Visiting the cemetery where my beloved Nonna and Nonno rest side by side in their stone marble mausoleum, surrounded by concrete and other towering mausoleums of the Italians immigrants which also sought out this part of Australia as their new found land. I touched my lips to my mouth, reached up and deposited a kiss on my Nonna’s photograph and then did the same to my Nonno’s framed portrait. “Ciao Nonna and Nonno”I said to them and I instantly felt the tears swelling in my eyes coming from a place that hasn’t healed in over a decade. A place I know never will. There will always be tears in me for my Nonna and Nonno. I wondered to myself how many of those people laid to rest there were on the same boat as my grandparents. It just doesn’t seem right. Their graves should have been in their homeland and I wish I could just transport them to their beloved island. Their graves deserved the magnificent backdrop of the images they carried in their hearts for over 30 years. I wish I could have gathered them up and returned them to their island, their home.
3.31.2010
Beyond These Skies....Part 7....A Maze of Marble and Stone
Visiting the cemetery where my beloved Nonna and Nonno rest side by side in their stone marble mausoleum, surrounded by concrete and other towering mausoleums of the Italians immigrants which also sought out this part of Australia as their new found land. I touched my lips to my mouth, reached up and deposited a kiss on my Nonna’s photograph and then did the same to my Nonno’s framed portrait. “Ciao Nonna and Nonno”I said to them and I instantly felt the tears swelling in my eyes coming from a place that hasn’t healed in over a decade. A place I know never will. There will always be tears in me for my Nonna and Nonno. I wondered to myself how many of those people laid to rest there were on the same boat as my grandparents. It just doesn’t seem right. Their graves should have been in their homeland and I wish I could just transport them to their beloved island. Their graves deserved the magnificent backdrop of the images they carried in their hearts for over 30 years. I wish I could have gathered them up and returned them to their island, their home.
Beyond These Skies....Part 6....An Immigration Story of my own
Sadly my Nonno Antonio and Nonna Maria have passed on and all I am left with are the memories of their warm hugs and soothing voices. They live in the halls of my memory now – the most precious of which I pull out only once in a while, just in case it gets used up if I try to remember it too many times. As I embarked on my own journey and voyage back to their homeland, I couldn’t help but think to myself that perhaps I was following in my Nonno Antonio’s footsteps. Boarding a plane, and leaving all of my beloved family and friends behind to come to a foreign country, which I have longed to call home. Was I about to change the outcome of my families’ roots yet again by leaving my patria just like my grandfather did? Was I to begin an immigration story of my own?
It is now more than ever that I am able to understand the courage which comes with making such a decision, the fear which comes with the unknown and the problems which are faced from living in a foreign country. I find myself wondering in amazement at how my grandparents survived for 30 odd years in a country which they never learnt to speak the language. Did they encounter the same daily problems as I do? And who did they turn to for help?
I can’t help but wonder if my Nonno Antonio were alive today, would he find it hard to understand why I wanted to go back to his patria. To the land he left in search of a better future? To the land he left forever and turned his back on with such conviction and determination.
And maybe that is why my decision to leave Australia perplexed my mother so much. My European journey meant something more to her than just a few years travelling around a country getting to know its culture again first hand, discovering my family roots. Maybe it’s because she has never returned or because to her a voyage to the other side of the world is a voyage from which you may never return, despite all of the modern day technology which has made travelling distances far more accessible.
I still remember the phone conversation I had with my mother only weeks before I boarded the plane destined for Italy.
“What’s the matter with me” I yell? “What’s the matter with you?” I ask. “Why can’t you be happy for me? Why can’t you be the slightest bit excited for me? I am going back to YOUR country for goodness sake” I screamed at her in true Italian style.
“This is my country now,” she screamed back at me, with her Sicilian blood beginning to boil.
I begin to argue “Don’t you understand? I was raised in Italy. Everything! I grew up listening to the language, eating and cooking its food, learning about the evil eye, peering up at statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ on every dresser in their house, the stupid superstitions, the trips to the delicatessen, the garden.” I pause for breath, hoping to get a reaction from my mother but nothing, so I continue, “the visitors, the neighbourhood full of relatives and Sicilians. It’s all been Italy! And You! So Sicilian! How can you not understand me when Nonna, Nonno and your heritage created this within me? How can you sit there now and say that it’s not your home anymore, when everything I was brought up with was tainted Italian? You taught me to love it! And I do love it. I want to be there more than anything right now and all I want from you is to be happy for me and to give me a glimmer of knowledge that I am making the right decision.”
I am not sure she understood. In her own way she turned my rant into something else later. After all, that’s what Sicilians do. Besides I am not even sure I understood it myself, or where it came from. All I know is that it is was true. I am the first of our family to make the voyage back to the homeland of Italia. I couldn’t understand why no one could see how humbling and important it was to me that I was the first of the Australian generation to want to go back and retrace our families’ heritage? I wanted to understand why my Nonna clasped her hands together and raised her eyes to the sky whenever the word Sicilia was mentioned.
My Italia. I longed to see and experience her for myself. I felt her, and the thought of her made all of the hairs on my body bristle.
