![\"\"](\"https:\/\/feedingandrew.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/peanut-sauce-pasta.jpg\" "\\"peanut")
<\/a>\n\tYou won't have any left overs with this pasta!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Last night my good friend stopped by and talked with me as I cooked the evening meal.\u00a0\u00a0 He curiously inspected the cupboards and every inch of the refrigerator looking for signs of heretical ingredients and hidden hypocrisy lurking on packaging information that we may have missed during our Lenten exorcism of all things non-vegan.<\/p>\n
Almost ready to give up, he suddenly rang out with \u201cXanthum Gum!\u201d an ingredient he had found on the label of our Trader Joe\u2019s almond milk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat can\u2019t be any good for fighting cancer!\u201d he triumphantly declared.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was from Xanadu,\u201d I blithely replied, a little annoyed at his petite inquisition on our kitchen.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting how when you start a new regimen or try to create a new good habit or quit an old bad one that others are threatened by your attempt to change your ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, you aren\u2019t supposed to have any oil on the Chinese Diet.\u00a0 Everyone that I know that\u2019s on it says you can\u2019t have any oil,\u201d he pointed out for the third or fourth time since we started just a week ago.<\/p>\n
I just shrugged my shoulders as I continued cutting away at vegetables and without looking at him I calmly said, \u201cYeah, that may be.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really know.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t read the book.\u00a0 We\u2019re not doing the Chinese Diet, we\u2019re just keeping to a plant-based one.\u201d<\/p>\n
I found it strange that he was so concerned about the orthodoxy of our approach, but I think I understand.\u00a0 My initial motivation for a change came from watching the documentary \u201cForks Over Knives\u201d and its hopeful message that cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other modern plagues could be cured or controlled with diet and The China Diet Study was a big part of the movie.\u00a0 If the documentary is correct, then it is an enormous indictment on way we eat.<\/p>\n
My good friend lives an envious life where his job allows him to eat at the very best restaurants in Los Angeles multiple nights each week and seeing mounds of vegetables going into a plant-based, whole-grain meal was a stark reminder that his lifestyle was perhaps not a good fit for a family history rife with heart disease.\u00a0\u00a0 I figured that finding a flaw with our approach would let him off the hook of facing the need to change his own ways.<\/p>\n
Our talk turned to other topics and as I continued to chop, little colorful mounds of diced vegetables grew into a spectacular mise en place (the French term for having everything cut and prepared before you start cooking).<\/p>\n
My friend examined the chopping block and suddenly stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are the same ingredients my mom used in her Chicken Curry!\u201d he burst out, but then quietly and more somberly added, \u201cthat makes me sad and makes me miss my mom.\u201d<\/p>\n
It made me miss his mom too.\u00a0 She had inspired me in so many ways when she was alive, but nowhere as much as experiencing her joy of being in the kitchen and cooking for her family and friends.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I realized why it\u2019s so hard for us to give up our strong beliefs and feelings about what we eat.<\/p>\n
Our feelings about food are largely about experience and memory.<\/p>\n
Just the smell of fried chicken will instantly put me back in my grandmother\u2019s kitchen, sitting at her Formica table and my grandpa\u2019s ball game droning on in the background.\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s a memory that I never want to lose.\u00a0 It\u2019s also a feeling I want to recreate for my own son and somehow think of him passing it on to his children.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no wonder that faced with the sobering possibility of premature death, my brother and almost everyone else in the world, still finds it hard or impossible to make a change in regards to diet.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I, with an ever increasing waistline, could still slather my crusty Tuscan bread with duck fat before I grilled it and called it breakfast!<\/p>\n
Food is more than life.\u00a0 It\u2019s our lives.\u00a0 What else is there in the human experience, except for breathing and sleeping, that we are compelled to do almost continuously from the day we are born until the day we die?<\/p>\n
It is also what we do in communion with others.\u00a0 There is a tacit agreement when we sit at table and break bread or cut meat that our lives, our histories, our memories are somehow connected to each other.\u00a0 We understand each other when we sit at the table together.<\/p>\n
When we change that paradigm, we upset the balance between friends, families, and lovers.<\/p>\n
More than fear that my diet should somehow influence him, my friend searched my cupboards trying to make sure I hadn\u2019t thrown out over thirty years of shared experiences and memories with the chicken stock.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the same reason many vegetarians and vegans go to great lengths to find dishes that feel meaty, fake cheeses that taste and melt cheesy, and non-dairy milk that tastes as good in a bowl of cereal as it works in a favorite baked good.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s why I drove all over town looking for Seitan, a great wheat based meat substitute.\u00a0 I wanted our meals to taste and feel like the ones at my mother\u2019s table or like the first meals that I ever cooked for Andrew.<\/p>\n
Who knows, maybe Xanthum Gum really does come from Xanadu.\u00a0 It surely has helped Andrew and me make a drastic transition into the future without having to let go of a past that holds our dearest and most cherished memories of how we became father and son.<\/p>\n
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