Feasting

Because of my recent dental work, I’m still eating a diet of mostly soft foods.  Lots and lots of smoothies, applesauce, pureed roasted carrots & sweet potatoes, and soup.  I’ve been able to eat soup with bits of chicken in the last day or so, though everything is cut up rather small.  While not exactly a fast, it is serving as a bit of needed cleansing for my body.  Aside from some homemade butterscotch pudding last week, there’s been no white sugar.  Everything has been whole, natural foods and I don’t mind saying I obviously needed a little cleansing.  I’m always amazed how off-track I can get from what I know to be the ideal way of eating for my body and lifestyle.  Sometimes I just need a little kick in the behind to get me back on track. 

While I’ve been on the road to recovery, (which has felt excruciatingly slow to me, but I’ve been told by the professionals that I’m doing amazingly well) I’ve been reading: Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection by Jessica Prentice.  It seems to be the perfect companion to this recovery diet I’m currently consuming.  It’s giving me that extra kick in the behind to pursue a healthier path that I need.  While the book isn’t presenting me with any necessarily new ideas, it is presenting them in a new and more interesting way than I’ve read in the past.  The book is organized around the 13 agricultural full moons and presents healthy food and eating in ways that are completely seasonal and natural.  If you’ve read Nourishing Traditions and are a Weston Price fan, the book won’t present you with any new earth-shattering (or diet-shattering) facts, it might however, give you reason to think differently about seasonal food, the moon, and food traditions.  The author pays great attention to balancing eating local foods with small amounts of spices and other seasonings that might not be local, but have a lesser transportation burden.  I appreciate this, because I am constantly trying to figure out how to eat local but still enjoy things like cardamom, cinnamon, and even the occasional avocado.

I borrowed the book from my friend, Sara, but I’ll be adding it to my bookshelf soon enough.  The recipes alone worth having in my collection and that doesn’t take into account the other sage advice.  Recipes like: Cardamom and Jaggery Rice Pudding for the Sap Moon, Warm Frothed Milk with Saffron and Cardamom for the milk moon, Sourdough Corn Fritters for the Corn Moon, Pumpkin Mashed Potatoes for the Moon of Long Nights, and much, much more.

A favorite quote from the book: “ironically, the industrialism that went hand in glove with the desire to be independent is rendering us increasingly unable to provide for ourselves, and ultimately dangerously dependent on resources that are finite and nonrenewing.”  This is something I’m constantly trying to work on and improve in my own life, a life that might not be completely self-sufficient but one in which I can depend on nature, my friends, Jeff, and our ability to provide for ourselves.  A life that is from hands, from people, from the earth, from God, and not industry, not packaged, and not artificial.  I have a long way to go, but its a journey I’m on and one in which I hope I continually improve and make headway.

If you’ve read the book, I’m curious to your thoughts and if you haven’t yet but do read it – come back and let me know what you think of it.