But before I could board the plane, without my mother standing at the airport to wave me arriverderci! I had one more thing to do….
Beyond These Skies....Part 5....Sicilia!!
Sicily with its dreadful poverty; real life is never far from anyone’s mind. The mafia has been the only successful business in Sicily for centuries and it still continues to keep a hand in everyone’s lives. Palermo, a city which Goethe once claimed was possessed of an indescribable beauty may now be the only city in Western Europe where you can still find yourself picking your steps through World War II rubble, just to give you a sense of development there. The town has been systematically uglified beyond description by the hideous and unsafe apartment blocks the Mafia constructed in the 1980’s as money laundering operations. Asked if these buildings were cheap to construct, a Sicilian man says “Oh no, this is very expensive concrete. In each batch, there are a few bodies of people who were killed by the mafia, and that costs money. But it does make the concrete stronger to be reinforced by all their bones!” Sicily is a jumbled mass of human existence finding space where ever it can; there is no sense of zoning, no order. People stand on street corners and watch the cars simply go by. Old men sit in groups outside the bars and watch the women go by. Young boys call out to their friends on the other side of the street while young girls check their reflections in the shop windows. Car horns blast incessantly. What an utterly intoxicating yet impossible place all at the same time!
Yes it is beautiful on the outside but on the inside it is like a prison. Sicilians both love and hate their island in equal measure. So beloved and so reviled. On the surface everything is perfect and beautiful. But underneath lays a hard life. The Mafia is everywhere, in every aspect of life. Mafia is the simplest of things. Paying the guy at the car park to look after your car, the rubbish collecting on the streets, the merchants wondering the streets with their bags of fake Gucci glasses, that’s Mafia! Yet ask a Sicilian what is wrong with Sicily and they will declare “It’s not the Mafia that’s the problem with Sicily, it’s the Sicilians!”
In Sicily, the only people you can trust are your family, if you’re lucky! Your husband, your wife, your children and your parents. And that’s it! Everyone else is out to stab you in the back and ruin you, given half a chance. People live in jealousy. There is very little work and not enough money, so as soon as you have something, others automatically want to take it away from you. The only good thing about having to deal with Sicilians is that it makes you hard. If you can live in Sicily, you can live anywhere. If you can deal with Sicilians you can deal with anyone!
Beyond These Skies....Part 4 ....An Emigration Story
One day, one moment, one decision is all it takes to change the destiny of an entire family, both for those present and for those yet to come. In that one single decision my Sicilian grandfather made to leave Sicily and venture to Australia. He changed the outcome of his families’ lives forever. Taking the detour of a lifetime, he left one island behind for another and set in motion the possibility and eventuality of a new generation of family history. Ordering his wife and children to pack up their lives to begin a voyage of no return, Nonno Antonio broke off a branch of the family tree and moved it to the other side of the world. So you see, for me immigration is not a distant memory or something that happened so long ago I repeat it like a worn out tale of family history. 50 years is less than a lifetime and for the rest of my Grandparents life and for all those who walked off those boats after their life changing voyages, they can still recount in living colour everything they left behind.
As many Sicilians did in the 1950’s and 60’s, Nonno Antonio, Nonna Maria, Zio Jo and my mother left Sicily in search of Australia’s promised opportunity and better life. Yet for all the positives in that statement I am only left wondering how they must have felt stepping onto that boat with the knowledge that they would never see their homeland, families and beloved friends again. How did they bring themselves to leave members of their family? Never to return or see them again? How did they live with the likely knowledge that they would live and die in a foreign country? I now understand how brave my Nonno Antonio must have been to look upon something he loved with the knowledge that he may never see it again. And how Sicilian Nonna Maria and my mother were to know pain like that, but for the sake of pride pretend they were pleased to be leaving.
Sometimes I wonder what would have become of my family and my life if Nonno Antonio hadn’t been as strong and courageous as to make the decision to leave the worn track of his history and take the leap into the unknown. Would my mother still be living in Sicily raising her family within a Sicilian arranged marriage, continuing to live out the Italian traditions of her family?
Beyond These Skies...Part 3....European at Heart
I could never have completely understood the step I was about to take as I boarded that plane, destined for an unknown land. Born and raised in Victoria, Australia, I learnt a carefree kind of lifestyle, allowed to roam the streets freely on my bicycle and play with friends in the streets. I made friends easily and achieved much in my schooling and sporting activities. But I longed for Italy and the continent of Europe. Born to an English father and a Sicilian Mother, I was brought up within a family where Europe was home to every single ancestors before me. Their stories of immigration intertwined within my families’ history. I grew up being Australian but feeling deeply European within my heart. My siblings and I, faced with the knowledge of being the first generation of Australians within our family, lived in a world where our European families roots where as important to us as was celebrating Australia day. We only had to look as far as our parents to understand that another world outside of Australia existed. A world which we had become a part of due to our parents and grandparents traditions which they carried in their hearts and brought with them on their voyages to a new land.
