What’s for Dinner?

What’s for dinner? It seems like a simple enough question, yet the answer to it can have profound impacts on my personal economy, my health, my energy use, and our overall environment, not to mention the living capital of my little homestead. So it’s a question I’ve been putting more thought and effort into, trying to shift my answers with the goal of improving all these elements. I imagine some of you are cringing already, fearing I’m going to break out with some militant screed instructing you that MY diet is the BEST diet and you must follow it too or you’re some morally inferior poopy head. Don’t worry, that’s not me. I feel like what you chose to eat is up to you, just as it is your own responsibility to determine what sort of diet your body functions best on. I’m merely offering this up as information about my personal journey in the realm of food in the hopes it might help you too.

(Please note some of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. What this means is that should you click through them and make a qualifying purchase I will receive a commission which I’d certainly appreciate since it helps support this blog project. However, this shouldn’t increase your cost any, and certainly don’t ever feel like I’m pressuring you to buy things through the links I offer or anywhere else. I’m all about being frugal first!)

Really what I’m trying to do is change my personal food culture, which unfortunately is an even more daunting task than just changing my diet, as if dietary changes weren’t hard enough. First I should probably share what I’m trying to do with my diet. Since there seems to be a lot of focus these days on different diets this likely doesn’t seem that unusual. My shift has been toward a nutrient dense, whole food, plant based diet. In this I’ve found inspiration and guidance from the work of Joel Fuhrman, M.D., in particular his book “Eat to Live”, and from the work of Michael Greger, M.D., especially his book “How Not to Die”.

If you aren’t familiar with a nutrient dense, or a whole food plant based diet you might at first think they are just other names for being a vegan. While it’s true there is heavy crossover, one could technically eat nothing but Oreo cookies while drinking vodka and be on a vegan diet! That’s not what I’m aiming for. I am essentially looking to cut out heavily refined and processed foods that lack nutrients and fiber. I wish to focus on eating whole plant foods that are dense with nutrients in relation to calories. This would qualify as a vegan diet, but not all vegan diets would qualify as whole food plant based. I should also note that I don’t consider myself a vegan, or even vegetarian. I do still eat meat and other animal products, which I doubt will change anytime soon. However, I aim to make this a very very small part of my diet. Meat for me now is more like something for special occasions, or not making a fuss at potlucks or social events where it’s the only option.

So if this is the dietary change I’m undergoing what do I mean when I say I want to change my personal food culture? By this I mean not only what I eat, but where the food comes from and it’s overall role in my life. Like most people when I think about getting food the first thing that comes to mind is buying it at a grocery store. I suppose for many these days the grocery store is actually running neck in neck with restaurants for our first thoughts of where to get food. After this might come a farm, or slightly divergent from this, a farmers market. Finally I suspect the average person will think about getting their food from some type of home garden. These days very few people will even think about my last category, the living earth around us, or put differently, foraging for wild edibles.

I’ve been studying wild edibles for many years now, as well as growing a garden for even longer. Yet, when I’m hungry and need to acquire food my thought process still runs pretty much in this same order. If I am at home the grocery store will be first followed by ordering take out from a restaurant. If I am away from home then eating at a restaurant earns the top spot, followed by a grocery store. My garden comes next, followed by a farmers market, with foraging for wild food trailing last. This basically represents how I was brought up so it’s no surprise it forms the basis for my food culture. This baseline order of sourcing my food is what I want to change.

I’ve been putting a lot of effort in the past several years to turn my property into more of a permaculture landscape with edible plants growing all over in a more or less wild fashion. I’ve been trying to establish different ecosystems that will support a wider variety of plants. In particular I’ve been introducing edible perennials in the hope I can get good colonies of them growing without me needing to tend and nurture them.

While doing this I’ve also been striving to get better at gardening. I’m no master gardener but I have been doing better. The number of beds has expanded greatly over the years, and last year I had my new greenhouse up and running. Since I’ve been shifting some of the garden beds to perennial plant beds I suppose you could say I’ve been crossing a wild food, permaculture landscape with cultivated gardening efforts.

This year I am focusing on really trying to change my approach to sourcing food. I want to focus first on eating what is growing on or around my property, looking to the garden and wild foraging as the primary place to start. What I’m not getting there I want to plan ahead to acquire from the weekly farmers market. In my ideal world I’ll only be using the grocery store for supplemental items to support meals based around these primary sources of food. Eating out at restaurants will be reserved for social occasions or times I’m traveling away from home.

You might ask, why would I want to do this? Why seek to upend not only my diet but how I go about sourcing my food? As usual, there are multiple reasons. I could list environmental benefits to eating locally produced food, and greatly reducing animal products, but honestly that’s a side benefit for me, not a prime driver of the effort to change. I could also say I’m taking a moral stance against the practices involved in the modern factory farming of animals. However, that would be a lie. While I’m none too keen on such factory farming practices it’s not a driving force in my reduction of animal products. Again, taking some support away from that industry is just a side benefit.

