The Other Ice Cream Man

I first began blogging as a teen. I was an obsessive story teller and poetry writer (and performer) and accumulated many many notebooks and loose papers over my high school career. 

At one point, not fully understanding the ways to the world wide web, I printed my favorite posts, comments and all, incase somehow my digital diary disappeared. Cute, I know.

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My father has always been great at listening to my interests and keeping a dialogue open about what we both find interesting about foods… although its mostly about dieting (he is slightly obsessed with the way other people eat, similar to the way I am.) My father has been involved in all aspects of my relationship with food (good and bad) and, while he was once a wealth of misinformation, over time he has started to get the right idea.

When I was a kid my father and I would share food “secrets” we knew. He would scoop out whole avocados or suck on surinam cherries picked from our back yard in florida, teach me about citrus canker that affected the crops in the area, and introduced me to drinking aloe (“very good for digestion” he would mumble to himself before pouring some in to his iced tea). All of these wonderful ideas and yet he still bought in to the low-fat, low-carb fads.

I told him about hormones in cow’s milk and why partially hydrogenated oils and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) are bad for you. For a while we both switched to soy, which totally grossed out the rest of the family. We spent lots of time bouncing ideas about nutrition off of each other, a lot of it being him telling me to quit eating pastries. Finally eating a low-gluten diet has helped keep me away from them.

Ever since I started my food blog he has sent me numerous links to food and health related sites and blogs. Usually its an “Eat this not that” or some other food fable that would hardly fit in to Michael Pollan’s Food Rules. Much like the political spam mail he likes to send me I try often to try to get him to look at information through another lens.  

It hasn’t been easy. Its surprisingly difficult to get other people to understand marketing schemes…. like the fact that there is no such thing as “flavored water,” once you add something else, water is just another ingredient. I could go on about these forever. The point is that my father has been a victim of this for a very long time and today made a pretty good step and actually found me a great food blog.

 www.heathereatsalmondbutter.com is a blog by a woman who lost weight the right way, by eating well and exercising! I like the blog because it reaches people on a more personal level, a trial and error of cooking and dieting with some really great food ideas. I quickly identified with Heather when I read her most recent post about giving up Stevia for lent. I once gave up pastries, but not sugar, and she is giving up STEVIA? Jeebus, the woman is inspiring! Although she doesn’t come across as a veggie snob, she admits her weaknesses (if you can call them that) “I practically live on vegetables, but yesterday, all I wanted was bread.”

I like the idea of having your average person running along side in the battle to avoid the supermarket junk food wasteland.

So here’s your pat on the back, Dad. You’re on the right track ;)