Beyond these Skies....Part 1....A life Changing Moment
It seems that it’s the smallest things that make the biggest difference. A chance encounter, a fleeting thought, a brief conversation, picking up a book meant for you in a book store, or the single image that won’t leave your dreams. It’s the moments you don’t even notice which can start a chain of events that have you suddenly veering off onto a tangent of a lifetime. If they look back, can most people pinpoint the exact moment that their life changed forever? The defining moment or series of events that coincided to achieve an outcome that they never would have dreamt of? For me, it was a rare moment of acting without thinking. A series of events which brought me to the point of allowing myself to listen to my heart, whilst ignoring my ever cautious mind. I imagined myself walking down ancient streets and felt that strange shift inside of me whenever I thought of that magic word…..Italia! It drew something out of me I couldn’t explain. It held such a power over me I couldn’t resist and in that moment I felt like I had no other choice. “Go,” I whispered to myself, and from that moment forward I gave over to the acceptance that everything in my life would change forever.
That very moment for me, is now over 2 years ago. Those chance encounters and dreams are all long gone. And, Yes, my life has changed forever. Of course, these moments can happen at any time and to anyone. I am not deluded by the thought that my epiphany was the work of true pioneering brilliance, but a moment in my life when I allowed my destiny to take flight with me in tow.
My recent past tells of a period of time spanning over 2 years of travelling, experiencing, and exploring. As I stand here today looking back over my travelling journey, I am proud to say I did it in my own way and got the most out of my experiences and have been lucky to have had many amazing opportunities come my way.
With the perspective of hindsight, I now know my life will never be the same because of the impulse decision I made to leave Australia at such a young age. In such formative years of my life I left behind my life as I knew it and begun the journey of creating another. The moment I made the simple yet huge decision to leave all of the beautiful people whom I cherished as part of my life and take flight to begin the journey in which would create my new destiny, I created a new life. I started down a new road, a new journey, and changed my life as I knew it.
Beyond These Skies...
Recently I have been compiling memoirs that explore the eternal theme of belonging. The understanding of heritage, stories of immigration and how the people in our childhood can shape us. I hope you enjoy this next phase of my waffle!
3.09.2010
This ones a long one, Sorry!!! My Wish....My Mission....My Food Philosophy
Imagine...a world where children grew up on farms, exposed to experiences such as feeding lambs, collecting eggs from the hens each morning, picking ripe apples directly from the tree and planting carrot seeds in the vegetable garden. Imagine...a world without supermarkets or convenience stores but the convenience of your tomatoes being just a short walk to your vegetable garden?
Sadly, these visions seem to be a thing of the past, images our predecessors’ cherish rather than memories we hope to be able to provide for our children of today. Luckily for me, I was one of those children who were brought up searching for the freshly laid eggs under the hens’ warm belly. At age five I could tell you exactly what was growing in the vegetable garden, I knew when the raspberries were ready to be picked for making jam. I tasted the sweetness of a fresh fig from the tree and looked forward to the autumn bringing the prickly chestnuts to roast over an open fire. This was all common knowledge to me because I was exposed to it. That was the landscape of food I was taught and I grew up being surrounded by.
Sadly though, I am in the minority of children in my generation who were brought up like this. We have come too far from those images now. The world is a very different place in the here and now. Food is now killing us! The western diet as we know it today is actually causing us to de-evolve! For the first time we are looking at a picture where our children will die younger due to poor knowledge of food and overconsumption of the wrong choices they are exposed to.
We are now looking at a pandemic of obesity. The outlook is grim, very grim. And quite simply a revolution is needed.
Obesity, diabetes, some cancers and heart disease are taking the lives of our loved ones due to poor education and the landscape of food we surround ourselves with.
I ask you, how did we reach this point? A point where we find ourselves not evolving but actually de-evolving! When in your lifetime were you educated about food, its nutrients and how to cook nutritious meals from real foods? I ask you, where has real food gone? The fruit bowl on the family dinner table? The home-baked breakfast bars? And for that matter, the family dining table, where did that go? Perhaps all of these ‘old fashioned’ values walked out the door as divorce rates increased and more women left the life of a domesticated house wife to pursue more ‘fulfilling’ lives in independent career roles separate to the home.
Mis-leading labelling, marketing and the tricks of advertising have taken the truth out of real foods, so it is no wonder we are a population very confused about what the right and wrong choices are. We were not born craving coke, big Macs or skittles! Have we forgotten that we don’t NEED white bread or aspartame filled soft drinks in our diets. Supermarkets have taken the place of local produce growers, busier lifestyles driven by economics have changed our priorities in the home, ready-made meals packed with preservatives and additives have taken the place of freshly cooked nutritious meals due to time and knowledge limitations. Surely the relationship with your local produce man at the market is better than your fake “Have a nice day!” relationship with the check out chick at the supermarket or the “would you like fries with that?” relationship with the MacDonald’s server!
