Greetings, fellow eaters!
There is no conversation I’d rather have than about food. I love developing recipes and figuring out what to do with stuff I’m not familiar with. That’s probably why I love our local CSA so much. When that box comes, it’s like Christmas for me. I open it with excitement and ponder its contents and plan what I’m going to do with each item. When I can use multiple items in one dish, it’s like using Q and X in the same word in Scrabble!
Does anyone else think about food as much as I do? I mean, less than an hour after breakfast, I’m thinking about lunch. If I realize at work that I’ve forgotten to pack a snack, I nearly have a panic attack! Which was the case today. So I sought out a Kind bar. Whew! Have you had one of those? They’re pretty tasty.
In the 1990’s, I was a major fat-phobe. You can ask my friend Jodi. She hated eating out with me because I ordered everything on the side. Ha! No butter or sour cream for a baked potato, no creamy salad dressing, nothing fried or cooked in oil. I avoided things described as scampi and I never (and still don’t) order anything ‘alfredo’. But times have changed and I’m no longer of the opinion that all fats are bad. It’s taken more than a decade for me to come to that realization. The federal guidelines for what foods are good for you and what is not have changed over the years. I used to think that the science was constantly evolving but now I’m not so sure. I fear that ‘Big Food’ as Dr. Mark Hyman calls it has colored our regulators minds and possibly lined their pocketbooks and basically kept the general public guessing. But federal guidelines was not the purpose of this post, so I’ll move on.
How about you? Are there foods, sauces, condiments that you avoid not because you don’t like them but because you think they’re bad? For all my preaching about good health and nutrition, I still think moderation is the key. I don’t deprive myself of what I really want. But what I’ve found is that I desire unhealthy foods far less than I once did, based in part I think, because of this changed attitude about food. If you think you can’t have a donut, how much more attractive does that make it?
We went to party last night where there were lots of veggies, salads and lean meat… and 2 pies. After my chicken and multiple types of salads, I honestly did not want the pie. It did not seem like a sacrifice to me at all. But if I’d wanted it, you’re darn-tootin’ I would’ve eaten it.
Now, I proudly eat avocado toast. I cook with good olive oil. I use ghee and I occasionally eat good cheese. (Limiting cheese has more to do with my opinion on dairy, but that’s a whole other blog post!). I fall upon food with gusto as my old friend David used to say.
So folks, I challenge you to think about what you eat but enjoy it, savor it and eat without guilt. I hope that you’ll come visit me especially if you’re wondering if you’ll really like those mustard greens or the Swiss chard. Together we can definitely expand our food horizons!