Swiss chard, chick pea and potato stew.

Wikipedia says; a foodie is a gourmet or a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food and alcoholic beverages. A foodie seeks new food experiences as a hobby rather than simply eating out for convenience or hunger. While gourmet and epicurean can be used as synonyms they have fallen out of favor and bring to mind a stodgy or snobbish attitude.

 It is very stressful to reach my age and realize how many things I still want to BE. A writer, photographer, student, political activist, humanitarian, hiker, avid gym-goer and foodie. None will be easy but the foodie gig may be the most difficult of all.

Obviously being a real foodie is out of my reach. Someone whose lifelong food preferences fall in the macaroni and cheese, cinnamon roll, Ritz crackers and Philadelphia cream cheese category will never reach gourmet/epicurean heights.

Still, there’s no reason not to at least try for foodie light. History indicates I may have strands of the right DNA. As a kid I endlessly baked cakes, only cakes, with no interest in any other category of foodstuff.  Cherry, chocolate, chocolate/maraschino cherry, caramel, Jell-O, strawberry, white layer cake with lemon filling and seven-minute icing, peanut butter, prune, mayonnaise, and more. As a young Air Force wife (especially when living in the Philippines with a maid), I cut recipes out of magazines and copied them from friends and relatives and tried everything—no matter how strange or complicated. Some successes, numerous messes (primarily the French dishes).

I can feel that cooking, baking, experimental, experiential desire coming on again. For oh so many reasons:

• Now the world has Google and a million (low estimate) foodie blogs,  many of which are works of literary and visual art, and great fun to peruse;
• As responsible citizens we need to limit our consumption of environmentally unfriendly meat, eat more organic vegetables, lower our intake of gluten, sugar and processed foods generally—to do that one must cook;
• What could possibly be a more satisfying pastime than surrounding ourselves with a food pyramid of ingredients, pouring a glass of wine and cutting, peeling, smashing, slicing, stirring, whisking, browning, simmering and roasting, with perhaps the reward of a second glass of wine;
• Finally, how pleasurable to share the results with good friends and family accompanied by good conversation.

Tonight my friend Bob and I shared a meal of his Swiss chard, chick pea and potato stew and my vegetable fried rice (brown rice, peanut oil, garlic, green onion, green pepper, petit peas, sesame oil and peanuts) with sherbet for dessert. The food was tasty, pretty and healthy, gave us pleasure and was friendly on all environmental fronts. We are definitely on the right path.

Vegetable Fried Rice.