Ask the Food Fairy!

That’s the big meme, right? If you just eat fewer calories and/or burn more calories, you will lose weight!

By which, of course, is always meant FAT. Nobody cares about muscle except prizefighters. “It’s all muscle” is up there with “I’m just big-boned” as a common escape from fatphobia.

Well, turns out the link between fat and calories isn’t quite as straightforward as people think. My favorite story in The Diet Cure is a little throwaway anecdote about the author’s neighbor, who is constantly dieting and consumes some 1700 calories a day (mostly diet food) to the author’s over 3,000 (mostly protein and veggies). And yet he weighs far more than she does. AND he cares about that, which I’m not sure she does.

Of course, there are plenty of diets that take what you eat into account… no bread, no dessert, no fat, nothing but lemon juice and cayenne, whatever… with wildly varying levels of “success”.

But even if that works for you, it means you can essentially never go back to those foods – which is part of the reason behind the often-quoted statistic that 90% of diets fail.

Plus, dieting focuses on the wrong place. Any goal weight or size is going to be pretty arbitrary – there’s no one right number for any of us that means we’re healthy, attractive, or whatever our real goal is.

I am convinced that what we should really be doing is exploring what it means for each of us to be healthy. Healthy in terms of what we eat, what we do for fun, how we feel about ourselves and our bodies, the whole shebang– and how to get there.

A healthy size or weight is the size or weight we are when we are living a healthy, balanced, joyful life. And it might change as we learn more about what that means, and that’s okay too.

This is going to be a core part of the holistic food workshops I am creating. Check out that link for more information as it develops! And any feedback is very welcome here.

Happy Birthday to PeaceMeals! My little business turns one on July first… not so little anymore!

PeaceMeals has gone through a ton of changes over the past year. I started out focusing on not just creating people’s weekly meal plans, but also going out and doing their grocery shopping!

Problem was, that took forever, I was constantly covered in flour or protein powder from the bulk bins, and oh yeah did I mention that it took forever?

So I started steering people away from the grocery boxes and toward the cheaper option of just getting a set of recipes and a suggested meal plan.

But you know what? Sure, that’s helpful. It saves people money on groceries, because I figure out how much all the ingredients are likely to cost, and adjust the week’s recipes to land around $20-$30 (depending on where you are and how much you buy organic). It gets people out of ruts and it gives people healthy meal options.

But it was boring! Boring for me, that is. And I doubt it was as exciting for my customers as not having to go grocery shopping was.

So I set out to make it exciting and fun and joyful for me to do again. And look what happened!

I realized that what I make are really weekly cookbooks, and that opened up a whole new vista for me. I started building them around different themes again, and packing them with colorful, interesting pictures and stories and activities. Like natural ways to dye eggs!

I just finished a series based on the different chakras. Some of the cookbooks came with meditations to do for a particular chakra, even meditations that came with music or video. One came with yoga postures to do for the throat chakra. I think this turtle’s doing one now:

So I’m pretty excited. What’s next? I’m in the process of making all the fancy cookbooks available on this website, as well as in the Etsy store. I’m expanding the website to better reflect what is sold – like allowing people to get a new cookbook sent to their inbox weekly. I’m going to update this blog much more often, and bring more of a focus on healthy self-image to it. And I’m working on offering online coaching around healthy eating and a healthy self-image. Plus, the menu planner/datebook that I have been writing is almost done!

Watch this space – it’s about to explode with delights!

This week’s boxes and meal plans feature New Year’s recipes from all over the globe. Ghana, Ireland, Japan, the American South…. It was a lot of fun researching what different cultures eat.

The groceries for the premium meal plans run about $40-$50, depending on where you are and what you have on hand, so with the $15 meal planning kit your meals for the week are $55-$65… and with no wheat, and lots of veggies and protein, it’s a super-healthy and delicious way to start off the new year:

Herring in Sour Cream (Germany)

Eating herring at midnight on New Year’s is supposed to be good luck – so save one just for that! The omega-3s and omega-6s packed into these little fish are bound to bring you good health, too.

Photo credit: Wordridden on Flickr

Cotechino con Lenticchie (Italy)

So many of the dishes that different cultures use to celebrate their new year are aimed at bringing in the bucks. In this case, the round green lentils symbolize money, while the delicious sausage symbolizes the abundance and good fortune you must have to be eating sausage whenever you like!

Sanshu-zakana (Japan)

This is just part of the elaborate boxes of New Year’s dishes that people eat at this time: the o-sechi, a ton of food in three or four lacquered boxes that allow people to go for several days without having to cook! (Hey… a lot like using these meal plans!)

According to the Japan Times, the kuromame (a black bean dish) is “for the blessings of health and the ability to work; seasoned dried small anchovies, tazukuri — for fertility in the field; and prepared herring roe, kazunoko — [are] for maternal fertility and abundance of generations.”

Photo credit: _e.t. via Flickr

Yam Fufu with Stew (Western Africa)

As a local restaurant review put it, “the fufu reaches a soft, fluffy consistency between mashed potatoes and whipped cream. You eat it by using your right hand to pluck morsels off the mound in your bowl. Then you dip the fufu into the stew and delicately flick it into your mouth. Don’t chew, just swallow. ‘Once you get used to it, it’s a very sensual food,’ [Ghanaian food expert] Osseo-Asare says.”

In “Things Fall Apart,” Chinua Achebe writes lyrically of the fall Yam Festival, when “old things of the past year are ritually discarded and thrown out in anticipation of a new yam and new year.” Different cultures in Ghana and Nigeria celebrate this in slightly different ways; for example, in Ghana it is also known as the “Homowo” or “To Hoot at Hunger” Festival. Yam fufu is, of course, a highlight of this celebration.

Fatt Goh (China)

Moist, fluffy little cupcakes traditionally made with rice flour. If they puff up while steaming, you will puff up yourself with good luck and prosperity during the coming year! And hey, if not, you still have delicious cake to eat.

The groceries for the basic meal plans run about $20-$30, depending on where you are and what you have on hand, so with the $15 meal planning kit your meals for the week are $35-$45… and damn is it getting yummy in here:

Fatt Goh again (China)

Yep, this meal plan has the same little cupcakes. They’re also called huat kueh, if that helps you at all! But here, you get to eat them every day. Cake for breakfast?! That’s a VERY happy new year! And then:

Photo credit: jetalone on Flickr

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (Hungary)

So many of the dishes that different cultures use to celebrate their new year are aimed at bringing in the bucks. In this case, the cabbage leaves symbolize money, and the meaty, colorful filling symbolizes all the prosperity and abundance we want on other levels too.

Photo credit: Sheila Miguez

Boxty (Ireland)

“Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty in the pan,
If you can’t make boxty,
You’ll never get a man.”
Whether or not that’s a goal of yours, boxty is a delicious, hearty way to ring in the New Year. Besides, potatoes stave off scurvy. You don’t want scurvy, do you?

Hoppin’ John (American South)

The black-eyed peas symbolize coins, and the dark leafy greens simmered alongside them represent riches and good luck. A little bacon or other pork product tossed in for flavor symbolizes prosperity. Oh yeah – and it all tastes great too! I especially love how creamy the black-eyed peas get; it makes such a good contrast with the slight crunch of those greens.

Happy New Year’s to those who celebrate it this week!