I’m doing this for two main reasons. The first is economic. It should be able to save me a bunch of money. I haven’t really delved into this yet on the blog, but one of the prime reasons I was able to make art my full-time career was getting a strong handle on my finances. Central to this for me was the book, “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominquez and Vicki Robin. I wrote a bunch of articles many years ago for Art Calendar Magazine related to this which you can still find on my davidhuang.org website. I will probably see about revising and updating these for this new blog at some point. Anyway, their book helped me develop new ways of seeing and relating to money that allowed me to get out of debt and easily live a fulfilling life for less money than I bring in as a studio artist. A major component to this has been tracking all my expenses.

About the time I became debt free following the plan from “Your Money or Your Life” interest rates dropped down to practically nothing. This discouraged me from engaging with the second part of the book, investing savings to develop passive income streams that would eventually meet all my income needs. I sort of just drifted for quite a while financially. Money wasn’t a serious concern as I had all my prime systems set up such that my required expenses were always far less than my income. After a certain amount was stashed away as a formidable “emergency fund” it would seem further potential savings was either being spent or given away. Though in fairness to myself, much of the extra spending was done on projects for my homestead that would reduce my expenses even more over time. In other words, investing in non-financial forms of capital.

Fast forward to around a year or so ago and I came across blogs and podcasts that are essentially the modern outgrowths of “Your Money or Your Life”, what has become known as the FIRE movement. This stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. These gave me the kick in the pants to refocus on my economic life rather than letting it run more or less on autopilot. I have a new, rather ambitious goal of achieving a very basic level of financial independence by the time I’m 50, which translates to about 3 years.

What this means is that I’ve begun earnestly saving and investing. To reach financial independence I need to have my passive income streams be equal to my expenses. Of course one goal is to increase my investment income, but another is to decrease my required expenses, with the condition that I wish to maintain my high quality of life.

So what does this have to do with changing my food culture? As I noted previously part of my economic management has been tracking all my expenses for about 2 decades now. I’ve got plenty of data, and over the years it’s been easy to cut out things that don’t provide enough fulfillment to justify their cost, and to make life changes that reduce or eliminate the biggest expenses. When I looked back over my figures for the past year I could see that at this point, relative to my remaining expenses, food was a major cost. It represents my best place to find further cost savings. Hence I began to consider what I could do in this realm.

The food I get from my garden or forage from wild spaces around me is of much higher quality and much lower cost, hence I want to make these my prime sources. For store bought food I’ve also been looking first more often at a salvage/discount goods store in the nearby village. I can walk or bike there easily and see what’s available. They tend to have dented cans, slightly crushed boxes, overstock goods, or things a bit beyond the freshness “use by” dates. Sometimes I can find crazy good deals on food I’d actually use there. For example, my best recent score was a 20 pound food service box of frozen mixed vegetables (corn, peas, carrots, and green beans) for $4.99! That works out to 25 cents a pound to pack my tiny freezer full of bulk vegetables I’ll use. The danger with this store is that they also have really good deals on junk food! (18 large bakery style chocolate chip cookies for 99 cents anyone? Mmmm… why yes, I’d like a package of those!)

The other major approach I’m using to try and save money on food is to make sure and actually use the perishable foods I have on hand. It sounds obvious enough, but in the past I’ve been known to throw out far too many “science projects” moldering in the fridge. Here though I’m focusing not just on what is in the fridge, I’m also thinking about the living food growing around me. If I’m not using it in its prime I end up with things getting tough, inedible, or going to seed. This has probably been my greatest failure with my garden in the past. I’ll have lots of viable food in the garden, but then force of habit would have me shopping at the grocery store each week where I’ll be lured in by all sorts of pretty, perishable food that was “on sale”. Once I have it home the thinking would end up running something like, well since I bought this I need to eat it before it goes bad, and the stuff in the garden can keep longer since it’s still alive and unpicked. So the freshest, most nutritious, and free garden food goes unused a few days longer. Then before I know it I’m back at the grocery store for my habitual weekly grocery shopping trip and the cycle starts again. This is the cycle I really want to break! I need to look at what is vibrant and prime to harvest here first! Then only if I don’t have enough should I resort to the farmers market or the store. If I can achieve this it should put the most nutritious food in my belly and keep the most money in my wallet.

So personal economics is one reason to tackle this food project, but frankly that alone isn’t enough reason. I’m not really interested in scrimping and jumping through hoops just to save a few more dollars. As I noted before, maintaining a high quality of life is important to me. Ideally I’d like to improve my life! Thus we get to the second main reason I’m doing this. I wish to improve my health!

