A Lifetime of Culinary Adventures...

This is the first blog entry that I have written on this site in more than three years. And what is it about? Food. Maybe it's because I just finished the book Julie/Julia, and plan to see the movie ASAP. Maybe it's because I've recently made a hugely life-altering decision with regards to food, and have been filling up a lot of my time working with and thinking about food.... either way, here I am. Back in the game. With food.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love food. Not necessarily the eating of it, though I very much enjoy that as well, but the entire experience of it. Grocery shopping is a major stress-reliever, and the only shopping I truly enjoy. The colors, smells, and "thrill of the hunt" for just the right ingredients or the freshest produce, or the surprise of the unexpected item that I thought I would never stumble across outside of a major metropolitan gourmet store. Cooking is something I can get lost in for days on end. Searching for the best recipes in my vast collection of cookbooks and the plethora of cooking-centric websites can eat up many happy hours of my time. I've been known to bring three or four different kinds of baked desserts, all balancing completely diverse sets of flavors so as to appeal to the greatest number of tastes, to any given event I'm invited to. So it came as a bit of a shock to some--including myself at times, in some ways--to learn that I have recently joined the ranks of Raw Foodism. I am now a cook in an Un-cooked world.

It's really not so much of a stretch, when I spell out the long progression of how I came to this point... it all started half my lifetime ago. It all began with a cow.

I was twelve years old when we visited my grandmother in Arkansas for a couple of hot, muggy summer weeks. All of my cousins had somehow been whisked away from the area for some type of summer camp (a camp that obviously had it in for me), leaving me surrounded solely by adults and a whole lot of boredom. I'd always loved animals (some would say that's a bit of an understatement), and was relieved and terribly excited to find that my grandmother was then keeping a young cow in the pasture behind her house. This cow, which was actually just a big calf, soon became my play companion for the majority of our Arkansas visit. I even gave him the very creative and dignified nickname of "Pal". Impressive, I know. I would bottle feed him, brush him, pet his face as if he were a dog, and coax him to walk with me along the pasture fence. He was truly a sweet cow, and I grew attached to him immediately. I envisioned future summers of visiting Pal the Cow as he grew up, visiting him in his pasture and petting his nose like old times. A mere several months later, however, I got the most horrifying piece of news from my grandmother in what I thought was a disturbingly casual way: upon asking about the well-being of my fine cow friend, my grandmother nonchalantly replied "we ate him". Cue a torrent of adolescent tears here. Needless to say, I was devastated, and my grandmother thought I was insane.

I'd remembered reading that Alicia Silverstone had given up meat when she was a young teen after a traumatizing realization of where meat came from. Alicia was, to those like me who were enthralled with the phenomenon that was "Clueless", definitely a role model. I decided that if she could do it, I could do it. I gave up beef. A fitting revenge for Pal, and one step closer to Alicia-dom for me. While I was at it, I decided that pigs--which I'd heard were smarter than dogs (and why would anyone eat their dogs? As if.)--were pretty cute, too. So were deer. And as I'd never before eaten any other sort of furry animal, they weren't ever even on the "edible" list to begin with. In one fell swoop, my diet had been purged of mammalian flesh. I was on a partial-vegetarian roll.

That partial-vegetarian lifestyle lasted me until my 21st year. I spent 9 years in the guilt-ridden purgatory of "I know where meat comes from, and I still like chicken. Help!" I wasn't quite sure how to completely give up all forms of fowl and fish... I already felt left out by most party menus and suffered well-intentioned harassment from my many carnivorously-inclined family members. Besides, I wondered to myself the question that so many vegetarians come to know and hate when asked: where would I get my protein? That, I soon found, was a very silly question indeed.

In fact, since about the age of 15, I'd determined that I would no longer eat poultry or fish on a daily basis. I guess the "cold turkey" method just seemed too, well, cold. Rather inconveniently, this was also the year that I decided the Protein Diet sounded like a good idea. It was, in fact, an epic waste of energy that in the end made me feel bloated and heavy in my gut daily as though I'd swallowed a lead weight or two. Yum. But I really got to know and love a few alternative proteins through the experience--namely soy sausages, boca burgers, fake chicken patties, and LOTS of eggs. I continued with supplementing my diet with such protein sources on a daily basis, with only the occasional bit of turkey or chicken or salmon. I felt I was somewhat alleviating my conscience, unless I thought too hard about it.

