Back Story

I was born and lived the first dozen years of my life in the suburbs of New Orleans – a city that ran an ad campaign in the ‘80s to promote tourism that featuring the tag line: “Others may only eat to live, but in New Orleans we live to eat!” Yeah. So, that’ll give you some idea of what my earliest ideas about food were. Food was everywhere, all the time. Food was both punishment and reward. Food was celebrations and holidays and funerals and comfort. Food was the way I bonded with my father as he taught me to flip the pancake when I could count 100 tiny bubbles in the batter. Food was the way families in the South showed love and, more importantly, hospitality. It was a measure of status, of worth; it was, in fact the singular reason for being, if you believed the TV.

I never considered food as toxic or healing, never as fuel for the work my body would do. In fact, I spent a great deal of time avoiding work. That’s how I got fat. Not crazy-fat. Not “Whoa, look at HER!” fat. Still, fatter than I was told was beautiful. Fatter than I was told was healthy. Fatter than I liked myself being. So I got skinny. Not crazy-skinny. Not “Look at that bitch” skinny. Still, plenty skinnier than I had ever been. But I didn’t do it right. I starved myself and ate bizarre manufactured non-foods. I challenged myself to see how long I could go without eating. I contend I did more damage to my body during that time than 1,000 cheeseburgers ever could have done.

This time, I’m doing it right.

I still love food. The only thing I like better than food is taking down the system from the inside. So I figured out how to enjoy my food - not for a moment and then regret it, and not for the control I could have over it – one day at a time. I found ways to make food healthier, even healing, while still tasting good. I discovered that absolutely anything can taste good when it is prepared well and absolutely anything can be harmful in excess.

I have learned a lot - the biggest lesson being that healthy living is not as difficult or mysterious as we have been led to believe - and I want to share it with you in the hopes that eating thoughtfully becomes the norm in our every-day lives.

So there’s the back-story. Common? Sure, but it’s why I’m doing this and I figured you should know. This is guaranteed to be your least favorite entry of this blog. Stay with me. From here on in it’s all jokes and pretty pictures, I promise.