Making Love in the Kitchen

I have a friend staying with me at the moment.

House guests are challenging for me for many reason. The main ones are that I live in a loft with no walls and I work from home. The other challenge, though more for my guests than for myself, is obviously going to be my eating habits. Very few people eat like us holistic bunnies.

My friend, who is a physical perform coach, and I worked together last year at a resort in St. Lucia. He still lives and works there and so did the obvious when you live on a tropical island, and came up to Canada in January for a holiday. As I do whenever I have anyone coming to stay with, I asked what I could pick up at the store.

This was the list I was given:

• Bread
• Cheese
• Ham Slices
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Red Bull
• Crisps (that’s English for chips)
• Special K
• Milk
• Instant Coffee
• Gatorade

As if I could go into a supermarket and buy these things. My friend had taken such good care to make sure I had everything I needed when I moved down to St. Lucia last year, even getting me a fancy hotel room at the resort when my accommodate fell through. I felt the least I could do was return the hospitality so off to the local supermarket I went. It took me over an hour to buy 5 items.

The first challenge was the milk. I don’t drink milk. He insisted it had to be cow’s milk and I insisted that it had to be organic. Done and done. Cheese was more of a challenge. Cheese is expensive and he likes the kind that can be melted on to toast. I settled for a white cheddar that didn’t have anything on the ingredient list I couldn’t pronounce. Ham slices didn’t make the cut. Just couldn’t do it.

I spent a good twenty-minutes reading chocolate chip cookie labels until I found one that didn’t have any hydrogenated palm or cottonseed oil and didn’t contain an ingredient that was followed by a numerical code. I knew that if sugar wasn’t listed, he would not be pleased. I could not bring myself to buy Red Bull, flourescent coloured Gatorade, or instant coffee. Just couldn’t put my dollar there. Same went for the Kellog’s Special K where instead I bought an organic Granola cereal.

I certainly didn’t resort to Wonderbread but instead picked up a whole grain organic number. For chips I went with Natural flavoured Sun Chips- it was the best (or junkiest) I could do.

So how did a Red Bull and fluorescent blue sports drink end up in my fridge, nestled between a head of cabbage, a jar of bee pollen, and almond butter? Well, Rich insisted on visiting the supermarket himself. Claimed it was part of the Canadian experience. Apparently a trip to the LCBO for some Corona and a little jaunt to McDonald’s for a Sausage McMuffin is also part of the experience.

Baby steps. Tonight I am making baked pecan crusted salmon, better than mashed potatoes with coriander pesto, green bean salad, steamed broccoli and brown rice. This, of course, is my passive aggressive approach at conversion. It always works.

Tags: Cooking, Health, Meghan Telpner, Nutrition, snacks