If only we could get our cat Louie to do this…

I said I wanted to learn to cook, right? What better motivation could I need?

So, I just read a pretty fascinating book called Gluten-Free Girl by Shauna James Ahern. In this memoir-cum-cookbook, Ahern chronicles her food habits as a child, her chronic illnesses, and finally her diagnosis of celiac disease, which renders her unable to eat foods that contain gluten (typically wheat, barley, rye and spelt). Rather than adopting a poor-me attitude, Ahern embraced her diagnosis and began a journey of discovery. Armed with a well-stocked kitchen, unusual ingredients, and a healthy zeal for eating, Ahern began creating sumptuous gluten-free recipes, such as Chilled Millet Salad with Jicama and Mango and Roasted Cauliflower with Smoked Paprika and Cocoa Powder.

Okay, I know you’re wondering. Why do I, someone who wholly detests cooking, find this book interesting? Well, actually there are a couple of reasons. One is that my holistic doctor told me to stop eating gluten. While I certainly don’t have full-blown celiac disease, I am apparently gluten sensitive, or intolerant, or something. Two, Ahern talks again and again about healing herself with food, a concept I’m coming to understand more and more. As a vegetarian and lifelong picky eater, I’ve always seen eating as a chore: something that has to be done to stay alive. I’ve never relished it as the pleasurable experience that so many people seem to do.

Also, I’ve been feeling like crap for years. Literally. Years. I’m exhausted, run-down and feel malnourished, even though I’ve always thought that I followed a reasonably healthy diet. And, whereas I’ve never gotten that much joy from eating, I do love to read. And Ahern painted sumptuous pictures in my head of delicious, beautiful meals. So, I think I’m going to try to learn to cook. I want to take the time to create art out of whole, healthy foods to heal my body and restore its proper nutrient balance. I want to look at eating as a joy, rather than something I dread…

For the past few months, people have been telling me to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. Like, literally once a month someone would recommend it to me. So I finally bit the bullet and put my name on the waiting list. I got my copy a few days ago, and I have to admit that so far I’m really enjoying it. A lot of her experiences speak to me, since she studied at an ashram (which I would like to do) and traveled to Bali, which I am doing next month! I’m only about halfway through, but so far there have been two passages that really caught my attention.

• What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad’s fault?) Was it just temporal, a “bad time” in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I’m a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don’t creative people always suffer from depression because we’re so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species’ attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

• For instance, when I told a friend back in New York City that I was going to India to live in an Ashram and search for divinity, he sighed and said, “Oh there’s a part of me that so wishes I wanted to do that…but I really have no desire for it whatsoever.”

These passages struck me because they represent what I’ve been struggling with lately. What is the root of my melancholy? And why am I so disinterested in everything lately? I’m not sure of the answers, so in addition to my amazing upcoming vacation (along with Bali, I’m also going to Singapore to see my family) I have also embarked on a new health journey with a holistic doctor. It’s not easy; I’m taking vast quantities of supplements, some of which are NOT vegetarian friendly, which is freaking me out, but after years of feeling depressed and icky, I feel that this is something I need to do. I can’t wait to see how the book ends; maybe the answers that Gilbert found will help me too.

I was goofing around on Facebook tonight, and I stumbled across a profile eerily similar to my own, for a girl named Nicole. We live in the same city, our birthdays are 3 days apart, we have the same unusual book listed in our favorites, we have similar political leanings, we’re both pro-Macintosh and anti-global warming, and she is in the same career field as my husband (for now, although he’s going back to school for GIS).

She also had a link to her etsy store, where she creates the coolest frickin’ thing ever: personality penguins. There’s yoga penguin, raw food penguin, pirate penguin, vegetarian penguin…it’s like she’s custom made them all for me! I don’t want to come off as a crazy stalker; I just think it’s weird how many random things we have in common. Maybe we’ll run into each other in Atlanta some day.