rediscovering food

I went a little crazy last weekend in the kitchen, immersed in a love affair with my food processor, hand mixer and blender. Smitten by the smells of pumpkin and cinnamon and coconut surrounding me.

I recently discovered the incredible world of food blogs and websites, one in particular that is my new favorite.

The thing is, I’ve been feeling pretty crappy lately, a lately that has lasted too long. About a month ago I finally surrendered – in a good way, an empowered way – and went on the medications my GI doc has wanted to get me on for a long time. The stuff I resisted until I couldn’t remember why I was resisting anymore. Finally realizing that being sick had not only completely taken over my life – not allowing for much life to be lived in the meantime – but it’s not good for a body to be constantly inflamed, constantly unwell. Recognizing that there is no defeat in going on medication to heal and to feel better.

Boy was that a hard one to accept. I am a product of growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there is high praise for doing things alternatively, and a sense that you have failed or are doing something wrong - or even that you are less than - if you follow Western medicine. There was tofu in my house back in 1980, before people everywhere had ever even heard of tofu.

So I am on the medications and they are working… slowly but surely. And I sometimes lose faith, but most of the time I know the healing is happening. Then I had a week of crappiness again - in spite of the meds - and I got really, really frustrated. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right – everything I put into my body seemed to hurt. I was terrified that the medications wouldn’t work and I’d be sick forever. I was not feeling vital.

But something finally clicked. I’ve been reading a lot online about food and inflammation and autoimmune disorders and gastrointestinal health and healing and wellness and how it all works. My mind has been like a supercomputer, processing all of the information I’ve picked up along the way. 

Tickety-tick-tick-tick...

And then my intuition threw in something that became the tipping point – in a good way: I’d fallen back in love with oatmeal right around the time I started on the medications, soaking my oats overnight so they wouldn’t give me heartburn. Making a big bowl of oatmeal in the morning, adding a spoon of coconut oil (anti-inflammatory and delicious) and sliced almonds (also anti-inflammatory) - loving the taste and feeling nourished. 


But this is the thing: When I got to the end of my day and the oatmeal was way down at the end of my gut, my body didn’t like it. So I read and I read and I figured it out. 




Ding ding!

My body can’t do grains right now – any grains. That even includes quinoa, which is technically a seed. As soon as I got that, every piece fit into place - everything I’ve read and what I’ve suspected in small bits until now.

So there’s this universe of grain-free eating, paleo diet-ing, whole food eating, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which I am following, etc. etc. I’m from the Bay Area, so none of this is hard for me, none of it is weird or foreign or feels impossible. None of it tastes too strange to be unpalatable. In fact, it feels like an opportunity.

That’s what it became last weekend – an opportunity to cook, fresh foods, homemade foods, nourishing foods.

Almonds are not only anti-inflammatory, but they are alkali-balancing, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and they make things taste good even without wheat in them. Coconut oil is all of those things too, and it makes everything taste like dessert and helps my kitchen taste like a Parisian patisserie. And did you know you can make pizza crust out of cauliflower… and it tastes good?!

I kept taking deep breaths of my house last weekend, which smelled like pumpkin pie because I had just made two batches of grain-free pumpkin bars. This is what I made last weekend from www.detoxinista.com: 

my own fresh almond butter
recipe

grain-free pumpkin bars
recipe

grain-free pumpkin pancakes
recipe

cauliflower pizza crust/flatbread
recipe

cauliflower crust tomato pizza

cauliflower crust pesto pizza

grain-free, nut-free, three-seed granola
recipe

My husband pointed out that it’s as if I discovered eating again. And he’s right. I have. Because for the last at least 6 months, I have been starved. Afraid to eat too much and to eat the wrong things because everything overwhelmed my system and made my gut cramp and scream.

So I ate less than usual and I ate very few kinds of things, which was my way of trying to feel better, even though it did not do good things to me physically, psychologically or emotionally.


I read something in Elaine Gottschall's Breaking the Vicious Cycle that explained why, as I started the new medications and felt ready to increase my calories again, I still wasn’t gaining weight. It explained that with my gut so irritated, I have not been getting the full nutrients from the food I eat, no matter how much I eat. And it explained how grains just keep irritating and re-irritating my gut. So no matter how much medication I take, unless I stop irritating it, it won’t heal.

So I said goodbye to grains for now, and I said hello to the world of everything else, which is actually a very, very big world – and one that tastes good and feels good. Thankfully it includes virtually every vegetable and fruit on the planet, and I am a big fan of both.

And I cooked and ate my way through last weekend and the week that followed, and felt clear and positive and excited to continue feeling good. 

What feels best is that I don’t feel deprived because I can’t have bread and pasta and tortillas and rice and oatmeal and corn chips and other grainy things. I’m discovering a whole world of new foods and also discovering that I really, really like to cook and bake. And eat.

And I no longer feel starved. And that alone feels really good.