Root Veg Quinoa Bowl
A Reflection on nourishment & A Recipe for nourishment—
Food is a personal, spiritual, political, insufferably economic & geopolitical necessity. The weight of it, it overwhelms.
As I boil water for the quinoa, a grain I did not know about until age 22, the narrator on the audiobook I’m listening to, The Assertiveness Guide for Women, asks me these questions:
Were certain emotions unacceptable in your family?
How did your family react when you issued differing opinions?
— the self-guided quiz in “The Assertiveness Guide for Women” by Julie De Azevedo Hanks, PhD.
Cooking quinoa and root vegetables for my vegetarian lunch today, in itself, would be enough to solicit a reaction of anger and frustration from my family. Not eating meat is the differing opinion.
Telling my mother that I was “considering only eating meat once a week” for environmental & health benefits was enough to start an argument about the importance of supporting the ranching industry, which my family has historically worked in.
Similarly, on the day my left-leaning uncle tried to explain the environmental impact of cattle production and factory farming to…
