Due to the variety of food I eat today, even my brother wouldn’t remember that yes, I like most other Australians, was brought up on meat and three veg. However my family has always LOVED food. When I decided to stop eating red meat at 13, the meals cooked at home (thanks to my mum) evolved to accommodate me. This was the start of something huge, something that has probably shaped and changed the palette not only of myself, but that of my family today.
Giving up meat over the years hasn’t only led me to question, think about and inform myself about ethical and environmental aspects of vegetarianism, it was also the start of FOOD discovery. It wasn’t until I stopped eating chicken that things really started to get interesting and when I stopped eating fish in more recent years, things in the kitchen have become even more creative, fun, interesting and yummy! People to this day still ask me what I eat if I don’t eat meat, or they still make jokes as if I am missing out on something! HA! They just have NO IDEA. The world of vegetarianism takes you to foodie places that, not to say you wouldn’t go if you do eat meat, but perhaps would be less likely to go.
I was brought up to be a foodie. The memories of sitting next to my mum flicking through the recipe section of magazines and cookbooks and drooling over yummy recipes... oh no, we still do that! :) I LOVE decadent and gourmet, the savoury as well as the sweet foods and desserts (including pure condensed milk from the can!).
I also love learning about foods from different countries and through my extensive world travels I would often go beserk tasting all of the local goodies. When I lived and studied in Germany I met students from all over the world. I remember they all thought I was crazy (and totally obsessed with food!) because the first question I would ask them was “What food or meal is a speciality where you come from?”. Germany was funnily enough also the place where I fell in love with Wholefoods. Living with a Ruddolph Steiner indulged family I learnt about Biodynamic Agriculture, as well as full fat unpasteurised milk and yoghurt that come in brown glass bottles (a post about milk I will leave to another day).
Generally speaking, day to day I would say I am more of a wholefoodie as I have a passion for unprocessed, pure wholefoods just as they come. Cooking them, and of course, eating them! I also love learning about the health giving properties of food, and opposite to my dad, the more nutritious the more enthused I am, the better it tastes to me and the more I want to eat it! I find one of the most simple and spectacular things about pure food, is that it is all produced by nature. I mean you can’t improve on perfect! Simple, but really, when you stop and think about the variety, the seeds, nuts, grains, legumes, vegetables, fruits, spices, all produced by nature... It is truly profound.
Being a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), I have been inspired and often guided by Paul Pitchford’s fabulous book, “Healing with Wholefoods”, which is influenced by East-Asian traditions, and I often use it as a standard reference when researching the health benefits of food (you probably notice that I may refer to it quite frequently in my posts). However I love learning about and incorporating many other different food principles into my cooking, or in the case of raw, NOT cooking! I think it’s about finding a balance, eating unprocessed, wholesome food as much as possible and most of all FEELING GOOD!
For the love of wholesome food,
Biss