I’m far enough into middle age these days that the invulnerable sense of youth is gone. Back in those glorious days of yore I could eat anything and everything without gaining any weight. Then slowly the pounds crept on, and my pants seemed to be shrinking more and more each time I washed them. I don’t know if it was good fortune or a curse permitting a longer period of denial, but my tall frame allowed me to put on quite a bit of extra weight without really appearing to so. When I literally started bursting zippers I realized I needed to attend to this. So first, I had to acknowledge my pants weren’t really shrinking and started buying them in the next size up. However, since I knew they weren’t what “my size” was supposed to be this would always bother me, offering motivation to lose the extra weight.

I tried cutting back on how much I was eating, to no real success. I tried cutting back on how much soda I was drinking, which at the time was often 2 liters a day! I learned I struggle very hard with moderation. I seem to be an all in or all out sort of person. So one day I finally made a new rule for myself of zero caffeinated beverages. No more guzzling gallons of Mountain Dew and Coke! I allowed the caffeine free versions, but somehow they no longer had the draw for me. (I’m still known to enjoy a good root beer from time to time, if it’s caffeine free.) I did have some withdrawal symptoms for a few days after quitting these cold turkey, but haven’t missed them since. To my great surprise and disappointment though, I didn’t lose a pound! I still don’t understand this. I mean seriously, how could I quit ingesting the empty calories of 2 liters of soda a day and not lose any weight! Still I figured removing them from my diet was a strong positive overall even if it didn’t provide me with any weight loss so I’ve never gone back.

I found over the years that the only way I’ve really been able to lose weight was through what I was eating, not how much I was eating. For a good period of time I tried a raw food diet. I also spent a while doing a lot of juicing. Both of these approaches did help me shed pounds, but in the end they weren’t eating styles I could sustain. The nutrient dense approach Joel Furhman presents in his book, “Eat to Live” was the first thing I was able to make sustainable over a longer term.

Then a few years ago I came across Michael Greger’s book, “How Not to Die” along with his completely free website, NutritionFacts.org, where he presents what he calls a whole food plant based diet. This has resonated with me even better, though in reality it’s basically the same as the nutrient dense approach. I guess I appreciate how Dr. Greger works to completely avoid letting money influence what he recommends by not taking sponsors or advertisers, relying on donations instead to support the website and its research. He even donates the profits from his books to charity. I also like how he supports all his claims with notes or links to the scientific studies that were the sources.

So anyhow, from my highest weight many years ago I’ve lost roughly 50 pounds. My guess is that I could lose another 10 or so to fully eliminate all my belly fat, though it would probably be good for me to not so much lose that weight as transmute it into muscle gain.

Still I find that when I’m stressed, or have over scheduled myself with work obligations I can slip back into poor eating habits. That happened toward the end of last year. These poor habits so quickly become addicting for me, because again I seem to have little ability to moderate. So once again I am working to refocus myself towards a nutrient dense, whole food, plant based diet, the sort of diet I am better able to sustain and which I can easily lose excess weight on.

These days though I’m not even all that concerned about my weight. I guess I know that with a good diet my weight naturally settles where it should be, thus becoming a non-issue. Instead I’m seeking to shift my motivating reasons to permanently alter my diet from weight loss to health gain. They tend to relate, but really aren’t quite the same. As a friend once noted to me, a couple harsh seconds with a chainsaw and you could lose a lot of weight real quick!

Lately something that has stuck with me and been a prime motivating factor was something Dr. Greger presented based on autopsy studies of accident victims. I forget if this was in his book, videos, or lectures, and I may not have the numbers exactly right. Regardless, the gist of it was if you are an American over the age of 10 there is something like a 95% chance that you have at least the beginnings of heart disease, the number 1 cause of death in the US. Since I realize many reading this blog are from other countries I’ll note that I suspect this would be true for anyplace where the diet is similar to the standard American diet (often known as SAD) that is high in meat and processed foods. I grew up and spent much of my life eating the SAD so I can pretty much feel assured I have heart disease, even though I’ve never gone to get it diagnosed from a doctor.

This is now my motivating factor. If I have heart disease, and based on the studies I can’t convince myself I don’t, what do I want to do about it? I could keep eating along the lines of the standard American diet, and plan to add in a side order of Lipitor, not to mention writing some blank checks to offer up to our health care system. This approach can work. I have my father to use as an example. He and I tended to be quite alike, as such he’s been a guide in my life for both what to do and what to avoid. When I was in high school he suffered his first symptoms of heart disease, resulting in an emergency triple bypass surgery. He went on to live decades more. Most of those years he was reasonably functional, though I observed a slow decline in his capacities. Without a doubt though he became fully enmeshed in the health care system for the remainder of his life, constantly dealing with doctors, drugs, and insurance. Personally I’d rather avoid this if I can.

