Reflections on Food Day

Oct 24, 2012 · 4 minute read · Comments
foodcookinghealthEast End Food Co-opTrader Joe'sStoney Lane FarmLewis Family FarmsMisera's Organic FarmKretschmann Farmpaleorice

A year ago I celebrated Food Day for the first time, by sharing some reflections on what food means to me. Today I review my reflections and some more.

Buying food

Abby and I still take care to shop carefully for groceries and make our own tasty meals to eat. Some of our sources:

• Kretschmann Farm CSA subscription for local produce
• Misera’s Organic Farm for local chickens
• Lewis Family Farms for local beef
• Stoney Lane Farm for local eggs
• Trader Joe’s
• East End Food Co-op

Our food choices are based on our concerns for both health and sustainability. Our choices may have an impact on one or the other or both.

Cooking

When I started my blog over a year ago, I had thought I would be posting more about cooking, since I was doing a good amount of it, but as it turned out, during this year (2012), Abby took over almost all of the cooking for us.

Diet

Both Abby and I have experimented in paleo directions in the past year. As a reminder, this doesn’t mean that we’re just going around chowing down on all the meat we can eat. It does mean that we have

• considerably increased our consumption of vegetables
• increased our consumption of various fats and oils
• reduced our consumption of carbs

The question of carbs

What we seemed to discover was that we needed some base level of carbs in order to maintain energy and weight levels. Through experimentation, Abby has focused on getting carbs through potatoes and sweet potatoes primarily, going almost completely off wheat. I, on the other hand, am still hooked on rice; I also still eat some wheat, but frankly, I can tell from the effects that I would probably do best to eliminate it.

Rice disaster?

Last year, I wondered about brown rice, and even briefly experimented with switching to white rice. The white rice experiment was a fast failure: the high glycemic index and lack of fiber didn’t help me at all.

More recently, there have been reports of brown rice in particular having high levels of arsenic. This is rather disturbing, and Abby and I have agreed that I need to quickly re-evaluate my consumption of brown rice. I’ve committed to trying out some alternative source of calories/fiber.

My breakfast

My breakfast has remained fairly stable since I quit oatmeal. Basically, I eat

• veggies
• eggs
• nuts
• a prune

Depending on how I feel and what’s available, occasionally I’ll eat some bacon or fish, and sometimes I’ll add some sweet potatoes or other carbs, but typically that’s it.

(I stopped the flax seeds, largely out of inconvenience of grinding them!)

Here’s what I happened to eat today.

The soup and veggies were leftovers from big batches Abby or I had made earlier:

• my cauliflower leaf soup with garlic, carrots, sweet potatoes, curry powder, extra virgin olive oil
• my stir-fried cauliflower florets with garlic, green peppers, coconut oil
• Abby’s spaghetti squash with onion and other stuff

And on top of that I also ate two fried eggs with walnuts.

My lunch and dinner

Lunch and dinner were combinations of various leftovers, all originally made by Abby (hence my not knowing the exact ingredients):

• ground beef stew with green peppers, jalapeno, onion, various seasoning
• slow-cooked chicken with veggies
• leftover kale and onion
• dinner included sauteed zucchini and other veggies Abby cooked tonight
• brown rice

Fasting

Sometimes I deliberately fast for a meal or two. This happens when I just don’t feel all that hungry. I treat that as a signal from my body that I don’t really need to eat. My experiments have convinced me that intermittent fasting helps with fat loss and mental clarity. It also helps me remember to be grateful, when I do eat again.

Conclusion

We are human beings, not robots. We need food. And food isn’t just “fuel”. It lives or has lived. It is complex. I am grateful to be living in a land of plenty, and that Abby has taken so much care to make varied and tasty dishes for us. But as the recent reports on arsenic reminds me, there is much we must continue to do to prevent the degradation of what we eat.