The vegetarian ones always have cheese as a main ingredient. The paleo ones, being dinosaur-friendly, focus on meat. And the vegan ones assume you want fake meat. Don't get me started on all the "eat right for your type" shite that fills up the diet section of the bookstore. Crap, all of it. Yeah, I said it. Calorie counting is for the 1980 you and has no place in 2012.
I got excited recently reading reviews for the Candle 79 cookbook, based on an NY vegan eatery popular with the snoberific veg-heads. I made the mexican chocolate cake in it, which was truly tasty. It also has some pretty decent looking pure veg ideas, but "Try the seitan piccata!!" is what I've been reading on every bathroom wall. So tonight we dined on said seitan, which is basically cooked wheat balls sliced into cutlets. It was as disgusto as it sounds. Who are these vegan liars? I want to meet them and shake them violently.
So I fall back to the clean eating philosophy, with my own modifications. You'll never see me reintroduce breakfast in my life on a regular basis after almost two years of being juicy. I feel heavy and unmotivated when I down food in the morning now and am fairly addicted to the green high I get at 10 am. But the rest of the philosophy - about eating whole, natural, unprocessed foods and eating smart and low-glycemic throughout the day - follows as closely to what I'm trying to achieve as anything else.
And the best thing is, I have zero clean-based cookbooks right now, so shove over wheat-meat recipes. If you have any good books you love that don't end in "and sprinkle cheese/scheeze over it before serving", please share, share, share.
We are changing our family diet, yet again. This one is basically gluten-free and only stocking in our house foods from the following book: "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth", by Jonny Bowden. This book is awesome b/c it is really straightforward and fascinating. Every family is different in how their bodies process food, but this book basically covers most food groups (although he's not big on grains and dairy). Because Hannah's genetic make-up is different from ours, we are slow to figure out what works best for her, but I can see that now we are on the right track. She cannot process carbohydrates well (even unrefined), her body turns carbs into sugar and I think this suggests her insulin levels are on the higher side. (Her birth mom's family are larger people!) Anyway, we can discuss it in person sometime, but diet and food are foremost in our minds. I highly recommend this book. He is a huge juicing fan too. This book is like a bible to me. We've just reached a point where if it isn't in the book, it isn't in our home. This also means no processed food. It is hard b/c even rice crackers are no longer welcome. Plus no more sugar anything (except blackstrap molasses -- it is in the book!). But fun things make it in the book like red wine, chocolate and coffee (of course in moderation ;-) ). When Hannah and I achieve our optimum health goals we can relax the rules a bit. Good luck to you and keep posting about your food research. Thanks! - Maggi
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a (ahem) more senior person, I find that my body is becoming sensitive to foods I have always eaten and enjoyed. I have lately discovered that too much gluten causes a rash so I am trying to cut down drastically - Oh bagels where art thou! Being an Italian, my love for semolina pasta has to be amended to read corn pasta, and, you know it's not bad!!!
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