viral thoughts

·      Beijing’s pollution levels are way down.

·      The administration, and the public, will need to acknowledge the validity of science.

·      People are pulling together during difficult times.

·      Be proactive instead of reactive – boost immune system, don’t panic, eat better, get enough sleep, gain perspective (you won’t die, but the world economy will suffer).

·      Consider alternative treatment methods such as antiviral essential oils, we currently have no foolproof treatment method for this virus.

·      We learn how globally connected we are. Physical walls don’t protect us, the virus is coming in via boat and plane.

·      Our immune systems get to practice on new challenges.

·      China bans trade and consumption of wild animals (although not sure how much this will really do, but the awareness of the damage and cruelty of the pangolin and other wild animal trade is rising).

·      Age of transparency – China, Japan, and US leaders are being rebuked for sweeping the importance of this outbreak under the rug, and it’s blowing up in their faces.

·      Virus takes hold in acidic body chemistry environment.  Mmmmhhhh, that means cutting out sugar, starch (potatoes, rice), white flour (pasta, baked goods, pizza, waffles), and eat way less meat.. This is not a new message, these food items, eaten in excess as in the SAD Diet, also cause diabetes, heart disease, inflammation, and possibly promote cancer.  Eat your veggies!

leave nature whole

Egg white omelets used to be quite the thing, and it was a blast from our cholesterol fearing past when a friend recently mentioned making one – here a link to an article that debunks some of the cholesterol misinformation and fears out there.  

In our scientific zeal we have been dissecting nature into its individual components, believing that we can isolate the “beneficial” or “good” parts and eliminate or diminish the “detrimental” or “bad” parts, with the intent to eat more “good” than “bad.”  That thinking has brought us man made fats (we can make your fat free of bad cholesterol), supplements (taking vitamin D pills instead of soaking up some sunshine, or resveratrol instead of drinking red wine), nutrient labels (“hopefully there are more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ nutrients in this food product”), and sugar-free drinks (beware of aspartame!).  It’s also brought us low fat and fat free products, with an emphasis on product. 

I’m not saying that all natural foods are equally good for all people.  After all, our digestive systems are individual and unique, and what’s beneficial for one may not be beneficial for somebody else.  Breeding and hybridization have of course always been ways to improve on nature too. But when we take that too far, such as with the modern wheat strains, our bodies rebel also.  

Products are seldomly better than nature, and there is nothing bad about eating the entire egg.   

the most important thing in life

Life has its ups and downs.  But my husband pointed out that we always ate well, even though we didn’t always buy organic or put wine on the weekday dinner table.  Now I mostly buy organic, enjoy a glass of wine with many weekday dinners, and my food knowledge and awareness have evolved in so many other ways that inform how I shop and cook.  Yet, I still make concessions.  My 2007 car is a bit banged up, most of my clothes come from  2nd hand stores (I actually hate mall shopping, find the selection more creative, and appreciate the idea of reuse), and my iphone 6s needs to be charged all the time because its battery is on its last leg, and you can’t replace it.  

It’s all about priorities and values.  Food is at the very top of my list.  It’s preventative healthcare and health insurance.  It’s quality of life and pleasure (stimulates your senses through color, aroma and smell).  It has to do with caring for our planet (less pesticides means more birds and bees, less poison in my body, and more minerals and nutrients in my food), and the farm workers (better for them if they don’t have to wade in sprayed soil).  Take a look at related posts, good food heals, cheap food kills, and what’s your food worth it to you.

Ponder your priorities.

wiser, not older

Next year I will hit my 60th run-around-the sun, and I am reflecting on all the ways in which maturing is more fun, more grounding, or even perhaps more desirable than remaining young forever.

Traditional societies have revered elders for their wisdom and perspective.  In our younger societies we have come to worship youth as more desirable – my theory being that we’re deflecting our fear of death, or maybe we just don’t think wrinkles are fashionable (although not everyone becomes wrinkly as they age). Young people may be creative and exuberant, technologically with it (absolutely important in our day and age), but they lack experience, and potentially depth, because they haven’t been around the block. 

Nowadays “older” depends so much on your personal outlook.  Ernestine Shepherd is an 80-year old body builder who began training not so long ago. Tao Porchon-Lynch, the 101-year old ballroom dancer and yogini, still  teaches yoga several times a week.  Bless people who can afford to retire in their 50s, but not all wish to do so.   Many professors teach into their 70s and even 80s.   Authors can practice their craft until the day they die.  86-year old Ruth Bader Ginsburg still sits on the Supreme Court, and I know many people who travel into their high 80s.  And why not?

