A Recipe For A Good Recipe

This last year I learned that I had a sensitivity to wheat and dairy products. A few months earlier, my doctor put me on a low fat diet for my gallbladder. A few months before that he had put me on a restrictive diet for diverticulitis. As the gravity of these restrictions accumulated, I felt an increasing sense of panic every time I had to cook. What if I cooked the wrong thing and made myself sick again? What if I became too sick to work? What if this new thing I just bought wasn't what I needed and, in fact, backfired? What if I never would be able to enjoy real food again? What if? What if?

I bought recipe books for each of the several restrictions I faced. Any one of them provided healthy, tasty and photogenic meals, but collectively, they allowed me to eat cardboard with a little salt and pepper (but not too much pepper.....and better with no salt.)

I found myself bracing for the ordeal of cooking the minute my eyes opened in the morning. There was a lump in my stomach as I scanned those restrictive diet books and tried to make sense out of all of their no no's. Mind you, I have loved good food from infancy. I can recite my favorite recipes in my sleep and to anyone who will pause long enough to listen. So not being able to eat my old standby's, not being able to eat in restaurants, not being able to snack in front of the TV at night or graze throughout the day....well, it was just not what I was used to, or as my grandson used to say when he was six, "It's not fair!"

For a while, I pouted inside and smiled outside. That never works. The pouts always sneak out through the cracks in your skin and glue themselves to your face. Then I tried complaining, but the problem with that approach is that everyone has their own problems and no matter how glazed over their eyes are or how fixed their sympathetic expression while you rail about the trials and tribulations of what you are bearing, they still just wish you would shut up.

Next, I went through the "poor me" cycle. This was a disaster because I started believing it, and then it took me another several months to feel "not poor" again which meant I was right back where I started. I can say now with some authority, that when you truly don't know what to do, the one thing you should not do is what everybody around you tells you to do, because most of the time people tell you what they have read or what they were told by someone who knew someone who had something similar to your problem or they will tell you what they think will make you happy whether or not it really will change your situation for the better.

So what did I do? I started by making lists of my favorite recipes. I highlighted ingredients that were verboten, and researched things I could eat to replace or create a reasonable substitute for each. I experimented and used Gary as my guinea pig. If he didn't turn purple, emit smoke through his ears, or fall over backwards, it was edible and added to the OK recipes list. 

I also made a list of all the ingredients I could think of that were safe for me to eat, and I started making up recipes using only them. That was actually the smartest thing I could have done because making over an old recipe with new, sometimes less exciting parts, has the tendency to leave one longing for the fleshpots of Egypt, but making something new always has a sense of adventure about it.

And that was the key that opened the door for me: I started looking at the half full recipe, not the half empty one. I quit lamenting what I could not have, and embraced what I could have. I also began thinking of food as fuel and tried to make the best fuel for body. The result? I felt felt satisfied, refreshed, and happy. I also lost quite a bit of weight.

If you're ever in the area, please stop by and I will serve you tea or coffee and some of my chocolate chip biscotti, or a slice of apple/pumpkin cake. If it's lunch time, I'll make you a toasted sandwich or a cup of soup, and if it's dinner time, you might be offered ham and three bean casserole, or turkey chili, or roasted chicken and sweet potatoes, or any one of a hundred combinations of the simple and tasty food items on my "yes" list.  You see, a lot of small yes's always add up to something good.