Branching Out

            I’ve dealt with chronic pain for most of my adult life, and I long ago decided that medication was not the route I wanted to take. Through much study and trial and error, I’ve learned that I feel better when I am able to eat right (for me) and maintain a regular yoga practice. However, neither of those thing have been easy for me. After my daughter born, I suffered severe depression, we moved a lot, and my husband’s inability to handle stress left him angry an unsupportive. We ate fast food a lot, we were broke a lot, and overdrawn more often that I care to remember. When we weren’t eating fast food, we were eating boxed, cheap food, and the times I did attempt to cook real food, no one liked it. And the yoga? It’s easy to get out of a routine when you feel you can’t even get a daily routine to stick. Still I was determined.

            I found the local Farmer’s Market, but that actually only increased our eating of unhealthy fried foods, as we found a booth that sold “fusion rolls,” comfort foods wrapped un like eggrolls and deep fried. Bacon mac and cheese eggrolls were a big favorite. Even though I was buying fruits and vegetables to use in the juicer I bought myself, I wasn’t buying enough to last me until next payday, and so I was really only juicing every other week, and I still wasn’t eating healthy in between. Even though I spent my days looking at recipes that called for whole foods, and fresh produce, and locally grown, and I fantasized about joining a CSA (community supported agriculture), and read books about not eating out and raw vegan, nothing changed. Eventually I even stopped using my juicer all together.

            Then I left my husband and moved to Arizona. To an area where there seems to be nothing locally grown, no Farmer’s Market that I can find, no CSA (even if I had the money to join one). The only good thing (foodwise, because I love everything else about my move) is there is also no fast food easily accessible where I am. The closest fast food place is 20 minutes away, unless I want to get a burger or hot dog at AM/PM. The only eating out nearby is the corner Mexican food place, and since I can cook the same thing at home for cheaper, I didn’t see much point in that.

            So now, here I am, getting ready to start the new year (2014), and I feel like I’m having to learn to cook again. I’ve got a cupboard full of cook books, a handful of books on eating healthy that I’ve read, a list of books on sustainable eating that I want to read, a stack of Yoga Journal magazines, and a few new kitchen tools that I got for Christmas. My spice cabinet has no herbs in, just seasoning salt, garlic powder, onion powder, white pepper, cayenne pepper, coarse ground black pepper, cinnamon, and sea salt. These are the only seasons I’ve really needed in order to make the few “real” foods I know how to make; pot roast, potato leek soup, and stroganoff. I think it’s beyond time I learn to branch out.