Winter Raw

I tend to want warm food in the winter--probably a common impulse in the frigid midwest. When I look outside and see drifts of snow taller than my head, it makes me want to shiver back inside for a warm beverage or some comfort food. So where does raw food fit into all this?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially since the thermometer almost hit 50 degrees today, and I'm getting ready to head south for spring break. I've drifted away from raw. What does that mean to leave a dietary practice, then come back to it again? It's not that I've stopped eating raw food. I always have something raw on the table. But also cooked food, and is that a sign of a failure and redemption, or of a cycle? I'm thinking about that today. And craving.

I have a strange--or maybe all-too-common--relationship with the foods I eat and the seemingly random (to anyone who isn't in my head) "rules" I impose on my diet. One week I'll decide that every Monday, or Friday, or Sunday, will be "raw day." Another week, I'll alternate vegetarian and vegan. Sometimes I'll give it all up and have some fish--wild caught, but still, I know, I know. I think, at less confident periods in my life, that this is a bad thing. At other times, instead of telling myself that's all wrong, I choose to see it as a way to respond to my in-flux body and spirit needing and wanting different things at different times, in different seasons and in different stages. So what's wrong with heading back towards the raw end of the spectrum? Nothing at all, of course.

And that means, in my food-centric world, that I'm thinking about what to make tomorrow. I think tomorrow should be a day of fresh, of alive, of raw. Just wait and see. I know I'm looking forward to it with delicious anticipation. (Check back tomorrow to see what happens because in my kitchen; something is always bound to happen in my kitchen.)