Thursday, May 27, 2010

Whole food

My diet isn't all that great. It's probably better than some people's since I do not eat much fast food, but it's not that good. I have a weakness for pastries, cheese, wine and chocolate. What I really should do is eat more whole foods.

Now that summer is almost here, better food is arriving at the farmers market. Oddly, I seem able to grow better food in my own garden in the winter months than spring or summer. My roof-top container garden is very shallow and gets too hot and dried out in the warmer months. I do have a zucchini that is thriving (but not yet fruiting) and we've gotten a few volunteer tomatoes that fruited, but I can't grow anything with a deep root or that might bolt easily. The volunteer tomatoes came out of the compost. Sadly they still taste like the commercial ones they came from.

For breakfast I had poached eggs, spinach and tomatoes. Tonight I made fish, carrots, fava beans and sliced tomatoes for dinner. I usually feel really good after eating a meal of whole foods. Something about fish with vegetables, especially fish on salad, works well for me.

Whole foods, I believe, are the key to better health. I want to make a better effort to prepare healthy, whole food meals. Fortunately whole food meals are pretty easy to prepare. A little butter and fresh rosemary (grows on the parking strip in front of the neighbor's house) on the carrots makes it taste fancy. Mangos added to anything seems exotic. Chop up a bunch of cilantro on top of some boring Mexican food and suddenly it's gourmet. Plain sliced avocados makes a great side.

I believe that rather than try to fuss with supplements and manufactured super-foods that we'd all be better off if everything we ate still looked like what it originally was. Since I'm not on the trail and forced to eat food that stores well in a backpack, I really want to make a better effort to eat recognizable things as much as possible.

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