What are we teaching our children about food? That it comes out of a pizza box? that you can drive to a microphone where someone will take your order and give you ‘food’ directly into your car where you can consume it while driving!! That Friday night is fish and chips night and on weekends you can ‘fend for yourself!’ by placing a ready meal in the microwave! And what about table manners? What about cutlery and the etiquette of conversation and sharing. Too many times I have seen children sit at the dinner table, turn their nose up at the food placed in front of them and switch on their DS; tuning into a world of video games while the real world is happening all around them but they are oblivious to it and not included in it! How sad is it that parents accept this as normal behaviour. That they would prefer their child to be consumed by video games than share their time together as a family and have genuine interest in each other’s lives and the family unit they are part of. That to me is very, very scary!
The old cliché ‘kids are like sponges’ could never be truer – they are easily influenced, they seek knowledge and will follow the lead of adults. It is therefore our responsibilities as adults to provide a positive environment around food. We too easily assume children want what we want, but they don’t!! They want what is best for them and they put faith in their parents to do that for them before they get to an age when they can make their own choices. We, the adult population are responsible for helping children make the link between what goes in their mouths and how it is going to affect their overall health, mood and well-being.
For the last two years I have been a traveller of this world. Seeking new cultures and experiences in foreign countries. I left Australia with a qualification in Naturopathy and an understanding of health from a holistic point of view. I am not a doctor, I am not a parent, I am no more important than you reading this article or the person sitting next to you on the tube. But I have a passion for health, nutrition, food and cooking. I have a vision, a wish if you like and that is to help people change their lives – to give them the space and time and knowledge they need to improve their life through food, spirit, and education about health and its link to nutrition and cooking.
How I hoped to reach this goal when I left Australia was to gain knowledge of the hospitality industry with a goal insight to open my very own health retreat. That has been my mission and goal. And it still is. I have placed myself in hospitality industry positions to improve my knowledge of all the aspects I will need to implement my final goal. For the last 2 years I have worked as a chef/cook, managed chalets in the French Alps and Villa’s in Tuscany.
My passions for naturopathy, food, cooking and nutrition drive me to want to help people make a change. A change that is needed! It is my wish to inspire people to cook again, to fight obesity throughout the world through education of diet, nutrition and lifestyle. We all have a choice about the diet and lifestyles we lead and by helping people recognise that making the right choices can not only prevent illness, but actually reverse them is in my opinion as an integral step in starting to reverse the pandemic of obesity which we must fight.
So let’s break it down...FOOD – One of the simplest things in this world. LIFE – The most important thing to all of us. DEATH – The thing we all try to avoid. GOOD HEALTH – A goal we all hope to achieve. So I ask you, why do we make it so hard for ourselves? Why is food so complicated? Once upon a time we listened to Mother Nature and what she had to provide for us naturally. Eating seasonally meant that we ate the right foods for our bodies at the right time of the year. We ate strawberries in the spring to help cleanse our bodies after a long indulgent winter. We ate watery watermelon, sweet grapes and colourful berries in the summer to keep us hydrated and full of energy and we ate hearty squash and carbohydrate rich foods in the winter to provide us with the nutrients to get through the less active, cold months. It all makes sense, yet we choose to ignore it.
And what about the question of nutrients? How many people even know what nutrients are? Most people will answer with the common answer of “you’re talking about vitamins and minerals, right?” Well yes, we are but do you actually know what foods contain what vitamins and minerals?! Shouldn’t we make it our responsibility to change the myth that an orange contains a large amount of Vitamin C! Shouldn’t we be educating people that a simple strawberry, kiwi fruit or pepper contains more vitamin C than an orange on your supermarket shelf ever will!
How many of us know the health benefits of the mineral, Zinc? Or what nutrients are important for us at different stages of our lives? Most of us will educate ourselves IF we get sick, or WHEN we become pregnant but what about prevention and the power we have to improve the quality of our mental states and health in day to day life?
It is my opinion, we have forgotten the art of cooking – how it can bind people – how the simple act of sitting around a table and the conviviality of that binds us all together, makes us laugh, forms bonds and makes us happy and HEALTHY!! Quite simply, It’s about food, it’s about produce, it’s about the seasons, and it’s about sharing food and the knowledge of nutrients and how they can affect our health. We cannot deny that plants promote health – eating more plant foods and less of the other choices we have increases our life spans and increases our quality of life. Conditions such as diabetes type 2 (NIDDIM), heart disease and hypertension, the very illnesses that are killing us are not only preventable but reversible through diet and lifestyle. And we have to start fighting them. We have to admit that drugs are not the answer and acknowledge that an easier and much cheaper way of combating these diseases is right at our finger tips.
And although another subject, another fight and struggle all of its own accord, let’s not forget about Global warming, carbon emissions and how the obesity crisis is intrinsically linked with how we are killing our planet. Of course if we all had vegetables gardens and never had to get in a car to go to buy our food, then we wouldn’t have such a big problem. If we didn’t demand food from all over the world be stocked on our supermarket shelves then carbon emissions would undoubtedly be less. If we kept to the old logic of being ‘locavores.’ Of eating produce from our local area, from local growers, butchers and foods in season then no one could argue that we would be helping the planet. As I have said, I was one of the lucky ones who grew up playing in the lanes of my Nonno’s vegetable garden sneakily pricing the sweetest sweet peas straight from the vines. My Sicilian heritage allowed me to grow up watching how tomatoes grew from flowers into little green round buds, into deliciously vibrant red fresh tomatoes ready to be picked. I watched as my Nonno picked them straight from his crop, delivering them into my Nonna’s kitchen where she would make them into the most delicious tomato sauces to go with our pasta. One of my most treasured possessions is my Nonna’s little black book of recipes. Written in incomprehensible Sicilian dialect, but none the less invaluable to me as a source of wisdom and inspiration.
