DownwindThe diet
Farmers are great at producing food. Meat, eggs, dairy, grains, fish, vegetables, fruit. That seems to cover all the options.
The rest of it is on “us” … How we prepare food, cook food, process food, enhance food, consume food.
I have made it through nearly 6 decades by eating what I want to eat. How food has been prepared, cooked, processed, enhanced and consumed has been less important to me than taste.
By writing this column faithfully each month, I have made it pretty clear to the world over the years that I am a food fan. Especially tasty food.
Describe “tasty” food? Sure. No problem although I have to make up some words. Most any food is rated “tasty” on my sliding tasty Bob food scale if it falls into the food groups of Breaded, Gravy’ed, Fri’ed, Chops’ed, Dairy’ed, Bacon-infus’ed or Pi’ed. I call it the Mid-west diet.
Those food groups closely follow my lifetime diet and fall into the MyPlatter USDA (United States Department of Awesome) recommended servings for a happy Farm Bureau manager. I do have a MyPlatter extra-wide poster with the siderails image which describes the daily allowance portion sizes of each food group if anyone needs one. MyPlatter is a science-based, comfort food graphic.
So…Life was going great. Smooth. Normal. And then I had my annual physical (annual means every few years). The results…
- Weight - good
- Height - fine (but shrinking)
- Blood pressure - within tolerance.
- Pulse - have one.
- Cholesterol and LDL – a bit elevated.
Wait what - elevated?
Yes - the other shoe dropped. To take care of the elevated cholesterol, the doctor said, “ I recommend some adjustments in the food plan. Need to get more vegetables into the diet, along with whole grains, fruits, nuts, seeds, and legume (beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, black eyed peas, green beans). Fish. The Mediterranean Diet is best.”
He meant “my” food plan. Talking about “me”.
I looked up the Mediterranean Diet. Surely there is something tasty on the list.
No gravy? No fried goodness? No breaded pork tenderloin the size of my head? No melted cheese drizzle? No bacon infusion? No steak? No melty ice cream on top of a cherry pie? No butter on top of a steaming homemade lard biscuit?
As a hardcore carnivore, the rule has always been “no meat, no meal”.
Sure - I like to fish and even eat a fish every few years. An almost tasty fish.
Realization struck. A whole new frontier. The starving my body and my taste buds. My arteries going into shock. Epi-pen stat.
After a few days of wallowing in my self-pity, my wife and I came up with a compromise… Mediterranean Diet during the week and Mid-West free-for-all diet on the weekends.
During the week, I will continue to use my bacon-infused toothpicks to remove the celery cords from teeth. (Must remember not to eat the toothpicks)
As we emerge from the Thanksgiving feast and enter into the holiday driven food gorging season, my Christmas list is unrecognizable… Carrots, hummus, kale and unsalted peanuts. Sure…all produced by farmers (I think to myself, enthusiastically).