Eating the Sun: The Power of Eating Warm Foods

(howstuffworks.com)

Ceres, goddess of agriculture, corn, the carrier of the cornucopia, mourns the loss of her daughter Proserpina six months out of the year, ever since Pluto made her a captive and companion for him in the underworld. However, every six months, Proserpina returns and Ceres opens her arms to welcome her back from the darkness. While Proserpina enjoys her stay with her mother, the sun comes out and everything begins to grow—this is the time to plant those seeds, pick grapes off the vine of Bacchus, drink wine, fornicate, marry and be merry. But we all know the growing season ends. As Pluto takes Ceres’s daughter back to his underworld kingdom once again, Ceres once again mourns the loss of her daughter, the sun departs and the world becomes cold, the ground becomes hard with frost. Nothing grows, the trees shed their leaves to survive the harsh winter to come. All the animals hibernate in caves and holes and subdivisions until Proserpina returns once again. And so it goes.

(reversespins.com)

Oh Proserpina, where are you? Here on the rock of Newfoundland, it’s been a cold summer. Ceres doesn’t seem ready to open her arms to welcome Proserpina back from her prolonged stay in Pluto's underworld. Pluto may no longer be a planet, but we still associate Pluto with being cold. (Funny then that Hell is supposed to be hot.) In other words, the sun hasn’t come out. Or if it has, it seems to be teasing us, playing hide and seek. Perhaps Ceres has lost hope this year. Perhaps Proserpina was too drunk and hungover from partying with Pluto’s minions and was knocked unconscious while playing pin the tail on Cerberus. Perhaps Ceres and Proserpina are not on speaking terms with each other—having a row, as they say. Whatever the reason may be, the sun isn’t out, thus we are not warm. And when we are not warm our bodies contract too much and we retreat back into ourselves and away from the world. So we have a few options. We can do the corn dance (which I and my past lives seemed to have forgotten) or we can bundle up. We can harness the power of warmth. We can think warm thoughts. We can eat warm foods.

Heat and warmth is a strange thing to be talking about in the summer. (We’re heading toward August now.) Usually in the summer, we talk about how to cool down, not warm up. I was at Second Cup the other day and saw their ad for their new summer drinks, you know, to cool down. But there was a dire warning attached to the sign: FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. Tim Horton’s has their iced lemonade chillers or whatever they’re called. Though it looks on the outset like just another marketing ploy to spur demand in a short amount of time and boost sales, it’s actually a reminder to us that Proserpina is only here for a limited time. And the marketing boys over at Tim Horton’s and Second Cup may have miscalculated the demand for their new gimmick. Newfoundlanders probably aren’t buying too many of those cold drinks. And if they are, they shouldn’t be.

So what’s going on? We have the heat on, our thick comforters are back on the beds, the thermostat is on, we’re inside cuddled under a blanket trying to get WARM. It is not just that the sun is gone. It is actually cold. It can still be hot without any sun. But this summer, if that’s what you want to call it, the weather seems to be contracting us, when it should be expanding us. Our instinct in the summer, usually, is to drink iced tea and eat salads, pasta salads, potato salads, deli sandwiches, but in order to expand, we must do the opposite. Now we have to think soup, casseroles, chili, hot cereal, cobblers and crisps, pies. Comfort food. That’s why it’s called comfort food. And if you’re eating non-comfort food in this cold weather, then you may be extremely uncomfortable and wondering why. You’re just following your instincts, so who can blame you? Our instincts are telling us one thing, but our bodies are telling us another: “Hey you! I’m cold! Warm me up!”

Being from Southern California, where it’s pretty even-steven all year round at a nice, comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit/20 Celsius, I never understood the concept of eating seasonally; my wife partner, being from Toronto mostly, did. And she cooks accordingly. See, we didn’t have falling leaves where I grew up, or snow-capped driveways. Christmas was just another sunny day, no difference from the Fourth of July. You could eat fruit all year long. So my wife partner raised her eyebrows at me when I would request “summer foods” in the winter. She thought I was strange, and I thought she was strange for planning her recipes according to the seasons. Now I see the error of my ways. Boy do I ever!

