It’s no exaggeration to say that I learned to eat by reading cookbooks.
When, at age 27, my doctor told me I weighed too much and that my blood pressure was so high she was going to have to put me on medication, I figured, well, I guess it’s finally time to change my habits.
I tried Weight Watchers for about five minutes. Regardless of the calorie counting, I sensed that I was undernourished and nutrient deficient. In some dimly lit cavern in the back of my mind, I recalled having read an interview with actress Naomie Harris in which she talked about how Woody Harrelson introduced her to raw foods while they were filming the movie After the Sunset together. With this shadowy concept of raw foods in mind, I reasoned that I couldn’t possibly go wrong if I just started eating a ton of fruits and vegetables. So, my conversion to vegetarianism, and eventually to a raw vegan diet, began.
The first order of business was buying a cookbook. I searched Amazon and was happy to come across Jenny Cornbleet’s Raw Food Made Easy: For 1 or 2 People. The name was its obvious selling point. I was living with a roommate at the time, and we generally went our own separate ways food-wise, so the idea of making dishes in individual servings was appealing to me. Especially since I didn’t know what I was getting into with this dietary shift. But, since I was never much of a cook prior to that, there were no bad habits for me to unlearn or recipes to miss or ingredients to regret not being able to use. I was as blank a slate, culinarily, as it was possible to be.
Thinking back on it, I actually have no idea what I ate for those first four years I was living in Chicago! I think probably a lot of pasta and chicken breasts made on a George Foreman grill.
I eased my way into the raw food thing gently, by learning how to make desserts first—avocado-based chocolate puddings, apple crumbles, and such. Then, I added in raw vegan versions of familiar, identifiable entrees like spaghetti with tomato sauce (made with zucchini spiralized into noodle shape) and various nut-based pates. The other wonderful thing about Cornbleet’s cookbook was that it didn’t call for any exotic ingredients that I would have been afraid to try (with my then-limited palate) or that would have been hard to find outside Whole Foods (I don’t think I probably had ever stepped inside a Whole Foods prior to this new dietary era).
Once I felt a certain level of proficiency using Cornbleet’s cookbook, I graduated to Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo. The recipes were slightly more complex, but the book was longer and had more to choose from and so I felt comfortable skipping over anything that was daunting. I gained confidence in the kitchen, and though I tried to never be an obnoxious proselytizer, I was always pleased to be able to share the food that I’d made with people and hear them say they genuinely enjoyed it.
Over the next few years, I did manage to get healthy enough that my doctor took me off my high blood pressure medication. This was a triumph in itself, and I’ll always be proud of that, but secretly, of course, I was dismayed that that accomplishment didn’t magically result in my suddenly having a brand new body. My skin cleared up and my eyes were blazing white and I did lose a pretty significant amount of weight, but it was never enough. I was never transformed. I was never not me.
Not to mention, the vigilance to maintain the raw food way of life ultimately became too much of a time investment for me to sustain it long term, especially once I started getting busy in other areas of my life that left me with less time for experimenting in the kitchen. So, over the next several years, I stopped identifying myself as a raw foodist. I continued to drink green smoothies pretty much every day (thank you, Victoria Boutenko!) and remained vegetarian (for the most part), but my raw food recipe books languished on my shelf for longer than I’d like to admit.
But these days, I have a new cookbook love: jae steele’s Get It Ripe. My boyfriend remembered that it had a great recipe for peanut butter cookies, so we purchased a copy about a year ago just for that. Luckily, it’s been the source of a handful of terrific new recipes that we now make and eat regularly: Sesame Kale Soba, Coconut Cauliflower Chana, and Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins.
I will never be the kind of person who can just throw a dish together based on feeling. I don’t trust myself enough to improvise at that level. But, it’s gratifying to have a shelf full of cookbooks that I can rely on to fill in the blanks if the cupboard is less than well stocked and I need to make breakfast in a pinch. Knowing where to look for the answers, in this case, is enough.
Queen of Peaches 