On Healthy Eating: Battling the Comfort Food War Within

I just found an unopened box of Bulgar Wheat that has been in my cupboard for nigh on seven years. In fact, I would venture to say if I had room in my kitchen for every health food item I’ve purchased but never used, I would be making Top Ramen in a room the size of the Duomo in Milan.

I have the best intentions. I really do. Having had endometriosis for over 15 years I’ve read theory after theory about how one’s diet affects endo symptoms and, over these span of years, I’ve cut out dairy, gluten, meat, sugar, flour, miniscule grains of dust, you name it. I’ve read books and then went on to purchase whole new sets of groceries from lands far, far away. I’ve researched recipes, thrown away all my “normal” food and been completely fired up. I’ve measured, sifted, and whisked with the frenzy of a new convert. I’ve sat at a table, alone, so that I may fully appreciate my food experience. I’ve taken that first bite.

And then I’ve dry heaved. Every. Single. Time.

But Have You Tried … ?

It’s heartbreaking really, and therein lies the story of a dusty box of Bulgar Wheat. As I perpetually whine to family, friends, and healthy eating converts they tell me, “You just have to get used to it”, “You just have to try this or that recipe”, “Tofu is really good, you must not know how to cook it properly.” But you see, I try, I have, I do. I just plain-ass don’t like it.

I think it stems from my DNA. I’m a foodie. My people, current and ancestral, are “kitchen people”. When we gather, we gather around the kitchen table or around the stove. I imagine even my ancestors probably gathered around the cave’s “kitchen” fire making guttural sounds over the roasting wild hog and begging for bacon. (A trait I indeed inherited.)

Food Memory

The memories I carry with me all involve food. Even those from 4th grade with my best friend Monica Wilcox and her family: biking on Sunday mornings for Dunkin Doughnuts, the first time I tried peanut butter on french toast, a homemade coffee cake that — despite years of effort and attempts — I’ve never quite been able to replicate, and packages of uncooked Jell-o eaten behind the school dumpsters resulting in stained red fingertips.

Reminiscing about Girl Scout camping trips 30 years ago doesn’t involve singing “Kumbayah.” I imagine we did sing such songs but what I can certainly describe in detail are the scout dinners we made by wrapping a ball of hamburger, some sliced potatoes, carrots, and butter in a cocoon of tinfoil before placing it on the fire. I can tell you about how the smell of those potatoes, oozing in butter, tickled my 10-year-old nostrils, or how the butter slowly dripped out and crackled in the fire. My first love affair with a s’more? Now thatI remember.

For the past 35 years I’ve “watched” many Super Bowls. I don’t have a clue who played or who won. I don’t even remember the commercials I probably laughed at. But I can tell you about every strand of mozzarella oozing from my plate of homemade lasagna – my family’s traditional Super Bowl meal.

Birthdays weren’t about parties and gifts, I recall very few of either. But, with a clarity I can’t fathom, I remember my mom’s tradition of letting us kids pick our own birthday dinner. Mine was almost always swedish meatballs.

Food is an experience. A feeling. A memory. I could no sooner let go of the memory of my Grandfather than I could let go of a plate of my mother’s lasagna. I cling just as tightly to both.

Enter Kris Carr with all of her infinite food wisdom

But now I’m reading Crazy Sexy Diet by the gorgeous Kris Carr and I want to be crazy and I most definitely want to be sexy! I’ve had enough health issues over the years to motivate me to want to give changing my diet another try. With the past two years of full-time school and working two jobs, I’ve built a life preserver up around my tummy that would have saved the Titanic. (Okay, I exaggerate, but it feels that way to me.)

But must I give up that juicy filet mignon lying softly on a bed of rosemary polenta that I dream of on the daily and just live with the memory of food like my beloved Roger Ebert? I don’t know the answer.

I’d love to hire a sort of Healthy Eating Hostage Negotiator (HEHN).

I foresee the negotiations going something like this:

Now that’s the kind of healthy eating I could abide by. I could definitely cut out all pre-packaged foods, canned goods, and processed gunk — if I could make, and sloppily relish in, the hearty goodness of my most memory inducing meals.

What about you? Are there foods you can’t imagine living without? Do you need a Healthy Eating Hostage Negotiator or are your cupboards full of utilized boxes of Bulgar Wheat? Any suggestions for me?

Currently “crunching” on the carrots in her carrot cake,