Rudolf Steiner was big on warmth, he always emphasized it. Warmth is the beginning of everything, the source of all life. The first thing we do to a newborn baby is swaddle them up. If your children aren’t growing in a healthy way, it might be because they are too cold. Think about it. Without warmth and heat, without the sun, nothing would grow. We often underestimate the power of the sun’s energy, we take it for granted. This summer, if it isn’t going to come out, then we must summon it within ourselves. Food, real food, is stored energy. We eat the food so we can get the energy. This is why we eat more grains in the winter and more fruits and vegetables in the summer. If you eat lifeless food, however, then it stands to reason you will have a lifeless energy about you. Processed food, processed meats, processed veggie burgers, processed anything—it has very little energy, despite what the marketing boys over at headquarters will tell you. The new McDonald’s Happy Meals may serve apples, but you can bet those apples are heavily processed. Ever see an apple left out too long? It oxidizes and turns brown. I don’t even know if the McDonald's apples can even be called apples. God knows what they’re doing to them. I know their oatmeal isn't oatmeal.

Terry Walters, not just a cooking genius, but also a nutritionist, has one of the best cookbooks out there called Clean Food. Rather than eating Mr. Clean in our foods, she stresses that the foods we eat should be clean, non-processed, foods.

What makes the book so special is that the recipes are organized by season. So for any of you locavores out there, this is a special plus. If you eat locally, then you can be sure you are eating seasonally, across the entire food spectrum. This is one of those if-you-are-stranded-on-a-desert-island-and-could-only-take-one-cookbook-with-you kinds of books. It’s simply incredible.

 

Clean Start is amazing, too. All the recipes are gluten-free. Gluten seems to be the new enemy, people increasingly getting diagnosed (incorrectly?) with Celiac disease. Just another example of how unhappy our beloved Ceres has become as our relationship to Mother Earth has become increasingly twisted and strained. How can we cheer her up? 

Eat, drink, and be warm. Even if it is summer.

Eat B(right),

Veggie Daddy

I would like to thank my good friend Lesley for inspiring this post.

  

When You're Sick: What to do, What to eat, What not to eat, and Why

Well, the strangest thing overcame me in the last 48 hours. Two nights ago, I felt completely awful and my stomach constantly rumbled. That was a big sign that I probably shouldn't have eaten dinner, but ate I did. Minestrone and whole wheat peach cobbler with vanilla "ice cream" for dessert. No, the peaches were not canned!

Tip: A great vegan way to make ice cream is to use coconut milk instead of milk. Sample different coconut milks to find the one you like best. The peach cobbler was made with whole wheat pastry flour, and I actually don't prefer this, but I know it's "good" for me, so what the hay. The kids actually liked it, so that's a plus. We kind of alternate with our baked goods. Sometimes they are made healthy, with less white flour and sugar, and then sometimes the opposite, loads of white flour and white sugar. My wife asks me if want healthy muffins or unhealthy muffins. I am always going to say unhealthy. That's how I roll! As long as you're eating them in moderation, homemade baked goods do not fall in the category of bad-for-you.

Tip: If you want to sweeten something, a great substitute is to use agave syrup. I sweeten my oatmeal that way. Yes, it's refined, but not as naughty as sugar.

Okay, back to the story. I was feeling horrible, and I felt worse after eating a full dinner. I had a horrible night that night, couldn't get to sleep, was mildly feverish, and I had to make many trips to the bathroom. The entire day after, I was either sleeping or in the bathroom. I didn't eat a thing. But the worst part of it all was the belching. I was belching something awful, my breath smelled like rotten eggs. It was disgusting. Was it something I ate?

Rudolf Steiner says consuming too much protein in the body makes all that undigested protein go rancid, and it smells like rotten eggs. Our bodies can only handle a certain amount of protein. If you go past the threshold, like so many of us do daily, the food goes rancid inside the body. Obviously, this leads to all sorts of disease. Eating more dietary fiber flushes all this out, acting like a natural Dran-o. Animal protein, meat, eggs, milk, cheese--these foods have no fiber. Whole fruits, vegetables, grains--these have lots of fiber. Eat plenty of it for a clean, unclogged system.

I wracked my brain to remind myself of what I ate over the past few days. My youngest daughter actually threw up the night before, we were staying at a friend's house the entire day, so it could have been something we ate at their house, though I don't know what it could have been. It must have been some strange bug that went around that just she and I got and no one else. She had cheese quesadillas and pasta, and I ate pasta. She threw up that night, a number of times, but her sister did not. I think I got the bug from her. The only thing she ate different than her sister were cheese quesadillas. Strange...

Tip: When you're feeling sick, the best thing to do is fast. You can still drink as much water as you want, just don't eat or drink anything besides water. And yes, this advice goes against what most people would say, but it makes a lot of sense if you just think about it a little. When you are sick it is because your body is trying to fight the toxicity in your system. While it is fighting this toxicity and trying to push it out (and does so in the form of vomiting, the runs, runny nose, fever) your body only has so much energy to fight all of the germs.


