Troubles in the Kitchen
Donna is a fantastic cook. She can bake like nobody’s business. If you have ever had the opportunity to enjoy her hospitality, you can attest to this fact. So it has been a very rare event indeed that I would have any complaints about what she puts on the table.
First, I need to say that we never intended for cooking to be her job alone. I fully intended to contribute in this area of running our household. That is, until she tasted my cooking. One particular remembrance sticks out to me as perhaps the decisive moment for her. During our first months of marriage we lived in a small studio apartment in State College, Pennsylvania. After returning home from her classes one evening, I proudly presented a dinner of something in a pan that contained all of the leftovers from our fridge mixed together. I was actually excited to dig in. After one taste, she smiled shyly and carefully emptied it into the trash bin. That was the last time she allowed me to cook dinner for anyone but myself, except for warming some hot dogs or sausages. Or making pancakes. Or grilling toasted cheese sandwiches (which she cannot cook without burning to this day).
The only time her cooking has given me pause is when she tries something completely new. She likes to experiment, while I’m happy with tried and true standards, like her apple pie. Or cheesecake. Or lasagna. Or four-cheese pasta. You don’t mess with perfection.
This is how our troubles in the kitchen began, I think. Donna loved to cook, and I would eat anything she would make, typically in large quantities. After 40 years of this, I had put on quite a few pounds. Though some friends told me I “carried it well,” the mirror told me I was getting closer and closer to “spherical equilibrium” as my college roommate would say. But my growing discomfort with my weight didn’t give me enough impetus to change. That came more recently.
The Heart of the Matter
Donna’s family has a history of heart disease, and after Donna’s mom was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, she decided to have a test called a CAC, or calcium score. The coronary artery calcium (CAC) score measures the amount of calcified plaque you have in your arteries. High levels of coronary plaque lead to heart attacks and strokes. On a scale of zero to 500, her score was zero, which was fantastic. So Donna asked me to get my CAC score for comparison.
Mostly to please Donna, I agreed to it, even though my family had no history of heart disease that I was aware of. For some odd reason, insurance companies will not pay for a CAC score, which I found utterly stupid. But the test only costs about $50 so we went through with it. My score came back higher than 450. It may have even been 500. This triggered alarms at my doctor’s office, so they scheduled an ultrasound of my coronary arteries. When I saw the look on my technician’s face, I knew something was up. She wouldn’t tell me what she saw, but that she would be sending the images to my doctor right away.
The next day my doctor called to tell me about some potentially life-threatening blockages in the arteries leading to my heart. They scheduled a heart catheterization to verify the results of the ultrasound. Long story short, they found two 95% blockages in one artery and placed coronary stents to save my life. According to the surgeon, it was close to a miracle that I hadn’t already experienced a heart attack, and that my wife had suggested getting the CAC score in the first place!
What Happened Next in the Kitchen
After my surgery, my cardiologist prescribed medications to reduce my blood pressure and reduce my cholesterol levels. He told me I would be on these medications for the rest of my life, which would be considerably shorter if I didn’t take them as prescribed. A couple weeks later, I experienced an allergic reaction to the medications which sent me to the hospital in an ambulance. Afterward, the doctor told me I would need to give myself injections for the rest of my life, but during the next two months while he fought with my insurance company to get the injections approved, I did some research of my own.
What I found astonished me. It turns out there is only one way to cure and even reverse heart disease, and that is a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet with no added salt, sugar, or oils. This may sound as crazy to you as it did to us, but extensive, peer-reviewed research proves it is true, even though it appears to be a well-kept secret in the United States. I’m not going into all that research here, but the proof was so overwhelming that we decided to give it a try.
On the advice of a fantastic doctor in Chattanooga, Dr. Suzannah Bozzone, I checked myself into TrueNorth Health Center in Santa Rosa, California, where I fasted for 23 days, followed by a re-feeding program consisting of a WFPB diet. When I returned to my cardiologist afterward, all of my cholesterol numbers and blood pressure had dropped to normal levels. He took me off all medications and the numbers held steady. So far so good.
Then we had to figure out how to maintain a healthy diet in the real world of frequent business travel and dinners, where every menu seemed to be pushing addictive salt, sugar, and fat at bargain prices. Plus, when we were home, Donna had to learn to cook in an entirely different way. This went way beyond vegan (eating no animal products), requiring her to figure out how to fry vegetables without oil, how to season food without salt, and how to bake without refined sugar. My doctors call this the SOS diet (no salt, oil, or sugar), but to Donna, SOS sounded more like a cry for help. She had to throw away all her cookbooks and recipes collected over 40 years and start over entirely! Suddenly we wondered if those injections weren’t such a bad option.
We didn’t give up. We found new cookbooks. We bought new cookware (more on this in another post). We found new restaurants. Best of all, Donna learned (and quickly mastered) the science and art of cooking without animal products, salt, oil, or sugar. She must really love me to have put herself through all of this. Now she can make an amazing lasagna that nobody believes is vegan and SOS-free. Her carrot cake muffins rule (even our grandchildren love them). I particularly like her chili and hearty vegetable soup. And there’s so much more. We had a die-hard NON-vegan at our home for a party the other night and he was stunned to learn that all of the food he ate (and enjoyed) was 100% plant based. We had a taco bar and brownies for crying out loud, and he loved them!
Now We’re Cooking
Both of us lost a lot of weight eating WFPB SOS foods, and our health has improved dramatically. On the downside, we did have to buy new clothing. But the upside is too good to pass up. We get to eat really good food that is just as good for us as it is to eat. After three years of living this way, we thought it would be helpful and fun for Donna to share her recipes and stories with others. Whether you have heart troubles or not, you’re going to love what she serves up. I will offer some words from time to time as well, because, after all, I’m the one who nearly ate myself to death.
