Food Dudes

Several years ago I worked in Peru on the Amazon River for about 6 months. About a month before the trip I went down there with my boss to do a pre-trip survey to map out the project. One night we went out to dinner in downtown Iquitos to a fish restaurant on the malecón, the big sidewalk overlooking the river. After we finished dinner and sat there watching people pass by, my boss, Col. Iron Mike Williams, fired up a cigarette, and pointed at a big group of people who looked to be an extended family. They were sitting and standing around one guy with a guitar and all were singing at full voice. Iron Mike exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “Look at that. Those people know how to live. What do we do? Stuff down our dinner as fast as we can and go watch TV.” I know it’s not that way in all our families all the time, but I think it’s true for too many of us too much of the time.

I suspect that we treat food too much like an exercise in efficiency: the most calories at the least cost in the least time with the most convenience so we can get back to . . . Youtube? We think of the food as an interruption of life when, in a way, it is life.

So with that problem in mind I want to celebrate the phenomenon I’ve seen recently of people enjoying a really special dish or meal that makes such an impression on them that they take a picture of it and put it on facebook.

My boy, Spencer Jones, with whom I’ve run many, many miles, does this fairly often. I also noticed that my podnah, Zane Lybrand, one of the strongest cyclists in about a 10 county radius, does the same thing. We were talking about food the other night and he told me he’s figured out to make his own sushi. He explained the process a little bit and then said, “Here, I’ll show you” and whipped out his phone to open up his pictures. As he’s doing this I’m thinking, “This is going to look like little lumps of hammered monkey doo.” I was astounded to see perfect restaurant-ready sushi. These guys know how to live. I admit I don’t know how to cook enough things. My brother taught me how to make some biscuits so good they’re against the law in 14 states and I can also make ceviche that is pretty good, but that’s about it.

I think it’s worth emphasizing how important food satisfaction is to life satisfaction. Our bodies and emotional states do better when we take time out to share good, healthy food with people we love. Think about your galvanized, life-long, nearly supernatural attachment with the first person who ever fed you. Studies have shown the importance of families eating together. There are a lot of episodes in the bible of Jesus sitting down to big meals with his disciples (he enjoyed eating and drinking enough to prompt the Pharisees to call him a glutton and a drunk). So, in a sense, food is love. That’s why we don’t do especially well with pre-processed foods that we just shotgun down. In fact, I think we tend to overeat bad food in a fruitless search for real food satisfaction. You can get calories anywhere, but food satisfaction is a more elusive thing.

I knew a lady a few years ago who went on a 40-day fast where she didn’t eat any food in order to lose weight (and to call attention to herself, I think). Only drank juice, water, milk, etc. She said it was really tough and the worst thing was, get this: she didn’t lose an ounce. Not an ounce. The body is a very resilient system. You deprive it of food calories and it says, “OK, I’ll slow my metabolism way down and make you drink enough juice to make up the calorie difference.” But those calories didn’t give her food satisfaction.

So, now that I don’t have night classes for the rest of the summer, I’m going to cook dinner more for my family. And I’m going to try to put some effort into planning, choosing, and preparing the food, because I think it’ll pay off in family food satisfaction. And I promise pictures on Facebook.

The firewood you chop yourself warms you twice.