Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Dirt
"For a seed to achieve its greatest expression it must come completely undone. The shell cracks. Its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destructions."
- Cynthia Occelli
Milk
You are what you eat, they say. How far are we willing to take that statement? Let's face it, food is what makes the world turn – not money. We actually work to "bring home the bacon" or to "put bread on the table". Every minute that goes by we are digesting food, converting food into usable energy, or longing for the next meal. Our family celebrations and our national holidays are all around dinner tables and cookouts. We eat to survive, but we may also eat for nourishment, and we can also eat for punishment, or to fill a void.
Food has different meanings for each one of us. We all have a relationship with food that is distinctly individual and complex. For some, food may be a symbol of love and pleasure. It can be something positive or negative. Food may simply be fuel. Food provides energy. It can bring life or death. For me, from my earliest memories on my journey to this moment as I type these words, food has meant a search for belonging, finding home.
I still remember sucking on my mother's breast. She was my home. My mom provided me much more than just food with her milk then; I tasted her nurturing heart and warmth, which kept me on her lap and in her arms till I was 4. Soon after, I transitioned to cow's milk, my eye-opener and daily breakfast before school. I associated milk with health, with doing the right thing. Whatever that meant to me at that young age, the responsibility of taking care of my body was already instilled in me, a value that has accompanied me and helped me transform myself from sickness and sadness to making a career around nourishing the world.
Milk is associated with feminine energy, in Ayurvedic medicine, dairy is part of the Ayurveda vegetarian diet because it provides a nourishing and calming energy. Milk is such a precious and sacred drink, it represents "progress". It's derived from the mother, the creator and main provider for a young child's growth and development. It's the most natural form of food to help a kid "progress" from the first instant after emerging from the womb to the baby's first cognitive moments. It's a complete food that comes with all of the essential nutrients that a baby needs while at mother's breast. The connection of the baby's saliva to the mom's nipple communicates exactly what the baby needs so that the mother's system can adapt, create, and specifically provide. There's so much beauty in breastfeeding. It is Nature interacting with us, elongating the course of our evolution by feeding our babies from the very first moment they open their eyes.
I didn't know any of this when I reached for the milk carton in my mom's fridge, but that's what I was looking for. Even my three-year-old daughter searches for my breast to find comfort, to get my attention, and to feel my caressing fingers on her back and neck. She looks for nourishment.
I was a shy little girl with a passion for color, horses, gymnastics and the 80s. I looked at adults as a different species than myself. My mom was my window to the world; anything else was bitter to me, including food. I drew a line separating my world and "theirs." My understanding of food was what my mother provided,what I ate at home. I can still recall the scent and taste of her dishes by just thinking about them. She would prepare spinach ravioli, parmesan hearts of palm, tomatoes stuffed with homemade mashed potatoes, steak stew, and spinach soup. Other than that, I was not interested in eating.
Vegetables were tough for me; I even disliked the sound they made when somebody ate them raw. Spinach was a special case, and that was only because Popeye, my favorite cartoon character, made me understand I needed spinach to be strong. Fish was repugnant – I couldn't stand the smell. I was grossed out by anyone eating roasted chicken on the bone in front of me, and if I ate it I would avoid smelling my hands afterwards because the smell stayed on my little fingers. I never liked red meat, though I ate it because it was what I understood as the fuel I needed to grow. Culturally, that was the message instilled in us in Colombia, but it would take me about twenty minutes to chew a piece of steak, and most likely it would end up thrown away in a paper napkin when nobody was looking. I did like hamburgers though, with ketchup.
Salsa de Tomate
My family, my grandparents and I had just arrived in the Dominican Republic. We were taking a vacation together far from the cold weather of Bogotá. We sat down by the hotel pool in the outside dining room feeling pretty hungry. We ordered hamburgers and French fries – this has become the universal food language for a kid. When the food arrrived, I asked for Salsa de Tomate. I could not eat unless I had some red sauce to smear on each fry. The waiter didn't know what I was talking about, even though we spoke the same language. I did my best to explain myself – "You know, tomato sauce." He laughed understandingly, nodded, and brought me four slices of tomato. Finally, we broke through the cultural gap and he brought me what he best knew as "ketchup!". Ketchup was the main vegetable during my years growing up; and sadly, to this day in our schools, it's still the main and only vegetable given to our kids in the form of pizza sauce or the highly processed Americanized version known worldwide as ketchup. Originally, ketchup was Chinese, and the word itself is a transliteration of the pronunciation of the Chinese word meaning "fish sauce".
