Food has been a driving theme in my life starting with growing up in a teaching kitchen. My mother, now 85 and still teaching cooking and blogging about food, had classes in our home. It was not an uncommon event to have Beef Wellington or souffle for snacks - leftovers from her demonstrations. Once when we visited a friend's home for lunch and I was asked what I would like to eat. I paused and thought for a moment and said, "sweetbreads please." I was then told that there were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the children so I politely declined. I was not sure why she had asked me what I wanted and why she thought thymus glands for lunch was odd. But I also knew no one could possibly make them as well as my mother!
I considered myself a gourmet orphan as my mother's business grew and she opened a gourmet shop (long before kitchen shops had really become popular) cooking school, catering business and restaurant. I helped manage the shop and worked for the catering end of things and hired myself out to handle the food at parties. That part was gloriously fun because I liked being behind the scenes at events and the artist in me adored pulling the trays together of such well made creations from my mother's kitchen.
As an adult my direction with food changed as I got involved in being more athletic and took up body building. People usually raise an eyebrow when I tell them I did this for quite a number of years but I do have to say that I have nothing but the fondest of memories of my gym days. My training partner was a runner and lifter which is an unusual combination. But she taught me about the mind body spirit connection and balancing the three of these in life being the most important aspect of good health. Her philosophy was about the middle road - no extremes and finding balance in all things. It was at this point I started to look at food as fuel instead of looking at it only as an art form. Those feeling merged and creating what I deemed healthy gourmet meals.
It wasn't until I got into creating a balanced raw food diet for my dogs that I started questioning what really constituted a healthy diet. My focus became more about raw foods, grass finished meats and healthy fats and oils in the diet. My kitchen kept evolving and is still evolving to this day.
I have brought up these subjects before but felt the need to touch on this food evolution of mine today because of my recent history with health crisis. A friend of mine called me the other day to tell me that she had started taking a probiotic and found that it was helping her in ways that she had been trying to get help for from her physician for years. She had been put on steroids and other drugs that only sent her deeper into her health crisis. But by switching things out and staying away from refined sugars and adding Greek yogurt and a very good probiotic to her diet she was experiences changes in her health. I was practically jumping up and down with delight as she told me this. It made me so very happy to hear of her findings for herself and my hope and dream for her is that this continues to unfold and she finds the road to health is paved with solid nutrition. Nutrition IS powerful medicine!
When I first became ill from the dental implants I did not stop eating refined things right away and found that they literally burned my mouth and caused such incredible digestive upset. I could not go on like that. I was feeling the consequence of feeding my emotions with sugars and pastas even though they were "clean foods" with organic claim - this did not mean that they were good for me. Not in the least.
My kitchen and I had a show down as I cleaned out every single bit of refined food from the shelves. No flours or sugars or cooked anything including jarred apple sauce and tomato products. It all went. The things that could be put in the food bank bin were deposited there and the rest made it to the compost pile. In order to keep my head above water through the health crisis I was going through, I needed to focus on mostly raw foods and staying very focused on non pasteurized items. Since raw milk soft cheese is illegal to sell in this state I had to start making those things myself. I found excellent recipes for keeping cottage cheese in a raw state as well as yogurt. I made my own ice cream with raw egg yolks, dates and bananas and no added sugar other than the whole dates. The raw cream and raw egg yolks are very healthy foods that help maintain strong teeth and bones.
The side effect of making my diet rules no pasteurized food and no refined foods was losing weight and reshaping my body. Through the course of living here in Vermont and being very focused outwardly on the health and well being of my animals and the keeping of ten acres and a 2000 square foot home was that my body was stuck on a back burner. I went from being a very well formed well tuned athlete to a frumpy middle aged woman. I was in clothing sizes I had never dreamed of owning and tended to hide in very baggy shirts and denim skirts. The baggy clothes acted like a veil to the reality of my own body and I could no longer face that it was not what I desired to be. That middle road was lost to an extreme of poor body maintenance. But without really thinking about it by making this change to a whole food diet, the weight drifted off. I honestly did not see it happening until one morning I went to put on my fat pants and they fell off of me when I zipped them up. This gave me such a euphoric feel and helped me slide and glide through the pain I was going through with reacting to the metal implants in my jawbone.
I brought the bathroom scale back to the bathroom and watched as the years of neglect vanished from my bones helping me to feel free again and to feel more like myself. I started to box up the tentish wardrobe and decided not to give them away quite yet as I needed to digest what was happening to me. When I would visit friends I would see the look in their eyes as they stopped, took in the change and smiled with glowing comments. But the more important side to this is that by making these changes it helped me stay focused on healing. When the dental implants were removed a little over a week ago (see the past blog entries for the horror story of allergic reactions to dental implants) a huge weight was lifted and I knew I could add another aspect to my path to wellness - I could start working out again.
So the road doesn't lead back to me. The road leads on to another level of me. I am finding that balance still of health and well being and I know that it is a constant and evolving state that sometimes is a dirt path and other times is paved in good intentions and yet other times I need a machete to cut the way. It's all very good and exciting and a wonderful adventure, isn't it. Today is the day I box up those clothes and send them along the way to others who may need them. It is incredibly symbolic and emotional for me to do this. Part of me had felt such embarrassment and shame for letting my body become filled with the weeds of neglect. But that lesson for me is understanding how I got to that point and embracing it as part of the journey I am here to experience. I know it will feel very healing to drop those bags into the clothing collection box today. I am sure I will shed happy tears for me.
