what I wrote to a friend who scoffed at my cooking

Hi D,

Consider this. My diet = my cooking, so I use the terms interchangeably. I know my cooking is A-rated because my bloodwork was perfect, too, just like yours. The culinary community wants people to think that there's only one right way to do things and that their cooking is "best" for everybody just because it's the most popular in restaurants. But in fact, if one's diet is right for him, it doesn't matter how popular it would be in a restaurant. It's the best cooking he can do.

Consider what I'm trying to do with things like dry-roasted veggies, plain steamed legumes, coarse chopped raw root, al-dente spaghetti, fibrous, un-sweet bakes, mild-tasting ice cream without too much chocolate and stuff, oatmeal that's just cooked for 30 seconds and not at all soft -- I'm trying to get the nutrition my body needs and avoid the stuff it doesn't need. For example, al dente spaghetti the way I fix it doesn't need to be strained because the water boils off. This helps the sphaghetti retain valuable water-soluble nutrients such as some vitamins and all minerals. To reiterate: straining the spaghetti is bad (for me.)

If a dish is good for me, I quickly learn to love the taste. Function over form. I toss berries, fish, chunky cheese and big chunks of raw garlic in a salad, and I seldom do any dressing. When I do dressing it's very little -- a spoonful versus those big tubs they serve in restaurants. I learn to love the taste because I get a good blend of aminos without the annoying overdose of fat...

That's right. There's nothing wrong with a little fat, but I have my preferred foods for fat (cheese, nuts...) and I can pretty much tell when I've had too much. My face is broken out and I haven't been hungry at all once since early Wednesday morning. I'm pretty sure I've had too much of the good thing that is dietary fat. So I can't eat "their" way for days on end.

Some dishes I make have mass appeal (turkey burgers, baked salmon w/ asparagus...) but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to cook the best I can, which means making the best diet for me, not "them." And I think I have had it together for eons in that department. Just ask my nurse practitioner.

--D.