Everywhere we traveled, there was the "burger and fries" and ketchup on the menu. We traveled every summer, mostly to Disney World. On these trips we ate at McDonald's and every other fast food chain there was. They spoke my language, they gave me my food, and on top of that, the "happy meal" came with a miniature plastic Barbie dressed in hot pink tights and tulle – back then, if you gave me a couple of those Barbies, I would eat as many hamburgers as you wanted. Meals became so easy during our travels, how could my parents ever question what was behind the white painted clown face that provided such convenience? Traveling to the States and going to their cleverly marketed and advertised stores meant only one thing to us; we can trust them, or so we assumed.
When we were in the States, everything had a sense of freshness and newness; it had a certain harmony even though it was loud and intense. Being a visually driven girl, as most kids are, I was fascinated with every single package, TV ad, or plastic toy that I saw. It was as if adults had broken the code and entered into my imaginary world to communicate directly with me. And there was no harm to it, or so we thought, because my parents, relying on their human naïveté, approved of them.
I wouldn't say I struggled with eating per se growing up. I just didn't like to eat just for the sake of food. I ate for what was around food, for what food represented or could bring to me in an existential realm: home, trust, and connection with my inner world. But I did not completely lack understanding of the other aspect of food; which is health. I had practiced gymnastics since I was one. I grew up doing gymnastics almost daily; my body was my instrument that turned in all the flips and spins I could ever dream of. Connecting with my body in this way at such a young age may have influenced me to take good care of it. I needed strength, so I ate spinach, or would down a glass of milk every morning because "healthy bones", or eat a hamburger because "meat" was the fuel I needed. In our Latin cultural understanding, that was what "nutrients" were.
"Nutrition" meant to do the right thing for my body. One day in first grade while still living in Bogotá, we had a group of people come to our class to talk about nutrition; they specifically talked about soda beverages and their harmful effect on our bodies. On that day at age 8 I made the decision to eradicate sodas completely from my life; to this day, it is a vow I am still keeping.
I always think back to this anecdote and reflect on my daughter. What kind of relationship with food am I inspiring in her? How am I presenting food to her? What are the values associated with food that I want to embed in her subconscious? Relating this event to my current life, my daughter has no recollection of what sodas, Coke, or Pepsi are. That day in my first grade class had a ripple effect which inspired me to do the right thing for my body and to pass on this principle to my own daughter. I'm teaching her about where food comes from, but as much as I have to do for her, I also have to "undo". We don't have a TV at home to avoid commercials and mainstream shows, though we can stream movies and narrow down our selection to the programs or movies we like to watch, in a way, we are choosing what information we want to feed ourselves.
It's in our Nature to trust one another. We go to the doctor, and although we have never seen him before and know little of him, we trust he is doing the best for our families. When we drive around the city, we trust that no car is going to purposely hit us. When we buy food, we trust what we are buying is safe for our kids. However, trust is now taking us farther from health, it's making us blind to the truth. In a way, that innate trust we have of others has become a form of ignorance. When it comes to the food we feed our children we must take the blinders off, because unfortunately the corporations that manufacture our highly processed and convenient foods are not in business for the sake of our kids' progress, but to make them into their loyal customers at an early age. Food ads are specially targeted to kids aged two and three for a reason. Once they hooka kid at that age, they will embed an emotional memory that will bind them to that food forever.
I belong to the information generation. Compared to our parents' time, especially growing up in a much more conservative third world country, living in Miami I now have access to knowledge that they never had. I can on google, buy books, attend seminars, and take online courses and classes in whatever topic I want to chocolate-dip-coat myself in. But information also comes with responsibility and the need to take action. I cannot just lecture my daughter about food, I can't sell her a concept that certain foods are "bad" or "good" – I must not skew her own curiosity about food – but I can show her by example how to honor, appreciate, and respect food, which is now my responsibility.
Back in my first grade classroom,, what spoke to me was the purity of the message: you can harm your body with sodas. That was all, there were not loud red fonts nor shiny packages. All the love invested in my gymnastics classes, the discipline my mom and I devoted to my practice, the positive feedback from my gymnastic instructor, and the freedom that I felt twisting like spaghetti and flipping like a monkey in the air shifted my thinking into respect for the choices that would impact my body. You see, my association with food back then, "nutrition," was linked not only to doing the right thing, but being "better".
[Burnt] Mushroom Soup
Our brains started to expand the moment civilization discovered fire, because we began to cook! Fish was now part of our diet, and the inclusion of healthy omega fats and sea nutrients boosted our brain development and our thinking. The one thing fish has in common with breast milk is the amount of fat. Breast milk is 90% fat, since it is intended to nourish our babies, and essential fatty acids are the main source of nutrition to help our kids' brains develop.