My inspiration and wisdom is also drawn from my very own Mother who drove to the local fresh produce market, with her children in tow, searching the stalls looking for the ripest, sweetest, most delicious produce for our meals which she provided for us. My siblings and I thought supermarkets were strange places. We knew that a melon on the stands in the supermarket didn’t have anywhere near the colour, taste or smell of those on the local stands at the market from the friendly local farmer ‘Mario’, who grew his melons with love from his plot down the road.
As I have said, I am one of the lucky ones. I am not obese, I am free of illness and have the knowledge to make informed choices about my diet and lifestyle. But as I have also stated, I am in the minority and that needs to change. In order to combat obesity we need to start educating people. We need to start to change the way we eat and cook our foods. We need to start educating children about real foods, nutrients, health and teach them the wholesome value of being able to cook with real foods. We need to start thinking about alcohol consumption in our daily lives and now our sedentary lives and daily food choices are causing illness and obesity.
So where do I want to start...?
As I decide to hang up my worn out travellers shoes, I find myself in a unique position. With two years cooking/chef experience and my Naturopathy degree behind me I am at the centre of being able to implement my knowledge to start to help people make the right choices about food. All of my passions; holistic health, nutrition, cooking and food put me at the front line of being able to educate and cook nutritious meals for individuals with such diseases as type 2 diabetes or hypertension. Having run my own Naturopathic business and had patients describe their daily eating habits I have seen how poor food choices can manifest illness in individuals. And what’s better I now have the cooking abilities to actually provide the right food choices to these individuals as a way of combating their illnesses. All in all I understand how food is killing us and what’s better; I can help to make a change. My plan is to use the power of words, speech and education to implement a change and reverse the ill effects of the landscape of food surrounding us. To allow food not to kill us but to nourish us!
Sadly, these visions seem to be a thing of the past, images our predecessors’ cherish rather than memories we hope to be able to provide for our children of today. Luckily for me, I was one of those children who were brought up searching for the freshly laid eggs under the hens’ warm belly. At age five I could tell you exactly what was growing in the vegetable garden, I knew when the raspberries were ready to be picked for making jam. I tasted the sweetness of a fresh fig from the tree and looked forward to the autumn bringing the prickly chestnuts to roast over an open fire. This was all common knowledge to me because I was exposed to it. That was the landscape of food I was taught and I grew up being surrounded by.
Sadly though, I am in the minority of children in my generation who were brought up like this. We have come too far from those images now. The world is a very different place in the here and now. Food is now killing us! The western diet as we know it today is actually causing us to de-evolve! For the first time we are looking at a picture where our children will die younger due to poor knowledge of food and overconsumption of the wrong choices they are exposed to.
We are now looking at a pandemic of obesity. The outlook is grim, very grim. And quite simply a revolution is needed.
Obesity, diabetes, some cancers and heart disease are taking the lives of our loved ones due to poor education and the landscape of food we surround ourselves with.
I ask you, how did we reach this point? A point where we find ourselves not evolving but actually de-evolving! When in your lifetime were you educated about food, its nutrients and how to cook nutritious meals from real foods? I ask you, where has real food gone? The fruit bowl on the family dinner table? The home-baked breakfast bars? And for that matter, the family dining table, where did that go? Perhaps all of these ‘old fashioned’ values walked out the door as divorce rates increased and more women left the life of a domesticated house wife to pursue more ‘fulfilling’ lives in independent career roles separate to the home.
Mis-leading labelling, marketing and the tricks of advertising have taken the truth out of real foods, so it is no wonder we are a population very confused about what the right and wrong choices are. We were not born craving coke, big Macs or skittles! Have we forgotten that we don’t NEED white bread or aspartame filled soft drinks in our diets. Supermarkets have taken the place of local produce growers, busier lifestyles driven by economics have changed our priorities in the home, ready-made meals packed with preservatives and additives have taken the place of freshly cooked nutritious meals due to time and knowledge limitations. Surely the relationship with your local produce man at the market is better than your fake “Have a nice day!” relationship with the check out chick at the supermarket or the “would you like fries with that?” relationship with the MacDonald’s server!
What are we teaching our children about food? That it comes out of a pizza box? that you can drive to a microphone where someone will take your order and give you ‘food’ directly into your car where you can consume it while driving!! That Friday night is fish and chips night and on weekends you can ‘fend for yourself!’ by placing a ready meal in the microwave! And what about table manners? What about cutlery and the etiquette of conversation and sharing. Too many times I have seen children sit at the dinner table, turn their nose up at the food placed in front of them and switch on their DS; tuning into a world of video games while the real world is happening all around them but they are oblivious to it and not included in it! How sad is it that parents accept this as normal behaviour. That they would prefer their child to be consumed by video games than share their time together as a family and have genuine interest in each other’s lives and the family unit they are part of. That to me is very, very scary!
