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The Naked Chef Cares About What You Eat.

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Jamie Oliver says:

“The more we care about what we eat, the better for us, our families and the country.”

Who is Jamie Oliver anyway? Well, if you like food and enjoy cooking shows, you’ll know that he’s a phenomenon in the world of food. Jamie is  “one of Britain’s most famous exports,” and you may have heard of the television series The Naked Chef (BBC), a huge success around the world.

Jamie is one of those Gutsy people who followed his passion at a young age. If you’ve watched him on TV, you can’t help but be charmed by his enthusiasm for food, cooking, and educating all of us, especially children about the importance of eating healthy.

“My biggest passion has been, and remains, food education.”

From what I’ve read about Jamie, he has a very close relationship with his parents and I admire them for letting him follow his passion at a young age. Jamie quit school at 16 and started his training at Westminster Catering College. He has inspired people to spend more time enjoying being in the kitchen, and even start growing their own food.

“I was lucky enough to be brought up by parents who placed a lot of importance on traditional values and sharing those life skills.”

Jamie Oliver and his family

Jamie believes in the importance of having family dinners and I completely agree with him. He says he’s shocked by how many families don’t even have a dinner table. He wants to change this and claims that:

“Carving out the time at least once a week to cook a meal and sit down around the table with your family has endless benefits, even in modern-day life.”

It’s a wonderful opportunity to share and I admit that our meals around a dinner table when my sons were all home, especially when we lived in Belize, and didn’t have TV, resulted in some wonderful memories.

“Being knowledgeable about where food comes from and how it affects your body is one of the most important life skills we can teach them.”

During his trips around the world, Jamie says there are many people who have no clue where their food comes from. I remember when he spoke to some children at a school in New York who had no idea that french fries came from a potato, and who didn’t know what an apple or a potato looked like.

“With so many parents working today, it’s easy to grab ready-made pre-packaged meals that are not good for our bodies, nutritionally.”

That’s why Jamie is on a mission to ensure that every 16-year-old knows about food and can turn a pile of ingredients into a delicious meal. Jamie is optimistic however, and claims there is a growth in real foodies, both young and old, who shop at farmers’ markets and are passionate about fresh ingredients. There are some positive changes in Britain, where  McDonald’s is only selling free-range eggs and organic milk in an effort to support British producers. I did a Google search on McDonald’s in the U.S, and whether they also serve organic eggs and milk, and nothing popped up. Jamie says:

“These companies aren’t necessarily doing these things in other countries, they’re doing them here, for us – because British consumers have become more educated and are demanding it.”

Imagine my excitement to see Jamie mention the importance of ” an individual or a family that have the guts to travel halfway round the world, set up a new life and make a go of it.”

So what does this have to do with food?

“Everything.”

Everything we eat today can be traced back in history, either through invasion, exploration, colonization and immigration.

I remember reading that even Queen Elizabeth, when she visited Belize, tasted Gibnut and thought it tasted just like chicken.

Baby Gibnut

 Photo credit

The whole concept of a pie originated in Egypt and was brought to us by the Romans via the Greeks. Burgers come from America via Germany through Russia.

Do you cook from scratch? Do you enjoy cooking or do you buy mostly pre-packaged food? What about organic products? 

The new Dr. Phil of man and horse: Buck

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You’ve just come out of a movie feeling intense emotions of love, kindness towards others, the good in life, and you long to  share and inspire others to pay it forward.

This is how I felt after seeing the movie “Buck.”

“Buck” is the story of Buck Brannaman, a true cowboy who endured a violent, abusive upbringing, and succeeded in overcoming tremendous personal odds.

After years of being physically beaten by his alcoholic father, Buck was placed in a  loving foster home where he developed a phenomenally successful approach to horses.  A real-life “horse-whisperer”, he is described as the “real deal” by Robert Redford. Everyone who meets Buck for the first time is taken by his authenticity.

Buck admits that the violence of his upbringing transformed him into the person he has become today, and his approach is to teach people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment. He’s able to transform horses and people with the approach,

“I’m helping horses with people problems,”

and the movie succeeds in showing us the animal-human relationship and how it becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life.

