I’m betting you could use a little joy in your life right about now. I know one such blissful bundle. It’s called the power of “yum,” that moment of convergence where smell, taste, and mind align to create an involuntary spasm of vocal delight.
Putting yum to work for you or a loved one is what this book is all about. Your doctor may be too concerned with your “serious” health issues to spend much time fretting about your taste buds. That’s a shame, because those blessed buds are often knocked for a loop by both cancer and its treatments. When those buds get roughed up, there goes your sense of yum.
It doesn’t have to be that way. This book is about reconnecting with an old, trusted pal who cheered you up, allowed you to share laughter and love with your family, and turned total strangers into friends. I’m talking, of course, about an outrageously delicious, nutritious plate of food.
You know that there’s magic in preparing and sharing a magnificent meal. And at a moment in life when nothing may feel in your control, taking the time to create a simple, delicious dish can be a lifeline, a reaffirmation of your humanity.
What follows are all the tools you need to replace ennui with inspiration and get your creative culinary juices flowing again. The meals you create will have a power that goes beyond mere measurements on a nutritional chart. You’ll find that these meals, created to be enjoyed by all who sit around your table, build community and nurture those who keep your spirits aloft: friends, spouse, lover, neighbors, children. This book is for them as well, a place they can turn to with confidence.
It can be daunting cooking for someone with cancer. A favorite meal suddenly is approached by caregivers with the kind of trepidation normally reserved for crossing a minefield. “She loves walnuts with her salad, but the doctor said no nuts.” “He goes wild for my fudge brownies, but I’ve heard sugar can feed cancer.” “She’s suddenly so finicky.” “I can’t believe that the smell of tuna fish now makes him nauseous.” It’s enough to make caregivers throw up their hands in despair and frustration. How do I know? Because on a personal and professional level, I’ve “been there, done that.”
Several years ago, before I embarked on the culinary odyssey that led to this book, my father was diagnosed with throat cancer. The radiation treatments made swallowing nearly impossible. Now there’s only one thing you need to know about my dad. He loves food. He lives food. In fact, he made his living in the food business. And there he stood, tears in his eyes, wondering how he’d ever be able to enjoy another meal: “Bec, what am I going to do?” moaned Dad. “Food is the platform of my life!”
I felt utterly helpless. Forget that I was a professionally trained chef running one of Northern California’s premiere organic restaurants. What did I know about feeding someone with cancer? I did the best I could—cold fruit smoothies became a staple for him—but there was no one place I could go to find soups, salads, entrées, desserts, snacks, and quick pick-me-ups that were, for lack of a better term, cancer-compatible. That’s why these recipes are unique. Every recipe is built around ingredients that taste fantastic (that’s the hook!); bolster the immune system; are easy to digest; and work well with numerous healthy substitutions.
These recipes weren’t developed overnight. Actually, they wouldn’t have been developed at all if I had obeyed the “rules” for feeding cancer patients. I remember bringing my very first client, Shannon, what I thought a cancer patient should eat. My choices were based upon the limited medical literature on the subject. I showed up with bland puréed carrot soup and boring miso soup. I knew these offerings were a palatable snooze-fest, but I figured I’d better behave. Shannon thought otherwise. “You know,” she said the next time she saw me, “I’m really craving something a little more …”—she searched for the right word that wouldn’t hurt my feelings—“uh, exciting.”
To my ears that was like getting a papal blessing. I raced out Shannon’s door and headed straight for the farmers’ market. There I grabbed every fresh and seasonable vegetable I could find. Within an hour I was back in Shannon’s kitchen. A few minutes later everything I bought went into the pot along with a layer of spices. In a blink the pot began boiling and heavenly smells wafted through the house. In glided Shannon, following her nose. “That,” she said, inhaling deeply over the pot, “is more like it.”
I’m glad to say her response is not unique. I’m blessed to be a visiting chef at Commonweal, one of the nation’s most respected cancer wellness programs. At Commonweal I often see patients who’ve been put on restricted diets by doctors or given a list of what they can and can’t eat by a nutritionist. Only one thing is missing: no one has shown them how to creatively translate these ingredients into scrumptious dishes. The result? Many of them stop eating, the last thing they can afford to do when they’re sick. Fortunately, I’ve seen these very same people go absolutely gaga when served meals made from the recipes in this book. One man was astounded as he watched his wife with pancreatic cancer go back for a second helping of carrot ginger soup with cashew cream. “She hasn’t eaten this much in weeks!” he whispered to me in wonder.
Just as heartwarming is the clear evidence that these foods inspire a sense of wellness that patients want to re-create again and again. I knew this was true by the fourth day of my first Commonweal retreat. One by one, curious patients started showing up in my kitchen. I put them to work peeling, washing, and playing. Their fear of the kitchen quickly melted away, replaced with delight. As I watched my three new helpers make nori rolls, I imagined a doctor suddenly sticking his head in my kitchen and saying something like, “Don’t you know these people are sick?” To which I would reply to the doctor, “Tell that to them.”
