On August 1, it will be a year since Harry had his quadruple bypass surgery.
What a year it has been!!
Harry’s heart surgery insisted we eat meat to heal and included me as I was anemic at the time. So, we have been including lean meat, chicken and seafood in our diet. After about six months, my anemia was gone. Harry put on about 40 pounds and his cholesterol went up despite his medication.
I developed some sort of problem where I couldn’t eat much without getting sick. As a result, I started losing the weight I put on at the start of the diet. We are still eating meat but cut dairy way down and have stepped up fresh vegetables and fruits.
Around the first of the year, I started experimenting with the Yucatan cuisine. Luckily, I could fix a lot of it plant based. However, I developed a full blown case of diverticulitis and had to eat bland food for several months. It seems we were sick from the first of the year well into summer with one thing or another.
At the end of June, we went on an Alaskan cruise. Yes, we had a lot of seafood and other rich food, but we seemed to mainline the Caesar salad and fresh fruit. It was great but we had a cough the entire time.
Next year, we are going to Spain, Portugal and Morocco. I am very familiar with Moroccan food and look forward to making many dishes that I know are healthy, Portuguese food varies considerably but reminds me of Balkan food. Food familiar to Hungary and the Slovakian cories. Spanish seems to be an eclectic blend of several countries but is definitely more than tapas and paella. In some ways it is like Lebanese, Turkey and Greek, having considerable overlap with other countries.
I love to explore different cultures. While I find many similarities between Europe, African and Mediterranean countries, I realize American food has no similarities with other countries other than Americanized attempts at ethnic food.
The biggest difference I can see between American and literally any other country is the prevalence of processed food. People from other countries say, “what’s with all the cans”?
Nearly every cuisine I look at uses fresh food. It isn’t doused with poison like our food. Unfortunately, it is more and more difficult to get organic food or afford it when it’s available.
All of that said, it is time for us to go back plant based as much as we can. I will still allow some animal protein nut is extremely limited amounts. In other countries, at least the healthier ones, use meat as a flavoring. I purchased a book on Portuguese cooking and sent it back because it only had about 10 recipes without meat and most of those were seasoning blends.
Be aware, other countries have different recipes or tendencies by REGION, just like the USA. California is thought to have healthier cuisine than the deep south for example.
I will be posting new recipes with culinary slants toward Mediterranean, Islamic, African, Asian and others as I experiment.
