Serenity

Not much blogging these days, and my days are hardly about food at the moment. I’m now working at the HU 4 days a week while working on my 3rd book (Eenvoudig Spiritueel), which is due in January 2012. Busy busy busy.

 

Shady coffee

Today, I learnt something important about coffee. Yes, yes I’m back to drinking coffee – in moderation, but that is not what this is about. What I was quite unaware of, is how thoroughly unsustainable a lot of coffee growing really is. Yes, of course I knew about exploitation of coffee farmers and sure I dutifully buy my Max Havelaar or similar. And yes I vaguely knew about deforestation – but not the full extent of these practices. 

 

What not to eat: caffeine

It did not take me long to find out that coffee is my favourite drug. The first thing I missed on my first day of detoxing was my morning coffee. I replaced it with herbal tea and later with a coffee substitute that tasted vaguely coffeeish. The craving eventually subsided. But why was coffee not on the menu during detox?

 

Strangely unliberating

Yesterday was the last day of my 28-day-plan. It stealthily crept up on me – I was not quite ready. I was still in the process of thinking about how to proceed after the official end of what I still for lack of a better word call the detox. On Saturday night, I was still happily drinking water and refusing cake at a birthday party. Last night, I was having chicken, wine, burritos and ice-cream with friends in their garden. Relief? None whatsoever.

 

The time factor

Earlier, I wrote that detoxing is not cheap. I should add it is not quick. Healthy food is not fast food. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, a lot more than I used to. Do I have that extra time? Of course not. None of us have.

 

What not to eat

So, if I’m not juice fasting, what exactly is this detox thing I’m doing? Like I wrote earlier, the truth about food is not so easy to define and food science not as unambiguous as we’d like. The plan I’m following is aimed at dropping anything artificially flavoured or coloured, sugars other than the natural sugars in fruit and vegetables, caffeine (no coffee, black or green tea), alcohol, meat, dairy from the cow, white rice and pasta, bread and bakery and anything containing gluten from the diet. This sounds awfully limiting and in a way it is.

 

Planthead

I’not sure what this picture is doing here. I took it on the same day I took the picture of the ugly snackbar 
facade. I liked that they were in the same street. I liked the italianness of the planthead, in my quite unitalian neigbourhood. Yet it also reminded me of those beer boots you had in the seventies. Something posing as something else.

 

What is the truth about food?

Today is the 22nd day of my 28-day detox. I miss coffee, biscuits & cakes and a glass of wine in the evening, but not desperately. What I am most tired of is having to explain. Perhaps I should not call this a detox. Too often, I get looked at as if I’m some kind of fanatic who does not know how to enjoy life. And moreover, that I am doing something that is not going to make me any healthier anyway.

 

Corporate ugliness

The owner of the snack bar in my neighbourhood recently spent thousands of euros on having his property painted in the corporate colours. A bit of an eyesore.

 

Define hunger

Did your mother, like mine, tell you off when you said you were hungry? ‘You’re not hungry’, she would snap. ‘Children in the third world, now they are hungry.’ Manipulative use of language of course – Western bodies, too, get hungry. They, too, need food. The difference is, they usually get it when they want it.