I love food. And vegetables bring me oodles of joy!

Why? Because vegetables love me back. Sitting down and munching on a big bowl of goodness like these Braised Fennel Turnips & White Beans leaves me feeling rejuvenated and restored in ways that processed food could never.

But, it wasn’t always this way and today I want to come clean as I share my story of starting with goodness, abandoning it and then returning to the love.

Growing up my parent’s had a huge garden. My Mom grinds her own wheat for the most scrumptious Honey Whole Wheat Bread, they eat more salads than any couple I know and my Dad even makes his own wine with the abundance from their garden. As a tiny one, I remember putting together ‘concoctions’ as I explored my future role of being a chef. When my teenage years became busy with ballet and carpools, the wholesome food of my youngest years changed into frequent trips out to eat, soda and more strange “food” from power bars to french fries and gas station fare. Somewhere in their I became a vegetarian, other than less meat and more beans my diet certainly was far from my early nourishing days.

Thus began my sudo-Rumspringa as I abandoned my childhood happy, healthy, hippy fare for the lure of “convenient” food products.

In college, armed with a food debit card for the cafeteria, my appetite for processed foods accelerated. I remember going to a little mini-mart on campus that accepted our food cards and I would stock up on Baked Tortilla Chips with a Spicy Queso Dip. This often became my breakfast as I rushed to classes and kept up with a busy college life. I also was drinking soda pop (Mr. Pibb/Dr. Pepper with a twist of lime!) and more coffee (it was Seattle for goodness sake!) than water. My body suffered and looking back at the variety of ailments and ER visits (no joke- I was so sick so often), I am just happy it wasn’t worse or resulted in lifelong illnesses that effect so many of us in this country at young ages.

Here is the deal, processed foods leave most of us smitten with their endless supply of additives and chemicals that tease our taste buds into believing they are real. While we may find ourselves scarfing down these food products, they rarely leave any of us truly satisfied. Our bodies often know the difference, even when our tastebuds get confused. As a result, we eat too much crap (for lack of a better word) and we are left sick. This of course has been made more obvious in the Western world, where we have seen epidemics in diet related diseases, starting at obscenely young ages.

Despite my eating habits, I loved my college days and in many ways I ate my way through Seattle’s fabulous authentic restaurants where I also started to appreciate a new way of scratch cooking. This lead to an incredible bright spot in my dietary evolution as I also started to experiment again in the kitchen and was dabbling in a bit of gardening as well. My senior year I cooked for multiple events from Thanksgiving to many friends’ birthdays to my own graduation party. Another part of my future destiny began to be shaped.

My move to California, sealed the deal on my love of cooking. It was still a few more years before I became a personal chef, but I opened up my first CSA (community supported agriculture) box while living with my sister and her family. I was helping around the house and took on the task of cooking more than any other. Our daily meals challenged me in the best way as there were four little kids, food allergies and my own status as a vegetarian to manage. I loved it.

During my years on the Central Coast, falling in love with Farmers Markets was joyful and eating the foods from my childhood started to come back to me… as did my health.

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One day of nostalgia in California, I bought that beloved college Queso Dip. I took a few bites and was shocked by how nasty it tasted and felt in my body. I tucked it in the back of my fridge and finally got rid of it when I moved. I am pretty sure it didn’t ‘age’ during that time and was technically still edible on move out day. Thankfully, my mind and body were adapting and able to better identify real, good food.

Today, I make a variation on that Nacho Cheese Dip, but use squash as the base, because I am pretty crazy about veggies. I have some in the fridge now and my family will certainly eat it all up before it starts to go bad.

We all eat certain foods for our own personal reasons and this changes regularly. Today, I invite you to more consciously reflect on the food that leaves you feeling incredible and those that leave you feeling less than fabulous.

What about you? Did you go through a processed food phase or did you grow up eating mostly food products? Is there a food that you find yourself missing but can no longer eat because it makes you sick?

I hope everyday you find your way to nourishing, real food that will love you back!

If any of this story resonated with you, please comment below or share this with your friends. We all have our own personal food journey. Let’s share and discuss how we have come to eat the way we do today, whether our past was nourishing or not.

With delicious love,

Chef Lilly

PS- I am giving you free access to the recipes in this post for the next week or two… Enjoy!