The old cliché ‘kids are like sponges’ could never be truer – they are easily influenced, they seek knowledge and will follow the lead of adults. It is therefore our responsibilities as adults to provide a positive environment around food. We too easily assume children want what we want, but they don’t!! They want what is best for them and they put faith in their parents to do that for them before they get to an age when they can make their own choices. We, the adult population are responsible for helping children make the link between what goes in their mouths and how it is going to affect their overall health, mood and well-being.
For the last two years I have been a traveller of this world. Seeking new cultures and experiences in foreign countries. I left Australia with a qualification in Naturopathy and an understanding of health from a holistic point of view. I am not a doctor, I am not a parent, I am no more important than you reading this article or the person sitting next to you on the tube. But I have a passion for health, nutrition, food and cooking. I have a vision, a wish if you like and that is to help people change their lives – to give them the space and time and knowledge they need to improve their life through food, spirit, and education about health and its link to nutrition and cooking.
How I hoped to reach this goal when I left Australia was to gain knowledge of the hospitality industry with a goal insight to open my very own health retreat. That has been my mission and goal. And it still is. I have placed myself in hospitality industry positions to improve my knowledge of all the aspects I will need to implement my final goal. For the last 2 years I have worked as a chef/cook, managed chalets in the French Alps and Villa’s in Tuscany.
My passions for naturopathy, food, cooking and nutrition drive me to want to help people make a change. A change that is needed! It is my wish to inspire people to cook again, to fight obesity throughout the world through education of diet, nutrition and lifestyle. We all have a choice about the diet and lifestyles we lead and by helping people recognise that making the right choices can not only prevent illness, but actually reverse them is in my opinion as an integral step in starting to reverse the pandemic of obesity which we must fight.
So let’s break it down...FOOD – One of the simplest things in this world. LIFE – The most important thing to all of us. DEATH – The thing we all try to avoid. GOOD HEALTH – A goal we all hope to achieve. So I ask you, why do we make it so hard for ourselves? Why is food so complicated? Once upon a time we listened to Mother Nature and what she had to provide for us naturally. Eating seasonally meant that we ate the right foods for our bodies at the right time of the year. We ate strawberries in the spring to help cleanse our bodies after a long indulgent winter. We ate watery watermelon, sweet grapes and colourful berries in the summer to keep us hydrated and full of energy and we ate hearty squash and carbohydrate rich foods in the winter to provide us with the nutrients to get through the less active, cold months. It all makes sense, yet we choose to ignore it.
And what about the question of nutrients? How many people even know what nutrients are? Most people will answer with the common answer of “you’re talking about vitamins and minerals, right?” Well yes, we are but do you actually know what foods contain what vitamins and minerals?! Shouldn’t we make it our responsibility to change the myth that an orange contains a large amount of Vitamin C! Shouldn’t we be educating people that a simple strawberry, kiwi fruit or pepper contains more vitamin C than an orange on your supermarket shelf ever will!
How many of us know the health benefits of the mineral, Zinc? Or what nutrients are important for us at different stages of our lives? Most of us will educate ourselves IF we get sick, or WHEN we become pregnant but what about prevention and the power we have to improve the quality of our mental states and health in day to day life?
It is my opinion, we have forgotten the art of cooking – how it can bind people – how the simple act of sitting around a table and the conviviality of that binds us all together, makes us laugh, forms bonds and makes us happy and HEALTHY!! Quite simply, It’s about food, it’s about produce, it’s about the seasons, and it’s about sharing food and the knowledge of nutrients and how they can affect our health. We cannot deny that plants promote health – eating more plant foods and less of the other choices we have increases our life spans and increases our quality of life. Conditions such as diabetes type 2 (NIDDIM), heart disease and hypertension, the very illnesses that are killing us are not only preventable but reversible through diet and lifestyle. And we have to start fighting them. We have to admit that drugs are not the answer and acknowledge that an easier and much cheaper way of combating these diseases is right at our finger tips.
And although another subject, another fight and struggle all of its own accord, let’s not forget about Global warming, carbon emissions and how the obesity crisis is intrinsically linked with how we are killing our planet. Of course if we all had vegetables gardens and never had to get in a car to go to buy our food, then we wouldn’t have such a big problem. If we didn’t demand food from all over the world be stocked on our supermarket shelves then carbon emissions would undoubtedly be less. If we kept to the old logic of being ‘locavores.’ Of eating produce from our local area, from local growers, butchers and foods in season then no one could argue that we would be helping the planet. As I have said, I was one of the lucky ones who grew up playing in the lanes of my Nonno’s vegetable garden sneakily pricing the sweetest sweet peas straight from the vines. My Sicilian heritage allowed me to grow up watching how tomatoes grew from flowers into little green round buds, into deliciously vibrant red fresh tomatoes ready to be picked. I watched as my Nonno picked them straight from his crop, delivering them into my Nonna’s kitchen where she would make them into the most delicious tomato sauces to go with our pasta. One of my most treasured possessions is my Nonna’s little black book of recipes. Written in incomprehensible Sicilian dialect, but none the less invaluable to me as a source of wisdom and inspiration.