Our thinking about aging and “old age” is evolving.  When AARP sent me a card a few years ago I laughed it all the way into the trash can.  The French have broadened their senior citizen categorization from le troisième age, the 3rdage, the over 60s, to the quatrième age, the fourth age, the over 80s.  “Old” seems to relate more to how you look and feel and think instead of your actual age.  The Huffington Post published a chart that shows activity peaks according to age.  Peaks in life satisfaction, happiness with your body, and psychological wellbeing are all achieved starting in your late 60s.  And aren’t those the markers that count most?

Is it all in the mind? Are we our worst enemy?  To some extent yes.  How do you think about old age?  What are your plans?  

fake meat or authentic veggies?

Since the Tofurky phenomenon for Thanksgiving and otherwise, a tofu based and turkey breast shaped hunk of meat substitute, I have had my gripes with food that emulates something other than what it is. Since Michael Pollan and our evolving food awareness I thought we had embraced “eating foods that our grandmothers would have recognized.”  

The whole thing about the Green Revolution of the 1950s has been to feed the masses cheaply.  From this effort also arose the manufacturing of food products, supposedly to save us time and promote convenience.   But feeding the corporate profit machine was its ultimate result, not our health.  

The newest thing is openly called fake meat, and every effort is being made to create the most authentic meat taste and look, bloody drips and all – see a huge article in Wednesday’s NYT food section.  After tofurky came the meat substitute Quorn, now there is fake meat, all made up of all sorts of ingredients, GMO and otherwise. In the end they are all manufactured foods, not something nature made. It’s not alive.  It’s made in a factory. It comes in a package with a long ingredient list, and it’s not more authentic than a TV dinner.

We may be smiling about TV dinners, but if, in this new age of authenticity, we’re looking for a health promoting diet we might want to get away from “product” and eat real food.

replenishing naturally

Lawns need fertilization.  Leaving the shredded grass and leaves after lawn mowing nourishes the soil on an ongoing basis. If you use a clippings bag you need to fertilize your lawn artificially eventually, and that never works as well as the natural way because of the chemicals.  Forest floors replenish themselves in a never ending cycle of falling leaves and other organic matter that decay and decompose back into the soil.  Houseplants especially need added nutrition since they grow in  the confined environment of a pot.  As the roots absorb minerals over time, the soil  depletes in the same way agricultural soils deplete if we don’t put nutrients back in.  I put the yellowed leaves from my houseplants back into the pot to perpetuate the continuous cycle of adding natural nutrients back, and I use the leftover water from steaming greens for my plants. 

Our minds and bodies are no different.  If you take out, you have to replenish lest your capital shrinks until there is no more.  Today’s Times has an article about the many rich who now work constantly because enough is never enough for them, and they operate on a treadmill of accumulation for the sake of accumulation - 85% of their assets are locked into investments!  But for what?  To make it to the finish line aka death with tons of money in the bank?   A business coach told me a while ago, when we were discussing some hang-ups over money, “Money is an incredible vehicle to purpose and pleasure in life.”  Locked-up money may give us a sense of security, but it doesn’t nourish the mind and gives you no purpose and pleasure.  Money by itself, sitting in an investment, account does not nourish your mind and body. Doing something with the money, dislodging it from its investment vehicle, is what moves mountains, creates meaning and nourishment not only for ourselves, but also for our society.  

If you keep taking out of yourself, by working constantly without putting back in, meaning, experiences, friendships, you deplete your human capital and your ability to experience joy and satisfaction.  Supplements can only go so far in replenishing your body and mind, coffee, alcohol and medications can help over a hump but do not replenish or heal naturally. 

How do you fertilize and replenish your mind and body the natural way so you experience meaning and joy on life?

there's no catch

“There’s got to be a catch,” a recent food workshop attendee said.  We have come to mistrust goodness and can’t believe that you “can have your cake and eat it too,” meaning if food is delicious there’s got to be a catch.  

Coming from a religious perspective the idea may be that “good food” has to be sinful.  From a cultural perspective “good food” has been associated with sweet, fatty and “bad,” without qualifier. The underlying conclusion would then be that healthful food must be bland, boring, fatless, virtuous, depriving, and joyless.  What misunderstanding! 

