Simple Food

Meat. Vegetables. Rice.

That's all we're eating here for the next five days. We've been snacking on all sorts of processed food lately, and I can tell that my kids' bodies are overloaded with sugar and chemicals. Some members of my household have food sensitivities and it's time to give them a break.



I blew an afternoon going through cookbooks trying to make a menu plan for our restricted diet before I finally gave up and just made up meals on my own. Very few cookbooks feature meals based on such sparse ingredients. Tonight's dinner was baked chicken with herbs and potatoes. Simple, elegant and filling. We had butter on the potatoes, but I used no flour to thicken the broth; this will be a wheat-free week.

Three hours later, my body wants to know where's dessert? I've had the strangest craving for ice cream tonight; strange because I rarely eat ice cream, and really - it's way too early to be craving anything. I just started this process.

There's another odd thing about this diet; even though I end up eating way more meat than usual - when there are no condiments, meat becomes the condiment - I generally lose a pound or two within a few days. I don't think we realize how many calories are ladled into every slice of cheese, every bagel or muffin, every teaspoon of prepared salad dressing or every dollop of peanut sauce (my personal favorite).

Last time I did this I stopped having nightmares and began to wake up early every morning - completely refreshed. Of course that was offset by severe crankiness around four in the afternoon. I wonder what will happen this time.

This is the way our ancestors must have eaten in the days before they settled down to farm. I have to imagine that labor and fresh air probably gave their food a flavor mine doesn't seem to have. Sitting around a campfire would have lent the whole affair a certain ambiance.

Maybe I'll try that tomorrow night. We'll stand around a blaze in the snow watching out for the neighborhood moose. Not so different from our ancestors, eh?