I never wanted to write a food blog. There are far too many excellent blogs about food, well written, beautifully photographed, filled with wonderful food, for me to ever want to compete. I really have nothing to add.
And yet this summer has been mostly about food. My knitting and sewing have been neglected, mostly my sewing, and I do feel badly about that. This blog was supposed to be about travel and books and music and just things I do, but then lately that has been about food as well.
I have long loved food and cooking; I have savored thinking about food, reading about food, and most of all eating. Eating is all about the moment and the experience! And in a way eating is a metaphor for life. I had forgotten about that. I had forgotten about the joy to be found in a simple morsel of perfect fresh fruit. I had forgotten about savoring the taste of the things we put in our mouths. I had forgotten that food was more than nourishment.
When I first found out I had Celiac Disease, I instantly felt better than I had in a long time. Although I had always been interested in food, the diagnosis intensified that interest, piqued my interest in finding things I loved and embracing all the foods I could eat and not the things I couldn’t. There was a bit of denial mixed in though, and the gluten-free substitutes I found were mostly tasteless and dissapointing.
But then I started feeling bad again. MY GI doctor would say "I told you so"; he never really believed I have Celiac, my symptoms were wrong for the classic diagnosis. And I began to believe him, and to doubt myself. Since I felt bad anyway, I stopped worrying about hidden gluten, and if you are celiac you will know what I mean, because I fetl terrible all the time anyway. I felt terrible no matter what I ate, or even if I didn’t eat. This was completely self-defeating.
Well, now we know that there are different symptoms to Celiac. And my doctor was both right and wrong. I do have Celiac, but I also have IBS, and one played off the other. When I stopped eating gluten I made my IBS worse and eventually I felt worse. Now I have a new doctor who understands this and has been tryng to explain it to me and help me find how I should be eating.
Now I feel good. Energetic again. Happy with myself. Well.
And I love eating and cooking, even though planning menus on my new diet still takes hours of my time. But it is time well spent. It would be wonderful if I lived in a city where I could run out each day and find the freshest most perfect thing, but even then I would probably spend hours involved in the process of eating. Now I go several times a week and find the produce, fish, and meat, and then spend hours thinking about what we will eat, making sure my diet fits the parameters we have found work best for me. But food is what keeps us alive. It is also the product of hours of labor. The food that keeps us alive is worth spending time on, worth sharing with family and friends. If food, the very basis of life is not worth the time, what is? Is it silly to spend hours on the very thigns that make life worth living. In the process I have also rediscovered how to savor the music at concerts, the beauty of the landscape when I am driving, the pleasure of just sitting and knitting.
But sometimes I am still overwhelmed by the lack of time to do all I want to do, and my own inclinations to take on more and do more and drive myself into a frenzy. But I am learning to enjoy the moment.
And now is the moment for tomatoes. Finally!
Despite the fact that it was an odd summer, despite the fact that we had local corn by July 4th, unusually early, the tomatoes are late. It has happened before, The late tomatoes are not as unusual an occurrence as the early corn. In fact a lot of people lost their tomato crops, myself included. But luckily there are lots of local farms around. The tomatoes pictured above are from Montgomery Place.
I ate a significant portion of them for lunch, 2 1/2 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, quartered and tossed with a smidge of olive oil, some good balsamic vinegar, and some sea salt.
Pure Heaven and all mine.
Comments
One response to “Savoring the Moment”
Ah, the joy of fresh ripe tomatoes. It reminds me of my mother’s garden in Kansas. We ate a basket of them a day and tried to give them away to anyone who dropped by.
I married a city boy who grew up with store-bought tomatoes and didn’t know what he was missing. When we toured Provence by bicycle, I bought two ripe tomatoes at the market in Arles. He told me I was nuts and that they were going in my panniers, not his.
Hours later, when I brought them out, he took one bite and his face was transformed. He asked me how I knew that they would be worth the risk.
Our daughter refuses to eat tomatoes that are not vine-ripened. She knows that life is too short for mediocre food.