Kindness: The Essential Ingredient
Every once in a while you run across someone who restores your faith in humanity.
Chef James Haller is one of those people.
A few years back, I read his book, “Vie de France,” which chronicles a month he and a group of friends spent in the Loire Valley. Haller did the cooking, of course, and it struck me that he prepared food by instinct. No surprise, he’d been cooking professionally for a couple of decades, and is founder of the Blue Strawbery in Portsmouth, N.H.
He sounded like a good person. A nice person. Someone I’d want for a friend. He's won kudos for his inventive appraoch to cooking, too, and I borrowed from his approach and his book as I prepared food during a vacation in the Lot Valley two years ago.
Haller has also written a book called, “What to Eat When You Don’t Feel Like Eating,” which targets a neglected eating constituency: People with life threatening or even terminal illnesses.
So when a friend and co-worker was diagnosed with cancer, I thought of James Haller. I e-mailed him and we arranged a telephone interview.
Turns out he’d written another book, this one aimed at men with prostate cancer. It’s called “Simply Wonderful Food.”
It also turns out that he’s every bit as nice as he sounds in print. He's been volunteering his services to the hospice movement, cooking for sick people for years.
For seriously ill people, Haller recommends comforting foods that are packed with Vitamins A and C. Leafy greens and just about anything orange.
He pays attention to color, texture, taste and nutritional value. He often adds mint to counteract the metallic taste chemotherapy patients experience.
Haller suggests prostate cancer patients eat foods that are easy to digest. Treatment wreaks havoc with the digestive system, he notes.
We can prepare all the time-consuming fancy food we want, French or otherwise, but, as they say, it might not amount to a hill of beans if we forget the most important ingredient: Kindness.
It seems to me that James Haller figured that out long ago. Read more about him here.
Comments
My mother finally lost her battle with cancer several years ago--a battle she waged heroically off and on for almost two decades. I remember cooking for her during chemo treatment periods when her appetite totally would vanish. Through her urging, I learned to serve her tiny portions of everything. The sight of too much food on her plate would otherwise overwhelm her.
Regarding kindness, I have been absolutely moved by the courage and kindness of Wesley Autrey, the New York construction worker who saved a young man from certain death when he fell onto the subway tracks earlier this week, shielding him with his own body as the train passed overhead. I saw Mr. Autrey on Letterman last night, and he was funny and self-effacing and matter-of-fact about his most heroic act. What a fabulous example he set for his two young daughters--and for us all.
I am always so grateful when I hear about these acts of kindness. It is so easy to become jaded in my business.
I am sorry about your mother, Terry. I know that grief comes in waves, not all at once.
I think Mr. Haller is doing a wonderful thing for a forgotten segment of the population. He deserves recognition.
It would have been nice to know of better foods for him....although he always ate everything...
Good job!
It seems that cancer makes its way into all of our lives somehow...
How I wish my mother had been open to any thought of food as she was going through the treatment for colon cancer that would eventually take her life.
How I wish I'd had the wherewithall to encourage her to take small bites of anything!
How I wish I'd had known about Chef Haller then.
Thank you for another thought provoking, kind-hearted post.
I think sometimes the gently food James Haller recommends would be good for us to consider at any time of stress. It looks easy to make and he does not use a conventional recipe format, only a narrative approach.
Talk about cooking from the heart!
Sure wish this book was around about 20 years ago when I worked on the Oncology unit. So good for him for caring enough to address the problem.
I am really resolving to be kind in 2007. It's easier and much more pleasant than being unkind.
BTW, I thought of you tonight as I photographed a brown egg.
Thank you for your kind thoughtfulnes!