eating

this past year, i was in a unique position, of--at 27--starting my life over, as an eater. prior to 27, i wasn't a horrible eater--i just didn't think about what i ate (which meant a lot of my food was processed or had preservatives in it. and i also drank copious amounts of diet coke.) last spring, when i started to get sick, i was able to eat less and less, until, before i knew it, my diet consisted of toast, gatorade-mixed-with-water and potatoes (and almost-plain sandwiches from jimmy johns.) sometimes i'd eat bananas. that was it.

this fall, i'm finally adding foods back into my life. but that's after 7 months of eating next-to-nothing. it's very strange, but also really freeing. my wyoming doctor (the best doctor in the universe) gave me all sorts of suggestions on stuff that i'd be okay eating and stuff that might (still) make me sick. it turns out the make-me-sick category is most of the stuff i used to eat. anyway, by default, i've been going to natural foods. the problem is i don't really know how to cook these foods, so i'm just adding things slowly as i learn to make them.

this fall i learned how to make soup--lots of healthy, hearty soups, from scratch. it was a good start and i ate a lot of soup. well, this coming spring, i've decided to venture out and learn to bake my own bread. (good recipes, anyone?) it's so weird and wonderful, but i realized the other day, when offered some cake, that i thought, what i'd really like is a good slice of bread, instead. this sort of lifestyle takes longer (real cooking, growing some of my own stuff in a garden)--but it's sort of thrilling too.

i've been thinking, long and hard, about reinstating my long-ago (college) practice of shabbat--taking a sabbath--where i don't do any work, i read by candles (rather than electricity), I don't cook, I don't write, in short--I create nothing. Instead, the night before, I bake and prepare good meals ahead of time. I feel like I haven't slowed down like that in years and it might be really good, not just for spiritual reasons, but for my head. I suppose this is unrelated to natural foods--though it all sort of flows together in my head under some heading like "slowing down and learning to pay attention."