Israeli Breakfast
Israel was at the tail end of my first around-the- world tour. I had spent a month on the road with my boss, Sam, and we had shared many meals and many (many) bread baskets, along with a lot of time s...
FOOD + HEALTH
Eating your way to better health!
Health is not an achievement, and surely not one of perfect attainment. Health is a means to thrive, to open your eyes, your heart and be capable of fully engaging with the present. That is the tricky thing about the ever-trendy health: it should be a self created lifestyle and rhythm that helps you both maintain and regain balance. A personal journey; freeing you up to be in life, listen more intently, make active decisions in both work and leisure. Health allows for play, whereas a strained relationship with health places fear in the way of play. Have you ever been afraid of a perfect ice cream sundae, in an otherwise perfect moment, often the product of holding on too tightly to health? Simply put, health is homeostasis, health is confidence in the body that you inhabit. Health again, is a means to thrive.
How do we find our healthy? I can speak to what I know. Food is the leader, along with community, movement, and mindfulness rounding everything out.
Let’s continue to break it down. Great health requires great food. Not complicated food, but the best ingredients you can get your hands on. Just remember this: fresh food, real ingredients close, to the earth.
Health is connection, coming together, out of your own head to converse, to learn and share. Health is movement. e body you inhabit needs to move - for your heart, lymphatic system, muscles, bones, movement is needed for the entirety of your life. Health is mindfulness: the ability to put a pause on racing thoughts. A skill that requires practice and patience. Now that I mention it - all of these guiding principles require practice, patience, and consistency.
I recently participated in a residency at Stone Acres farm in Stonington and I am currently writing from another residency in Tuscany, Italy. I entered the residency as a writer, for a respite and to download my thoughts from my first residency of 2019 in Nosara, Costa Rica. Yes, this year has been about dropping myself into different cultures. What I didn’t realize was that the historical and emerging food culture in Coastal Connecticut is amazing! It floored me, grabbed my heart, and led me to less writing and more experiencing and contributing.
What is going on at Stone Acres, with the 85th Day Restaurant Group, and the surrounding area is nothing short of important. Real food is being celebrated, new ideas and recipes are being made, and single ingredients abound. The thread with all of my residencies, specifically with Stone Acres, has been the garden, orto or huerta. Honoring it, celebrating it, and using it to fuel tremendous creativity. With intention, the beautiful rhubarb, mushrooms, greens, et al became not merely ingredients, but the star of the plate during my residency. I have such a love for vegetables that seeing it become infectious. In the Spring, the farm and I hosted an event at Stone Acres honoring nature’s bounty, always saving room for dessert. My collaboration with James Wayman was mutually inspiring. Spice bush scented our custard tart. Sage made its way into the cream atop perfect chocolate pudding. Greens were braised down with field herbs, an unbelievable vegan posole lit up your palate using local Flint corn. We made the strongest mushroom stock to braise down spring mushrooms and top naturally leavened sourdough with a whisper of probiotic rich local labne. Should I go on? We had an outright party with plants, all from the farm and local radius.
Katzie at Stone Acres Farm showing her love for the fresh vegetables grown there
My time in Connecticut has continued to inspire my research, creative work and search for through lines in thriving. The garden is the star and I am excited to continue to cultivate the idea, share stories and create new recipes to share. For now, Clean Enough, my first book, is filled to the brim with recipes celebrating vegetables in all of their glory, saving room for the second half: best of class desserts made with love.
Vegetables should be celebrated and having them at the center of your plate is step one in health. This doesn’t mean that you are vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, or any such label. This means that you are making an active choice to have the base of your diet be fresh food, full of vitamins and minerals. The rest is up to you. Be it responsibly raised proteins, healthy fats, grains, or otherwise. If you get at least half your plate right with fresh plants, the rest is gravy!
To start the day, fresh fruit and vegetables are great in bowls with grains or eggs, atop toast or blended into smoothies. For lunch, dinner, and beyond I like to keep my toast game strong, make delicious soups, grains and legumes, salads, and party plates of vegetables in various preparations: from roasted to braised, sautéed, steamed and blanched, the possibilities are endless. From there I go into my pantry and I might take roasted carrots and toss them in fresh minty pesto, eat them with harissa and lentils. This mix and match approach of making food that is simply food, not “healthy” food, is a great way to enjoy life and while making healthy choices. There is no need to be a prisoner to chicken and steamed broccoli - there are many routes to fresh and clean plates.
Why do you need to eat vegetables? Why is it important to eat fresh food? Food directly affects our mood, digestion, sleep, susceptibility to illness, and ability to focus. Food is directly tied to function. Food can be medicine as well as the complete opposite.
For example, eating treats that increase your insulin, your heart rate, and create acidity in your body (as sugar is acidic) will not affect your overall health if you participate in that indulgence only once in a while. The problem lies in having spiked insulin, a racing heart, acidic system (and excess calories!) all of the time. This can lead to inflammation, weight gain, poor skin quality, decreased immunity, and poor digestion. What helps digestion, skin quality, sleep? Vitamin and mineral rich fresh food which along with herbs and spices that add flavor, can decrease inflammation, improve digestion, and kill harmful bacteria. Inflammation is the root cause of many diseases, stagnation in digestion leads to skin issues as well as allergens or toxins remaining in your body rather than being flushed out. This is why fresh food choices are so important as they are both delicious and preventative medicine.
I wanted to share a few recipes from Clean Enough, to inspire you to get to your farmer’s market or shop the outside isles of your local grocery store. Be sure to grab high quality olive oil, freshly cracked pepper, mineral rich sea salt and a bevy of herbs and spices, what I call “free flavor”. Most importantly, have fun with food, celebrate and share a meal with someone today!
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