#167 - Still Life

I think most people - at one level or another - have a need to be creative in some way. For some, it may be working with wood or tying flies or painting. Me, I have an almost constant need to be creative. My creativity (such as it is) takes many forms. Often, I express myself creatively through this or my other blog, My Wordsmithing. Other times, I express myself through writing song lyrics.

Sometimes, I try to express myself creatively through photography. Now, I don't claim to be a great photographer. I'll never be confused with Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, or Anne Geddes. Heck, my wife Teresa has a much better eye than I do when it comes to photography. Still, from time to time, things do catch my eye and inspire me to get out my camera. Tonight while making dinner was one of those times.

I was cutting up vegetables for dinner, a little stir fry to go with some rice. I finished chopping up some garlic, then set the knife I was using down on the cutting board. As I did, I looked down at the arrangement of cut vegetables on the board and thought, this looks like a picture. So I decided it should be.

I pulled out my trusty Pentax K-r, slapped my 50-millimeter, f2 prime lens on it, and here is the result. I took two versions, one with and one without flash. let me know what you think.

Taken with in-camera flash

Taken without flash

The angle is slightly different, but the arrangement is the same in each image, both of them taken with a lens I bought on eBay for $25. I ran both images through a program to auto-correct the exposure, and I cropped the flash version a little. Then I re-sized each image to one-fifth its original size for this blog entry. Otherwise, I did nothing to either image.

If I had been thinking, I might have moved the chopped garlic closer to the other vegetables or moved the knife a little further away for the sake of symmetry. Be that as it may, I kind of like how these pictures came out.

I guess if there is a message here it is that one never knows when or where the creative muse will show herself. The question is: will you be ready when she does?

#160 - A Different Take on Easter

Happy Easter, everyone! In the Christian world, Easter is the day when the resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated. At least that's the case amongst Christian adults. I suspect their children are more interested in finding out what the Easter Bunny brought them.

Easter has a different or an added meaning in our household. Two years ago on Easter, our family made the decision to stop consciously eating any and all animal products - no meat, no dairy, no poultry, no seafood. People who knew of my love of steak and five-meat pizza were sure this would be a short-lived experiment. They were wrong.

We are now two years into this change, and I don't think any of us has looked back. Does that mean we never slip? No, but we have done our best to stay on what we see as a healthier, more humane, more sustainable and less resource-intensive eating path. By and large, we have succeeded.

Recently, I finished reading an English translation of The Upanishads, one of the most sacred texts in Hindu spirituality. Throughout the text, I was struck by the many similarities between what the Hindu and Christian faiths believe and profess. I was convinced anew of the truth and the wisdom of the old adage "there are many paths to the mountaintop."

Toward the end of my reading, I was especially struck by a passage in the Taittiriya Upanishad dealing with food. These five lines spoke directly to the reason for our dietary change and served to further underline the validity of our reasons for that change:

From food are made all bodies, which become
Food  again for others after their death.
Food is the most important of all things
For the body; therefore it is the best
Medicine for all the body's ailments.

(Taittiriya II.2.1)

We have tried and struggled at times to reduce if not eliminate our intake of processed food, and it is to this effort specifically that this passage speaks. Thanks to economies of scale and highly efficient production methods, processed food is usually less expensive than the natural ingredients sometimes used to help make that processed meal. To me, something is wrong with that picture.

I believe healthy food is a basic human right. I also believe that people have a right to know where their food comes from, what is in the food they eat (GMO grains, hormones, chemicals, etc.), and how their food is produced (are livestock raised using humane or inhumane methods, for instance).

I also believe those who risk much to expose unsanitary and/or inhumane food production methods should be applauded. They should not be accused of a crime, as is fast becoming the common response across America. (Note the spate of so-called "Ag-Gag" legislation popular in agricultural states in recent years, including Idaho, where we live.)

Some of those considerations played a part in our decision to change how and what we eat. Some of the medical research also played a part (e.g., Dr. T. Colin Campbell's The China Study). Ultimately though, I suppose we made the decision because it felt like it was the right thing to do for ourselves, for our son, and for our planet. How could we go wrong? Happy Easter and healthy eating!

(The Upanishads - translation by Eknath Easwaran. © 1987, 2007 The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. Published by Nilgiri Press.)

#121 - Adventures in Eating

Let me just start by saying I like food. For years I've had almost a love affair with beef, pork, chicken, potatoes, pasta, just about any dessert you can name. And food loved me back, to the point where I was many pounds overweight with a cholesterol level well over 200.

