What's for Dinner?

Growing up, my Mom used to ask me what I wanted for dinner. I never had a good answer because how is anyone supposed to know what they want to eat hours before they even get hungry?

Once on my own, this activity became a hunt-and-gather exercise of opening cabinets and the refrigerator and interweaving such foods as breads and pastas with cheeses and milk, and topping it off with as much sugar laden food as I could find to create a meal worthy of the classic American table.

Cooking in Mexico in the same hunt-and-gather fashion, my friends told me that this was called "preparing" food. Later I learned the true difference from "cooking" food.

Eventually I happened upon a naturopath that told me my unceasing allergies of more than eight years were probably caused by not just environmental allergies but also because of food allergies. He gave me a list of "offending" foods which actually included everything on my diet. I looked at my doctor and asked, "What am I supposed to eat?". He gave me a list of organic vegetables and meats, legumes, nuts, seeds, and oils which have become the building blocks of my daily chemistry experiments. Within three weeks, my symptoms began to fade away. Sixteen months later, I consider myself 85% improved, with some symptoms of dysbiosis which I continue to work towards eliminating.


I hope my story inspires my readers to appreciate the flavors and consider the health of every morsel of food they put in their bodies with the goal of living out their days actively and free of pain and health challenges.

To tackle the challenge of learning to eat allergy-free, I read cookbooks that first Friday night, so that I would have a plan for what to eat for breakfast. That spawned the famous "Olive Egg Muffins", a twenty minute recipe packed with savory energy. After a month of working from recipes, I began to get the hang of when to start cooking each dish in order to have them all finish at the same time, and after a few months, the flavor experimentation began.

My biggest surprise was that when you eat organic foods to avoid antibiotics, rotate foods so as to not consume the same food twice in a four day period, and when eliminate sugars from your diet, the properties and flavors of foods become significantly enhanced. Every bite of mindfully prepared food will melt in your mouth.

This is the story of how a person who had no clue in the kitchen learned the flavors, timing and mixtures behind food alchemy. It is the story of becoming a foodie, and learning to anticipate every moment and flavor of preparing and consuming one's next meal, hours before it happens.

Bon Appetit!