The Body Electric: Day Fourteen

A // W // F

foodcherries

This evening, I stand in the kitchen and chop.

And saute. 

And stir.

And smile.

There are friends coming for dinner, and that makes me happy.

These days, food makes me happy, too.

*

There was a time in my life where food didn’t make me happy.  In fact, I was downright afraid of it.  

And that fear persisted long after I made my recovery from my eating disorder.  It persisted so long that, one day, I decided to do something about it and just plain fall in love with food.

If love is an arrow, I wrested the bow out of Cupid’s hands, took aim and fired.  

I didn’t miss.

*

In the absence of new photos on my reel lately, I’ve been scrolling through some of my older shots.  I scroll all the way back to 2009, when my love-affair with food began, and I find lush, shockingly colorful images like this:

foodstrawberries2

And this:

peachblueberry

And this:

foodchard

My mind takes me back to that season when a love of eating was new — a rich, wildly sensory experience — and it just plain makes me happy.  

Because that was the year I taught myself where food comes from, if it’s raised right — out in the fields or the woods, in places where light is plentiful and the soil is rich:

foodharvest

 

I learned what it felt like to eat a blueberry or a blackberry straight from the brambles.  I discovered scapes, and I met my all-time-favorite food, Chicken of the Woods — a wood mushroom that magically soaks up whatever you cook it in (hello, chardonnay!) and transforms the flavor into something unspeakably divine:

foodchickenofthewoods

I learned to can and vacuum-seal and freeze and pickle.  I took a job as a baker’s assistant, and I learned to make meltingly soft scones, dense crusty artisan breads full of nuts and berries, and my personal favorite, galettes:

foodgalettes

I learned that food looks best in the sunlight:

foodnectarine

Most of all, I smiled a lot, and laughed — right there in the presence of the food that used to scare me:

foodlaugh

Today, I’m thinking back to those days and finding myself overwhelmed with gratitude…

I open the bottle of wine.

I let it breathe.

I toss the salad.

I wait for my friends to arrive. ❤

 

16 Comments

  2. What a story to not only overcome an eating disorder, but to beat it big time and to start loving food! Very impressive!

    I hope the evening with your friends was brilliant.

    Your photos are lovely. Got to love the colours of cherry 🙂

    Warm regards,
    Tieme

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Very kind of you, Tieme… These photos are nostalgic for me on so many levels … They were the first shots I took with a DSLR! 🙂

      I appreciate your support and your taking the time to comment. Thanks for sharing a little bit of joy with me today! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Oh wow! I remember my first project with my DSLR. It was during a cold day (minus 23 degrees Celsius) at the Kinderdijk. A place in Holland with many windmills. Those photos still mean the world to me.

        Wonderfully said, and I thank you for sharing a bit of joy with me 🙂

        Warm regards and all the best,
        Tieme

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