There are certain foods that made me far more ill, physically sore, mentally foggy, emotionally wrought out, and wondering why the heck I’d eaten something in the first place.  Yet, what I’ve eaten – cumulatively – has made my life exactly what it is today. Food has given me health, taken my health away, given me vitamins, calories, trans fats (which were often delicious), and re-mineralized my body on a daily basis.

What I’ve eaten has allowed me to share utterly memorable experiences with loved ones, family and my friends.  It’s made me many new friends from all over the world.  Food and sharing it with others has made me incredibly happy. Great photo ops have been captured at the table or with food as the main theme.  But most of the ‘photographic’ memories have been eternally etched on my brain and affixed to my soul, as have the smells, tastes, conversations, laughs, practical jokes and experiences that parallel the river of sensations and the glorious tastes and smells that I have been privileged to have come my way.

I’ve spent hours upon delicious countless hours of conversations, exchanged viewpoints, hilarious moments and touching odes that would not have been the same without the food that accompanied them.  I have built entire vacations, picnics, side trips and life choices around knowing when, where and with who I was going eat my meals with.

Food has taken me to  parts of the world that I will now remember with great fondness.  Food has been my salvation, task master and my karmic experience.  The foods Ive eaten have made me understand – often the hard way – that we truly ARE what we eat.

I have been as enthralled with the most elaborate, expensive, exquisite meals that have been prepared for me, as I have been with my own efforts, or even the simplest of fruits or vegetables eaten in their natural state.  Three times every day, if not more often, food has treated me to one of the best and most amazingly transformative, restorative and cool experiences that anyone can have.

Each day, I get to add to the rich diversity, number and types of foods I’ve already eaten, the ideas they’ve birthed, and the skills I’ve learned from having to prepare them.  But the best thing is that I have learned that there are profound, deeply health-promoting results that have come from the act of preparing, cooking and eating food.  I get to eat a meal or consume something that can make my life better.  Or, and I’ve found this out the hard way, my body does not always digest, process, appreciate or stay healthy as I wish it would.  Not everything I would like to eat is as healthy for me as my body needs it to be.

And then I’ve also been blessed to be able to cook, create new dishes from scratch, honor great family traditions and recipes, and enjoy the fruits of my culinary labors.  I have cut, chopped, poured, sliced, scraped, whipped and prep’ed food for hours many decades.  I have been delighted, exhausted, horrified, freaked out, thankful, disgusted, but mostly very satisfied and happy with what has gone into and come out of my kitchen.  All of the rituals, traditions, good luck, great timing, missteps, and boo boo’s have made me the cook who I am today.

I wish had it in me to be a chef.  But work, life, family obligations and a whole raft of other things have kept me from taking the formal part of a culinary education.  But what I lack in formal education, I make up for in enthusiasm, appreciation for the art, and outright determination to know what will make something taste incredible and look and smell as beautiful as it possibly can. The biggest bonus is that now I also know how to prepare, choose, dine on, and understand which foods will actually be healing and health-promoting.

Never being a surface kinda gal, I also had to find out what would make one food more nutritious, healthy and beneficial to me and my body than another.  Why would I feel energized and great after one meal, and that I needed either a nap or a place to crawl up into a ball of searing pain after another.  That’s why FoodsforYourLife.com was born.  I had taken years and years of notes, am very close to launching EnergyforYourLife.com and my Energy Series of books, and I thought it was time to for one of my favorite hobbies to mesh with one of my other favorite things, and that I now get to share whenever my e-pen hits the screen.

I can now cook myself just about anything that my heart and body needs.  But I’m not satisfied with that status quo. I still have so many things to learn about food, cooking techniques, favors to try and ingredients to experiment with.  I’m in that wonderful place in life where I have so much experience to draw on and yet so many things to look forward to.  What a great thing to happen to a foodie who happens to need food to also keep her healthy daily.

If I had to do it over again, I don’t think I’d change a single meal, snack, repast, buffet or fine dining experience.  Well, I think I would want to change the time I bit on something in an Indian-food restaurant and then cracked my molar.  And I am also not too nuts about the time I was relegated to small package of Pringles as the only thing I could eat on a five-hour Via First Class rail trip on a day where I did not have time to stop for another meal.  But other than that, I like food, and gratefully, now that I know what to eat, it seems to like me.

I’ve finally found blogging.  Thanks for finding me and welcome to Foods for Your Life.  I hope we’ll get to share some time, energy and hopefully some great ideas about what makes food as tasty as it is healthy for us all.

Best,

Julia