Nourishing More Than Just the Body

There are lots of components to this realm of food. We point to Southern cooking as Soul Food, rightfully so. Food traditions all are about nourishing the body and the soul. Food gifts are all about wishing you a prolonged life. This is the tradition of offering guests something to eat or drink, a hospitality.

 

Dietary laws and alternative diets are formed by either the rejection of,  restriction of, protection of, or the embracing some food source or holy day. For example, many religions reject pork as a food source, many speculate that this law has roots back before safe cooking and storage of pork was possible. Outlawing the consumption of pork could easily had been as a protective measure to prevent illness among their tribes. 

Food, or more accurately, culinary is the art of food, the place where beauty meets nutrition. This special place touches so much of your life, from business to social, from medicine and health, from marking special events with color, life, beauty, warmth, and love, from the everyday need of fuel to the communal activities of everyone's life.

Every time we gather together we take a communion, small or large, ritualistic or not, that binds us all as one union. The history of food dates all the way back to the earliest of mankind. With out the changes from hunter-gather to agriculture, there would still be no society, no government, no libraries, and no localized written knowledge base. It wasn't until we began to farm for our food and work with animal care for livestock did we stay centralized and formed villages, towns, and cities. A vast amount of time was spent following and finding food stuffs before we learned to farm. Food has always been at the heart of our culture and cultures around the globe. 

All food is soul food essentially. We share and begin to understand aspects of other's daily lives by way of their food. The popular dishes of any country or city, tells the dinner a lot about the people who created it. What types of food are available in that region? If there is a lot of cows versus a lot of lamb can tell you is there are grasslands or rocky hills. How is the climate, hot or cold? Cold climates do not have any tropical fruits and hot peppers. Is there good farming land? If a region has abundance of vegetables types available then chances are that farming is important and available. Do their dishes take a long time to cook or a short time? Asian cultures learned to cook foods quickly because there are not a lot of trees like we have in America so things needed to be done with as little fire as possible.

All good food has one essential ingredient, shared by all sources, and implied by the givers, love. You do not feed an enemy with the hard labors that were spent to grow and cultivate your sources of food. I know that our society is becoming more and more distant from our food sources. We have generations of kids that only know that chicken comes from the grocery store, for example. I spend a good deal of my time educating the young about the real facts of food sources so that they may make food selections based upon reality, informed decisions, instead of marketing brainwashing on the televisions and mass media.   

Snap, crackle, and pop drop.

I was having a stressful but better than average mood today until I heard some very sad news. But before I go there, and I will, I just wanted to make a quick post about my fibromyalgia. I do not want this blog to be taken over by news on my condition, but felt this was worthwhile.

The last couple of weeks I have had a infatuation with cereal, milk, and bananas. I have not been able to consume milk products regularly since 2nd or 3rd grade. I would eat ice cream, well because it's ice cream, and just suffer any upset stomach or bouts with diarrhea that can with it. Now, since I have been on some new medications to control my symptoms, I have found, or reignited, my love of bananas, milk, and cereal. Add to this, a lot of the cereal manufacturers have changed their formulas to make their products gluten-free. Cheerios, for example, was using wheat flour as a binder in their old formula, but now it is certified gluten-free.

I woke this morning and eat yet another bowl of my new found treat. The ability to enjoy breakfast again is welcomed. I haven't been eating breakfast regularly in years as most of what we consider breakfast items were not well suited to eating them and then going to work. The upset stomach and having to rise earlier to fix something to eat, has never been good for me. Making something quick would always leave me with upset stomach, and the items that take longer to prep and consume would always leave me lethargic and uncomfortable.

This last year, or more, has had me making fruit and vegetable smoothies to both raise my metabolism and nourish me throughout the day. This regimen began on a smoothie cleanse and when it was over, I could really tell when I wouldn't fix one, that my body functions were slower and sluggish. So I would make an carry one everyday I was working, and that made it much easier to consume food while away from home, and not be searching the grocery store for something to eat, as the fast food joints had zero, or next to zero, gluten-free quick meals or snacks. On my days off, if I didn't get out the blender, I would be functioning very well, and would regret not preparing one for myself.

The marketplace is improving its options for gluten-free offerings and we sufferers of gluten allergies and Ceilacs disease thank you. The American diet is highly concentrated around wheat flour, it is in almost every well know product, even in ways that are harder to discern by just glancing over the nutrition labels.

Now for the drop.... As I was watching one of my shows on Hulu, a commercial break appeared, and I opened up my Facebook feed only to find out that my life-long favorite artist, hands down, Prince has died at the age of 57. I am heartbroken. The last couple of months we have lost the legends of music and radio that has been devastating to my generation especially, Phife Dawg, Doug Banks a king of radio broadcasting, last week, and now Prince. I grew up with Prince, danced on stage with him once at a show, I've heard every released track, sat in the fourth row center isle to see him perform, took fashion cues, watched his movies, memorized the lyrics and dance moves.

It's with a heavy heart that I say thank you to someone I have only been in physical proximity only once. Goodbye to a voice of my generation that moved us like none-other. And I send my tidings of peace to his weary soul.

45 and counting...

It took me 45 years of life, good and bad, great and sad, to get to this place. A destination, a fate, unseen and unknown. I had just a glimpse  that I wanted to teach, but not be a teacher in the traditional sense. I worked on myself and my skills, and now my days are dedicated to sharing what I know with the next generation.

I don't just want to take them down culinary road but also expand their thinking, increase their knowledge of themselves, improvements even more important than just being able to feed themselves. Understanding cooking is learning about self. How, what, when, what you like, what you don't, what you can, and what you can't do successfully.

Everyone needs a looking glass, a mirror, somewhere that they can clearly see their own reflection. We need to be able to see several views of oneself, how we think we look to others, how others see us, and lastly we need to see our true reflection, good, bad, or otherwise. Many activities that humans do regularly can be that mirror. Culinary is mine. It shows me my strengths and demands me to be patient, a hard issue for me most of the time. My creations often show me my moods, as they can fail when I am not at my best, and can be light and extraordinary when I am in a good space mentally.

No one is perfect, we all make mistakes, fail at attempts, and need to start over from time to time. When you find the place where you belong, your whole world can reflect your efforts and heart. Find your place. Find your talent. Find your heart.