Food Is Medicine

Food is medicine -- or should be.

Actually food is medicine and should be viewed that way. I think that will be the title of my next book: FOOD IS MEDICINE. Maybe then food will be treated as it should have always been treated, as a commodity that has the power to kill or cure.

Evidently MOW considers chicken nuggets part of the vegetarian meal. They also think that corn is acceptable. It's not. Read up on zein and its links to health problems and digestion. Not at all is corn acceptable.

I guess maybe tomorrow when I call before 8:30 AM, I will get to talk to someone -- anyone -- who has the power to get me a vegetarian meal tray. So far, MOW has failed, even after me calling and talking to Bonetta (?). So much for her expertise and assurances. The drivers told me today that they were promised for a HOT LINE.

"It's really hot."

Not I'd say from his tone and manner. A lot cooler than their food trays, which were quite warm to touch.

So much for Meals On Wheels. There are meals and they do deliver, but MOW can't tell the difference between vegetarian and regular with the emphasis on lots of the WRONG foods. No wonder this nation is faced with an obesity crisis in the young and emaciated in the elderly.

I'm not THAT old, but I hope the homeless are treated better than I am living here in a senior residential community.

I'm not sure if fasting isn't the right route for me. I can fast and I can face a 30-day fast if I must -- and I must if this is the caliber of MOW.

No matter how many times I call, the staff has not met my needs. Gravy dumped on a big pile of potatoes dotted with a few flecks of what I presume is cheddar cheese. Maybe I'm being too cantankerous and uppity.

No. I haven't demanded they serve me with fat containing food with fresh veggies. All I have done is opted for a vegetarian meal, which today contained veggies AND MEAT coated in wheat. Not vegetarian at all, although it includes veggies (corn and potatoes). So much for Bonetta's personal touch. I'd rather she not touch anything, especially my VEGETARIAN meals.

Evidently Bonetta doesn't understand English. I was speaking English, so maybe English is her second language. Maybe she's from Africa. Somalia? We have plenty of Somali refugees here in Ohio, and in Franklin County where MOW is based.

I think the Kellogg brothers communicated more efficiently than MOW's Bonetta does. At least the Kellogg's advocated enemas three times a day. Good thing I don't -- and haven't -- required enemas three times a day. For all I know, Bonetta would put the tube for the rectum (entrance to the bowels) in my mouth, going the long way down to the colon by way of the digestive tract.

I'm of the belief that all schools should have experience with growing things, like their own food in a garden on the premises. Maybe then the lunch ladies wouldn't fall so far down on the job. Kids would get their hands dirty in the actual dirt and know what their food looks like before they have a tray slapped down in front of them with mashed potatoes drowned in chicken gravy and dotted sparsely with cheddar cheese before they peel and eat their GMO banana.

I remember when our carport in Panama often had a stalk full of ripening bananas hanging. I didn't know about GMOs and such, but I knew bananas grew on trees -- in fact the trees that could be seen in the jungle surrounding our four-plex home built over the carport.

Those were the days. We climbed guava trees and picked guavas (green and yellow - very ripe). We also climbed the coconut palms that also climbed high over the jungle, using a machete to cut down coconuts (ripe and very immature, so immature the coconut meat was a slurry of milk coconut meat that hadn't hardened and exuded the coconut milk). We ate immature coconuts with a spoon, scooping out the fresh, milky coconut meat that had not yet expressed the milk or hardened into coconut meat. The milk was fresher when the coconuts had matured more. When immature the coconut 'meat' contained fat and 'milk' and could be scooped up with a spoon. I loved those kinds of coconuts. They were delicious then.

I even prefer organic fresh coconut flour and oil. It doesn't taste at all fruity or coconutty. I prefer to cook with it too. No coconutty taste then either . . . unless their palates are more sensitive than mine.

Rather like eating a piece of "Skinny Me" chocolate mixed with strawberry. It doesn't smell like strawberries, so obviously does not have the strawberry scent mixed in. It's just made with real strawberries just like I used to pick when I went to farmer's field and picked my own berries.

I also learned how to make strawberry jam, which I donated to the unmarried bachelors living in the VOQ. I had a lot of visitors in those days. They took my homemade strawberry preserves and my Mason jelly jars and never returned either the strawberries or the jars. At least I had fed the bachelors living on base. I'll bet they never complained about my cooking (or jam making) or my intrusions (visitations) either. I didn't use too much sugar and let the fresh strawberries shine in the homemade preserves.

Maybe they would have complained when I made my first venison stew. I never stuck around to hear their comments, but I was often home when they visited and asked if I had any more of my strawberry preserves. That is the only time they returned the Mason jars -- to have them filled again.

I never begrudged them my cooking especially since my husband would go out for dinner when I was cooking. He often bought shrimp and chips instead of eating my venison stew or slathering homemade bread with my homemade strawberry jam. Go figure.

I know much more know and I live in the midst of a farming community. I can take the transport to the fields, pick my own strawberries (if I can find where they grow), and make preserves . . . if someone will give me some jelly jars. Any offers?

That is all. Disperse.