The Changing Plate: 🍽️ A Food Journey

If you haven’t noticed by now, I LOVE FOOD. Eating it, of course, but also growing it, preparing it, preserving it for later and sharing it with people I love.

Food is a deeply personal thing, tied to culture, family and home. It’s also quite political. I don’t know about you, but I consider the threat of cutting off food assistance to those who need it most to be a truly vile political weapon. Food access and quality varies a lot by our location, demographics, and income. And its industrial scale production is a massive global industry with a hefty environmental cost.

We all need to eat. And while that shared biological fact often unites us and brings us together, the tribalism of various types of diets sometimes feels more divisive than uniting.

Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I learned that skinny was the ideal, and fat was bad. My mom was into aerobics and the low-fat craze. I was a string bean who didn’t even have to try to stay that way, and mom always made us healthy well-balanced meals. We were never deprived of treats or snacks, but we learned balance and we had a full fridge and pantry of healthy options to choose from.

I never had to experience hunger or lived in a food desert like so many poor kids do, and I never had any issues with disordered eating. And even though I was surrounded by impossible beauty standards, I was one of the lucky ones, enabled by privilege and middle class comfort. And amazing, loving and active parents who modeled healthy habits, of course.

Despite growing up in a family of domestic goddesses, it took me a while to warm up to cooking. I was a hyperactive kid who didn’t have the patience for it, and I famously burnt soup once when I attempted to make dinner for the family but got distracted by a book. But once I left the nest and went off to college, eventually I had to learn. And I went full crunchy hippie with it.

One summer in college we drove to rural northeastern California for my first Rainbow Family Gathering. Peaceful Rainbow Gatherings have been happening annually the first week of July since shortly after Woodstock, a continuation of the 60s spirit and one of the largest “non-organizations” in the world.

Tens of thousands of hippies gather in a different National Forest each year, and the peak is a July 4th silent circle in the Main Meadow, where everyone gathers in silence, chants ohm, and prays for world peace. Different groups set up camps with kitchens that feed everyone for free, and every evening for dinner, everyone gathers in big circles in Main Meadow, and kitchens take turns feeding everyone out of coolers and huge pots pulled in carts. All the food is vegan, since that way everyone can eat it and it’s cheap.

At Rainbow Gathering, even though we were sitting in a dusty meadow eating what looked like porridge, everyone was well fed, and everything was actually quite delicious. I decided right then and there that I could easily cook that way at home. I returned from my first Rainbow Gathering and decided to explore a vegetarian diet. If the Rainbows could feed everyone for free on rice and beans and veggies, then surely I could afford the same as a broke college student.

I’ve always had a deep connection with animals. I like pretty much any animal more than most people and grew up with both cats and dogs. I also loved the outdoors and have been an environmentalist all my life, and in high school and college I guess you could say I “went woke.” The more I learned and read, the more progressive I became, which is a trend that continues to this day. (Whoever said we get more conservative as we get older was a liar).

So by the middle of college when I attended Rainbow Gathering, going vegetarian felt like a natural next step as well as a political statement. Every choice I made was to me a chance to live my ethics out loud and wear my heart on my sleeve, and still is. We vote with our dollars after all, and after seeing how horrific animals and the planet are treated in factory farms where the majority of meat is produced, I could not continue to support that shit.

For the next couple decades I explored all kinds of plant based diets from pescatarian to vegan to raw foodie, reading and learning about nutrition along the way. Eventually I settled into a vegetarian mostly whole foods diet that included organic dairy and eggs, since that’s what felt best for my body but still allowed me some flexibility when eating out or traveling. I picked up a gig designing the local Co-op’s newsletter so I could get a discount on organic food, and I learned to cook from scratch and on a budget from cookbooks like The Moosewood Cookbook and The Veganomicon.

