.: nutrition.cooking

If it is not already, cooking will become integral with your survival of cancer. More or less, eating out in restaurants is a thing of the past. There is so much in hidden preservatives and sugars that you just cannot avoid, that make it a nearly impossible task. Never is a long, long time, but almost never is what you are faced with. It unfortunately becomes a very slippery slope and continued foraging at restaurants and especially fast food places will only increase the problems you already face with cancer.

I really hate it when I find something that goes counter to what I have done for years and it just plain makes sense, so I have to alter what I am doing. This is especially true when it comes to food. If ever there was a commensurate food junkie, I am it. I have managed fast food restaurants, taught classes in gourmet cooking, and won contests with really decadent French pastries. So the only logical thing to do is come up with alternatives that are out of the ordinary, fun to make and enjoyable to eat.

I won't waste much space here on esoteric discourse. The name says it all. Each recipe presented here is something we have tried and most probably modified either to match my eating requirements or simply for taste. To me eating is more than just something to keep me alive. I have always had a passionate love affair with good food and having this minor problem of terminal cancer simply refocused the issue. If I can eat enjoyable food, why in the world should I give up favorites that can be modified to be beneficial to my body? As I couldn't think of any reason to the contrary, I started working on what I love to do and that is cook and eat. Remember however, that the best food values generally come from raw vegetables. Any time you cook food in any matter that raises it above 140° Fahrenheit, you begin to destroy vital nutrients. So temper the cooking with lots of juicing and lots of raw eating. Your taste buds will adapt and ultimately your body will thank you. Bon Appetité!

When making food, anyone can do that. When making a dining experience, color, freshness, appearance, and presentation make a meal worth remembering and repeating. That is the difference between eating to live and living to eat. It is not the quantity of what you consume, it is the quality and how it is presented. This psychologically goes a long way to helping you overcome the radical changes. Pleasing to the eye makes what you eat mentally taste better. Proven fact. The other thing that goes hand in hand with the recipes I am working on is utilizing as much highly beneficial nutrient foods for building up my body as I can. Not everything qualifies as highly beneficial. But by in large, the goal is to not just eat, but have the nutrition count for good as well.

One more thought about what is presented here. There of course rages the great controversy about whether a vegetarian diet is the only way to go. You will find yourself heading that direction, but it is not an absolute. Until your cancer is in remission, you will derive more beneficial nutrients from juicing your salads/greens than you will from eating them whole as a regular salad. Will I ever stop juicing now that I have started? No. Will I ever go back to much more vegetables and fruits than protein? No. Those are my choices. Will I ever go back to copious quantities of meat in my diet. No. That is my choice. Will I ever cut meat completely out of my diet. Probably not, but I cannot say that for sure at this point. You have to do what works for you. If you will not follow the plan that gets you healthy again, then why bother in the first place? You will have to alter what you are doing to deal with your cancer because whatever you were doing prior to this point obviously was not the right thing to do.

Most of the things here have one form of meat or another in them, but not all. Meat becomes a condiment, a flavoring. Proteins are available from plant sources, but frankly I like the taste of meat and if you balance what you eat, there is no reason to exclude meat if you choose not to. There are rules and limitations that you should impose upon yourself, but I am not the rule police and you are only accountable for those things to yourself. The other consideration that goes with this is how things are cooked for those around you. If they choose to follow your diet restrictions, that makes life much, much simpler for all concerned. Yet if they have to have the ice cream and doughnuts and cookies and cakes that you should no longer have, that is something you must deal with. I see no reason to deprive my family and friends from eating as they choose to as long as I can have what is right for me. The recipes here are something that everyone can eat and not feel deprived. They are beneficial, or at least sustaining for you and they are not just boring, strange concoctions that "sick people" eat. These are things we have enjoyed that are now in a much healthier state that when I first started cooking them. These are "treats". The majority of my nutrients come from juiced vegetables and very selectively chosen items that are most beneficial to my body.

For now, there will be an absolute randomness to recipes until I get enough of them posted to group them in some form of logical order. So just read, try, and I hope you will enjoy what is here. They will come slowly, but surely over time. None of these happened correctly the first time made. To read the recipe with comments, click on the recipe name. Otherwise, right-click > Save As (Internet Explorer), right-click > Save File As (Netscape), or right-click > Save Link As (Firefox) on the Acrobat or Word icon to download the recipe file in that format.

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On to the recipes!