When I met my then-future husband, the stars aligned in several ways. Not only was I smitten, but I was dating someone who rarely to never ate meat. He wasn't morally averse to the idea as I was, but simply didn't want to buy something so expensive on a frequent basis. He cooked up a mean tofu, veggie, rice and cheese stir-fry, and olive-oil soaked sautee strips of tempeh that were to die for. I almost didn't even realize that I was no longer eating any meat for a while. Once I did realize it, I was thrilled with myself--I'd proven that it could be done! Me!! Meat free!!! Except the very occasional sushi!!!!! Ok, so I wasn't perfect. I grew up in Alaska, for gods sake. Fish is like manna to me.

Fast forward to age 24. After having "gone Veg" for 3 years, and contemplating veganism for at least one of them ("what about cheeeeeeese?" my cravings would whine every time I would think those thoughts), I determined that my very annoying year-round mild allergy/sinus-y symptoms were likely due to a food allergy. I don't get allergies from anything else... and refuse to be convinced otherwise. Seriously, though, I just don't. But I figured a little investigation wouldn't hurt. Also, my digestion system had been particularly vindictive and stubborn as of late, and would not sort itself out without some kind of punishment, it seemed. So I went on a series of juice fasts--three days a week, then one day a week, then three again, and so on, weeding out mostly the two foods that seemed to be connected to the majority of the world's food allergies, dairy and wheat. I was surprised to find a vast overall improvement, in addition to a renewed appreciation for just how wonderful chewing, in fact, is.

I begrudgingly stuck by my findings and practiced my new wheat-free, dairy-free food rules pretty diligently, and threw in an egg-free rule just for the heck of it. I tend to do that--add in the "why not, while I'm at it anyway" items to any list I happen to be making... grocery lists, travel plan lists, etc., so why not dietary eschewing lists? See--there I go again. It nearly broke my will, though, to see so many of my long-treasured recipes for baked goods and fantastic skillet meals either go out the door completely, or become so bastardized that they would no longer have the same magic, or even taste. I suddenly had to go purchase tapioca and rice flours and egg replacers and vegan butter and such... things that I have nothing at all against, but they just don't quite taste the same in "conventional" recipes. So then I had to go searching for special recipes that were not only vegan, but wheat-free. Let me tell you, it's depressing. Most vegan recipe writers, it seems, are extremely wheat-centric. It was enough to drive me to craving and dining on sushi for the first time in months. I make such a bad sushi-eating, honey-consuming vegan.

I made a particularly disgusting tasting Allergy Bread--"alternative bread for wheat/gluten allergies"--that involved about eight different kinds of flours and starches, I guess to make it seem as though it did indeed contain gluten, that kind of took the final wind out of my sails on the whole strange-and-expensive-flour-recipes baking experiment. I could make good vegan cookies and dessert-y quick breads like carrot-applesauce loaf, but I couldn't make anything that tasted half-decent without a lot of sugar involved. I didn't want to eat sugar every day, and dammit, my pride as a life-long baker was on the line. I decided to simply forgo bread-based foods altogether. Take that, Allergy Bread! Sometimes I take food failures personally.

Salad, stir frys (sans cheese and eggs), fruits, rice, and oatmeal and the like were it for me. Then my digestive issues, which I will not get into, returned. Oh fudge. Except I was thinking of the HBO version of the word, not the Disney Channel one. I finally went to see someone that I thought might shed some light on the issue, a highly recommended naturopath. It wasn't quite what I'd expected... for one, I thought for sure that any Naturopath would be wholeheartedly on the Vegetarianism-is-Grrreat! bandwagon. Nope, not quite... and not only that, but she believed the "diet should be determined by Blood-Type" theory might hold some water. I am type O (I think), which is supposedly hungry for what else but meaty meaty meat meat. Maybe, for some people, this would have been a joyous thing to hear, as it gives permission to indulge in the most carnivorous of culinary fantasies. For me, though, as a glad and morally-bound vegetarian, it was rather panic-inducing. In addition to supposedly needing bucket loads of meat (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit), I was NOT allowed to eat about half of my favorite produce items (and here, I'm not exaggerating). The future seemed very bleak indeed. However was I to find a solution?

