I trained Muay Thai in Thailand for a month. With a pacemaker.

The tour didn't start in a kitchen. It started on a little island called Koh Samui, in a Muay Thai gym.

Before I cooked a single dinner on this trip, I spent thirty days training. Me and Polina went to a place called Kof Fit for the fitness program. They ran Muay Thai a couple times a week, I went to one class, and I fell in love with it. Two ninety-minute sessions a day: running, jump rope, shadow boxing, pad work. My coach was a guy named Tang, short, forty-three, an absolute killer who fought twice last year and won both.

Here's something most people don't know about me. I have a pacemaker. I was born with my heart upside down and backwards. Doctors told my parents I'd never run long distances, that I might need a wheelchair sometimes. I've had the pacemaker almost ten years and the battery is still good. I can cycle a hundred miles, I can swim, but I can't run. Every time I try, I hit a wall. Muay Thai, though, worked with exactly how my body is built.

You go hard, then you get a rest, then you go again. That's the same reason I fell in love with cooking. It's the one thing I can fully focus on. You do the thing in front of you, then the next thing, then the next.

The best part wasn't the shape I got into. It was a guy named Leo, from Lithuania. The coaches liked him and asked if he wanted to fight, and he said yes, while I was there. So I did the only thing that made sense. I made Leo t-shirts, hats, and signs. The night of the fight I talked my way ringside as the "photographer." First round he almost got knocked out, up against the ropes, the count going to nine. He got up at nine. Second round, he knocked the other guy out. One of my dreams has always been to watch someone fight their first Muay Thai fight. I never wanted to fight myself. I'm much better at cooking.

In between all of it, I locked in the India dinners with Prasad over a little podcast setup on the island, met an incredible Thai chef named Kukai who walked us through her market, and got pulled into dancing with the women selling spices in the middle of it. Doing all of it with Polina, pushing each other, is what built the team before the real work started.

A confession. When people started asking for photos of my food for the India dinners, all I had were shots from Truffle Shuffle, and that wasn't the tasting-menu food I want to cook at Elizabeth. So I borrowed some of Tyler's photos for the proposal. A few people noticed the same dish. We've since shot the real Elizabeth menu. Thank you, Tyler.

Then Bangkok, and the kitchens. But this is the part I'll always remember as the start.