I was 21 when I chose to eat vegetarian, and shortly after graduation, I got a job doing web design for PETA, the largest animal rights organization in the world. (Wonderful kind people who are consistent in their ethics and do a ton of good, even if they seem a bit extreme and get a bad rap). It was affirming having a work community that was so aligned on their mission, but PETA folks were also a lot of fun, and taught me that skipping animal products did not have to be boring. I learned that there is a huge variety of vegans, from junk food vegans that eat nothing but fries to strict purists who are constantly on a juice cleanse. A vegan diet isn’t guaranteed to be a healthy one, turns out!

My ex went vegetarian about six months after I did and later vegan, and soon I learned from his example the type of vegetarian I did NOT want to be. Dude was a total narcissist, so of course his diet became a reason to be a condescending prick to everyone and preach at them about how superior he was for not eating animals. I was naive, and afraid to challenge him on it, but I’d be so embarrassed when he’d start arguments with our friends about it. Even if I agreed with him in my diet choices, he was such an asshole about it that I realized that food choices are very personal, and berating people for not making the same ones as you was no way to “convert” them. So thanks to his negative example, I never wanted to be one of those vegans. I learned to be less preachy, and to let my food do the talking for me.

I caught the gardening bug by the end of college, but it wasn’t until I moved to Northern California in 2008 that I really got into it. The mild Mediterranean climate means gardening can be an almost year-round endeavor. Right after moving to the Mendocino Coast, I found an organization called Noyo Food Forest and signed up for one of their courses.

NFF was started by a group of women who became some of my first friends in Mendo, and they built a massive organic garden behind the Fort Bragg High School called The Learning Garden. The students would learn how to grow healthy food by doing it, and then eat what they grew in the school’s cafeteria. I was soon volunteering in the Learning Garden and helping start another community garden, and designing the flyers for their annual Earth Day celebration.

It seemed like everyone in Mendo had some kind of garden, and my friends and I would take turns hosting work / dinner parties with the most delicious homegrown meals. I had friends who challenged themselves to eat only food from Mendocino County for a whole year, a friend and client who led group Aryurvedic cleanses, and I knew so many fabulous cooks. I have never eaten so well in my life. What an amazing community to be a part of, literally glued together by food.

One of my greatest food influences has been reading books by Michael Pollan. It began with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, then In Defense of Food, and then the author even took a little psychedelic detour with How to Change Your Mind. It was from one of his books that I first heard of regenerative farming, and now it’s trending. His most basic advice for choosing what to eat has always hit home to me: Eat (real) food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. Simple, wise, and emphasis on real as in whole foods made from scratch.

Since moving to Sonoma County I have access to even more local farms, farmers markets and a huge variety of restaurants. This is definitely a foodie area, with some great local dairies, farms, and of course, wineries. But my cost of living has also increased quite a bit, and I had to start over building a local community. I love having my own apartment with room to cook, but my garden is at my boyfriend’s house and I’m way more urban than I was in Mendo. West County is very much a similar farm to table community vibe to Mendocino though, and I am privileged to have access to so much variety and local abundance.

The last few months, I have been learning and evolving my diet yet again as I learn about how to deal with endometriosis and head towards perimenopause. No longer am I a member of the “fast metabolism eat whatever I want” club of my youth, I am one of those people who tracks everything I eat in an app now. Cutting more foods out when I already have a somewhat restrictive diet is definitely no fun, so I’m trying to refocus on adding and trying new anti-inflammatory foods and going for progress over perfection.

I am still a fan of physical cookbooks, although I do keep an iPad in the kitchen for recipes too. When I started researching my condition and the diet that would best support dealing with it, the gyno I saw had mentioned a Low FODMAP diet, and most of the books on endo I was reading mentioned inflammation and estrogen being triggers. Luckily one of my clients, Dr. Natasha Khallouf, was an Integrative Medicine practitioner and she helped me interpret my bloodwork, put together a nutrition plan based on the results, and recommended supplements and a tracking app called MyFitnessPal.

