On Love... The Rules and Regulations

Huh?

Someone on Facebook commented that they "loved" the food they’d created. One of their "friends" reprimanded her, telling her that you can’t "love" food. You love your lover and your family, but you can’t "love" food.

I wonder who died and put her in charge of love.

I don't know what that other person's motivation was for loving her food, but I'm going to respect her feelings.  See, I love my food too. I do.  I have auto-immune disease and can no longer have so many of the foods I grew up eating. They are simply off-limits. When I ate those old familiar foods, it wasn’t about love. It was about nourishment and getting on with things. Same old, same old, really. Oh, I enjoyed my food, but it just didn't loom large in my life.  And then came the day when food was about feeling sick.  

Since being denied the predictability of familiar foods, I’ve been on a journey of sorts, discovering different, speciality foods that I can have, learning about a greater range of foods from around the world to increase my options, and learning to create healthy, satisfying, delicious meals from them. This has often been a challenge with discoveries fraught with trial, error and failure. It’s also been a labour of love, since health and nourishment are important in life and deserve our attention and effort.  And I’m worth that effort. Do you not love yourself? If you don’t, you have a problem... particularly if you’re stuffing your face with unhealthy convenience foods.

And so, as with any challenge we might face in life, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with mastering a skill. The failures teach us to appreciate all the more the successes, the sheer joy we feel from creating a culinary delight from few and different food choices. It’s a similar delight, satisfaction and gratification that comes with mastering a piece of music ~ a concerto on the piano, or a particularly difficult riff on a guitar ~ or creating a work of art, or growing that perfect orchid. Yes, Virginia, we LOVE the results because we worked hard and overcame much to realize them. Get over it.

I really don’t understand what makes people who have narrow parameters for everything tick, like those people who think those of us on special diets are doing it just to annoy or inconvenience them, or, yeah, those who think there are limitations to love.

What I do get is that there are many different kinds of love. The love one has for success after struggle. That love for simple things, like sunshine and twittering birds. The swelling of appreciation (a form of love) for that beautiful flower in the garden, and the sound of waves on the shore. And oh... all the musical groups I’ve loved... no, not physically. ;)  It doesn’t matter if it’s food, music, art, beauty or whatever... it’s love. I also love my friends, my dog, my cats and of course, last but certainly not least, and most obviously, my family.  I have room in my heart to love all of the beauty of life.

Simply put, life is all about love. If you don’t get that, and you have to set down rules and regulations about love, maybe you need to open your mind, and your heart.

Now.... here’s a meal I really love.

Then I have to do some planting, because man... I do love my garden.  It brings the birds, butterflies and bees and gives them food and a place to work, and yes, I love them too.