When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
-The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Hugh’s next book is coming out soon and it is appropriately titled “Freedom is Blogging in your Underwear.”   When I first heard the name of the book, I thought it was intended to be tongue in cheek. But every time I walk past the table and see Rex in his underwear on the cover of the book, I think that this is one great truth.

Freedom is relative.The way we exert and express our freedom is very personal.

We are raised to think that the right way to live involves getting the right job with the fancy title, the right corporate perks, the bonus, the stock options, and the 401K. Then to keep those things, you need to put in extra time, extra effort, become more about the team than you are about yourself, and hope that you don’t ever falter.

Because by giving up our freedom to be ourselves we are supposed to gain something.

One of the things that’s given me the most freedom in life is my blog.  My blog has given me an outlet to express myself as a professional, a writer, and a person.  It has given me a platform to complain when I don’t like something. It’s been a tool I’ve been able to use to share things that I love.

Not even the best job I’ve ever had has done all those things for me. Sure, they have satisfied me in some way but they haven’t allowed me to exert my freedom without attempting against my sense of self first.
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Last night I did something I love to do: I cooked.

During our weekly visit to the Pinecrest Farmer’s Market, for the first time ever we bought some fresh fish. Normally, we buy our fish at Whole Foods (we live pescetarian),  but it really was getting annoying that even though I’ve been able to lower our weekly grocery bill , even when maintaining our seasonal, local, organic diet, I had not been able to find quality substitutions for the fish.

This has changed.  We bought our weekly supply of fresh fish for 50% of the price!

I was so happy, I made some ceviche and surprisingly, it came out amazing!

We love ceviche, but sadly no recipe I’ve tried has yielded the results I wanted.  Not even Chef Pandita’s  (and that’s saying A LOT). Yesterday, we bought some corvina and I just experimented and it came out amazing!

Ceviche

Ingredients:

1/2 lb of corvina rinsed and chopped in chunks
6 limes juiced
1 clove of garlic minced
3 tbsp of cilantro chopped
1 serrano pepper chopped into tiny pieces
1/2 a red onion really thinly sliced

Preparation:

Add salt and pepper to the fish.
Mix the lime juice, garlic, cilantro, and pepper and pour it over the fish in a glass bowl.
Add onions to the fish and mix it around.
Cover it with saran wrap and let it sit in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours.

Enjoy!