Food is Life
There has been a few articles this week about the dramatic effects and impacts about processed meat on our body and health. Plants in full swing and a rather serious advice to stay away from the processed counter. The processed meat seems definitely related to an excessive amount of salt and antibiotics. Several varieties of meat are according these reports as bad as smoking. The WHO is publishing research and warning the consumer.
Dear Michael Pollen you seem right after all!
When I read about Pollen I automatically think about by mother. I mentioned her often in my writings on this blog. I love her and was absolutely at the frontline of a new wave of food knowledge and -education in the seventies. And nothing changed, she stayed loyal and the transmitted her knowledge to me. She might not be my role model for cooking; I mean recipes wise, she's absolutely my role model for nutrition. Her chemistry-medical background and her work in cancer clinics have changed the way she observed the world. When she got married and became a full time mother she never stopped using her scientific knowledge in her challenging role as family 'cook' for my dad and her five children. She's my personal nutrition coach.
Common sense. There isn't really a new thing under the sun. Fruit and vegetables are the two most important groups of nutrition during my childhood. Cycling home from the field-hockey training we stopped at the apple orchard and got an apple for free... My mother got piles of apples in wooden fruit crates in the small outhouse in the back of the garden. We only ate the fruits from the season. And those apples were so large, so fresh, so unbelievable juicy and I see why my girls get upset with the taste of apples in London when I think back.
Eat and enjoy the richnesses of each season at least if you don't have to deal with any food intolerances or food allergies. I admit we make exceptions because of my deadly allergic daughter.
I do buy grapes, strawberries and raspberries all year round, simply because of her. Berries and grapes are for her easily to digest. Never had she experienced a reaction while consuming these fruits. And that is a happy feeling!
I follow the footsteps of my mother and reduce our intake of meat. The girls love a good piece of meat and that's perfect. We really moderate. My allergy girl instead always had a more intense need for meat, not easy to compensate all the limitations she's dealing with since she was a baby. So common sense it is again. Every meal I try to find, since we deal with a life organised around allergies, a recipe that is a fair mix of myself, allergy prescriptions and nutritional facts. Everyday I cook with intuition. Food is Life!
Lunch today: plants, fibres , protein, phosphorus, iodine...
It's Halloween, and about my allergy girl. She's home at home from Imperial College.
And I make: shrimps with garlic in olive oil. Mushrooms, garlic, coriander, lime, white cabbage sautéed olive oil. I boil her rice noodles and serve with soya sauce.
My eclectic kitchen table. The blue bowl is from Japan, which my husband brought me last year. from a business trip. The tiny little bowl has been with me since I left in Beijing (spring 1998). I took it with me in my suitcase, as a last souvenir from my 2,5 years in China. It comes in a set of three. The rectangular plates are French porcelain these I bought in Rabat. They come in a set of four.
