About.

Welcome to my Leaf Parade —  a place to share ideas about whole foods and real ingredients. I’m a 27-year-old medical editor by day/gluten-free home cook by night, hungry for all things green. Or cheese-covered. Or slathered in globs of chunky, salty peanut butter.

Mmm, peanut butter. I love peanut butter. Especially when eaten directly from the jar. Alone in my bedroom. With the door closed.

But, yes, lots of wholesome, green things, too.

People are always saying, “You are what you eat.” (Peanut butter.) I think it’s more than that, though. I think that we also eat what we are. Our food recites our story. The places where we go as eaters are also the places where we go as daydreamers — they are all sites of recovery. Through eating, we remember — we revisit, we reenact — all of the precious little nuggets of time and space in which we felt nourished, felt joyful, felt well-taken-care-of by food. Proust’s famous opus, In Search Of Lost Time, is over 4,000 pages long, but people only talk about the “episode of the madeleine cookie.” This is not insignificant…

In my life, I have explored many different ways of eating: from my decade-long journey in (and out of) vegetarianism, to that semester in college during which I ate little more than microwaved red bliss potatoes (true story). I have been an every-tarian, but I’m ready to settle down, to review my notes, and to just eat. To eat real food. To continue the story.

And so, in the midst of my renunciation of refined sugars and processed ingredients, I am determined not to center my food story in the spirit of lack, as so often happens when we remove things from our lives (and our cupboards). There is no deprivation here. No suffering. I am still accessing the same stories, the same happinesses — I’ve just written a better ending. And, don’t worry, there will still be peanut butter — and probably almond butter also, because I’m hooked on that too.

As ever, as I have been since I was a little girl with puffed-out cheeks and cookies in her pockets, I am insatiable; rapacious. I always clean my plate, and I always want just one small bite more. These all-natural, from-fresh feasts are a testament to my non-suffering. I love a parade.

 

-Emily K.

 

 

New to whole foods? Here are some great resources:

Read:

Michael Pollan – In Defense Of Food

Nina Planck – Real Food: What to Eat and Why

Watch:

Hungry For Change