How does love become an obsession and how do you gain freedom from that obsession? That is the journey that Dayna Macy embarks on in Ravenous. Hay House Publishing gave me this book to read and review and I found it to be a quick read. Dayna tells her story of her slow weight gain from childhood to present in a way that is touching, amusing, and informative. Each chapter takes the reader through her obsession with one food, her childhood memories of that food and then a visit to a local spot that centers on that food. The chapters end with a recipe. We delve into chocolate, squash, beef, fresh vegetables, and a broth for fasting while we, as readers, learn that “food is just food.”
The last chapters were my favorites: “The Yoga of Food” and “The Practice of Food.” In those chapters Dayna Macy seems to get at the heart of her food struggle. She wonders what happens if her spirit would tell salami and she is told by her friend that her spirit wouldn’t; that there is a difference between the voice of spirit and the voice of addiction. Dayna is told that there would be a certain dissonance. I found resonance with that idea.
Through all her travels to visit her food obsessions she brings the taste of those addictions into our mouths to taste and she does it in a way that has us standing beside her indulging ourselves both in her memories and in our own. This book took me to Sunday dinners of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and Christmas stockings filled with Dutch shoe chocolates. It is good read wherever you are in your food journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment