The poetry of food

In 2004 when I moved to Germany with my husband, I made a concerted effort to eat European food. And not just in restaurants. I shopped in small grocery stores, peering at the lists of ingredients on each item with concentration and to be honest trepidation. My handy dictionary went with me everywhere, and after a few months I found I pretty much only bought fresh food--bio-food in fact. Less translation required. I learned how to make hollandaise sauce from scratch, I bought fresh herbs and planted them on my patio, and generally speaking, we ate very healthfully, as my colleagues and friends ate. Lots of salads, grilled meat and fish, and fresh fruit, hardly any grains, as I had given up most refined carbohydrates several years before. There were moments, of course when all this went out the window. Sometimes we craved "American food" and would buckle and give in to Burger King or McDonald's. The bakeries on every corner in Germany offer all sorts of tempting treats, and then there were the forays out for Thai food, or Indian food, and the vacation trips where all semblance of eating light gave way to eating "well". I was a happy newlywed, slightly chubby, but not wildly obese. I was active and excited to be in Europe and wanted to soak up all the culture I could before we had to move home. It turned out that I was also lonely and stressed out a large part of those four years, and I gained 15 pounds as a result. My husband was sent to Iraq for over a year during that time, and even when he was home, he was busy. Painfully shy, I spent a lot of time at home cooking, and reading about food and nutrition. In 2008 we were sent home.

Moving home to the US, although a welcome change was also stressful, and being jobless and unsure of where we were going to end up didn't help. I pined for Europe. Friendless as I was there, I really didn't have anyone at home to fill in the empty spaces in my life either. So I kept a journal. It was called "FOOD," and while I started it in Germany, I really poured myself into it once I had moved home. Despite the fact that they say people who journal are more successful at losing weight, I gained 20 pounds...

Today, as the year winds down, I am beginning this new online journal with the intention of tracking my menus and keeping myself honed in on my goal:

To eat healthfully, and hopefully to also lose some weight.

I love to write about food, to me, it is a kind of poetry. I cannot think of a more pleasant way to keep a journal. Food permeates my life in ways I do not always recognize, and I hope that these pages will teach me about myself as much as about what I eat.