Food

I sincerely thank whoever discovered the muffin.

There is something really irresistible about a muffin – all kinds of muffins.

Others may love their croissant, but I love my muffin.

Right away, I think of muffins wrapped in red and white checked gingham in a honey-colored wicker basket. I think of New England or charming European villages with fresh baked breads. I think of the open hearth, with a log fire, at the center of a home.

It’s so primal – food – eating – our daily bread.

When Bruce and I were first married, we discovered Jones’ Family Farm, and started a tradition.

Each October we’d go to the farm and pick out a huge pumpkin. Then we’d bring it home, and work all weekend to make pies (usually 9) and loaves (usually 6).

Sometimes, we’d make pumpkin cookies or pumpkin pancakes (not a big hit). We’d cook the seeds. Then we’d distribute the pies to my parents and my brother Mike, Bruce’s parents, aunties, neighbors, etc.

I’d always bring some in for the teacher’s lounge at Second Hill Lane School.

Hi, it's Marilyn Fuller, nurse and life coach.

I'm going to talk to you about Inflammation, and that leads to chronic illness.

According to Dr Barry Sears, who wrote "The Wellness Zone", inflammation leads to chronic illness.

So, disease comes in 3 stages: first you have wellness, then you have cellular inflammation, and then you get chronic disease.

Hi again it's Marilyn Fuller. We talked about the Circle of Life before – Primary Foods, and touched upon Secondary Foods, but today it’s about Secondary Foods, and yes, you can integrate Primary Foods into that.

I love working with beets – whole, leafy, bushy beets.

Everything about them leaves this deep, ruby tint. As you rinse the giant green leaves, the red stalks look like rhubarb and tint the water red. As they drip on the steel sink, the droplets look luminescent over the cool, silver blue.

If you hold a leaf up to the light, so the sun shines thru, the leaf is a gorgeous, vibrant yellow green, contrasted with the crimson stem system running thru the leaf.

The leaves taste great raw.

All the foods that we are close to, both drink and hard food, vegetables, fruit, etc., how do you know if they are good for your body?

There is an easy way of finding this out. The autonomic nervous system, which lies down the center of your body in the front of you, all the way down to your belly button, can identify, if you hold the product in front of you under, your chin, dead center in your body.

If it is good for you, you will tilt forward.

If it’s not good for you, you will tilt backward.

When my children were very young, we would play a game. They would smell spices, herbs, and other flavorings. The idea was not necessarily to know their names, but rather to become familiar with them directly, meeting them, letting them talk to the children.

Remarkably, many years later, I learned that this is how indigenous people would learn about healing plants – by meeting them and learning from them, rather than human experts.

The children really had definite opinions about each flavoring.

Once a year in the fall, my uncle would drive us to a place filled with all kinds of fresh apples. They were in hundreds of tall, round baskets. The place was called Aspetuck. It was an old farm stand, a large wooden room, like a barn, filled with apples everywhere.

The aroma of the apples was overwhelming, like a perfume made from all the different kinds of apples. We’d bring the aroma home with us. And they were beautiful to look at, too. The yellow leaves had fallen, and were falling, all around us. This is pure New England fall.

Artwork by Bruce Zboray    www.bruce-zboray.artistwebsites.com


My grandmother on my father’s side lived with us. Well, it was really her house, so I guess we lived with her. She came from Hungary when my aunt and uncle were very young. She spoke only Hungarian.

Every Sunday she would put on a small, flat brimmed hat, a black floral dress, and walk two miles, to the Russian Orthodox Church, which had seven spires shaped like candles. It looked right out of Russia.

What is it about a rainbow that conjures such positive, joyful thoughts?

It seems that everyone loves a rainbow. Poems are written. Smiles cross faces when the word rainbow is seen. There are so many expressions: catch a rainbow, the other side of a rainbow, ride the rainbow, chase a rainbow, find your rainbow.

Men search for the treasure pot at the end of the rainbow. So I ask you, “Is there a treasure?” Perhaps the treasure in rainbows is “eating a rainbow.” “What,” you may ask, “am I talking about?” I’m talking about starting every day eating the colors of the rainbow.