It is this connection to wellness through food that is the subtext here, the same connection that can grow and encompass community as people hopefully move from sickness back to health. One of the most gratifying aspects of writing this book has been hearing from cancer support groups. Many use One Bite at a Time as a focal point for coming together, trying the recipes and bringing them to others who could benefit from both the food and the love. At one end of the spectrum is someone like Shannon, who used these recipes to reach out to caregivers when she was feeling zapped from treatment. “Everybody wants to help, but they don’t know how. They want to bring you food. They realize that’s something they can do, but the trouble is they’ll bring anything or what they’re having for dinner,” says Shannon. “If you can say ‘Here are the recipes I like, if you want to try to do something like this,’ that helps. Because I wouldn’t have made it if my family and friends hadn’t taken care of me.”
On the other end is Jen, a breast cancer survivor and food writer who loves to cook. Jen is always looking for tasty dishes that will nourish herself and her family. She knew she was on the right track when she whipped up my Taxicab Yellow Tomato Soup for her husband, Ty. Jen could’ve spouted nutritional facts about the soup until she was blue in the face and Ty would’ve just yawned. It was the taste that blew him away. “It’s been dubbed the moaner soup, because when you taste it, it does make you moan,” laughs Jen. She recalls that Ty took one sip and swooned. “He went ‘ummmmmm. I had forgotten how much I like tomato soup. Ahhhh!’ ”
Taste is what it’s really all about. I love the way one of my colleagues, Michael Broffman, puts it: “Any food that doesn’t taste good can’t be good for you.” Michael is right in one sense. It’s hard to stick with any cuisine that doesn’t hug your taste buds, regardless of its health benefits. But I’d go a step further: Everything about the process of eating can be fun, from going to a farmers’ market to turning your kitchen into a haven for your culinary creativity to serving your meals in beautiful bowls. Of course, what brings it all together is the payoff: wrapping your mouth around a meal and feeling that shudder of ecstasy rushing through your body.
I’ll let you in on another secret. This isn’t a diet book. The word diet makes me break out in a cold sweat. It always seems like you’re giving up way more than you get from a diet. Who needs that?
In this book you’ll find vegetables, fruits, sweets, poultry, and fish. They’re all here, presented in sensible ways that take advantage of the nutrition, taste, and immunity-building properties in every morsel of yum.
Some say my cuisine employs a “flexitarian” approach. That’s a term I like. To me, a flexitarian is someone who knows how to substitute tasty, healthy foods for items that either common sense or their doctor says they should avoid. Becoming a flexitarian is vital for your physical and mental health. I mean, it’s tough enough being sick, but it’s downright depressing when your doctor starts telling you, “Spicy foods? I’d prefer you don’t. Dairy? I’d pass on that, too.” Normally such restrictions are the equivalent of being put in culinary jail with no chance of parole. But that’s often not the case when you learn to be a flexitarian.
Once I show you both the wide range of healthy foods at your disposal and how to prepare them, you’ll be amazed at how much your culinary universe will expand. You’ll discover substitutes that re-create the taste and texture of those “forbidden” foods. You’ll learn to make delicious sweets without refined sugar; satiating creamy soups that are dairy-free and power packed with nutrients; and stews that satisfy carnivorous cravings with just a few ounces of poultry; and, perhaps best of all, you’ll get up close and comfortable with your vegetables (the taste will leave you no choice!).
In short, I’m not going to tell you what to eat.
I’d rather show you how to use the best and healthiest organic ingredients that protect your body while providing an explosion of flavor. That’s right, I said ‘organic.’ Now don’t freak out. If you don’t want to use organics, you don’t have to. All of the recipes in this book can be made and thoroughly enjoyed with conventionally grown fruits, vegetables, and meats available in any supermarket. But organics have become so popular over the last few years that you’re likely to find them in your favorite grocery store, affordably priced, and often placed side-by-side with their conventionally grown cousins.
I can quote you chapter and verse about why organic foods are better for you than nonorganic foods—more cancer-fighting nutrients, less exposure to nasty pesticides, and so on—but here’s the only thing you really need to know: organics taste better. They’re fresher. And, if you shop at a farmers’ market, they’re often grown right in your community. Think of it this way: I’m a chef, and I want my food to taste the best it possibly can. And if your taste buds have been desensitized by cancer treatments, you need that extra burst of flavor in every dish. That’s why I use organics whenever possible. Often this little fact blows my clients away, as they realize that healthy eating also tastes wonderful. In short, the days of healthy food resembling bland hippie gruel are gone. So many varieties of organics are now available that they dovetail wonderfully with a flexitarian approach covering many cuisines. “I don’t feel deprived, I don’t feel like I’m bored, I don’t feel like I’m on a narrow path at all,” says another of my clients, Andrea. She’s a cancer survivor who subsisted on ice cream and yams before she learned how to cook.
