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| Wild blueberry picking in Maine... |
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| ...and the finished product! |
Food has so many facets. It's a window into culture, a social lubricant, a sensual pleasure, a fuel, and a medicine. Like many people, I crave the starches, the fats, the sweets, the savories, the textures, and the communal pleasure of enjoying good food with those I love. I've even been known to indulge in too much junk food. That stuff in engineered to make us want it! But the more I eat, and the older I get, the more I tune in to my body's response to food, and how what I eat changes how I think, how I move, how I feel.
As Girl with Spoon approaches its 3rd(!) anniversary, I look back at my recipes and am proud that I've created so many options for people on special diets, people with allergies, and people who simply want to create bold, tasty food that can easily adapt to their lifestyles and bodies.
And surprisingly, the past can give us myriad ideas on how to do this. In agrarian society, in the West and elsewhere, livestock was humanely raised, expensive to keep, and only slaughtered occasionally for special occasions. Processed food filled with wheat, corn, and sugars was not-existant. People ate vegetable-based proteins, dairy, fish, and fresh, seasonal vegetables, both starchy and leafy. And depending on what was available and culturally acceptable in a particularly region, traditional cuisines included different combinations of these ingredients, eliminating some, adding others.
So what does this mean? If you're gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, diary-free, whatever: Find cuisines and dishes that naturally, healthfully, traditionally reflect the way you like to eat.
My mission statement, which has finally gelled out several years of experimenting: No matter what your dietary issues, you can eat well!
Contact me at carolyn (at) girlwithspoon (dot) com
