A Note on Good Food
Too long since I’ve written so let’s start over with food, of course.
This afternoon I was mopping the floor— it’s Monday, I clean the house on Mondays and stay away from the world to recharge. It means a lot of time to think. Time to analyze and reanalyze and be annoyed by that, then try to stretch my body and my brain away from its tightness.
Most thinking moments come back to food. What I think about it, what I’ll cook all week and how to obtain the food that I’d like to eat all week. Should we go to the grocery store as an after school activity, will we get a snack there or should I bring one? Wonder what they want to eat this week? Me?
What an interesting way we all talk about food and how it fuels or doesn’t fuel our bodies. That “healthy” versus non-healthy way of living instead of just feeding the parts of us that need to be fed. Good food is the food you need to put in your body or on your tongue to get a dopamine release, a sense of healing and wholeness, the kind that makes you feel full. We sure are hungry beings and it’s not a simple thing to eat.
But— why? Why it can’t just be food sliced and diced from the ground or a can of manufactured chips that have no resemblance to the food of the farms. Just something to eat sometimes. Why does ‘health’ mean one thing or the other, something that either makes us live or kills us. Humans can be so damn dramatic about food.
We do all need to eat, every human and animal out there is on the search for food at the same time. It’s simply that we eat differently and why not just embrace the ‘good food and good living’ instead of being so obsessed with ‘health’ or the ways others consume. In some way or another, someone will tell you that you are eating wrong.
What kind of foods make your body feel good? Rested, relaxed, able to take on what life throws at you and with patience and grace and kindness? What gives you warm feelings, energetic feelings? It isn’t me that gets to tell you these things and I’m certainly not going to throw ‘health’ at it to convince you that my way is better. You’ll want to figure it out for yourself and stick to that and then not be too hard on yourself when you don’t.
Let us eat good food. Let each other live outside of what and who and how so and so says we’re supposed to eat. Healthy is relative and eating food isn’t a medical event. It is a chance to reconnect to ourselves, our community, the earth that so gracious allows our presence. Something we can put our energy into to feed ourselves and others.
Anyway, I did say this was just a note.
