You know what else makes me crazy sometimes?  Food.

We all eat.  Most of us enjoy eating.  Many of us care very much about what we eat.  There is a feast of nutrition advice available to us, at least in this part of the world, whenever we want it and sometimes even when we don’t. 
The trouble is how complicated that advice can be.  Eat whole grains, but cut out wheat.  Cut out lactose, but get enough dairy.  Eat more vegetables, but make sure they are organic.  Feed yourself fish at least twice a week, but not if it is farmed.  Then there is the saturated, omega-6, and trans fats issue.    Sigh.

I believe that good nutrition is as important to your health as good medicine.  Maybe better.  I do my best to keep up.  Among others, I subscribe to Canadian Living, Clean Eating, and Fine Cooking magazines, and they are full of good recipes, nutrition information, and cooking techniques. I meal plan a few weeks in advance, and similar to how I try to write every day, I also try to cook at least 6 days out of 7, and plan for the fun of trying a new recipe or a new ingredient at least once a week.  But my life is also a bit complicated.  A kid gets sick.  The van broke down.  And more often than that, disability-related things happen to unravel my plans.  A urinary tract infection.  A pressure sore.  And over the last year?  Pneumonia, 3 times.  The last time I had bacterial pneumonia that made me cough so hard I cracked several of my ribs, I turned to a friend for nutritional advice.  While she is not a dietician, she does have a PhD in Food Science. Help me make sense of the conflicting messages out there about nutrition, I asked. What is your best advice on foods that help your immune system? She wrote back in an email a long list of foods I should be eating, including  oats, garlic, and turmeric.   But don’t worry, she joked, red wine and dark chocolate are also antioxidants and therefore good for immunity, so you won’t be stuck eating mushy porridge with turmeric and garlic.  With a chuckle, I read her email out loud to my husband.  What I did not realize was that my daughter was listening.  My then six-year-old daughter who, I had not realized, has been so worried about my coughing.

The next morning, she woke early.  I came out to the kitchen to discover she had made me breakfast:  Porridge with turmeric and garlic.  You can’t make this stuff up, folks.  And I ate it.  Or at least, I tried it.  It tasted about how you would expect it would.  In a moment of sheer parenting brilliance (that I only wish happened more often), I said to her, “You should try this!”

She dug in.  “Oh, that’s not right,” she frowned.

“Maybe it is the spices.  Let’s try again using cinnamon,” I suggested.

Since then, she is into making breakfasts and her latest experiment is salads.  Today, for example, she made me a salad with romaine lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, and peppers.  Yes, for breakfast.  And no, I don’t know how well the vegetables were washed, or if there is omega-6 fats in the dressing she made, but I do know that she made it a beautiful thing adding in equal parts of curiousity, compassion, love, and pride.  I know that even though those things do not get written up in the nutritional breakdown of the meal, that they nevertheless matter. 

Wishing you beauty, but perhaps without a crust of garlic and turmeric,
hk