I’ve never been exposed to horses, ranches or cowboys. Growing up in the suburbs of Paris with museums, cultural events and gourmet restaurants, could not be further from a cowboy’s lifestyle, yet Buck showed me the human side of horses and an understanding of how they can teach us so much about our own insecurities, problems and character flaws.

Buck Brannaman explains that a horse views a human tossing a saddle on his back much the way he would view a lion attack. He has a way of explaining to some doubting horse owners, who attend his clinics, his techniques which are all based on love and not punishment.

“Your horse is a mirror of you. Some may not like what they see. Some might.”

His no nonsense advice reminds me of the approach that Dr. Phil takes with those who seek help on his show. Buck shows us that raising horses is like raising children, they need guidelines and sometimes “tough love” is also required to build trust and mutual respect. Trying to bribe a horse with carrots and sugar leads to a spoiled, unresponsive horse, the same argument can be made for that type of parenting approach.

Strangely enough, you never see Buck whisper; he just snaps and waves a couple of red flags to convince the animal he cares about them. He has the ability to control any horse, even the feistiest and most deadly horses, and manages to appease them by remaining calm and non-threatening.

Buck is equally successful in his interaction with people and he holds clinics all over the West to show owners and trainers how to tame the liveliest colts. The movie shows his loving relationship with his wife and daughter, who performs at rodeos with him two months out of the year.

Buck’s turnaround was in great part due to the love he received from his foster mother. She is a delightful old lady who raised Buck with all the love that he didn’t receive from his own dad. Her love for Buck is obvious and what struck me as a major learning lesson in this film is just how much a parent can influence a child’s life into adulthood. I sensed that everyone watching the film was thinking about two things:

  • their childhood and the choices they have made as adults.
  • their parenting skills.

Have you seen the movie? Please share your thoughts even if you haven’t seen Buck.

 Photo credit Buck Brannaman

Memorial Day and what it means to me

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My son during parent weekend at New Mexico Military Institute

Memorial Day has taken on a whole new meaning in my life. Let me explain. Like many Americans, I believed it was a holiday signifying the start of summer barbecues, beach days and a vacation on the horizon.

But now that my seventeen-year-old son enlisted and started a nine week Army Basic training program, I have developed a new appreciation for what young men and women go through, and what other service men and women have done for us, and continue to do for our country and our world.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have often taken our freedom for granted. If only we lived in a peaceful world where every single person on our planet could fall asleep without the fear of being killed, raped, and had a  safe place to live.

For the next nine weeks, my 17-year-old son, like all the other soldiers during Basic training will learn the following Seven Army Values:

* Loyalty
* Duty
* Respect
* Selfless Service
* Honor
* Integrity
* Personal Courage

“These values form the basis of your soldier character and they sustain a soldier in times of both peace and conflict.”

His daily training schedule will be the following:

Army Boot Camp 5 a.m. – Wake up
5:30 a.m. – Physical Training
6:30 a.m. – Breakfast
8:30 a.m. – Training
Noon – Lunch
1 p.m. – Training
5 p.m. – Dinner
6 p.m. – Drill Sergeant Time
8:30 p.m. – Personal Time
9:30 p.m. – Lights Out

And finally, let’s not forget the gas chamber training:

As explained on the basic training website: “The gas chamber is probably the most mentally challenging exercise you will have to overcome at basic training. Recruits have to breathe Ortho-chlorbenzylidenedimalonitrile. Wow, that sounds scary. Actually, it is just the active substance of CS gas. You might recognize the name better as the common riot control formula called tear gas. Now, the bad news is yes, you will have to go into an isolated room and breathe this gas in your lungs and it does sting a little bit. The good news is as soon as you walk outside, the exercise is over.”

For those of you who have fought for our freedom, and for those families who have suffered the loss of a loved one, please forgive my lack of understanding. I finally grasp the sacrifice that your son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife, lover, friend, cousin, uncle, aunt, or other relative has gone through. No words can express the gratitude that I now feel.

Should we raise our children without gender identity?

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You’re pregnant and can’t wait for the ultrasound that will finally reveal the sex of your child. You have a desire to bond with your baby and to prepare for the arrival of your bundle of joy. You look through baby-name books and make a list of the ones you like for boys and girls, depending on the sex, or…..wait a minute… you don’t believe in gender identity?

