People, talking about food.

My foodie friends have been such an inspiration to me in this last year.

I've been reflecting on this alot. Having people in my life who either HAVE to think about food all the time (allergies), who make a choice to live another way (veg/vegans) or who just really LOVE food (Monika). I eat things now that honestly wouldn't have occured to me a year ago. I've been an adventures eater for years, a point of pride really. But between the nouvea cuisne pork belly obsessed, and the delecious but often high calorie ethic options in my Rainier Valley work - neighborhood. I was trying alot of new food... but maybe not the healthiest. Turns out squash mac is delecious. I love Kale and Chard... something that shocked me. Even Joe, on a ride-along he doesn't have a choice in happily eats mushrooms cause they might make me better. I regularly cook now with miatake mushrooms, I only tried them because they are supposed to do some magic cancer shit. Turns out they taste so meaty in dishes you could swear it was bacon, not really but they are GOOD.

After getting sick, it's pretty evident that while I don't attribute my cancer to any given factor now would probably be a good time to really start taking care of myself better.

My friend Sarah beat me to the punch talking about my 28 fruit and veg challenge, as her and her dude Jeff have taken it up as well... in fact VS style, admirably. I'm in the 4th? week now of actually tracking my numbers. The only time I haven't made it so far was Christmas week. I got over 25, but at a low point on Christmas Eve was persuaded to add "Merlot Grapes". I'm not beating myself up, cause the week was full of repeats. I ate brussel sprouts like 5 times, 5 delicious times.

I track it on my fridge chalk panel. I got the idea out of book called anticancer where a doc with cancer pretty much just lists every nutritional statistic listed to cancer. It's a really dense book, but its where the 28 number comes from. Diversity in our food is apparently super important ... although according to Bill Bryson we should have realized sooner. If limited diets cause beriberi and scurvy, then its an idea that bears taking further. I've been reading his "At home" which is so specifically relevant to my interests I feel as if he wrote it just for me. It's full of ridiclous trivia, about home, architecture, food.... so great.

So I'm doing my challenge, and suceeding for the most part. I feel like that brings up the other side of this. Sarah wrote about trying beet greens and not having that go tasty. I've got a picture of my quickly wilting beets (yeah that says organic, i'm wasting farmers mkt food and hating myself for it) next to some monkey bread my friend Rachel brought me. So this is where we get to one of my huge motivators for the 28. Sugar is pretty universally agreed to be bad for folks with cancer, the cancer eats the sugar first... it gets dibs. So I limit my sugar, or... try to. As soon as you start thinking about what you cannot have... its all you want. So I try think of it like a budget. I try to say no to sweets that aren't my favorite thing to save room in the "bank" for something awesome later. This kinda plays into the taking care of myself thing. I eat alot less choclate candy crap, but now I eat REALLY GOOD chocolate.
http://www.divinechocolate.com/products/raspberry.aspx
This stuff I buy, 5 bars at a time when I can get up to a 10,000 villages store. I even sent it to my sister that had thyroid cancer for chritsmas. I sent her chocolate, not cancer... to be clear.
So, you eat less crap... but you discover something that tasty.

And when your friend makes you a monkey bread.... you eat that shit, and it is delicious. But you suck it up and figure out what to do with those damn beets before they go south cause dammit food is expensive and if you don't eat your beets, there is no dessert.