What if there was some really important nugget of information that could speed and ease the journey to become happy and healthy eaters for life? Over the next month, I’ll be sharing this missing link, called Transformation: Being New in Our Thinking.
A Churning Story
Most of you know that I’ve been in the healthy eating area for many years, 33 to be exact. For the longest time, I churned out lots of recipes, articles, tips, books, strategies and even a software program. That was what everyone else in the healthy eating area did–and it was what clients and customers wanted.
But about four or five years ago a realization hit me: We must be one of the most well-resourced populations in the history of mankind! We have immediate, affordable access to:
- A gazillion recipes at our Internet fingertips
- An entire network of cooking shows
- Gadgets galore
- Handy appliances from air fryers, steamers and panini makers to pizza ovens, pressure cookers and stand mixers in designer colors
- Nutritionists by the hundreds
- Thousands of cookbooks
- Hundreds and hundreds of diet and nutrition books
- Dozens of pre-prepped or pre-cooked vegetables, whole grains and meats
- A rich cornucopia of foods from around the world
- And very serviceable–sometimes gorgeous–kitchens with counters, sinks, electricity, lighting and running water!
And yet, despite all these resources, many people I have interacted with still struggle to make meals as wholesome as those made by women in traditional cultures with the most minimal of kitchens and cooking resources.
“Why is that?” I had to question. “Why aren’t our many resources helping us become lifelong healthy eaters?”
Something Deeper?
All of this led me to wonder:
Do we need something deeper than more physical things and tangible services? Do we need a transformation in the foundational way we think about food, eating, the kitchen and cooking?
A “Scientific” Experiment
Sensing that some kind of transformation might be needed, I decided to see what others thought. So I undertook a “scientific” experiment, amending my newsletter sign up form to include two quick questions:
First Does the idea of Meal Making Transformation make sense to you?
Second Are you interesting in transforming how you make meals, especially healthy meals?
I was surprised that, without even an explanation of “Meal Making Transformation,” roughly 85-90% of respondents answered those to questions in the affirmative!
I had always tiptoed around the idea of transformation because it seemed pretty unusual in the meal making area. Certainly, no one else was talking about it. But seeing the results of my “experiment,” I stopped tiptoeing and put Meal Making Transformation front and center as The New Kitchen’s mission.
Now it’s time to pin down exactly what Meal Making Transformation means, i.e., what does it look like? And even more importantly, why is it worth learning about it?
Why Bother?
Nowadays, I can throw together a healthy, tasty meal pretty easily. But trust me, it wasn’t always like that. When I first started making the gluten-and dairy-free meals needed for my family’s health, it was highly stressful and crazily chaotic. I got decent meals on the table, but only barely!
I was able to survive for a couple of months, until we all regained out health. But I soon realized that, if we didn’t want to become a sick mess again, our new way of eating needed to continue for life! Yikes!
How could I possibly keep up with daily, vegetable-rich, wholesome meals making forever?!At that time, 34 years ago, there were no maps, trail markers, or even trails for guidance. I was left to “feel” my way to kitchen sanity. Gradually I did discover and piece together a way that healthy everyday meal making could be a reasonably doable part of our hectic modern lives.
I didn’t think of the various pieces I discovered as part of an identifiable whole called Meal Making Transformation. That understanding only came later, in hindsight. But what was very clear to me is that the pieces worked!
The strategies, tools and thinking that came to me, bit by bit, made it possible to sustain our new, healthy eating lifestyle for life, which was not only empowering but also extremely gratifying.
That is why I believe Meal Making Transformation is worth knowing about and even adopting, in whole or in part. Since no one else is talking about it, who knows? It could be the missing link for anyone struggling to make the healthy meals they crave. So I hope you’ll open heart and mind and see if there could be some helpful guidance here!
The next post will share more about what Meal Making Transformation looks like.