Welcome to The Festal and the Ferial!

I have begun this blog, at the encouragement of my family, for two reasons. First, as a practical aid to our little circle: a convenient way to trade and organize recipes that have been labeled "keepers."But a second reason also began to surface as I have excitedly rambled on to everyone who will listen about how this journey with Keto Cooking is changing our lives. More and more people, who I know are excellent cooks and who are on their own journeys towards healthy, hearty living had never heard of the recipes I was using and have asked for details. This made me want more than ever to get the word out to as many people as possible that eating healthy, hearty, beautiful and delicious food is not a contradiction.

Of course I've heard that before. But I am a woman who salivates just thinking about the "symphony of crackle" in the crust of a perfectly baked loaf of french bread and the contrapuntal flavors of four different cheeses melting together with Italian seasoning over bacon and tart apple slices in a grilled cheese sandwich. I have zigzagged thousands of times across the line between a healthy love for the gift of food and viewing food as the comfort or ecstatic experience I can't live without. With this tendency to go to food for escape came a predictable yo-yo history with my weight. I would gain and lose, binge and fast...and not the healthy fasting which sharpens, humbles and centers, but a fasting of fear and desperation that flailed for instant results.

I began diets, determined to not only lose weight but eat healthier, conscious that our bodies are a sacred gift and we are its steward. But most diets seemed in contradiction to everything I believed food could and even should be. I have always felt that food should be delightful to smell, taste, feel and look at. It should feel good in our bellies and give us energy to live life with gusto. It should make us glimpse the heavenly city and long for the day when all will be made new. I was born, as I think most of us are, with a longing for "the real thing." So to stare down a future filled with choosing the salad for dinner instead of the five layer lasagna and drizzling thin, low fat substitutes over dishes that begged for a rich, white wine cream sauce just made me sad and confused.

Enter Josh, my ridiculously handsome rock of a husband who has had his own up and down battle with his weight. When we met a few years ago, he introduced me to the Keto diet. Though I was immensely impressed with his dedication and weight loss results (he had lost about 150 pounds), I mostly thought it was weird, gross (he pretty much ate turkey burgers every day) and unbalanced (he didn't really eat vegetables to speak of).

(7 months after we started dating)

To fast forward, we fell madly in love and got married. I started cooking for him - lots of pasta and grilled cheese sandwiches, biscuits and gravy, chocolate lava cakes with icecream... and he started gaining back the weight he had lost. By the end of our honeymoon he had gained 10 pounds (a trend which didn't really slow down for months) and I had (very happily) gained a human growing inside me (which began a 70 pound gain in "baby" weight.) Thus, a year later, we found ourselves facing once again the diet beast. 

(7 months after our wedding)

I had been looking all my life for a way of eating - and thinking about - food that could be a way of life and not another short term diet. What I've been discovering is that Keto and Intermittent Fasting - done carefully and thoroughly - is that answer for us, and I could not be more grateful and excited for the recipe discoveries thus far and the many to come.

For those not at all familiar with Keto, the basic principle is that when you need to lose weight you can limit net carbs (carbs minus fiber) and calories to help your body enter a state of ketosis in which you burn fat most efficiently. This means that you can eat quite a bit of fat (trying to aim for lots of healthy fats) and protein to feel truly full! To give you an idea of what that looks like, I'm a 28 year old, 5' 7" woman and I aim for 1200 calories a day and limit my net carbs to 20 per day. My husband Josh, a 5' 11" muscular fellow who slugs sledge hammers in the heat 8 hours a day allows himself 1600 calories and 20 carbs. Sundays are our feast days! We still hold our net carbs to 20 to stay in ketosis, but we allow ourselves 2000 calories. This means we get to have special treats and especially abundant variety in our meals while still maintaining the progress we've made towards our weight goals.

The other piece to the shape of our eating every day is Intermittent Fasting. There are many versions of this floating around, but the way we incorporate it is largely for the purpose of eliminating mindless, meaningless boredom snacking. I love salty snacks, but I am finding that indulging in them whenever I get the whim not only sabotages my health but also takes the edge off of the hunger that would come to the real feast with an eagerness and a delight cultivated by patience. It also tends, for me, to almost without fail fall under the category of seeking comfort in food for things that food cannot fix. Every time I turn away from snacking for comfort throughout the day and save my appetite for true, real food I am reminded of the Source of my comfort and of our waiting through the short days of this life for that great feast, the heavenly Supper of the Lamb. This is gift enough to make this daily liturgy of fasting and feasting something I hope to continue in some form for the rest of my life.

That said, we do allow ourselves a generous luxury of coffee with real cream throughout the morning. This serves to naturally take the edge of our appetites until we are ready to break the fast with a true, hearty meal. For me that first meal is about 2 pm and dinner is whenever Josh gets home from work - usually around 11 pm. Josh typically saves almost all of his daily calorie and carb budget for that hearty meal when he gets home. Waiting longer to eat also allows us to have more of our calorie budget available for the food that matters most: that which is blessed and broken in fellowship together.

There's a lot more I'll have to say in bits and pieces as we go along about what this is looking like for us in the day to day details. But this is enough background to get started and I can't wait to start sharing the real thing recipes that are letting us - ordinary folks with ordinary cooking skills - savor every aspect of our food, lose the weight that is damaging our bodies and point our longings toward the great feast to come: The Supper of the Lamb.

(2 weeks and 10 pounds ago)