Culinary obsessions: Avocado
I think a lot about food. I always have. I guess you could even say I’m obsessed. And not just because I love to cook, either. Of all the kinds of food I’m obssessed with, avocados are definitely top tier. Not only do I love the shapes they come in, the earthy hues of green, brown and yellow are favorites on my palette. And then there’s the unique tenderness, aroma and taste of a ripe avocado. Unbeatable! So happy when I discovered that the fruit is now readily available at our local market here in Vietnam.
At one point in my life, I worked professionally as a short-order cook and absolutely loved the process of prepping and composing meals. Though often stressful, there’s so much imagination and inventiveness involved in kitchen work. I’ve always seen making food as yet another way to express myself creatively.
When we decided to switch from being omnivores to seafood eating herbivores about four years ago, I never experienced the transition as being particularly hard. There were/are some foods I miss, though; Nathan’s hot dogs, thick slices of Hungarian salami topped with Dijon on lightly toasted sourdough or rye bread, southern-fried chicken with dripping bbq sauce at the Venice branch of Baby Blues BBQ and the crispy, honey-glazed bacon you can order at any IHOP or Denny’s, to name a few.
In addition to being bad for the planet and farm animals, I figure I have already eaten more than a lion’s share of meats in my lifetime. And since really tasty vegetarian alternatives are on a rise, the challenge has been far from unsurmountable. Also, as someone with a mild case of rheumatic arthritis, what I eat today is unquestionably as important as practicing Yoga/Qigong, getting a good night’s sleep and reducing stress is.
Still, I have cravings…
I used to think our body knew what was good for us to a greater extent than our minds did – and definitely better than anything our tastebuds tried to trick us into believing we needed.
So with that in mind, I concluded that most cravings originated from our body covertly brainwashing us into thinking it demanded a specific type of food to help produce something really important, like, you know, a protein or vitamin crucial to improving our health or making necessary repairs. That theory was probably more relevant when my younger self’s metabolism was firing on all cylinders.
Nowadays, I find that the older I get, the more I get the jones for things that aren’t at all conducive to the lifestyle I am trying hard to live by – especially considering my aforementioned condition. In fact, the stuff I desire to indulge in today is likely the diametrical opposite of what my body needs; pizza, pasta, and other processed foods – none of which contain much nutrition and probably take more energy to break down and flush out than they leave behind. But if someone placed a family-sized pizza in front of me right now, I’d dig in right away and probably not stop until the last piece of crust was sent down my throat.
Now that we’ve left Sweden and spent just over a full week in Asia, I can feel how the swelling around my waistline is slowly deflating. Here in Vietnam, there are few temptations to lure my weak character. Charlotte found a nearby deli the other day and that might be a go-to place when the surge for something deliciously detrimental becomes uncontrollable. But for now, we’re only eating healthy, local food with a big fruit plate in the mornings and then a light lunch, like avocado or some more fruit, after which we have an early veggie and tofu dinner with rice or noodles.
I’d say there’s about a 12-hour timespan between dinner and breakfast where we don’t eat anything – giving our bodies sufficient time to absorb whatever we’ve eaten last and above all, give our digestive system time to rest.
It seems logical that if we constantly stuff our faces and bellies with hard-to-digest food during the hours we’re awake, our digestive system and whole being will suffer from all the overtime.
Consequentially, if everything we eat is instead plant-based, i.e. easily digested and relatively simple to exploit nourishment from, our bodies will thank us by converting it into fuel and other stuff it needs to countermeasure bacterial infections, inflammations and an array of other bad shit that comes our way.