Sharon and I have gone GREEN. No not tree-hugging, granola-crunching environmentally green. Salad green actually. We have decided that at our age it is time to start making healthier choices when it comes to food. Our diet is consisting of more fruits and vegetables and watching our fat intake while choosing to make recipes that are good for you. Several observations arise out of this experience and have an impact on life as we know it:
One recipe that my dear wife decided to experiment with was three bean stew. It consists of lima beans, black beans and dried kidney beans with a chicken stock base. There are also peppers and spices mixed in for flavor. Sounds good right? And healthy too, right? Nope. Doesn't taste like anything, except spicey. But it is good for you. What continued the locomotion (and I do mean loco) of bringing spoon to face was the knowledge that finally we are eating right. We have become so used to self-indulgent pleasure seeking that we assume that our food should not only be healthy but that it should taste good too. There should be a party in my mouth every time I sit down to a meal, or so we have been trained to think. On the contrary, God has provided us with foods that are made for the body and while that evil thing called a tongue is tempting us to please it, in reality it is the stomach, nay the body, that needs to be served properly. The tongue is but a small part of the body and yet it demands great attention and pleasure. So I learned that to eat is not an experience so much as it is a necessity and one that beckons us to put the right things in the body.
Part of this revelation came through my reading of one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novels, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Ivan, or Shukov as he is called in the story, was a political prisoner in a Soviet work camp buried in the Siberian wilderness. The story follows exactly one day in the experiences of Shukov. What is most compelling about Shukov's day is the centrality of food as the ultimate of moments. Shukov is overjoyed when a barrack mate receives his monthly package from family. In that package there is contained sausages and sweets and other goodies. What that means for Shukov is that his bunk mate does not need his ration at supper and therefore he gets two. It turns out that the coveted meal is a hard, crusty bread with a bowl of some sort of gruel. The gruel contains small fish parts that, if one is lucky, may be consumed by sucking the bones clean, chewing on the marrow, and eventually devouring the entire thing. Shukov has a method of eating: because the allotment is meager, he takes out his home made spoon, created from melted down wire scraps, and slowly eats the gruel letting each spoonful wander around his mouth. With the second bowl he does the same slow methodical process within the short time the camp guards allow them to eat. By eating slowly Shukov believed that he received a greater benefit out of the meal and was less hungry than others who simply wolfed down their bowlfuls. And the food was nothing to write home about. That is appreciating food.
It further reminded me of my childhood when I visited my aunts in the town of Steinbach. Forced to tag along with my parents we would visit Tante Trutje (Aunt Gertrude) and Tante Anne. Being of Mennonite heritage their food was also of that sort. Meal time was a terror for a finicky kid who had few favorites in terms of dishes. The old aunties would serve hallopsche (cabbage roles), or borscht, or some overboiled beef with cabbage, or maybe just pluma moos (fruit soup). Being a finicky youngster I remember that even at home when my mom would serve lasagna, I would opt for Lipton's Chicken Noodle soup, much to the chagrin of my brother and sister and other family members. They bugged me constantly about my lack of menu. Back to the aunties then, I think now of how these ladies who had come through the Depression and really hard times must have wondered at the ingrate who sat at their table. When they knew times of hardship having food was a Godsend no matter what it was. Food was food no matter what it tasted like.
Ironically, as time passed, I became a connoisseur of different foods. Now I enjoy the Mennonite, or so called, dishes like borscht and perogies with farmer sausage and cream sauce. But they are not good for the body; they are fatty. I have eaten in Paraguay, Brazil, Turkey and Greece and have an appreciation for the foods of those countries, however different they might be. And now I must deny myself some of them, along with American cuisine, because they are unhealthy. Actually Turkey and Greece both have quite healthy foods (but I'm not living there am I). I have come full circle in my food journey.
