ripped to shreds its insides, Blackbird Cafe confirmed a fire can't stop 'em now. Blackbird Cafe takes pride in a menu cooked from scratch. From their website:

Blackbird is a casual restaurant, serving lunch and dinner, plus breakfast on the weekends. Our menu items are prepared from scratch in our tiny kitchen. No frozen fries, no pre-fab desserts.

We use high quality ingredients and transform them into our versions of homespun classics. Our menu changes occasionally to showcase the best ingredients in their seasons, and to accommodate the fickleness of Mother Nature. But, we also like to keep your well-loved faves on the menu too!

My fiance, Carlos and I walked into Blackbird Cafe on an evening earlier this week, both starving and desperately needing to relax. Free yoga was a great escape but I also needed some quality one-on-one time with Carlos. We were shown to a tiny two person booth toward the back of the restaurant. As we walked toward our booth, I couldn't help but find my eyes darting around the mismatched decor consuming the walls. Every section of the wall seemed to have its own theme which didn't connect but seemed to somehow match its neighboring decorations. The hodgepodge of decor worked in a way I'm pretty sure would look tacky and unorganized if recreated in my house. I was impressed and a little jealous.

I sat down with a heavy sigh as if I was letting stress escape from within the sigh itself. I opened the menu and found familiar thoughts racing through my head. There is often an internal struggle in my mind when I look at menus because I want one of everything. I'm the type of person who eats because food tastes good, because I love the textures of food and because I crave the sensations dancing on my taste buds. I envy those who eat to live and work every day at trying to force a much needed paradigm shift but often get distracted by dreams of what I'm having for dinner. {Note to self: talk to therapist about eating to live and not living to eat.}

As we scanned the menu at our delicious main meal options, we ordered the crusty baguette with chickpea spread and whipped honey butter. I know some who can resist bread but that isn't me. The chickpea spread was a play off a popular hummus flavor but twice as good. It boasted a bold flavor but lightly complimented the crusty bread. The whipped honey butter was good enough to be eaten with a spoon however I resisted and thinly spread it on the second half of my crusty baguette.

In my world, an egg makes everything better. Carlos and I had conversations while a light murmur of conversations floated through the air around us. It was an August evening fit for a paragraph introduction in a book.

Portion sizes are a struggle when eating out because most places give us what we scream for - more for less. Blackbird Cafe challenges that request and instead strives to plate meals that are closer to appropriate portions. Over the past few years, I've allowed myself to adjust to leaving satisfied from dinner, not stuffed beyond comfort.

My spicy peanut noodles with chicken and egg were better than the high expectations I had set. I tasted every unique flavor choreographed together. Each bite made the world turn a little easier. How can a girl eat to live when made from scratch promises to emphasize this kind of live to eat mentality! I finished my egg and half the noodles & chicken. I paused and made a conscious decision not to eat everything on my plate.

Our server came by just enough to let us know he was still there but not to bombard us with intrusions. When he noticed we were slowing down on our meals, he asked the tempting question surrounding the subject dessert. Would we or wouldn't we? I entertained the thought. I even went so far as to ask for descriptions of heavenly creations and begin the process of elimination deciding which one I wanted in my stomach.

As I looked up at the server, I noticed a monster-sized antique looking door on the wall behind him. A symbol, I'm sure of it. The door represented all I'd hope for, fought for and dreamed of. This door was colorful as if alluding to the promises met on the other side. It also appeared to be a heavy door of which one would need to use all the fight they had to push open. It looked simple yet screamed of strength and power.

I smiled and snapped a photo. Doors and mirrors. An entrance to possibilities and a reminder of responsibility. Out in the real world, healthiness exists. We just have to slow down and take a breath long enough for it to make its presence known to us. Blackbird Cafe gives us the space we need to take a breath long enough for us to slow down in a fast paced world. It is a reminder we can be healthy by looking in the mirror and seeing ourselves making responsible decisions.