Remember, when you get sick and have symptoms, the germs are not causing the symptoms. The symptoms we get when we are sick are a result of our body fighting the germs. When you are sick and go to the doctor and complain about the symptoms you are having, they give you antibiotics for those symptoms only. They want to give you drugs so that your symptoms will go bye-bye. They are not addressing what is making you sick, they are addressing the symptoms you get as a result of being sick. It's a big difference. This is called allopathic medicine, by the way. Traditional western medical practices are allopathic in nature, in which they give you something to make something else go away. Eastern medical practices do not treat sickness in this manner, they are much more concerned with the energy pathways, energy flow, etc. There are two amazing alternative health centers here in St. John's: Dynamis Health Centre and The MoMaVi Centre. The MoMaVie Centre is located right above the boat shack by Quidi Vidi Lake. I went there and was amazed in the difference. (I suffer from some kind of tendonitis, hence my reason for trying to be healthier.) I also go to Dynamis, which practices Heilkunst homeopathy among other methods. Go to either (or both) of these if you need to see a doctor.

When your immune system is "doing battle", it has very little energy to digest food, and when the body's defenses are trying to fight the enemy, putting food in your body is like forcing your army, your immune system, to divide in half to go deal with the food--the germs will be there much longer because of a now severely weakened army. Your immune system's hands are full, it can't afford to spread out and fight the food and the germs. So when you are sick, the food you put in your body is considered toxic as well. This is why you might vomit as soon as you try to eat something or get the runs. Your body is saying, No, I don't want any food, I'm trying to heal the body over here! So, the worst thing to do is eat when you feel sick.

I should have not eaten dinner when I realized I started to feel ill, and that was a big mistake. However, I didn't think I had a fever, and so I ate. I should have checked my temperature first. Had I done so, I wouldn't have eaten dinner and dessert at all, I probably would have gotten a higher fever that night, and been mostly fine the next morning. The opposite happened, and I suffered for the entire day afterwards, lying in bed doing nothing. I fasted for the whole day, and I'm almost 100% today. Live and learn.

Fevers are good for us. A high fever means our body is doing what it is meant to do: fight disease, fight toxicity, fight the bugs. There is a saying, "Feed a cold, starve a fever." This is greatly misunderstood. When they say this they're trying to tell you that if you eat when you have a cold, then you won't get a fever, and that's a good thing. Once again, as it seems to be with most things, the opposite of the conventional wisdom is true. If you eat when you have a cold, then you won't get a fever, and so your body won't be able to fight the bugs as well as it could if you actually had a fever. Remember, having a high fever is good, it's lots of energy being directed towards fighting the enemy. If you decided to eat while sick, you're forcing your defenses to weaken themselves, giving them more tasks than they can deal with. It's a lose-lose. So if you hear someone say, "Feed a cold, starve a fever," then gently remind yourself of the whole message: "Don't feed a cold, or you'll starve the fever."

Does your child have a fever? Obviously, if you understand that a high fever is a good sign that her body is doing what it's supposed to do, then for God Sake, don't give them any fever-reducing medicine. You want them to have a fever, that's what makes the body flush out the bad guys. Also, don't give them anything to eat, just let them drink lots of water. If your child is starving and really wants to eat, why do you think Chicken Noodle Soup is the number one cure-all? Because it's mostly water. Easily digested, your body doesn't have to do a lot of work. So if you're vegetarian or your children are, then simply make a broth using vegetable bouillon cubes. Miso soup is a good choice if they like it, I don't. Melon is also a great choice because it, too, is mostly comprised of water. Juiced fruits are okay as well because they are simple carbohydrates and therefore easily digested, even more so if you juice them. Any food that digests easily is a good choice because you want your body to use as little energy as possible to digest food. So simple carbohydrates that are juiced are the best option if you have to eat when you're sick. But the absolutely best thing you can do is to not eat anything at all.

Now, since I have fasted all day yesterday, I didn't want to shock my system with heavy food, so I just ate watermelon and I feel this was a good choice. Lots of water, very little "food" and my body was sated. I'll keep eating fruits today to better ease my body back into digesting the food. It also stands to reason that the more raw, simple carbohydrates we eat, the more energy we will have to do other things, so you might want to consider this if you feel low on energy.

Eat B(right),
Veggie Daddy