Eat a Peach

I'm so happy. 

The peach I cut this morning is sweet, juicy golden deliciousness. After six weeks of limiting nutritional sugars, it's a delight to enjoy them again. I have just a little bit of an idea of what it might have been like in the ancient world. Summer must have been amazing, with its progression of sweet and juicy fruits. I imagine that people lived for the season. 

We're disconnected from natural rhythms. We can get pretty much anything from the store these days. Our understanding of seasonal eating is almost non-existent. It makes sense to me that our bodies evolved to work in concert with the seasons. That we get the nutrients we need to be healthy with seasonal eating. That seasonal eating is the optimal way of eating for good health. That we give our body systems time to rest periodically, for example, giving the pancreas time to rest in winter and most of spring, after the summer and fall splurge of sweet fruits and vegetables.

I started my lifestyle experimentation yesterday. I'm approaching it with both a spirit of play and a spirit of listening. We've been encouraged to experiment with foods we may like to bring back occasionally, one food a day. Yesterday, I experimented with cheese. 

I bought a small piece of four different cheeses, all cow's milk. All high quality. I cut four thin slices and tried them. I was curious whether I would still like cheese and what effect it would have on my body. It was one of the foods I loved when I started the program.

Two of the cheese tasted so bad to me that I was repelled. Two, I loved. I thought it was interesting because I'd bought cheese that I was sure I'd like. About ten minutes later, the underside of my tongue became a little itchy and ten minutes after that I was feeling it in my throat. I'd never reacted to cheese that way before. I had planned to try the cheese right out of the fridge and then an hour later after the chill wore off. I tried a few small pieces of the two I liked on a cheese plate I made for dinner.

I really shouldn't call it a cheese plate because there was so little cheese. 

I included a piece of pastured Canadian bacon I heated on the cast iron skillet, cut into strips, some artichoke hummus and some cut up veg, a few walnut and pecan halves. That was dinner. I really enjoyed it and there was no itchiness.

It made me wonder if things that repel us might not be so good for us. I wonder if we have a built-in system that alerts us to stay away from certain things. Of course, this kind of thing probably only works if we haven't burned out our taste buds with refined sugars and artificial non-food additives. Or when we've recovered them. Like what happens if you've been off sugar for months and then try something with refined sugar. It tastes too sweet and you usually don't want more. 

I'm thinking about what comes next, what today's experiment will be. Until them, I am enjoying this peach and a couple of cherries. It's almost time for my green smoothie. Not sure what lunch will be. I'm listening to my body and hearing what she has to say.

The Green Wilderness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.