Begin Reading Table of Contents Newsletters Copyright Page In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. I dedicate this book to the amazing men and women who have taught me that food is medicine, that consciousness is everything, that a clean body makes a happy existence, and that how you relate to the issue is the issue!—Dr. Habib Sadeghi, Dr. Alejandro Junger, Michio Kushi, John Kenyon, Janet Reibstein, Vicky Vlachonis, and Lee and Darleen Gross. • • • For Chris, Apple, and Moses. For Whistler. —Gwyneth Foreword By Dr. Habib Sadeghi Osteopathic Physician Be Hive of Healing Center for Integrative Medicine Los Angeles, California Food is many things. It’s necessary, nurturing, and healing. With few exceptions, food has been misrepresented and sensationalized more than almost any other subject in the media. It seems as though we can’t turn on the evening news without seeing a story about a particular food item that was once deemed “bad” for us by an “expert” that’s now being praised as healthy. People are passionate about food. We should be. What’s more important than the quality of food that gives us life, health, and strength? Instead of using that passion to enjoy food, we do what we do with most things in life. We complicate it. We overthink it. We worry about whether or not a certain food is good for us, or whether or not it causes some health problem. We’ve intellectualized food when it’s not a mental exercise. It’s a sensorial experience. Food comes from the earth. So do we. The tastes, textures, smells, and colors of food are reminders of our visceral connection to the essential life energy of the earth. Food also keeps us aware that we’re partners in a process that’s much larger than ourselves. Food gives us its life force. In return, we act as good stewards of the earth to ensure this cycle of life continues in a healthy, vital way. We sustain and nurture each other. Food is simple. Food is spiritual. To understand this, all we need to do is look at the process through which we obtain food’s energy: digestion. Di means “two” and gestion (as in gestation) refers to the action of carrying or bearing. Food carries two purposes for us. It has two functions. Everyone understands how food builds and feeds our bodies. When we move away from our instinct and intellectualize food with too much science, we forget that it was created to feed our soul, as well. It builds our bodies through sustenance and nurtures our souls through sensation. Food is sacred. Its dual purpose was understood by many ancient cultures, which is why food was an integral part of their spiritual ceremonies. The harvest season was celebrated and fertility rituals often included different foods. For thousands of years, Ayurveda, the ancient system of Hindu medicine, has used the energetics of different foods to engage the mind/body connection and facilitate healing. Food isn’t an inanimate object. It’s part of us. The most intimate way we become one with the earth is by taking what it offers us into our bodies as food. It’s a sacred union that’s connected to both our divinity as spiritual beings and our human experience through health and vitality. Food that has fantastic texture, depth of flavor, and an enticing aroma excites us and makes us happy. It thrills us, lights us up, and reminds us what it feels like to enjoy something from the soul level. The experience is even richer when we share food we love with friends and family. It brings us together and strengthens the spiritual connections we have with each other. We feed our bodies through food, but we feed our souls through what makes us happy, through pleasure. Because food brings us so much pleasure, it’s not just essential for a healthy body, but a healthy spirit, too. A lot of people think great flavor is an afterthought when it comes to “healthy” food, but if we are to be fully nourished by food, it needs to taste wonderful. Food must be a pleasure-filled, spiritual experience. God gave us taste buds for a reason! Animals regularly fed a diet that’s full of nutrition but void of any flavor will eventually die from malnutrition.* It’s clear that there is a physiological link between taste and health. If we don’t enjoy the food we’re eating, regardless of whether it’s broccoli or brownies, we’re absorbing fewer of its nutrients. In order to be fully nourished by our food, we must take pleasure in it. It seems more than coincidence that my dear friend Gwyneth celebrates her fortieth birthday with the release of this beautiful cookbook. The number forty is highly significant across all traditional faiths and esoteric philosophies. It symbolizes change—coming through a struggle and emerging on the other side more enlightened because of the experience. It’s a passage into spiritual adulthood. Traditionally, anyone under the age of forty was prohibited from studying the Jewish mystic philosophy of Kabbalah because it was felt they hadn’t had enough life experience to fully digest it. Reaching forty is a joyful milestone. It’s a time to celebrate the birth of the new self that has been gestating within. It’s time to rejoice in the birth of the body and in the rebirth of the soul! When it comes to cooking amazing food, we all know someone who can come home from work and whip up an incredible meal out of what’s left in their refrigerator—usually celery, one egg, sea salt, and three other ingredients that just don’t seem to go together. Out of these isolated ingredients comes a terrific meal that makes perfect sense and tastes great. Food is spiritual because it can be a metaphor for life. When crazy things happen and our laundry list of problems just doesn’t make sense, we can step back and get a better view of how it’s all coming together. We can see how the ingredients complement each other and combine to create a deeper, richer experience. There are no bad ingredients in the recipe of life. Everything adds flavor to the final product and helps us absorb what I call psychospiritual nutrition. We can fully digest all the ingredients of our life and see that they’ve come together perfectly to make for a fuller human experience. In food and life, it’s all good. Dr. Habib Sadeghi Los Angeles 2012 Introduction On Cooking, Panic Attacks, and * Somatization One sunny afternoon in London, in the spring of 2011, I thought—without sounding overly dramatic—that I was going to die. I had just served lunch in the garden at home. I had felt unwell while I was preparing it, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. I had a vague feeling that I was going to faint, and I wasn’t forming thoughts correctly. I didn’t say much while we all ate. My family had friends joining us, and it was a beautiful, warm Sunday, but I couldn’t really take it in. I was worried. I stood up to clear the table and found that my right hand wasn’t working as it should, and then everything went blurry. I got a searing pain in my head, I couldn’t speak, and I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was having a stroke. My girlfriend held my hand and talked me into a calm state. As it turned out, I was having a horrible migraine and a panic attack. It took me hours to get my equilibrium back. As I tried to sleep it off, I could hear my children playing in the garden, and I was struck by the fear that my health could separate me from them, even for an afternoon. That next week, I set off to see doctors for every imaginable kind of checkup. I was told I had a benign cyst on my ovary that needed to be removed immediately, that I had a nodule on my parathyroid that was causing a lot of my fatigue, that my thyroid wasn’t functioning properly, and that I needed to adjust my hormones with more hormones. It was not a good picture. I had had a very exciting and busy year, and I knew I was worn down from the