My awesome, equivalently hippie-minded friend Amoris and her superbly natural-health-schooled mama Lynn recommended that I try pairing both fasting and colonics to really do a full system detox. I will not go into details... I am not the kind of girl who colonics-and-tells. But I will say that the very wonderful colonics technician spoke of her high regard for eating a diet with 80% (or more) Raw foods as being a key component to maintaining a healthy digestive system, and thus started a pattern of pieces falling quickly into place for me. I'd remembered previously mentioned wonderful friend Amoris having done a similar Raw Foods diet for quite a while a couple of years back, and that she was quite excited about it at the time. It seemed like something worth checking into.

To the web I went, trawling for as much information as I could find, and found quite a bit indeed. Too much, in fact, to even begin to process it all, but what I did have time to read seemed to shake me by the shoulders and say "do it, you fool... it is your destiny!" It was indeed very much like Luke finding out that Darth Vader is his father, and hearing that the Dark Side is his destiny, only it was totally and completely different in every way except for the "it is your destiny" line. Honestly, though, it seemed like the perfect fit. I could make all kinds of fun, creative foods, either be as simple or complicatedly gourmet as I wanted to, and make all kinds of yummy cookie and mousse and pie and ice cream recipes and never feel an ounce of guilt about actually eating them. When I was an avid baker, that was the terrible paradox--I could put all kinds of joy into the creation of treats, but I would reap nothing but guilt and a balloon-like feeling from consuming them. This solution seemed too ideal to be true. But I did it anyway, going almost 100% Raw right off the bat.

I have never felt better in my life. I haven't experienced acid reflux--once the bane of my existence--at all. Zilch. My energy levels are constant and high. My skin has never looked better. I can eat all the time... this, as I'm sure all of you who are familiar with dieting as I am, is like finding the Holy Grail--better, in fact. It's like taking a big fat scoop of Chocolate of the Gods mousse and putting it in the Holy Grail and eating it all while watching True Blood on Netflix.

I have found my culinary calling. I really could go on and on forever about it, but I'm still learning, and figure it would be really annoying for a Raw Foods beginner to go on and on forever while being such a newbie to the lifestyle. Besides, I'm not yet used to my energy levels being so high, and I'm tending to write too much as is--I'm like a hyper kid in a candy store. If you want to check out more about it all, check out the blogs and websites of those much more "expert level" than myself. I will post links to some of my favorites below:

http://www.aniphyo.com/
http://therawchefblog.com/
http://www.kristensraw.blogspot.com/
http://rawgoddessheathy.blogspot.com/
http://www.welikeitraw.com/rawfood/

And about million more.

Happy reading... and eating! :) :)

On Darfur: Installment 1 (of a sure-to-be continuing series)

Just found this fantastic blog page posted by an aid worker in Sudan:

Sleepless in Sudan. Uncensored, direct from a dazed & confused aid worker in Darfur, Sudan

While already on the subject of Darfur, here is another website related to the topic that lists what kinds of relief agencies are working there and what kind of aid they are supplying (among other interesting bits of information):

http://www.charity.org/globalalert/darfur/

It's difficult to stomach the fact that so few Western governments have stepped forward to really attempt to intervene with the ongoing genocide--mostly, these governments (especially MY government) have offered lip-service support of doing something to help alleviate the situation. Isn't it interesting how the "never again" oath sworn by so many of our leaders in reference to the Rwanda genocide (after the genocide had ceased, and nearly a million people had been slaughtered) was so quickly forgotten and replaced with a "We'll get around to it... Eventually" attitude.

Meanwhile, we're still busy "freeing" the people of Iraq and spending approximately 3 billion dollars a week to do it. And what is the justification they're spooning us these days? That it was, essentially, a human rights mission to remove an abusive and tyrranical leader (and install our own version of democracy while we're at it). Of course, we all know to expect lies from this government, and this is certainly not an exception... but how can this administration rationalize placing this thin "human rights" veil over our intent regarding our invading Iraq while blatantly ignoring government-instigated atrocities far more severe in scale that are currently happening and that have been happening for years? It seems like it'd be good for their case if they'd at least pretend to be concerned enough to do something to help.

Enough on this subject for now. I'm too emotional today for a discussion on global politics, if you didn't already notice...