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food

A Year of Magical Eating

Magical Eating

April 30, 2018
beans at the market

 

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” ~ Michael Pollan

Just about a year ago, I wrote a post about eating magically. Magic was and is at the heart of everything I do – why on earth wasn’t I also using that as a basis for how I was eating? Despite eating pretty well, I was experiencing a then 9-month long case of hives, and was at the end of my itchy rope. So I took my own advice, spending the past year paying very close attention to the Magic of what I ate and drank.

When I talk about eating Magically it sounds like I spend my days whipping up stardust and moonbeam smoothies while telling you the virtues of living my high-raw and therefore high-vibe life.

I don’t and I won’t do that. (And I’m not raw vegan. In fact, I am unclassifiable.)

I do admit that in the past I have been tempted by the wonder. I have seen articles about the glorious effects of drinking collagen and then gone to Amazon to see how much those little pots of goodness (it turns out they are made of whizzed up cows) were and then laughed at myself and wondered about the state of the world. I have stood in a bookstore and fondled the pages of a cookbook full of recipes for powders and sauces that all appear to have mystical powers, if you have the time and the life energy and the money to spend on all of that.

But when I stop myself and let myself breathe for a few moments (my rule: step away and think about it if it promises a miracle), I can see that not only does the Emperor have no clothes on, but that he/she is ageing and worried about her body just like I am.

For more than 30 years of my life, I struggled with food. I was home from school with ‘tummy aches’ a lot, and as I got older I felt just a little bit sick a lot of the time. I went to the doctor so often with lots of things. Luckily I lived in a country where I could do that. When, totally frustrated, I finally went to another doctor (after a brutal internal scope to check for ulcers) and said, “something’s still not right!”, and he said, “we’ll do a blood test to just rule out Celiac Disease,” my life changed.

Within months of not eating gluten, as my gut healed, I began to be able to eat fruit again. Despite years – years – of scarfing down vitamins, it was when I began to eat differently that I began to feel better.

But it was shopping for food that really shifted things.

When you are allergic to gluten, you have to read every single food label. Every one. And when you start to read what is going into your body, you begin to wonder what the heck all of that tetrahydrowhatisthatizine is doing in your food.

So slowly we began making small changes. When we could afford it, we’d choose organic fruits and vegetables. When something had too many ingredients to pronounce, we put it back on the shelf. We chose to make a few more things from scratch. We stopped eating things with ingredients that we knew were poison (MSG and high-fructose corn syrup were the first to go), and began to choose differently whenever we could.

None of this was complicated or expensive or unusual. It was simply a matter of choosing things that either were – or had the closest passing resemblance to – real food.

And with each choice, the next one seemed a little bit easier. We weren’t perfect, in fact as big food lovers we had lots of ridiculous conversations in the condiments aisle, and lots of nights of just buying whatever we wanted. But as the years went by, we began having less of that and more conscious choices.

And that was when we began to talk about changing our lives.

I don’t think that it was a coincidence that when we were eating more real food and less fake food we began to feel better.  I don’t think that it is a coincidence that as we healed our bodies, our thoughts went to wanting more. The more actual food we ate, the more we wanted to do more, see more, and create more.

Then I added Magic to the mix. And you know, the overwhelming feeling I had right from the beginning was relief and expansion.

Eating Magically is not about potions or powders or fads or capital W ‘wellness’. In my opinion that is simply another way to give our power and our connection to our Source away. It’s not about what to eat or what not to eat. It’s about coming at eating from an entirely new perspective.

Remember that in my definition, Magic is: the moments of connection between me and the Mystery/ Source/ the Divine. So then Eating Magically is about seeing the Divine, allowing the Wonder, and opening to the Universe in every bite. It’s about allowing food to remind us of who we are – instead of all of the the ways that we are not.

We were built to eat. We were built to need food. Isn’t it possible that the infinite wisdom that created us also created the nourishment we need in the forms we need it? And what if magical food does not have to be only for the people who can afford little pots of it, because all food is magical?

What if the food we eat is the foundation for every other interaction we have with the world?

What then?

with so much love,

meghan

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Year of Magical Eating

A Year of Magical Eating

June 5, 2017
tinamastes feria market meghan genge

 

I should have felt like a million bucks. The eating program that I have been so faithfully following told me that I would begin to feel ‘amazing.’ And a week or two ago, I did.

But I have spent the last week in bed with one unrelated symptom after another, until, kidneys aching and mind confused, I sent my husband out for drugs.

Once they kicked in and my thoughts started to make sense again, I realised that I needed to take my own advice: I needed to plug in and tune in and figure out what the heck was going on.

I needed to start thinking magically.

