Back to the Kitchen

we have such gorgeous wild salmon here in Oregon

It's been a long time since I posted to this blog. I thought now would be a good time to start up again because I had a heart attack in February, just six days shy of my 50th birthday, and I made a lot of changes in the kitchen afterwards. I'm doing much better now. It's the food.

tossed salad with shrimp, homemade Catalina dressing and toasted almonds

Food is the best medicine. It really is. Over the last several years I fell into doing what was easy and extremely unhealthy. I ate mostly fast food and processed food. I would work all day, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to start cooking, so I'd head for McDonald's or Taco Bell. If it was still early enough to cook, I'd often push the other easy button and grab a Papa Murphy's Take and Bake family size Hawaiian pizza, thinking I was being more healthy by adding green peppers and less unhealthy when I only ate half the pie. Note to Self: if I want to stay up all night drinking water, I'll remember my old routine.

homemade guacamole on a baked yellow orn tortilla chip

I ate a lot of red meat, a lot of fried foods, sweets, and foods high in sodium; and I would often live on coffee all day and binge on high-calorie processed foods close to bedtime. Foods marketed as healthy choices are not much better. Processed foods have one, more or all of the three deadly food sins: fat, sodium and sugar. Whole wheat bread, for example, is full of sugar. Canned vegetable soup is full of sodium. Salsa and chips...full of sodium and the chips are deep fried. Today I don't know if any of those foods would taste right. After eating "clean" for over a month, processed foods taste bad.

Oregon blackberries are sublime

Back in 2002, I lost 70 pounds eating very healthy, freshly prepared whole food, much of it raw. At the time I was following Cooking Thin on the Food Network, with Chef Kathleen Daelemans. The 2016 version of that 'diet' is a bit more mindful of salt, sugar and oil, but it's working the same way. After a week, I was so wired from good, clean nutrition I couldn't really drink coffee. It's such a wonderful thing to be in Oregon. We get some of the finest produce I have ever seen.

heavenly mushrooms, oyster, hedgehog and crimini

Since the heart attack, I have lost more than 20 pounds...and I wasn't even trying to lose weight. I was just trying to keep plaque from building up in the stent. The medical part of the story is: I had a partial blockage of the left anterior descending (LAD) artery, the main artery along the front left-hand side of the heart. When that artery becomes fully blocked it causes cardiac arrest and in a majority of cases, death. I narrowly escaped the "widow maker" heart attack. A stent was used to open the artery, and now it is my job to keep the stent clean and functioning properly, hopefully preventing the need for additional heart procedures in the future.

the healthy prep sink

Things were much better when I got home from the hospital, and I got back to cooking the way I did back in 2002. I love eating gourmet health food, and it makes me feel like a king. Taking the time to prepare fresh meals for myself daily is worth it. If I'm not worth it, who is? So, you can expect to see me cooking up a storm, and I will make an effort to post to this long lost blog more often. Thanks for reading!