Finding My Way

I lost my way with Color My Food. It got so big and overwhelming

• recipes
• photos
• menus
• prep guidelines
• shopping lists
• blog posts on food and health

I lost sight of why I started doing this. And I got tangled up with the logistics and technology of creating and sustaining a website (I’m so NOT technical!), that I felt paralyzed.

Last weekend I had the great fortune to be part of a fellowship of wise women, in a place of centennial living oaks where birdsong and loving breezes centered me. In that place of tranquility I found my way back Color My Food– by cooking and sharing my love for delicious, nutritious food.

Color My Food is about sharing:

• how I think about eating
• what I cook
• how I cook

in hopes of making it easier for others to cook and savor real food, get full menus, and obtain morsels of knowledge about food and health.

When I think about eating, I trust ancestral nutrition. Over tens of thousands of years humans adapted to a diet of fresh vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and small amount of lean meat (wild game and fish). That diet enabled human bodies to stand erect and to develop the brains of modern humans.

Nature has an incredible way of knowing how to heal: cuts scab over, broken bones mend, cancer cells fended off, but only if given the needed building blocks of physical nutrients. I trust the mysterious and incredible symphony of nutrition found in food the way nature intended.

When I think about cooking I get visions of colorful, flavorful nutrient-dense food floating in my head.

Nutrient-dense food has the most nutrients per calorie. These are whole foods as close to their natural state as possible: vegetables, whole-grains, legumes and fruit. They contain a rich tapestry of

• essential nutrients (vitamins and minerals)
• enzymes
• phytochemicals (natural plant chemicals)
• pH stabilizing factors (vital to preventing cancer cells and preventing chronic inflammation that causes disease)
• substances required for a healthy gut bacteria

I seek recipes that bring nutrient-dense foods together in harmony. I swim out into the Internet — Epicurious and Pinterest are my most frequent ports of call — in search of colorful, delicious nutrient-dense recipes. I’m like a baleen whale swooping in gigantic mouthfuls of seawater, expelling excess and retaining only krill for nourishment. That’s my recipe collecting process. I delight in looking at recipes and get excited when I find a muffin recipe that promises Mother Nature in every bite: oatmeal, fruit and nuts, or a salad recipe of vibrant hues, a chorus of greens, bell peppers, berries, grains and pumpkin seeds, or a meat dish simmering in aromatic spices and lovely vegetables…

I have a knack for finding recipes loaded with an array of vegetables, spices and herbs, it’s a hunting skill honed over several years. And I love challenging myself to bump up the nutrients in a recipe and further expand the variety and quantity of whole foods by adding broccoli, garlic, nuts or other superfoods.

I search for ethnic recipes, knowing these are rich in spices, herbs and flavor. Spices and herbs have been used for millennia to treat disease and even more importantly, to PREVENT disease. I love the world tour my kitchen offers: Thai on Monday, Moroccan on Tuesday…in any given week the foods of three or more different countries make an appearance on our plates.

I place my found recipes in a treasure chest of promises: for a robust immune system, disease fighting powers, memory and concentration enhancing capabilities. On a weekly basis I avidly look through my treasure chest and pull out recipes for a weekly menu with seasonal produce in mind.

I make a grocery list that takes me primarily to the perimeter of the grocery store; transforming my shopping cart into a cornucopia of Mother Nature’s bounty, filling it with marvelous vegetables in colors of the rainbow: kale and arugula, beets or red cabbage, red and green bell peppers, sweet potatoes and red onions. Back at home, I unload my bags with thankfulness for all that produce.

It’s visually delightful to see an array of colors in my pot or mixing bowl, the more colors the happier I am because it looks pretty and because I know all those colors are good our health. This delight and the satisfaction of taking bites loaded with flavor and texture feed body AND soul.

So step into my kitchen where eating Mother Nature’s colorful foods is a way of life.

Heaven help me, I shall find my way through the technology and logistics of websites and Internet to share what I do in a way that is helpful to you.

Do let me know, if you like what you see here. I’d be over-the-moon-excited if you make something or learn something new. Pray do tell if you do.