Free Off the Menu by Stacey Ballis

spread of fresh-looking salads. Wheat-berry salad, what looks like a Greek salad, asparagus, a platter of beautifully arranged fruit, and some cooked tuna steaks. “This looks amazing!” I’ve been mired in fall comfort foods for work, all braised and hearty, and it is very exciting to see such fresh and light fare for a change.
    “My Melanie, she is a mirrrrracle.”
    Melanie is a local chef who runs healthy gourmet take-out restaurants and a food delivery service, and it is her light and delicious food that has helped Maria lose weight and get healthier. They met when Maria did a segment on midlife career changes. Melanie used to be a lawyer before she left to go to culinary school, and then opened her first place in Lincoln Square. Since then she has opened three other locations, one near me in Logan Square, one in the Gold Coast and one in Hyde Park. I often stop by on my way home from work to pick something up if I am too tired or lazy to cook for myself. The cobbler’s children have no shoes, as they say, and no one eats more takeout than chefs. When Maria and I parted company, she went through an endless series of diets with prepackaged food. Nutrisystem, Seattle Sutton’s, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, The Zone … She tried it all. She’d lose ten pounds and gain six. She hated the food with a passion. Up and down, forward and backward, minimal successes and maximal annoyance.
    After the career-change show aired, she called Melanie, who worked with Maria’s doctors and nutritionist to comeup with a food plan, and Mel began both delivering meals and occasionally catering Maria’s events, ensuring that Maria could continue to entertain without derailing her program. And for the first time, Maria began to have serious sustained success, because first and foremost, the food is delicious. Appropriately portioned, restricted in all the ways Maria needs it to be restricted, but very, very tasty. And they have become good friends and colleagues with a common cause. Melanie and Maria have launched a program in five of the local charter elementary schools in some of the food desert neighborhoods, to support healthy options in the school cafeterias and nutrition education as part of the science curriculum. Maria is pushing the Chicago Public School system to adopt the program for all of the elementary schools in the city, which is a long and difficult process, but I don’t doubt that she will eventually succeed.
    “It all looks amazing.” We fill our plates with small portions of all the dishes, and sit at the other end of the table to eat.
    “’Ow is
la familia
?” Maria asks, picking up a spear of asparagus in her fingers and munching on the tip.
    “
La familia y un poco loco en la cabeza
, but very good. Mama wants to know if you are coming for Thanksgiving this year?”
    “Of courrrrse! And my doctorrrrr says I can have little bit of everrrrrything, but no seconds.” She says this both as a way of guaranteeing her own smart eating, since once she has told me what the doctor said she can’t cheat and pretend otherwise, and as a way of knowing that I will warn my mother about not pressing her to eat more food. My mother, who has stood in line for two hours for a loaf of bread and one orange, thinks that nothing is more satisfying than filling people to eighttimes human capacity with rich food. Hence the size of my ass.
    “Fantastic! Everyone will be very excited.” This is exuberantly true. Maria is just herself, all day every day. She doesn’t have a “television persona.” All that warmth and wit and nurturing spirit that make her fans so rabid is genuine. Which is why the more famous she gets, the more secluded she becomes. Because she is the kind of person who would never deny someone access or reject someone reaching out to her, being in public can be exhausting for her. I know that famous people choose that fame, and so does Maria—she is not one of those celebs who bemoans the fact that she