The quick answer: To organize a healthier family food culture, write weekly menus.
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Returning Home
After Christmas the Beautiful Wife and I returned to her family roots, high in little Midway, Utah. The century-old Victorian (shown above) was her father’s childhood home. The statue remembers her grandfather, or great-grandfather depending on who is telling the story, and was carved from an old tree on the property.
The weather was crispy cold with occasional snowfalls and we mostly stayed indoors, sleeping at night under thick down comforters. Each day found me with a book to read. We listened to music, ate healthy meals (to my surprise I had gained 10 lb. over the Holidays so was keeping a food log), and rediscovered an old treat—dancing together with the lights turned down. It was all very nice.
What was I reading? Nutrition books, like Mike Pollan’s In Defense of Food (my 4th reading), Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s Eat to Live, Nina Planck’s Real Food (2nd time), Barbara Reed's Food, Teens & Behavior (a remarkable study of criminal behavior change through healthy eating), and Pollan’s Food Rules, An Eater’s Manual. I also met with Jane Birch, a BYU staff member, and read her new book, Discovering the Word of Wisdom. (We’ll review of Jane’s book in a few weeks, when we visit the theme of eating meat sparingly.)
The point of my Midway retreat was to think long and hard about the 52 Healthy Changes. They’re a work in progress, improving each year as the Food Reformation moves along its forward path. I was surprised by my feelings—a growing affection for those olden ways of times past. It seemed to me that there was more wisdom to be gained here than from all that science has discovered—though I enjoy reading about nutrition science.
It was just in the ‘30s that the BW’s father grew up in this house, farming and eating as people had for eons. The evidence is in the picture. The shed at the right edge is where they kept the family cow, their source of raw pastured dairy, in bad weather. In front of it was a large kitchen garden, protected from bugs by their ranging chickens. Across the street Uncle Coony’s smokehouse preserved hams from their pigs. There was a gristmill across town for fresh-ground wheat. The women of the home baked twice a week—everything was whole wheat and because these were Depression times there was little money for luxuries like sugar. They might have enjoyed a soda pop on a big holiday, like the 4th of July, or maybe Pioneer Day.
When I wrote his memoirs, the BW’s father recalled all this, noting a winter treat—taking a cold apple from the root cellar, dipping it in the hot water tank of their wood-burning stove to warm it, and then removing the peel with a sharp knife in a single piece. In this lovely old home, deep in my books and thoughts, I dreamed of a rebirth for traditional eating—and the rise of a healthy Mormon food culture. Isn’t it true that what can be imagined can be achieved?
Write A Menu
In the Holiday bustle we got out of the habit of writing a weekly menu and started to eat by impulse—more snacks and less prepared lunches and dinners. Per my confession above, I gained 10 lbs. By eating healthy in Midway with the discipline of a food log, I shed a pound a day and came home close to my weight goal. First thing at home we wrote a food menu for the week.
So we’re back to using a menu, which also saves money because less food goes bad in the ‘fridge. Last night I cooked blackened salmon while the BW made a kale salad. I had a slice of sourdough whole-wheat bread and we shared an orange for dessert. It feels good when you make these mid-course diet corrections.
You can read more about menu writing in the 2012 and 2013 posts.
Please comment: Sometimes we get busy and fail to write a menu, but then we realize life is less hectic when we do the planning step of weekly menu preparation. Got a favorite way to write menus? Tell us about it, or share one of your favorite meals. In the next post we’ll share our menu for this week.