Ellen Kanner - Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith, and What to Eat for Dinner - A Satisfying Diet for Unsatisfying Times

Praise for
Feeding the Hungry Ghostby Ellen Kanner

Just what it takes, on and off the plate, to enjoy a richer life today.

Mireille Guiliano, author of French Women Dont Get Fat

Beyond being a collection of recipes, this is a book about living. Ellen is like having an elfin, white, Jewish, vegan Oprah whispering in your ear that its going to be more than okay, honey its going to be magical!

from the foreword by Norman Van Aken, coauthor
(with Justin Van Aken) of My Key West Kitchen

FEEDING the
HUNGRY GHOST

Copyright 2013 by Ellen Kanner

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Earlier versions of some content were originally published in the Huffington Post, the Miami Herald, and Culinate.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

First printing, February 2013
ISBN 978-1-60868-164-8

Printed in the USA on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Lewis and Marcia Kanner,
the best omnivorous parents a vegan girl could have.
Thanks for always having faith in me.

I have favorite quotes from this book already. But before I share a couple, let me harken back. When I was much younger, Id buy albums at the music store. Now that I have carbon-dated myself, let me say why Im thinking this way in regard to Feeding the Hungry Ghost by Ellen Kanner. There were albums that you would put on the turntable and after two listens you would get a kind of glow, and that glow was due to the fact that you knew deep inside that this album was going to reveal more and more gems with each listening. Heres one from Ellen that I underlined immediately in my copy of this beautiful new book:

Prayer is attentiveness what the yogic call mindfulness and its what happens to me in the kitchen.

Beyond being a collection of recipes, this is a book about living. Ellen is like having an elfin, white, Jewish, vegan Oprah whispering in your ear that its going to be more than okay, honey its going to be magical!

Another favorite I starred in the margin of my copy:

Every time I start to write about faith,
I wind up writing about food.

A word to my fellow omnivores: you will find yourself not looking at this as a vegetarian cookbook that inherently contains restraints. Ellen would giggle and pinch youmetaphorically, at least! Her voice and wisdom roll off the pages without a bit of guilt-inducement or condescension. She is a seeker, not a proselytizer. She is here to awaken a more positive self in each of us. And Im ready.

Im also ready to have her gift me with the Ethiopian custom called gursha (see ) is in the ancient spoon her gifted hand is holding when the gursha comes my way.

Come to think of itit has already.

Norman Van Aken,
coauthor (with Justin Van Aken) of My Key West Kitchen

Eating we do it every day; youd think wed have it down by now. And yet I hear from readers all the time who say they want a closer, healthier relationship with what they eat, with the planet, and with themselves. This should not be so hard. But it is.

I gave a talk recently, fashioned to be a sort of greens greatest hits. I wanted my audience to understand the consequences of what we eat, and why that might make them consider eating more produce and less meat. They might even go vegan. It happens. My talking points went something like this:

1. A meatless diet is cool, and not just because celebs are doing it; its cool in terms of carbon output.

2. Its good for our health. The USDAs new dietary guidelines say so.

3. Even D. H. Lawrence got into it (at which point I threw in his line about figs being to get the audience revved up about the connection between produce and pleasure).

People nodded. I had them. I ended big: change what you eat, then change your life, then change the world. Applause. Then I opened it up to questions.

A guy in the third row asked, What do I eat for dinner? Excellent question. Because you cant change the world when you cant even figure out what to eat at the end of a long day.

The French paradox enables the French to eat lavish, leisurely, artery-clogging meals while remaining svelte and chic, with cholesterol levels that dont make their doctors scream and hurl statins at them. The American paradox, by contrast, is just depressing. We know more than we ever have before about what our bodies and our planet need yet were in an obesity epidemic, and the earth isnt doing so great, either. March is National Nutrition Month, but March 14 is National Potato Chip Day. Were spending billions on diet books while consuming over a million Twinkies a day. I myself do not participate in this Twinkie fest, so dont look at me.

We watch food shows and follow celebrity chefs, but we dont cook. Many of us dont even know how to shop for food, let alone what to eat. One friend uses her oven as a shoe closet. Since she doesnt cook, she eats as though on an endless campout processed sausage, packaged cookies, chips, candy, and cinnamon buns-o-rama, washed down with double mocha lattes, extra whip. Shes on a strict diet of nitrates, fat, and sugar, absent fruit and vegetables. A whole grain never crosses her lips.

This is a girl who knows better. Im thinking you know better, too. Knowing better is easy. Making changes armed with that knowledge is whats hard, a bring-you-to-your-knees kind of hard. Sometimes it doesnt even seem possible. But it is.

My friend is wonderful, brilliant, beautiful, the best person I know. Im just ninety-six pounds worth of nervous. I worry about her. I worry about that guy, the one who doesnt know what to eat for dinner. I worry about you, too. Because youre probably as baffled as Mr. Whats-for-Dinner and on the same diet my friend is on. Maybe youre not into cinnamon buns, but were all caught up in todays frantic pace, fast food, big talk, empty calories, and empty promises a diet of living that leaves us hungry and unfulfilled.

You deserve nourishment nourishment from the food you eat, of course, but also from connection, balance, radiant good health, and the fun that seems to be happening at a party to which you were not invited. Hate that.