So the other option someone such as myself with heart disease has is to attempt to halt or even reverse its progression though changes in diet and exercise. As Dr. Greger’s works point out, we’ve known for decades how to cure our leading killer, yet this information is rarely presented to us. I would guess this is mostly because doctors doubt their patients would make the changes necessary. To be fair, it’s way easier to take a pill (and deal with damaging side effects) than it is to radically alter ones diet in a society whose food culture so pervasively pushes us in the wrong directions, and pretty much all dietary approaches agree that the SAD is bad.

As an added bonus, the sort of diet that can cure heart disease is also the same diet that helps prevent or reduce most of the other leading chronic diseases of our time, such as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, etc. The side effects for me of a whole food plant based diet should be a much higher quality of life now and in the future because of better overall health. Those are the sorts of side effects I want! As an example, for myself I’ve found that the much greater levels of fiber in my diet have helped me better deal with intestinal issues I’ve had dominantly ruling over my life from birth. As a final bonus, if I can conquer making this a life long dietary change I can also likely save a ton of money avoiding future health care costs. So while this approach is certainly more challenging the rewards of succeeding are far greater as well. Hence I’m opting to take greater personal responsibility for my health by attending to my diet. I’d like to believe that even though my misspent youth has passed, I can still build my body up to state healthier than it has ever been!

These are my goals anyway, to alter my personal food culture in order to save money and increase my health. Thus far I’m making progress, but not exactly wildly succeeding. I still lapse regularly because, well… peanut butter cups, ice cream, cheesecake, kettle cooked potato chips, spicy sesame shrimp combo plates, and so on.

I’m also making it much harder on myself by attempting to change not just my diet, but where I get my food. What do I mean by this? It is wonderful that there seem to be more and more people adopting nutrient dense or whole food plant based diets. Knowing there are others succeeding in this is excellent moral support. Even better are all the recipes and cookbooks coming out that support this way of eating. However, these recipes also tend to use either very exotic specialty ingredients from around the world, or foods commonly found in grocery stores. By itself this is fabulous!

There is also a culture developing of foraging for wild edible foods, though it seems to be much smaller. They too are working to develop recipes and cookbooks to replace our lost food cultures of how to utilize these foods. Which again, by itself is fabulous. However, these recipes tend to incorporate lots of meat, butter, salt, sugar, or refined grains, all of which I’m seeking to eliminate.

My conundrum then becomes what do I do with what are essentially “exotic” locally available whole plant foods that keep the recipes nutritious? What do I make with milkweed and cattails? I’ve got lots of Jerusalem artichokes now that I’ve found a way to make them digestible for my fractious gut, but what can I do with them. Acorn meal? Daylilies? I could keep going on, but I think you get the idea. I feel like I’m something of a pioneer seeking to blend two different styles of eating. This would be great if I was a real chef, but I’m not. In fact, I tend to be very reluctant to cook for anyone but myself because I feel like what I make is just too weird for most people.

Even so, I think that this will become another part of what this blog is about, trying to share approaches and ideas in preparing this wider variety of edible whole plant foods in ways that support health. I’ll likely offer some of my own recipes or adaptations of what others have done, though you shouldn’t expect to see fancy pictures of beautifully arranged meals. Knowing me I won’t even have clear measurements like 1 cup or 2 teaspoons. (I imagine those who’ve taken a patina workshop from me are all laughing right now, because they know this is true!) I’m just hoping that what I can share here might help others by providing different ways to use, source, and think about food. In short, to help us develop better food cultures.

So, what’s for dinner? It’s a simple question with some potential wide ranging answers.

Studio Snippet

This has been a really long post so I’m going to keep the studio snippet short, plus I don’t have much to say. I promised I would share some finished images of the piece I had been showing process shots of in previous snippets. Here they are! The piece is now done. It is Luminous Relic #1694. The final size of the vessel ended up being approximately 3.5 inches x 3.5 inches x 3.5 inches. It is made from copper, fine silver, and 23-karat gold leaf.

I’m pleased with how the piece turned out, though I was unsure of it at points along the way. I really didn’t quite know where the design was going from the start. This is what made me unsure. I had to assess each stage of the design and decide what to do next that might add greater interest and beauty. When I’m working with a design style I’m familiar with I have a mental road map to follow. On this one it was more fuzzy notes and loose ideas jotted down on scrap paper than a clear map.

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I’m happy to have a site where I can again allow comments. (I had to shut them off on my main website because the spam was simply uncontrollable!) So please I encourage you to share thoughts of your own. My general rule about comments though is just to play nice. Differing views are fine, but I’m not interested in engaging in or moderating verbal fights. If I feel things get out of hand, by whatever criteria I decide, I’ll just start blocking or deleting things.