One of the hardest shifts has been trying to cut out soy and gluten. I’m also trying to increase my protein intake and eat fewer carbs, mostly from veggies, and cut out alcohol and sugar. Getting enough protein while also cutting out soy has proven to be tough, so I ended a 20+ year streak recently and started eating some fish again. It’s helped to be adding something rather than solely taking things away, and I’m not sure I’ll go further than pescatarian. But my inflammation and digestion has improved a bit, so I’ll keep with it!

Thanks for following this long ramble on all things food and all the ways I overthink what I eat and what the choices I make mean. I can’t deny that I have some guilt to work through about eating fish again. I don’t really want to eat animals, but I have to balance my health and supporting my healing with my choices more than ever now. So baby steps and carefully tracking my progress it is.

Below I’ll share some of the healthy habits I’ve learned about and resources I’ve found that can benefit everyone – turns out, inflammation contributes to a whole bunch of common health problems, so we could all stand to eat a more anti-inflammatory diet. 🍽️ I’ve lost almost 20 pounds the last few months making small changes and tracking what I eat, and my endo symptoms have improved a bit too. I’m just figuring it out one bite at a time. But it seems that I’m on a good path…

📚 Anti-Inflammatory Recipes: Some of my current cookbooks that get used in heavy rotation include Your Body Isn’t Sabotaging You, You Are Just Misfed and The 4-Week Endometriosis Diet Plan. And a few of my old favorites are the Moosewood Cookbook (or any related ones) and the Thug Kitchen cookbooks.

🫘 Batch cooking things like rice or quinoa, soaked and cooked beans, and prepped veggies can help make cooking from scratch easier. I love using my InstaPot for grains or beans, I soak them overnight, drain and then cook.

🌞 Eat locally and seasonally - we crave heavier foods in the winter for a reason. Eating what’s seasonally available and incorporating a wide variety of colorful veggies keeps cooking exciting and meals healthy.

🍪 This one I’m still learning, because self control is hard for me when it comes to sweets so I kinda just have to not buy them. Don’t associate treats with shame or guilt, just choose healthier treats that still feel like treats. And don’t beat yourself up if you “cheat” on your diet. Diet culture sucks, and long term sustainability is more important.

🌱 Grow sprouts or fresh herbs on your windowsill, regrow green onions from the bottoms, and grow greens in small pots - any amount of homegrown food you can add to your diet helps. Greens are powerhouse foods!

🍳 My most often used kitchen appliances are my cast iron pan, combo Ninja toaster oven & air fryer, and my Vitamix blender. Also handy to have: a food processor, lots of Pyrex containers with lids, and of course I use mom’s old canner a few times a winter.

🫙 Preserve things when there’s an abundance: freeze, dehydrate, can, infused olive oil, etc. I usually have a container of pesto made from my summer basil plant in the freezer, jars full of dried herbs I grew, and berries in the freezer for canning. One of my favorite condiments is just blending a bunch of fresh herbs and some garlic with olive oil and lemon juice.

🍲 I save my veggie peels and scraps from cooking in a gallon bag in the freezer. When it gets full, I make veggie broth in my InstaPot, and store it in half gallon jars in the fridge to make soup or risotto or cook rice with.

🍓Sometimes you’re just too tired to cook. And for those times, smoothies and protein shakes were made! I try to pack a bunch of extra nutrition into a protein shake, they can replace a full meal. Protein powder, maca, frozen fruit, ground flax seeds, hemp seeds, chia, nut butter and greens all mix in for a healthy mix.

📱I use the MyFitnessPal app for recording meals, tracking your macros and seeing progress over time. It gets pretty nerdy, and it syncs with my Apple Watch to capture workout data.

⌚️ And speaking of the Watch, I finally upgraded after half a decade and now my battery lasts long enough to wear my watch to bed. Then it can record sleep data and give me insight into my patterns over time. Man, I get up a lot at night! I did not realize how important good sleep was until I started having trouble sleeping. Oof!

🥒 Fermented foods are super helpful for supporting gut health. I’m trying to get some Sonoma County friends together to swap ferments and make them together like my friends and I used to do in Mendo - hit me up if you’re interested in joining us!

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