One Month of Mindful Eating

"Mama, what's wrong with the potatoes?!"

With the exception of eating just about anything over the past two days so long as it would stay in my stomach, I find myself almost 4 weeks into living a whole foods plant based lifestyle.  And now that I'm fully recovered from that nasty stomach flu (which has launched a massive campaign against my intestinal track this winter...too much info?), I'm practically chomping at the bit to get back to my leafy greens and rainbow colored plates of food.  Tonight we celebrated the return of my appetite with something somewhat gentle: homemade gnocchi with artichokes and a sprinkling of kale...or we would have, had those potatoes that I spent 20 minutes delicately rolling into perfect little balls, not completely dissolved into the boiling water (luckily, there was plenty of back up pasta, gluten-free and gluten-full, in the pantry).

Nevertheless, my little helper, Maggie, was in full force today in the kitchen...and what kid wouldn't be, we're playing with flour for crying out loud.  I'm also 90% on the gluten-free train these days too, so the flour we used to roll the potato dough was rice flour...oh wait...perhaps this is why my potatoes dissolved...  

I do like the gluten-free thing though.  But, if I'm craving a sandwich or toast, I've found this great sprouted wheat bread.  Its tasty and I'm comforted by the fact that the ingredient list isn't half a mile long.  Have you looked at the ingredients in bread ever?  Didn't our moms or grandmas once bake this stuff at home?  I'm pretty sure 80% of what's in there wouldn't be found in grandma's pantry.  But I digress.  Some say that there's no real health benefit to being gluten-free and I can't say I know enough to argue a strong case either way.  What I do know is that I simply don't like how I feel after eating a lot of gluten, in a bowl of pasta or pizza for example.  To me, that's all it takes.  If my body feels bad, that's a pretty good sign it doesn't want or need whatever is being put into it.  How do you feel after a long night of drinking? Exactly. Body doesn't need all that alcohol.  That's how I feel after a big wheat-filled meal, an over-indulgence of sugar, or after a meal with too much salt.

So onward it is with plant based eating!  Despite the mess we managed to create in the kitchen tonight, and the unexpected turn of event in our dinner plan, it was delicious, healthy, and brought my family together - something I hope will happen for decades to come as we go through our long lives together.  What a beautiful thing.

~Namaste.