When I was a teacher, I struggled with eating because my time was limited.

Minerals are elements your body requires. An element is a basic substance that cannot be broken down into anything simpler. Iron and calcium are two examples of elements.

Fruit is food that grows from a flowering plant (trees, vines, bushes, and low-growing plants) and carries the seeds of its plant. Fruit provides your body with natural sugar, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and water.

Carbohydrates are a nutrient found in food. Your body requires carbohydrates for energy, and especially for the energy your brain uses to function.

Protein is a nutrient found in food. Your body requires protein to build itself, repair itself, and keep its systems working every day.

This post is to help make nutrient dense food and calories easier to understand.

I believe eating nutrient dense food is 100% beneficial. Therefore, I present this easy and fun challenge. For 7 days, increase the nutrient dense food you eat and decrease the processed food and added sugar by 50%.

Eating well begins the very moment you decide to buy food.

Friday is my scheduled shopping day for food, and this happens at the local farmers’ market. My time is spent purchasing nourishing food, talking with a variety of people, and being aware of my gratitude. This easy and fun routine was not always how I shopped for food.

I stopped eating meat because of things I learned at an Earth Day event in 1995. The celebration was at a local junior college. I attended with my two children. They sat in the double stroller as we went booth to booth learning about the treatment of animals in the food and product industry.

Today I am eating an egg salad sandwich, very different from the one I remember. I have a memory from fifth grade when my mom packed me an egg salad sandwich on egg bread for lunch. It would have been around 1980. There were no ice packs then to keep a lunch cool, and I was being raised in Southern California where the weather can be warm or hot. I remember sitting outside at a lunch bench with warm egg salad on egg bread, and the flavor and warmth were not appealing to me. It was probably made with Miracle Whip instead of mayonnaise because I apparently liked the flavor of Miracle Whip when I was younger. I laugh and smile at the memory.

A few days before Iddi, I was in my bungalow on the property where I lived. There were four bungalows, but because it was the pandemic, I was the only guest — along with a cook, the cleaner, and her fiancé. It was secluded, far from the main village on the beach, and I spent most of my time alone, surrounded by nature and animals: monkeys, cows, goats, millipedes.

I used to plan what I was going to eat based on what flavors I wanted to experience. But my desire to do this changed the more I nourished the body with food. And a round trip sailing excursion from Zanzibar islands to Lamu island during the world pandemic solidified for me the importance of food nourishment.

A coconut is a nutrient dense food and one of my favorite foods.

Today I set out to support someone who cooks food locally. I intentionally withdrew $20 out of the ATM (the one ATM that was installed less than a year ago), drove by a few food trucks, and then decided I would just eat what I had packed and use the money another day. This is what I thought until I started driving out of town and smelled barbecued meat. My brain was asking for protein, and I had the cash to honor the request.

Today I am eating a meal where the majority of the ingredients cooked overnight in a crockpot. Those ingredients are potatoes, pre-soaked beans, Italian ground sausage, one onion, and a little salt. This was a new experiment for me because I hadn’t cooked beans and meat together in the crockpot yet. Usually, once I turn the crockpot on, I don’t check it again until the morning. Because there were beans that would absorb water and ingredients piled to the top, I checked on it about four to five hours after it had started. I used a large spoon and stirred all the ingredients so they were evenly spread throughout the crockpot. I added a little more water from a garden hose, because the crockpot sits outside when I’m cooking in it, and put the lid back on. About six hours later after sleeping, I turned the crockpot off and let it cool.

It is November 2025 and I am sitting on a chair at a public market on the island of Ko Samui in Thailand. I am wearing a flower behind my right ear and a smile on my face as long noodles dangle from the chopsticks in my right hand.