Of course, the worst food can kill you, just like a gun can be used either to kill a person or simply for target shooting; just like chemical knowledge can be used either for warfare or simply to understand the Maillard reaction when searing a steak.  It’s never the food, or the gun, or the chemical knowledge that’s bad. It’s what we do with it that’s essential. 

When we use our knowledge in a life enhancing way, food heals, food connects people, food is delicious, food nourishes body and soul, food is an adventure, food is sensuous.  That’s the kind of food we want to make and eat.  When you learn how to make it both delicious and healthy, it becomes a win-win situation without reservation.  Is the Mediterranean Diet not considered one of the healthiest in the world?  It’s delicious!  Aren’t the Japanese with their sophisticated cuisine one of the longest living people in the world?  Their food is an adventure. 

Bon appétit!

product or produce?

The other day I had a casual conversation with two friends about cauliflower crust pizza, the new gluten-free and low carb alternative to regular wheat dough pizza crust.  I said that I had made it and like it.  To which the other friend replied, “Oh, I guess you don’t just go to Trader Joe’s and buy a frozen one?”

In the name of time and convenience - their sales strategy, with a hidden profit agenda - do you support Big Food and Big Ag and buy a product with multiple ingredients and a long production chain that feeds many profit driven cogs in the economic wheel? Or, in the name of health, taste, and control of ingredients, do you buy a cauliflower, steam it, rice it, add a few eggs, a bit of binding flour of choice and some spices, and bake it?

Do you choose product or produce?

summertiiiiiime…..

.…and the livin’ is easy, goes the first line of Gershwin’s famous song from Porgy and Bess.  After a cool and rainy spring, and a slow start to the summer (all fine for my Northern constitution) real summer is finally here.

Summer energy is so different from the other seasonal energies, and I am so glad to be living in a place where I get to experience these four distinct energies every year again.  Summer energy is light.  Summer energy is carefree.  Summer energy is joyful.  Summer energy is abundant.  Summer energy is vibrant.  Whether swimming and being at the beach, whether wearing bright and light colors, whether enjoying lighter foods and drinks, or nature’s abundance in flowers and produce, there is something exuberant about summer energy.

May you feel it, may it pervade your life, may you enjoy it to the fullest for the next two months.

Since summer invites a lesser workload, this will also serve as an abbreviated substitute newsletter to let you know that July and August food workshops are up on my website in case you need a joyful infusion of creative cooking and food inspiration in the next two months.

no name dinners

“What’s for dinner tonight?” Oftentimes the answer in my house in the early evening is, “I don’t know yet.”  Once I’ll take stock of fridge and pantry, and if I’m really desperate also the freezer, I’ll see what’s there and decide what I can make of it.  Often what I cook and put together doesn’t have a name, such as eggplant or chicken parm,  stuffed zucchini, or perhaps salmon on a bed of leeks.  As a matter of fact, what I mostly make is no-name dishes, something you can’t look up in a cookbook because I just made it up from what I had.

You see, I usually work backwards.  Instead of making a list of dishes for the week ahead and shopping for the ingredients, I shop for what’s in season, on sale, available, fresh, or what tickles my fancy and inspiration, then fill my fridge, pantry and freezer with possibilities.  

Last night I was in a pickle working late and having to put dinner on the table fast.  My trick is always to have meal building blocks at the ready.  I had a portion size baggie of cooked and thawed sorghum, some leftover sautéed red and yellow peppers from the previous night’s dinner, and a wedge of a Mexican fresh cheese they called Mexican Parmesan (ahem – not the same, more like Feta cheese without the sheep’s zing) to play with.  Thinking quinoa salad, which you can really make with just about anything, I made a sorghum/cubed cheese/sautéed peppers/diced shallots meal salad with a simple vinaigrette.  No name, made up on the spot, very healthy, very nourishing and satisfying.  With a few basic building blocks, a few basic techniques, and the dare to throw some things together, you’re on your way to making no-name dinners in a jiffy.  Add some fruit for dessert, add a piece of fish, some sautéed tofu or a piece of meat if you like, and you have full meal. Some no-name dinners will be better than others, but hey, they’re fun, fun, fun and so easy to make - and you won’t have to buy take-out.