My inspiration and wisdom is also drawn from my very own Mother who drove to the local fresh produce market, with her children in tow, searching the stalls looking for the ripest, sweetest, most delicious produce for our meals which she provided for us. My siblings and I thought supermarkets were strange places. We knew that a melon on the stands in the supermarket didn’t have anywhere near the colour, taste or smell of those on the local stands at the market from the friendly local farmer ‘Mario’, who grew his melons with love from his plot down the road.
As I have said, I am one of the lucky ones. I am not obese, I am free of illness and have the knowledge to make informed choices about my diet and lifestyle. But as I have also stated, I am in the minority and that needs to change. In order to combat obesity we need to start educating people. We need to start to change the way we eat and cook our foods. We need to start educating children about real foods, nutrients, health and teach them the wholesome value of being able to cook with real foods. We need to start thinking about alcohol consumption in our daily lives and now our sedentary lives and daily food choices are causing illness and obesity.
So where do I want to start...?
As I decide to hang up my worn out travellers shoes, I find myself in a unique position. With two years cooking/chef experience and my Naturopathy degree behind me I am at the centre of being able to implement my knowledge to start to help people make the right choices about food. All of my passions; holistic health, nutrition, cooking and food put me at the front line of being able to educate and cook nutritious meals for individuals with such diseases as type 2 diabetes or hypertension. Having run my own Naturopathic business and had patients describe their daily eating habits I have seen how poor food choices can manifest illness in individuals. And what’s better I now have the cooking abilities to actually provide the right food choices to these individuals as a way of combating their illnesses. All in all I understand how food is killing us and what’s better; I can help to make a change. My plan is to use the power of words, speech and education to implement a change and reverse the ill effects of the landscape of food surrounding us. To allow food not to kill us but to nourish us!
3.04.2010
Blimey!! Two years already....
The 10th of January 2010 marked the 2 year anniversary of the day I made the decision to leave Australia and begin this journey I have been travelling on for the last 2 years. And this week in March 2010 marks the day I walked through those dreaded double doors of the international departures at Melbourne airport. Tears flowing down my face at the emotional and physical pain of saying goodbye to my family and friends spilling over; completely overwhelming me.
And although 2 years doesn’t seem like a long time in the grand scheme of things, I can tell you from my point of view, each and every one of those 24 months has felt like a lifetime in themselves. When you are away from family and friends for that long, the absence your heart and whole being goes through can be hard to cope with at times. The changes that you go through as you experience new cultures, lives and places are all things you wish you could be sharing with your loved ones and those who understand you the best. Throughout those 2 years I have yearned to be around my loved ones more than I dare think about. The cumulative minutes, hours and days I have spent thinking, wishing and yearning to be around my friends and family would amount to an insurmountable amount of time. Time I probably should have spent enjoying the experiences of life instead of being so melodramatic! But hey, what’s life without a little philosophical thought and melancholy!
There have been times when I have been scared of the changes that come with time. I have noticed the connections with people taking on new transformations and friendships changing due to time and not sharing experiences. People change and I know I have changed beyond recognition to some people in my life due to these last two years. But I know my true friends are those that still understand and respect me for those and can still find the Kim that they love and know through those changes and experiences I have enjoyed without them. The people that have taken the time to understand how my environments, lifestyle and experiences have shaped and formed me into the person I am today are my true friends and I am grateful for them. Even my English Accents!!!
And although 2 years doesn’t seem like a long time in the grand scheme of things, I can tell you from my point of view, each and every one of those 24 months has felt like a lifetime in themselves. When you are away from family and friends for that long, the absence your heart and whole being goes through can be hard to cope with at times. The changes that you go through as you experience new cultures, lives and places are all things you wish you could be sharing with your loved ones and those who understand you the best. Throughout those 2 years I have yearned to be around my loved ones more than I dare think about. The cumulative minutes, hours and days I have spent thinking, wishing and yearning to be around my friends and family would amount to an insurmountable amount of time. Time I probably should have spent enjoying the experiences of life instead of being so melodramatic! But hey, what’s life without a little philosophical thought and melancholy!
There have been times when I have been scared of the changes that come with time. I have noticed the connections with people taking on new transformations and friendships changing due to time and not sharing experiences. People change and I know I have changed beyond recognition to some people in my life due to these last two years. But I know my true friends are those that still understand and respect me for those and can still find the Kim that they love and know through those changes and experiences I have enjoyed without them. The people that have taken the time to understand how my environments, lifestyle and experiences have shaped and formed me into the person I am today are my true friends and I am grateful for them. Even my English Accents!!!
Worn Out Travellers Shoes...
It’s time to hang up the travellers’ hat for a while!