“I didn’t know how to nourish myself before,” says Andrea, who adopted a flexitarian approach that let her flex her culinary muscles. She started with these concepts and is now translating them into her own recipes. “This,” says Andrea, “is the first time I feel I can nourish myself and other people.”
And I say, “Isn’t that what it’s all about?”
Let’s get down to a little learning and help you get the most out of this book. All you need is your taste buds to participate. Even if your buds aren’t working perfectly, we’ll show you how to get your buds and appetite back.
I’ve always felt that the more people understand about food from seed to table, the more they enjoy learning to cook. You may want to jump right to the recipes, and that’s fine. I’ve tried to take out as much of the intimidating foodie language as possible. Those things I couldn’t take out I explain in a section called Culinary Terms of Endearment.
Personally, I hope you’ll be motivated to delve a little deeper into the book. I’d like to be your culinary tour guide on what I promise will be a delightful adventure. I’ve put together chapters and sidebars that cover everything I teach to my clients and students in cooking classes and home sessions. These include:
• How Friends and Family Can Help. This chapter is vital for caregivers who cook for people who are sick.
• Sustainable Nourishment. Learn a delicious way of eating and living that builds the immune system.
• Nutrition at a Glance. If you want to know about all those fun phytochemicals, minerals, and vitamins in each recipe, this is the place to turn.
• Reinventing and reorganizing your pantry in Pantry Rehabilitation. Get out those garbage bags. This can be like dumpster diving.
• Resource Guide. This information will help you find organic produce and poultry as well as other products we love.
• The Big O. These sidebar points provide information about specific organic ingredients and their health benefits.
• Shopping the farmers’ markets in season. It’s fun, it’s informative, and it’s colorful. Plus, there’s something to be said for looking in the eye of the person who grows your food.
• Nutritional analyses. I break down each recipe’s calories and nutritional components to give you an awareness of what’s in each well-balanced dish.
I’ve placed all the chapters after the recipes, with one very important exception. Following this introduction, you’ll find a chapter called The FASS Factor: Tricks for Getting to Yum!
If there’s only one chapter you read in this book, it should be this one. Using simple language, this chapter will teach you everything I know about making any meal taste delicious. I’ll put it this way: As far as I’m concerned, I need to know addition to do math, the alphabet to write, and FASS to cook.
I promise that FASS will help you balance the taste of any dish you’re making. As you go through the recipes, you’ll see references to FASS and how it applies. To me, looking at the recipes without first reading about FASS is like going to the opera and passing on the libretto. The more you know, the more you can get out of the experience.
As for the recipes, this really is a community cookbook. Everything you see here has been tried— and often developed—in partnership with my friends and clients. Their insights and experiences over the past four years have shown me what works and what doesn’t. There’s a refreshing honesty in most of the kitchens I visit, which is reflected in many of the headnotes and sidebars that accompany the recipes. People are up-front about their fears, foibles, and frustrations surrounding food. This is especially true of people who know they have to eat, who want to eat, but can’t figure out how to reconnect with food. These dishes serve as a bridge to that place where illness is displaced by the sheer exhilaration of taste. Getting there is partly my job, partly yours. I can show you the way, but I assure you the power of food to heal leaps exponentially when you’re the one preparing it.
To that end, think of me not as a cook, but rather as a culinary translator, helping you build a bridge from the gray world of illness and medicine to the technicolor universe of delicious, nutritious meals … one bite at a time.
• Cooking with Oil: Heat the pan first, then add your oil. That way the oil will heat up quicker with less danger of overheating, smoking up the house, and creating free-radicals, those pesky critters that can damage the immune system.
• Spice Combining: If you don’t have a certain spice that’s called for in your spice cabinet, fret not. The dish will turn out fine. Common spices used in this book are allspice, cumin, cinnamon, and ginger.
• Salt: When I call for salt, I am referring to sea salt with its 80 plus minerals. Sea salt is much tastier than table salt, which has been bleached and has a bitter aftertaste.
• Olive Oil: I am referring to extra virgin olive oil.
• Gluten Intolerance: Non-gluten products can easily be substituted in recipes calling for gluten. Check out the updated Resource Guide for more information.
• Lactose Intolerance: In recipes that call for a lactose product, you can substitute unsweetened soy or rice milk for milk, and coconut or olive oil for butter.
• Tamari: In recipes using tamari (a wheat-free soy sauce), I am calling for low sodium tamari. It’s easily found next to the full throttle bottle.
• Organics: Use organic ingredients whenever possible, especially when it comes to animal protein, such as chicken, eggs, and dairy, as well as particular fruits and vegetables. I’ve highlighted the times when using organic ingredients is particularly important (look for sidebars marked “The Big O”).
• I also recommend you use earth-friendly cleaning products in your home, especially dishwashing detergent and liquid.