So I asked for help, a sign, an idea, the answers – and what I got was an intervention.

Before I tell you about that, I need to give you some backstory: I have had a case of hives off and on – mostly on – for over a year now. Most nights I get hot and annoyed and up come some hives. Despite already being off gluten (I have Celiac Disease), and eating really well, we couldn’t figure out if it was food related, so I decided to do an elimination diet. In the next 24 hours, three people I knew on FB talked about a popular elimination diet, so I thought I would give it a try. Luckily, as he is the chef in the family, my darling husband said he would do it with me.

I lost weight, I stopped bloating, I felt clearer, stronger, and way more connected. I still had hives and eczema, but everything else was feeling good. The only issue for me was that I was eating bucketloads (not really) of chicken. And a) the chicken here is definitely not organic and b) I had been almost vegetarian before this and ethically I really would like to be, so this was a tricky one.

So back to my intervention:

As I was showering and asking for this help, my husband was meditating in the next room. When I came out he said, “I can’t explain it, but I just had a very clear thought that you need to stop eating that chicken for awhile.” It felt really true for me, so I agreed. (Even if you take away the ethics of how they are raised, the sheer level of junk that is pumped into those poor birds cannot be a good (sometimes twice daily on that program) choice for me as I try to figure out my own health.)

Then I opened my Kindle app to find the book Soul Shifts open to this quote that I used in my one-day retreat: “…realise that you are eating consciousness in a fruit costume.”

Read that again: …you are eating consciousness in a fruit costume. That sentence gives me goosebumps and asks me to open in ways that I can’t even imagine. If I still had a vision board, it would be right in the middle of it.

Then I thought about Martha Beck saying, “The way we do anything is the way we do everything.”

The way we do anything is the way we do everything.

I realised that despite me believing that we are all divine and that we are all connected, despite talking about how everything – even food –  is magic, and despite me being called to see the light and the soul in everything, I had given my power away.

Food – and more specifically, what I eat – is still a place where I ignore the magic, I ignore the truth, I let myself be led by fads and cravings and doctors and Instagram posts.

Food is the part of my life that speaks to me the loudest when I am not in alignment with my best self, so of course it is the part that is easiest to ignore. 

And that is not what I want.

I choose to believe in Magic. I choose to see what happens when I allow everything to be Magical. And I choose to open to what I eat being consciousness in a fruit costume.

So for a year – because I need a deadline – I am going to try an experiment: I am going to treat food as the magical teacher that it is. I’m going to let myself trust it, and learn about my relationship to it. I’m going to listen to it, understand it, play with it, talk to it, and maybe even go all quantum physics on it. And I’m not going to BE anything – no pescatarian/ vegetarian/ vegan/ carnivore/ fruitarian/ only-eating-things-that-fell-off-a-tree-arian for me. I’m opening to understand – really understand – the Magic. And we’ll see where that goes.

Food is magic at its purest. So I know it is going to be my greatest teacher.

xo

 

 

 

food, Plenty

The Missing Ingredient

November 19, 2012

“I just couldn’t get away from the siren call of the kitchen that is an inherent part of me. The kitchen of which I speak is both literal and metaphoric. It’s the sum of what I’ve learnt so far, and am still learning.” – Sophie Dahl, Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights.

DSC00377

I have a confession to make: I hate cooking. I hate it. It literally makes me itch. Now, like a lot of things in my life, if I was okay with hating cooking, then all would be well, but I don’t want to hate cooking.

The weird thing is that I love the idea of cooking. New cookbooks make me drool. I pre-ordered Sophie Dahl’s new cookbook months ago and lovingly caress the covers of Risotto with Nettles and Plenty every time I am in a bookstore. I open the pages of Heidi’s books and something in my soul feels better – just owning them nourishes me – but I have yet to cook anything from them.

In my dreams I stand rosy cheeked and happy beside a stove while cooking something delectable. Stirring fresh basil into my sauce, I create magic just like Vianne in Chocolat. In reality, my back starts to ache and my teeth grind against one another in barely contained tension. It’s so bad that my husband (who cooks nearly all of our meals) completely avoids the kitchen when I am making dinner.

What is it – the missing ingredient that links desire and reality?

I know that I love beautiful things and that good food can be exquisitely beautiful. I love the whimsy and the theatricality of ingredients and their presentation. I love the alchemy that is involved in something going on its journey from seed to plate. I can be the most rapt and appreciative dinner guest – but it loses all magic when I am the one having to do the work.

So there is the challenge: learn how to find the exquisite in the preparation instead of just the outcome. See the beauty that lies in the work. Delight in the journey.

Or just get someone else to cook for me.

I am completely open to invitations.

xo