~ wellness, wonder, words ~
We’ve had a slow arriving spring and a visit from the late winter flu.
Watching my son curled up in bed the other day with a warm cup of tea surrounded by tissues and the rain falling all around, I was reminded of this ultra-comforting meal that was one of his favorites growing up.
In fact, he named the dish when he was no bigger than a sprout and I think he pretty much captured the bottom line with this one. …
What a difference a month makes.
I don’t want to jinx anything but we’ve got flowering peach and plum trees, blossoming roses and lingering sunlight. The windows are open, the breeze is gentle and welcoming and the lawn is strangely green thanks to a very wet winter. …
In a contest of salads, there are few that compete for my heart quite as well as a goood Caesar.
I get cravings for this gem in the spring and I find it hard to resist fresh burrata & seasonal tomato in August but in the dead of winter, the relatively simple but almighty Caesar takes it.
What makes or breaks a Caesar, apart from quality ingredients, is the dressing. Of course, this as individual as anything else but my leaning (unwavering bias) is towards a perceptibly tangy, garlicky experience — all good if everyone is participating, right? …
The question often arises whether dietary supplements are needed to stay healthy.
While our bodies require a variety of nutrients to maintain health, the source of these nutrients is important. As the name suggests, supplements are meant to complement a healthy diet not replace it. Food should be our starting point because it contains a host of biologically active compounds (beyond isolated nutrients) that work together synergistically to build health, protect us from disease and enhance the absorption capacity of nutrients and phytonutrients. We don’t yet understand the full complexity of this interactive environment but we do know that it’s very difficult to replicate in a pill. …
When the fog rolls in and the rains come, they can settle over us for weeks at a time. And while it’s not cold in relative terms, it does have a way of penetrating right to the bone not to mention the bleakness of it all (errr, wistfulness). I crave warmth in my hands, on my lap and in my belly. I also fight the urge to retire at 7 pm with a heating pad (you too?). The mid-day darkness has a powerful effect on our internal clocks and the idea of hibernating has never made so much sense to me (except for the small difference that I have full and abundant access to food so the energy conservation thing doesn’t work quite so well). Got to keep things moving, the energy going and the chi flowing.
Along the way, this warm and comforting sip has been a bright spot. …
A while back, I received a letter from a reader.
It was written by a young woman, only 27, who was recovering from a double lung transplant that came about as a result of a lifelong illness with cystic fibrosis. She described her gratefulness for the transplant and understood how it had saved her life but that it also gave rise to an endless stream of medical complications that kept her tied to the hospital and in chronic pain. Even the simplest tasks like doing a load of laundry or taking her dog to the park left her exhausted and defeated and filled with tears. She spoke honestly and clearly about what hurt and I imagined her young life and the incredible weight of the physical and emotional challenges she was carrying.
The second part of her letter was even more remarkable. She explained that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her days feeling stuck and depressed and described how she was giving herself a much needed kick in the pants to get going, stop feeling sorry for herself (her words) and start making some changes in her life, including her diet. I didn’t know her personally but I do know that most of us feel sorry for ourselves for far less and it struck me that to have this level of self-awareness and determination amidst the gravity and complexity of her situation was incredibly courageous.
She didn’t ask me for anything. She reached out merely to thank me for doing what I do and described her action plan to head to the grocery store in the morning to buy ingredients to try some new recipes. It amazed me that with everything she had going on that she found the time and precious energy to write. We had a back-and-forth about life, nutrition and her love of writing. She described some of the complexities of her illness on the dietary side, the biggest challenges that lay ahead and the goals she had set out to achieve them. I asked her if she would consider sharing her story on Inspired Edibles in case it might be helpful to others who were living with their own challenges. She was very keen and enthusiastic about it. I had never posted anything like it before on the blog and I wasn’t entirely sure how to introduce it at the time but the seed was planted.
As life rolled along and I continued to mull over how to incorporate personal stories like this, Annie was never far from my thoughts. This past Friday evening I started writing her a note to get an update and to see if she might still be keen to write and it was then that I came upon the sad news of her passing. I wish I could say that I had a poised response but I didn’t; it hit me hard and as I read the beautiful words written in her obituary, I imagined her family’s grief but also felt their joy and gratitude in having been surrounded by Annie’s kind, spirited and giving nature during her short life.
Although Annie’s story isn’t written here today in her own words, I wanted to honor her, however inadequately, with mine. Our stories are what unite us. They are what bring us together in our grief, our joy, our confusion and our fear. They offer us hope and love, companionship and support. They can also bring us some much needed perspective and act as a source of healing both for those sharing and those receiving.
So to dear Annie, I want you to know how profoundly you have touched my life and have given me every reason to open up my blog to personal stories such as your own. I don’t know what shape this might take over time or the full lessons we might learn from each other along the way, I only know that I needed to start.
The other morning – early morning – when the sky was dark and the floor was cold, I found myself in that curious transition between sleep and wakefulness; the one where your mind is on the threshold of consciousness but you’re still under the influence of make-believe. They call it a hypnopompic state and it can break your heart. It was in this moment that I found myself walking to our bedroom window, opening up the blinds and discovering huge snowflakes falling from the sky – they were dropping in pairs of two, gathering across our backyard in a million points of light. My heart was hammering against my chest and as quickly as I could pivot to bellow the excitement to my son, it all disappeared. Just like that; in the deceitful way of a dream. …
It’s not easy pulling off a major PR breakthrough when you happen to look remarkably like the human brain (especially when you’re an edible).
But the humble cauliflower has done just that. …
Who doesn’t love fall… the season of woodland walks, misty mornings and harvest moons; the season of wind-lashed cheeks, warming soup and crackling fires; the season of apple picking, color gazing and leaf crunching (not to mention the ever popular feijoa).
And yet among these familiar marvels, comes an unnamed internal shift; one that can sometimes leave us feeling a sense of loss, agitation and general malaise. One that is not always easy to describe but is nevertheless felt. This is because the change of seasons doesn’t merely alter what’s going on outside our windows, it can also have a profound effect on what’s going on inside of each of us – our mood, motivation, energy levels, sleep patterns and diets. …
your heart will never lie to you, that’s your brain’s job ~
We moved our son to college a couple of weekends ago — a transition precipitated by a mix of exhilaration, procrastination, frantic preparation, high emotions and laughter. Happily, lots of it. …