I used to hate eating. Cooking is a chore. Shopping for food is tedious and expensive (and oh so frustrating when you are pushing a big cart around small aisles that are filled with other people pushing big carts, or not pushing big carts and just standing in your way). Chopping up vegetables is time consuming. Cooking is messy, and cleaning up your mess often takes longer than eating ever does. Timing your food so everything is ready at once is difficult.

And worse than all that, after I ate I felt bloated. Stuffed. Tired. Fat. Ugly. I had pains in my chest and pains in my belly. Sometimes I felt so stuffed that I went to extreme and unhealthy means to unstuff myself. But I don’t really want to belabour the point at the minute, because something remarkable has happened to me.

It began when I stopped eating dairy. Suddenly I was less bloated after I ate, and I had less chest pains, and less bellyaches. It took me 24 years to make the connection…eat dairy, feel sick, eat dairy, feel sick…I’m lactose intolerant. Or, ‘lactose ignorant’ as my ex calls me. But once I realized that my body was ignorant to the ways of digesting dairy, I was on my first step to realizing that eating could be pain free.

Around this same time, I read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, and I’ll give the man full credit for shaking my food belief system to the core. In a matter of days, all the things that I had regarded as “food” –things that sat in boxes in my freezer, cans in my cupboard, bags on my counter, for months or years without the fear of going bad – these things were not ‘food.’ I was afraid of these things, and I still am, and I really believe that we all should be. This book precipitated my shift to eating ‘whole’ foods. Real food.

Last December I stopped eating meat. It came out of nowhere, and the reasons are largely unimportant to what ultimately happened to me. But it was this switch that changed me the most. Without meat, I had to look up new recipes. I had to buy new cookbooks. I had to put effort into planning and making meals. It seemed destined to be a short-lived phase for a girl who spent most of the summer heating up boneless frozen ribs in her microwave. But when I was sitting down to eat these meals, I felt something I had not previously associated with eating…I felt pleasure. And this is when I realized that while I was going to yoga and learning to be single and living on my own for the first time, I had been expecting that somewhere along the way I would ‘find myself’ (I am a 20 something after all). But all of a sudden I was finding out what it meant to taste, to savour, to revel in a delicious meal. I had found food.

Now, I can’t claim that I fully understand what has been happening to me in the past two months. I know I’ve turned a corner – whereas before I obsessed about food and how it would ruin my body, I know obsess about all the new recipes I want to try. I know that somehow spending a Saturday night cooking a big meal and then curling up with a new cooking magazine to plan my next big meal is a great Saturday night.

My body fears still haunt me. I still sometimes eat crappy ‘non food’ even though I’m never satisfied after. But I am challenging myself to enter this new era of my life with two main objectives. First, to immerse myself in this new love of food, and to find pleasure and joy in eating. And second, to find peace in eating – peace from my constant body fears, and peace from my alternating controlling and out-of-control eating.

My quick disclaimer is that I do not believe that everyone need give up meat, dairy, eggs to feel the way I do. But this is my current path, and it is what has led me to hope that I can find peace and joy and pleasure in food. I think that whether you eat meat, or don’t eat meat, eat dairy, or don’t eat dairy, eating will always be enhanced by stepping out of your comfort zone and discovering something new. And that is what I'm doing.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Vegetables Korma

I spent last Saturday night cuddles on my couch with my new favourite magazine, Vegetarian Times. I got particularly stuck on page 30, which featured recipes for Vegetables Korma, Sautéed Brussels Sprouts Leaves over Quinoa, and Artichoke Heart Rosti. I knew that I wanted to save the Artichoke Heart Rosti for Valentines’ Day (maybe because it has the word ‘heart’ in it, or maybe because I potatoes have so far proven to be The Love of My Life). So Vegetables Korma was slated for Saturday.

Shopping for ingredients was more stressful than usual, because my mom was with me and I was terrified for her to see how much money I’m currently spending on food. To her credit, the most she did was blink when the $75 price was totaled, and I assured her that the brown rice and various spices would last a long time, and that organic vegetables and fruit are really worth it.

I only made two substitutions in the recipe, coconut milk for cream, and fresh veggies (carrots, cauliflower) mixed in with the frozen peas. Things moved along smoothly in the kitchen: the veggies were chopped easily; my Magic Bullet blender rose to the occasion of mixing tomatoes, onion, and ginger; and I was even managing to clean up as I went! There were a couple of moments that caused mild confusion – the coconut milk was solid (I still haven’t figured this out), and the raisons I had seemed a lot bigger than the ones in the magazine picture (I began to fix this by biting the raisins in half, but it struck me that this wasn’t a very chef-like technique, so I just threw the raisins in as is). And before I knew it my kitchen reeked of onion and ginger and my dinner was ready.

I used a measuring cup to pile the rice on my place in a professional looking mountain, but then I mashed it all down because it looked kind of silly. I topped the rice with the vegetables. I grabbed a glass of water. I pressed play on the DVD player. On the couch, I grabbed my usually ‘table’ – a throw pillow that I usually use to steady my meal as close to my mouth as possible to limit spilling. But tonight I learned a hard lesson.

A pillow is not a table. It is not sturdy like a table. It is especially not sturdy like a table when it is resting on my restless legs. So when I reached down to adjust my pant legs, my pillow table rocked and my plate slid slowly off the couch. In hindsight, I probably could have caught it. But I didn’t. The plate smashed, and an entire serving (or, two servings if we’re being honest) of Vegetables Korma found its place on my floor amongst cat hair and more cat hair.

Luckily, the meal was actually delicious, so after I cleaned up the mess and sat back down with a new plate of food, I was able to enjoy my standard Saturday night. Food, movie, and a vegan oatmeal chocolate chip cookie from the Big Carrot.
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