My loyal and trusty travel shoes have taken me far and given me so many beautiful experiences but I’m done!! I’m tired!!
I find my thoughts turning towards wanting to find a base rather than what my new adventure is going to be. So it’s time to find a place to call home for a while...
With my life consisting of people constantly coming and going out of my life due to the job positions I have held over the last two years I find myself reaching a point of loneliness which seems to have consumed me. Making new friends no longer appeals as the eventual goodbyes when a new destination calls are too hard to bear. Each Saturday I endure a day filled with goodbyes from guests who have stayed in my company at the chalet, followed by a whole new group of at least 12 guests coming into my life with whom I have to get to know. The goodbyes each week are beginning to take their toll on me. It seems that with each farewell, each and every friendship which is developed and then lost leaves me feeling like a little piece of me is lost with them as they leave. It’s a horrible feeling having to start all over again each time people leave. I find myself looking forward to the day when I can live an existence where I can feel I have my friends support and friendship surrounding me without any time limit or restrictions as boundaries. Don’t get me wrong I will miss meeting so many new people and making connections with people from all walks of life but I am longing to be able to form bonds and friendships within a community I can call mine for a while.
It’s this bizarre sense of loneliness (without actually ever being lonely) that has driven me to want to find a base. It’s been such a long time since I felt like I had any support network around me that when the times do get tough I have no one to turn to but myself and my own strength. Travelling on my own and coupled with the constancy of missing family and friends while travelling is losing its appeal. The existence of constantly moving and never feeling as if I have a base to call home no longer appeals. All the excitement and wonder I once used to feel when I thought of visiting a new country or culture is lost to me now. The constancy of moving and setting up a life in a new destination conjures up thoughts of exhaustion and dread at the notion of more change. The unknown no longer appeals and the tourist within me has gone into hiding! I am longing for the lifestyle of an English speaking country, to have the ease of being able to converse and be understood. To have a space I can call my own, where I can unpack my suitcase and enjoy a bed that is MINE and not just mine for the next 5 months! My poor tired soul doesn’t seem to be able to cope with much more change lately. And I certainly have put it through a lot!
But what an adventure it has been! I can now look back with a huge amount of pride at what I have achieved and experienced over the last 2 years. I have beautiful memories I will cherish for the rest of my life and friends all over the world. I am truly grateful for all the amazing places I have visited, all the amazing experiences I have had. But by far the best part of the last 2 years have been the beautiful people I have been able to meet. I feel incredibly lucky to have met so many amazing, generous people who have shaped and changed me into the person I am today. I literally have suitcases full of memories!
My loyal and trusty travel shoes have taken me far and given me so many beautiful experiences but I’m done!! I’m tired!!
I find my thoughts turning towards wanting to find a base rather than what my new adventure is going to be. So it’s time to find a place to call home for a while...
With my life consisting of people constantly coming and going out of my life due to the job positions I have held over the last two years I find myself reaching a point of loneliness which seems to have consumed me. Making new friends no longer appeals as the eventual goodbyes when a new destination calls are too hard to bear. Each Saturday I endure a day filled with goodbyes from guests who have stayed in my company at the chalet, followed by a whole new group of at least 12 guests coming into my life with whom I have to get to know. The goodbyes each week are beginning to take their toll on me. It seems that with each farewell, each and every friendship which is developed and then lost leaves me feeling like a little piece of me is lost with them as they leave. It’s a horrible feeling having to start all over again each time people leave. I find myself looking forward to the day when I can live an existence where I can feel I have my friends support and friendship surrounding me without any time limit or restrictions as boundaries. Don’t get me wrong I will miss meeting so many new people and making connections with people from all walks of life but I am longing to be able to form bonds and friendships within a community I can call mine for a while.
It’s this bizarre sense of loneliness (without actually ever being lonely) that has driven me to want to find a base. It’s been such a long time since I felt like I had any support network around me that when the times do get tough I have no one to turn to but myself and my own strength. Travelling on my own and coupled with the constancy of missing family and friends while travelling is losing its appeal. The existence of constantly moving and never feeling as if I have a base to call home no longer appeals. All the excitement and wonder I once used to feel when I thought of visiting a new country or culture is lost to me now. The constancy of moving and setting up a life in a new destination conjures up thoughts of exhaustion and dread at the notion of more change. The unknown no longer appeals and the tourist within me has gone into hiding! I am longing for the lifestyle of an English speaking country, to have the ease of being able to converse and be understood. To have a space I can call my own, where I can unpack my suitcase and enjoy a bed that is MINE and not just mine for the next 5 months! My poor tired soul doesn’t seem to be able to cope with much more change lately. And I certainly have put it through a lot!
But what an adventure it has been! I can now look back with a huge amount of pride at what I have achieved and experienced over the last 2 years. I have beautiful memories I will cherish for the rest of my life and friends all over the world. I am truly grateful for all the amazing places I have visited, all the amazing experiences I have had. But by far the best part of the last 2 years have been the beautiful people I have been able to meet. I feel incredibly lucky to have met so many amazing, generous people who have shaped and changed me into the person I am today. I literally have suitcases full of memories!
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