The point is this: God has given us food and many other good things in life. Yes they are to be enjoyed but not to the point of worship. If food does not taste fantastic but it is still food and good for the body, give thanks to God and shut up and eat it. Give thanks for all the good things because as the letter written by James in the Bible says, all good things come from God. And eating salad for 30 days makes a trip to Tony Roma's that much sweeter. AMEN
One recipe that my dear wife decided to experiment with was three bean stew. It consists of lima beans, black beans and dried kidney beans with a chicken stock base. There are also peppers and spices mixed in for flavor. Sounds good right? And healthy too, right? Nope. Doesn't taste like anything, except spicey. But it is good for you. What continued the locomotion (and I do mean loco) of bringing spoon to face was the knowledge that finally we are eating right. We have become so used to self-indulgent pleasure seeking that we assume that our food should not only be healthy but that it should taste good too. There should be a party in my mouth every time I sit down to a meal, or so we have been trained to think. On the contrary, God has provided us with foods that are made for the body and while that evil thing called a tongue is tempting us to please it, in reality it is the stomach, nay the body, that needs to be served properly. The tongue is but a small part of the body and yet it demands great attention and pleasure. So I learned that to eat is not an experience so much as it is a necessity and one that beckons us to put the right things in the body.
Part of this revelation came through my reading of one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novels, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Ivan, or Shukov as he is called in the story, was a political prisoner in a Soviet work camp buried in the Siberian wilderness. The story follows exactly one day in the experiences of Shukov. What is most compelling about Shukov's day is the centrality of food as the ultimate of moments. Shukov is overjoyed when a barrack mate receives his monthly package from family. In that package there is contained sausages and sweets and other goodies. What that means for Shukov is that his bunk mate does not need his ration at supper and therefore he gets two. It turns out that the coveted meal is a hard, crusty bread with a bowl of some sort of gruel. The gruel contains small fish parts that, if one is lucky, may be consumed by sucking the bones clean, chewing on the marrow, and eventually devouring the entire thing. Shukov has a method of eating: because the allotment is meager, he takes out his home made spoon, created from melted down wire scraps, and slowly eats the gruel letting each spoonful wander around his mouth. With the second bowl he does the same slow methodical process within the short time the camp guards allow them to eat. By eating slowly Shukov believed that he received a greater benefit out of the meal and was less hungry than others who simply wolfed down their bowlfuls. And the food was nothing to write home about. That is appreciating food.It further reminded me of my childhood when I visited my aunts in the town of Steinbach. Forced to tag along with my parents we would visit Tante Trutje (Aunt Gertrude) and Tante Anne. Being of Mennonite heritage their food was also of that sort. Meal time was a terror for a finicky kid who had few favorites in terms of dishes. The old aunties would serve hallopsche (cabbage roles), or borscht, or some overboiled beef with cabbage, or maybe just pluma moos (fruit soup). Being a finicky youngster I remember that even at home when my mom would serve lasagna, I would opt for Lipton's Chicken Noodle soup, much to the chagrin of my brother and sister and other family members. They bugged me constantly about my lack of menu. Back to the aunties then, I think now of how these ladies who had come through the Depression and really hard times must have wondered at the ingrate who sat at their table. When they knew times of hardship having food was a Godsend no matter what it was. Food was food no matter what it tasted like.
Ironically, as time passed, I became a connoisseur of different foods. Now I enjoy the Mennonite, or so called, dishes like borscht and perogies with farmer sausage and cream sauce. But they are not good for the body; they are fatty. I have eaten in Paraguay, Brazil, Turkey and Greece and have an appreciation for the foods of those countries, however different they might be. And now I must deny myself some of them, along with American cuisine, because they are unhealthy. Actually Turkey and Greece both have quite healthy foods (but I'm not living there am I). I have come full circle in my food journey.
The point is this: God has given us food and many other good things in life. Yes they are to be enjoyed but not to the point of worship. If food does not taste fantastic but it is still food and good for the body, give thanks to God and shut up and eat it. Give thanks for all the good things because as the letter written by James in the Bible says, all good things come from God. And eating salad for 30 days makes a trip to Tony Roma's that much sweeter. AMEN
