The Imhotep Resurrection

Home made chicken jambalaya (organic non hormoned/antibioticed chicken)

It's possible to eat out real food that's even fun

I haven’t blogged for a while.  Talking to other bloggers, this is apparently a common phase a blogger goes through.  Blog, stop and realize that it’s time to blog again since there is so much to blog about and then stagnate on that thought for a while.  We all know if we don’t

keep the blog fresh and new it will die for sure.  If it’s already dead, we need to resurrect.  So I’m entering the resurrection phase.

First, why the loss in continuity?  Time as usual is never enough and unlike the Rolling Stones claim, it’s not on my side (but it’s definitely on their side).  I have more than full time life/career and in my spare time, I am also running a hobby site (totally unrelated to this blog) that now too needs resurrecting also. Plus I have many other interests and responsibilities.

So as part of the resurrection process, it’s time to self analyze.  Why did I start this blog in the first place, and was I true to its original mission? 

                       

There are multiple reasons why I started this blog.  Mostly, I refused to accept that garbage processed food is the natural outcome of a busy life style.  Friends would ask me for recipes – oh how did you make this without some key unhealthy ingredient?

It is well known that I personally avoid dairy like the plague.  This passionate hatred for dairy was initially the outcome of my son’s G.I. issues; an up and coming form of food allergy called Eosinophilic Esophagitis – a strange allergy of the esophagus that can only be diagnosed via an endoscopy / biopsy.  A condition you don’t ‘grow out of.’  So after his diagnosis, we tried the elimination diet (off the top 8 allergens) and it worked.  His condition cleared up.  The next 7 years were spent trying to figure out which of those 8, if not all, are causing this reaction (food trialà endoscopyàconclusion).   Over the years he gained back soy, wheat, eggs, fish and now the biggest one of them, with respect to his lifestyle, DAIRY, the most common trigger for EoE (the odds were against us).

So, back to this blog. since it’s not a food allergy blog. Over the past 8 years, I learned a lot about processed foods, ingredients, and how to make food taste good without bad ingredients.  Eating this way I stopped getting sinus infections, etc. I wanted to share this knowledge.  Cooking and living this way led to the Hegelian dialectic and hence paradigm shift.  So I started blogging about how to shop, cook and live with real food ingredients while avoiding some culprits that have been shown to be carcinogens and causes of diabetes.  I started posting recipes and shopping tricks. Then I had no time.  Taking photos and uploading them was easy.  It’s the recipes that slowed down the process.  I don’t really follow recipes.  I create dishes on the fly.  For a new dish I always read multiple recipes that formed the foundation.  Then I create my own recipe in my head as I apply some foundations that too are in my head. 

 Plus the whole purpose of the blog wasn’t to be a pure recipe blog.  There are plenty of great recipe blogs out there.

So as with any resurrection, remember Imhotep, it’s time to get back to the basics.  The rest follows (“Imhotep, Imhotep” – famous follows quote from The Mummy).

So to apply the Imhotep resurrection model, the first entry is to remind (including myself) why I blog.  With that step completed, I’ve set a goal for myself on the frequency  of new blog entries, even if not a full blown recipe, something valuable the reaffirms.  So for now, this entry is just a reminder that one can live a busy life without ingesting garbage.  One doesn’t need a food allergy or EoE to do this. 

While unwinding from a long workday, I found  this new source, it too is a reminder.  “We have to cook our way out of this mess” – blogs and events like this are reminders not stray off the path.  It’s the anti unhealthy campaign that we are exposed to daily (fast food and processed foods):

A new movement: The Eatin?

Due to my son being able to eat dairy, we can now eat out more (no dread of dairy cross contamination-if the spatula touched cheese, nobody will get sick).  But dining out is a science too.  Some restaurants have better dishes than some others. I’ve found a few that are ‘less evil’ than some others. Serving real food is of course the first criteria to even visiting it.

Healthy food is NOT boring.  It’s the lack of know how and some social conditioning that leads to people thinking that it is.

 

Yes-no meat and it's tasty

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Are food allergies, diets and being different causing alienation? Revisited

About a year ago, I blogged about the alienation that results from food allergies and special diets.  So what, if any, changes have I observed since last year?

I think I’ve noticed more of an ego issue with bad food choices people make.  Instead of saying, “bad food choices will lead to bad health consequences, maybe I should learn and alter my habits a bit,” (which seems like a step in the right direction if your goal is not to get chronic disease), it’s become an ‘us vs. them’ climate.

I’ve had a lot of positive comments on my blog.  “Thanks for making us more aware and sharing tips and tricks on how to eat healthier and tastier food.”  Such comments are very encouraging.  My personal goal this year is to spend time and effort only on activities that make a difference.  Time is a scarce resource.  So I’m thrilled that there are people out there that want to improve their lives and just need a little help as they acquire awareness (as I did when I learned all this-it was a fulltime job to figure out how to cook with healthy ingredients, what healthy ingredients even are,  and have the food taste great). 

But, now I sense some of the isolation that people with food allergies, celiac disease, and other special diets face.  It’s as if I came out of the closet – and now it’s public that I refuse to eat in a state of unconsciousness and succumb to peer pressure. 

Surely genetics plays a role in our health.  But if I don’t feed my child processed mac and cheese and sodium nitrite hot dogs every day with a generous helping of factory farmed meat and processed chemicals…. purely from a probabilistic standpoint, the likelihood of him acquiring some chronic disease is reduced.  No guarantees…but at least I’m trying to influence the outcome.  There is no need for me to restate all the great research that one can simply Google (China Study, Reversing Heart Disease, etc.).  Same goes for me, while I can still improve (e.g., be more disciplined about working out), I indulge in conscious eating and choices.  “Conscious Eating” – a term Michael Pollan coined.  Yet, conscious eating is looked down upon by a lot of people.  They continue to say, “I have the right to eat xyz.”   Yes, they have the right, but they also increase health costs for the rest of us.  And again, genetics already plays a role here. 

So my goal with the food related aspect of my blog continues-enable “conscious eating” that doesn’t mean you have to eat cardboard.  Not everything that tastes great has to lead to chronic diseases. Yes, it’s more effort, but most worthwhile things in life are. Is it convenient?  Not for me, full time career, single motherhood and eternal commute would make great excuses for not doing it.  But again, spend time on things that make a difference.


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Contents are protected by the U.S. Copyright act and may not be duplicated or redistributed.  All contents are owned by BlogToTheNextOne ©2012