That all started to change four weeks ago. That was when a couple of things converged to bring out a change.

I learned about a study of eating habits and diet in China and the apparent connections between levels of animal protein intake (meat and dairy) and diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, even cancer.

While I was reading The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Teresa and I happened upon a documentary on Hulu dealing with the same subject. The film Forks Over Knives presented many of the same arguments of Campbell's book but in a slightly more accessible format.

After seeing that film and another called Chow Down, we decided it was time to make a change in the way we eat. We began to drastically cut the amount of meat and dairy in our diets as well as the amount of oils we use. (We have not yet completely eliminated meat and dairy because of food we had purchased prior to seeing these films.) At the same time, we began to eat more fruits and vegetables.

About ten days into this dietary change we also bought a Wii Fit and began to incorporate exercise into our daily routine. Now, let me say I hated exercise with a passion before the Wii Fit. Exercise was boring, and I seldom saw any meaningful results, even after months of effort. Then, I would give up.

Since getting the Wii Fit, exercise has actually become, dare I say it, fun. The Wii Fit provides numerous activities, from yoga stretches and balance activities to aerobic exercises and strength training.

Between the dietary changes and the exercise, I have so far lost nine pounds in four weeks, and I have done it without pills and without starving myself. I still have a long way to go, but I can honestly say I feel better, and I am beginning to see the change physically.

In the interest of fairness, there are those who question the link between intake of animal protein and disease. Those same people say the evidence that a diet eliminating animal protein can help prevent or even reverse those diseases is suspect. I don't know who is right, but it doesn't really matter to me.

Even if the skeptics are right, there is still much to be said in favor of the dietary changes we have made. Seeing those films and reading The China Study made up think, perhaps for the first time, about what we were eating. Even if we need not have given up meat and dairy, the change to eating mostly fruits and vegetable and grains also resulted in a move away from highly processed foods. We now eat almost nothing that comes out of a box except for hot cereal.

Science was never my strong suit, so I don't know which side of the argument carries the most scientific weight. What I do know is that I feel better, and I am losing weight without skipping meals, without taking diet pills, and without counting calories or feeling deprived.

Between the changes in the way I feel and my weight and the compelling argument made by some that the amount of grain used to feed livestock each year is more than enough to feed the world's population, I feel I've made the right choice and opened the door to a whole new love affair with food.

Additional resources:

Chow Down (the actual film on Hulu.com)
Dr. McDougall's Health and Medical Center
The Engine 2 Diet
T. Colin Campbell Foundation

#94 - The Communal Side of Food

It's late Saturday evening, and Teresa has just gone to bed. A few hours earlier, the last of the dinner guests left after several hours of catching up, laughter, and yes, good food if I do say so myself.

It was great to catch up with people I once worked with and hung out with, people I haven't seen in several months. The conversation flowed freely, the laughter perhaps even more freely.

That, to me, is one of the great aspects of food. It always seems to taste better when it is shared with friends. I don't know if that is because, as a cook, you try a little harder and the extra effort comes through in the food. Perhaps it is because cooking for friends adds an extra element of enjoyment to the act itself. I think it may be some combination of the two.

After everyone left, Teresa and I watched Julie & Julia, about author Julie Powell's year-long journey through Julia Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Interspersed with that story is Julia Child's years long struggle to finish the cookbook and find someone to publish it. At the heart of the movie though, at least to me, is the food and our relationship with it.

In the film, food is the means by which Julie Powell is finally able to start and complete something, in the case cooking all 500-plus recipes from Julia Child's cookbook over the course of a single year. Food is also the means by which Julia Child finds purpose and meaning in life, perhaps even finds life itself.

When I have the chance to cook for friends, I don't know that I find purpose and meaning, but I do find myself feeling a little more alive, a little more connected with others. Cooking becomes my gift to them, my way of showing them how glad I am that they are a part of my life.

Cooking is mere ritual and eating merely a necessity of living when you have no one to share it with. Cooking during the week often feels the same way, coming home after a full day of work, faced with the prospect of what to cook or, as it is sometimes put, what to throw together for dinner.

Cooking for friends, though, becomes more of an act of love, a special occasion. I may be wrong, but I suspect many of the world's disagreements and misunderstandings could be cleared up or overcome if we could just cook for one another and break bread together. Who'll serve up the first course?