Cooking is a never ending play where Nature's elements, earth, air, fire and water, take main roles on the stage. The story that unfolds is mainly the interplay between ingredients and the chemical and cosmic reaction of the elements. The sensations it arouses wake up each of our senses. The transformation of the food from its raw stage to its final prepared state invites our sight. Cooking stimulates our sense of smell when the garlic melts in the pan, or when the fricassee vegetable casserole emits its special aroma. Our hearing alerts us to our next meal: the sound of oil sizzling on iron, the tempo of a chef's knife against the cutting board, or the singing of the fire outdoors. Cooking invites us to break bread, to feel the warmth released from the steaming lasagna, or to cool our throats with a frozen hibiscus lemonade. Cooking's flavors reach a peak in the mouth, relating each of our emotions and senses to taste buds that return bursts of umami euphoria.
Cooking is so much more than following a recipe; it requires our full attention and our unequivocal presence to perceive its alchemical transformation. It's about observing how long to leave the onion in the pan to caramelize, or how to use the tips of your fingers to pulverize the salt and just feel when the right pinch has been added. It's smelling the basil's sweet tones against the steam and letting our memory search for the right vinegar to complement it. Cooking brings you home, it grounds your feet to your roots. It connects you and nourishes your permanent awareness.
I have memories of cooking growing up. I am grateful that there was always food on the table. Whether we ate at grandma's, at home, or at my parents' friends' reunions, food was there. I don't even remember understanding the concept of a chef; it never crossed my mind that it could be a career. My closest understanding of someone that cooked was a woman on TV explaining how to make stuff step by step, I saw as a stay-at-home person, not a chef.
I remember my father making aji for the Sunday BBQs, or my mom preparing a taco buffet or her famous lasagna for house parties. But I didn't mess around in the kitchen till we came to Miami back in 2001. I was in my teens by then, but my curiosity for cooking came later, probably in my early twenties when I started experimenting with some recipes; however, my attempts met with failure time after time but I was missing the whole point of cooking.
I cooked out of fancy cook-books with photos that made your mouth water. I cooked with a watch to time the minutes listed on the recipe, and probably turned my back to the stove while waiting for the clock to beep. I would substitute ingredients, whatever I thought was the closest to what the recipe called for; I would add uneven amounts of flour that might or might not be what was listed on the cupcake recipe because I thought, what difference would it make? The result was always a burnt pan, a weird undercooked cupcake, or a burnt mushroom soup with red wine that tasted more like warm charred wine than anything else. I'd get furious. I was expecting magic to happen but the book lied. After several attempts, my family banned me from the kitchen, and I flipped my middle finger to cooking.
Back then my ingredients came in containers, but I never wondered where they originally came from. This is a fundamental question if you want to cook, because the story of the ingredients' origin carries little secrets about how it should be cooked, for how long, what its effect will be in a recipe, and what can you combine it with. I wanted instant transformation at the wiggle of a magic wand [or the touch of a button on the electric stove], but was missing that it's the cook who conducts the play, but the ingredients are the main actors on center stage. Once I understood that, cooking, became magic.
Chicken Nugget
I had my dark days when I moved to Miami. I felt like I didn't belong. The culture shock was painful. I felt frustrated living amongst people in my school who couldn't tell communists from community. Private school life had coated the kids' reality with fancy cars, sports, sex and drugs. Everything seemed like it was out of a mainstream American high school movie, all so pre-manufactured and methodical, so disconnected from the emotional aspects that need to be embraced in a teenager. It was all black or white. Even what they fed us complemented this confusing flat-thinking educational system: fried chicken nuggets, pizza, tomato sauce, and white bread. The food fed to us was so overprocessed and distant from its original source, as was the understanding of the school system as far as teenagers. I remember always asking, "What part of the chicken is a nugget?"
But not everything was so flavorless. I was fortunate enough to live next to the ocean, to meet people from all corners of the world, and to have the freedom to do things on my own I would never have been able to do back in Bogotá, like jogging around my 'hood at sunset.
I found a way to shift into a mentality that allowed me to explore Miami. But my hot-cold mood swings of mine landed me in the doctor's office. I was diagnosed with hyperthyroid, prescribed medication, and told I was destined to be on the pills the rest of my life, unless I decided to have my thyroid removed or radiated to ashes.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Nourished"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Pamela Wasabi.
Excerpted by permission of Mango Media, Inc..
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