“Purpose-Driven” and “Mission-Driven” are hot concepts these days. Even big consulting firms like Deloitte have been touting their benefits.
Now our new Covid reality seems to be sparking some soul-searching for purpose and mission on a personal level. I’m wondering if that should include our food lives. Do we have a good sense of what we should aspire to?
Currently, our mission and purpose around food and eating is pretty sad and sorry. I’m just looking at this week’s food ads and these are the aspirations I’m given:
- Eat not just a medium or large, but a giant pizza with gobs of cheese and not much else, certainly not lots of veggies.
- As the holidays approach, bake lots of goodies and eat them guiltily—but in large amounts. Or better yet, just buy chocolate covered donuts, cookie trays, ice cream or any of the other delectable-looking desserts in the store bakery.
- Don’t waste time making real, whole food meals! Just dig into the vast cornucopia of hot pockets, corn dogs, tater tots, pot pies, pop-tarts, or any of the other manufactured food products that fill 75% of store shelves.
- Be sure to ruin your appetite by munching mindlessly on cheesy crackers, artificially flavored nuts, high fat dips, energy bars, frozen taquitos, egg rolls and hundreds of other snack foods.
- Finally, please don’t settle for just water when there are dozens of sodas, artificial juice drinks, sports drinks and fancy sugar-filled designer drinks to quench your thirst.
You’ll find the same messages in food ads on TV, billboards and the internet and even in magazine articles and in movies and shows. All these influencers deliver the same mission for our food lives:
Eat as much food as you can and want to—and don’t put up with anything
that isn’t hyper flavor-filled and yummy. You deserve only food that is
over-the-top tasty, really cheap and takes no time to make.
Is it any wonder we face the diet-fueled diseases that we do? We need a better vision to guide our food lives!
So this idea came to me: Share what I make in a day—not so you’ll feel compelled to eat what I eat, but so that we start creating a new and better Purpose-Driven Food Culture.
Maybe these ideas will spark some meal ideas for you, but mainly I hope they give you a “vision of possibility” around eating and enjoying vegetable-rich, health-giving meals despite the damaging and dangerous vision promoted by our current food culture.
Note that these meals came from my “Rescued Vegetables Week,” when I was using up all the veggies rescued from my garden before one of the many deep freezes we have experienced this fall.
Breakfast: Miso Minestrone Many of you know that my standard breakfast is a vegetable, rice and egg combo. But sometimes I mix things up with. When cooler temps blew in, Miso Minestrone was a comforting way to start the day:
Sauteed onion + rescued greens and spaghetti squash + frozen red peppers simmered in bone broth. Stirred in beaten egg for protein and flavored with red miso and shichimi (Japanese 7-Spice Blend)
Lunch: Steak Salad During this week, I was preparing for a class on one-dish meals where we talked about zinc’s vital immune-boosting role. Beef (and most meats) are good sources of zinc so I included leftover strips in this salad. For the rest of the salad:
Rescued butter lettuce + Hakuri turnips, carrots, celery, red pepper. On top: grapes from a neighbor’s yard that I pickled a couple months ago. The dressing: Tarragon pear.
Dinner: Mexican Pork Skillet
Flavor and Seasoning Foundation Onion, garlic, roasted Anaheim peppers, ground cumin and Mexican oregano
Veggies Zucchini, yellow squash and rescued tomatillas, the last from my garden 🙁
Protein Leftover roasted pork shoulder, shredded
Toppings Tomatoes and Lime
Look Ma! No Cooking The best part about these meal ideas is that they really don’t require much in the way of “cooking.”
Can you cut up some vegetables?
Can you fry an onion or a steak?
Can you dump things in a soup pot and stir?
Then you can eat like this! If “cooking” isn’t really what stands between you and these kinds of meals, dig down and see where your real barriers are hiding. If you need some guidance, I offer one-on-one coaching now.
The Podcast that Sparked My Purpose-Driven Article
Ever wonder where Mary comes up with her crazy post ideas? This one came from a recent podcast featuring Carolyn Baker, talking about her recently-released book, Sacred Demise. The book provides a realistic but hopeful road map through the environmental collapse we are experiencing.
In the podcast, Baker contrasted our situation with the many indigenous cultures where individual rites of passage were a critical part of the transition from puberty to adult. Despite the tremendous and even frightening challenge of these rites, Carolyn explained that the young did not shirk from, but rather embraced them.
The reason: Over their entire lives, their cultures had instilled in them a very compelling “vision of possibility.” Young people knew the purpose and value of their odysseys and intrinsically understood that it was something “they needed to go through.” Meanwhile, in our culture “we have none of that.” So, she questions, why would we do anything but resist—which is what we so often do when it comes to eating better.
Baker has written no less than 13 books to help create and understand a guiding vision of possibility for the world we face today. I couldn’t help but see the similarities between the macro-level world issues that Baker addresses and the specific issue of modern food and eating. In both, we need new and compelling visions of possibility.
I hope this post begins to spark this vision and helps us build a sense of community to support us in creating a New Kitchen Culture. Please let me know what you think!