I’m not talking about choosing Michael for a boy or Daisy for a girl, nor do I mean dressing Michael in blue and Daisy in pink. I’m talking about raising your kid to be genderless, like the Canadian parents of Storm, a four-month-old baby, who refuse to reveal the sex of their baby in the hopes of curbing sexual stereotyping.

Kathy Witterick, 38 and David Stocker, 39, are the parents of Storm, their youngest child who has two older brothers, Jazz 5 and Kio 2. Only the brothers, the two nurse midwives who helped deliver Storm at home, and a very close family friend know whether Storm is a boy or a girl. What prompted them to do this with baby Storm? They say to offer “their children the freedom to choose who they want to be, unconstrained by social norms about males and females.”

The grandparents, although supportive, resented explaining this lack of gender to friends and co-workers. “They worried the children would be ridiculed,”  and furthermore, most people said “they were setting their kids up for a life of bullying in a world that can be cruel to outsiders.”

According to Michele Angello, a U.S. psychologist, “There is little hard, scientific data on exactly what does make people feel and act like a boy or a girl, but some evidence points to gender identity being hard-wired.”

I’d like to refer to the book I mentioned in a previous post called, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein, where she says that when her daughter, Daisy, was born, “I was committed to raising her without a sense of limits: I wanted her to believe neither that some behavior or toy or profession was not for her sex.”  Orenstein then explains how on Daisy’s first day of pre-school at age two, she wore her favorite “engineer overalls” and her Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox. “All it took was one boy who yelled, ‘Girls don’t like trains!'” and within a month, Daisy knew the names and gown colors of every Disney princess.

This brings me back to Storm’s brothers, Kio and Jazz. Were others told their sex and why have they both chosen long braided hair? All I can say is they must have incredibly strong personalities to stand up for themselves at school, as I am sure other kids have made hurtful comments.

Kathy and David state, “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …),” they said.

And David believes, “If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs.”

What do you think?

Are parents raising their kid to be genderless right or wrong?

I can’t wait to get a Gutsy discussion going.

Where are girls and women heading?

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You have probably heard of Sheena Upton, the California mom who claimed to inject her eight-year-old daughter, Britney, with botox to improve her chances of winning a beauty pageant.

After child protective services took her girl away to investigate the case, Upton claimed she fabricated the entire story for compensation. She was in fact paid $200 to hold a syringe with a clear liquid, and in her video stated that she didn’t even know what botox was.

So why is there a video of her injecting her daughter with a syringe? And why did Upton justify this by claiming that other moms give botox treatments to their daughters in order to play the tough beauty pageant game?

In one of the interviews which you can view here, her daughter said, “I just, like, don’t think wrinkles are nice on little girls.” She also said that it “hurts,” and that her mother also waxed the hairs off her legs and when asked why, Britney answered, “It’s not ladylike to have hair.”

The concern is how this will impact Britney psychologically, as well as any other girls who are going through the same loss of innocence.

I find it so depressing to hear about all the pressures girls seem to be going through today, especially after hearing Britney say that she puts up with the pain of botox injections to look “beautiful and pretty.” I am deeply saddened, as are most mothers and grandmothers. I wrote a previous article on what is considered a beautiful woman in different countries around the world which sparked several comments.

This topic relates to a book I am reading, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein, where she states,  “According to a 2006 survey of more than two thousand school-aged children, girls repeatedly described a paralyzing pressure to be ‘perfect’: not only to get straight As and be the student body president, editor of the newspaper, and captain of the swim team but also to be ‘kind and caring,’ ‘please everyone, be very thin, and dress right.’ …They now feel they must not only ‘have it all’ but be it all: Cinderella and Supergirl. Agressive and agreeable. Smart and stunning. Does that make them the beneficiaries of new opportunities or victims of a massive con job?”

Orenstein then continues, “It is as if the more girls achieve the more obsessed they become with appearance–not dissimilar to the way the ideal of the ‘good mother’ was ratcheted up just as adult women flooded the workforce.”

So where are girls and women heading in the next ten-twenty years? Any thoughts on this topic are welcome. I’m particularly interested in what men think?

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