Happiness is Eating Healthy

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well ~ Virginia Woolf

Hello my friends, so a new year has started and many of us have resolved to make some changes in the coming new year.  We are addressing each of top ten resolutions and hopefully helping you be more successful.  Tonight, we talk about a very popular resolution, eating better in the new year.

For me happiness really is food and I carry the extra weight to prove it.  The thing is when you are overweight people automatically assume you eat poorly, with me that is not true.  I eat healthily; I just eat way too much healthy food and am working personally to eat more reasonably this year.  When we talk about eating healthy you can address this in a lot of ways; we could talk about low-fat or low-carb, cutting calories, eating less processed food or even going meatless.  However I think this discussion can be addressed in another way that allows us to eat in a much more interesting fashion as well as eating more healthily.

I’m fortunate to live in California where we have multiple growing seasons and as such can get good, fresh food year round.  Even now in January I have lettuce, broccoli, spinach, radishes, carrots and cabbage growing in my outdoor garden.  So I do understand some of the recommendations I will make are easier to achieve in some places than others.

The two goals I have been pursuing over the last year and the recommendations I would make to you to eat more healthily would be to eat more locally and more seasonally.  Eating more locally doesn’t mean you can’t ever eat a banana, I think one of the upsides of globalization is that even in Maine, you can get a banana year-round.  Militancy is never a good solution, not even when it comes to diet.  Eating locally means to focus on what can be found locally, going to the farmer’s market instead of the grocery store and perusing what’s available and even better shopping at those roadside farm stands.  Find a local butcher who specializes in local meats, you will be surprised how many are actually out there and how affordable there meat often is, and even if it’s a little pricey it’s worth it for the peace of mind you get knowing it’s fresh.  Better yet have friends who hunt and fish, do some of that yourself or trade them for some of their local meat and fish.  There are a lot of benefits to eating locally, for me it really comes down to fresher, better tasting food that also supports my local economy.

Eating seasonally sounds like a giant pain in the butt.  However eating seasonally turns out to be a lot easier than you think, as well as being a heck of a lot fun.  Again, moderation is the key; I’m not suggesting you eat nothing but root vegetables and meat in Minnesota this winter.  However taking a look at local farms and see what they are doing, I know some farms have starting expanding their growing seasons with hoop houses and greenhouses, meaning you can get seasonal vegetables for a much larger part of the year than in the past.  One of the best examples I can give you as to how to do this comes from a friend I’ve made over the last couple of years.  Joanne Neft has written a cookbook with a chef that provides recipes for eating locally and seasonally.  Essentially, she attended the farmer’s market each week year round and created recipes based on what was available that week.  The cookbook, Placer County Real Food is amazing and the recipes are fantastic.  Think how much fun you could have doing a similar exercise each week where you live.  A great way to eat and a great way to have a happy day my friends        ~ Rev Kane