#30: Emma and Priya
"If time is money and health is wealth, then hanging out and having fun is the richest thing you could ever do."
Emma and Priya (@priyaandemma) are a pair of friends cooking their way through the Dimes cookbook and blogging the whole thing. Today, they’re here to give us the lowdown on Ridgewood Chocolate, crunchy landlords, and eating your plate. Bon appétit!
(Key: ✿ = Emma, ★ = Priya)
At a glance…
Location: Ridgewood
Big 3: ✿ Aquarius/Libra/Leo ★ Virgo/Leo/Sagittarius
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
✿ Health is about leisure and mindlessness. Ideally, you should never think about being healthy for the good grace that you already are. I’m healthiest when I’m happy and experiencing the luck of not having to worry. I am my least healthy if I’m inflexible in my body, mind, or spirit. Something is extremely wrong if it’s all three. If time is money and health is wealth, then hanging out and having fun is the richest thing you could ever do.
★ I feel healthy when everything that I do matches the other. I feel like I’ve wasted a healthy breakfast if I eat a garbage dinner. I have an all or nothing mindset which is something I’m trying to overcome. I feel healthiest when I abide by my routines almost every day. But it is impossible to do it everyday because sometimes I like going to the party or the club. In this sense I also feel healthy when I eat pancakes for breakfast and beer, shot, and hotdog for dinner because everything is matching. If everything is synchronous everything is okay. I also have to get 17,000 steps a day. I think running is the most powerful thing in the world and is the only thing that can save and protect and heal your brain. Health is regimen and discipline.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
✿ My current lifestyle is about experimentation. Right now I don’t have a very consistent routine and I am finding joy in variety. In some ways it allows me to do literally whatever I want. I was in a bad mood during the month of September because of this, but I’ve been feeling great about it so far in October. All I had to do was reread my favorite book and sleep for a week straight to fix my attitude.
So far this year I’ve been trying everything I can think of. Being broke, being rich, being married, being single, being genius, being stupid, being early, being late. I have been being a lab technician, an athlete, a chef, a caretaker, a party girl, an assistant, an electrician, a shop girl, front of house, back of house, a scholar, a humanitarian, an editor, and a director. I think soon I will become a dancer again.
★ My current lifestyle is changing and I’m not sure what it’s going to be yet. Winter is my favorite season. I got a new job and I don’t know how it will affect my life. I just returned from a trip where I was eating and drinking a lot of delicious terrible things so I am working on trying to feel pure again. Taking my vitamins again and eating colorful foods again. Right now my lifestyle is waiting for the dust to settle.
How do you start and end your days?
✿ The first thing I do in the morning is drink water and take two probiotics. I am not sure they do anything but I like the practice. One of my favorite things in the world is to cook breakfast for an hour, and take just as long to eat it. I don’t always have that luxury, so I often opt for convenience. I’ve been having a hard time with breakfast recently, not because I am not hungry, but because nothing sounds good. I used to eat dinner for breakfast, but after I started living with Priya, I have switched to eating yogurt with blueberries and granola. Maybe this shift from savory to sweet is messing with my mind. I am planning on inventing a new perfect breakfast for myself. Maybe it includes fish.
I would say I go for a run about 8 times a month, but I’m going to start aiming for 15. I am trying to incorporate a 10 lb dumbbell I found on the street into my at home “fitness” routine. I either dress like a slob or like a French school boy depending on which job I’m working that day. If I don’t have work I try to wear something I’m not allowed to wear.
My best and newest habit is writing everything down. I think buying a notebook without lines has helped this practice. When I’m at work I just carry my journal around and if I’m bored for more than thirty seconds I’ll start writing something down. When I’m not at work I’ll write anything down anytime. I love when I get to do something fun after going to work, but I also love getting to go home. I only floss and wash my face sometimes. I am enjoying sitting in the living room with my roommates until 1am when I have to go to sleep.
★ I usually go for a 5.2 mile run when I wake up. I run the same route every time and I only listen to Lana del Rey (lol). I run fastest when I’m sad about a boy. I never eat anything real before I run but sometimes I will eat one date or one dried apricot. I always eat breakfast even if I’m not hungry because I have to take my vitamins. I consider frozen blueberries a part of my vitamin routine so I usually eat greek yogurt, blueberries, and granola for breakfast. When I go to sleep at night I am so excited to wake up and eat my yogurt, blueberries, and granola.
Every day ends differently. I try to write down what happened every day in my journal but sometimes I dread it because sometimes I don’t want to relive the day. Some days are hard and I don’t want to think about them twice. But I try my best to write everything down before the day is over. Sometimes instead of writing in my journal I write on my blog but this is a bad habit. I should always journal before I blog or else I will reveal too much compromising information on the blog. I put Tiger Balm on my décolletage before I sleep.
Was there a specific moment in life that made you change your approach to health, or become more conscious generally?
✿ My mom is somewhat health-obsessed and because of this, I did not believe in “health.” I had to experience my own mistakes to start believing in it. I obviously used to think my body was invincible and nothing I did or anything that happened to me could affect me negatively. I still kind of think this.
I got the Nexplanon birth control when I was 18 in an attempt to help manage my horrible painful periods. I stopped getting my period, it made me depressed, and my life changed for the better when I got it removed prematurely. That was the first time I realized that something fairly common practice and widely recommended could actually be horrible for people’s mental and physical health. It seemed like a clear cut case of treating a symptom not the root. This created a shift in my life and I started focusing on what my body actually needs to function well. I’ve turned to a more holistic style of wellness and try to eat a balanced diet and run around. What you put in is what you get out.
★ I was vegan for many many years and now I eat everything. I stopped being vegan because I realized the only reason I wasn’t eating animal products was because I had become terrified of the object of the food itself. I forced myself to start eating animal products so that I would overcome the mindset that food is a threat.
What’s your relationship to self-healing? At what point do you feel the need to see a doctor?
✿ I believe almost exclusively in self-healing. I almost never go to the doctor because I do not trust Western medicine or my state-issued health insurance. I couldn’t go to the doctor when I broke my foot or got a concussion because I was repeatedly turned away due to my poor health insurance. I instead walked on my broken bone and got community-priced acupuncture to increase blood flow to my brain. My foot seems fine and so does my head. I am prone to self-experimentation and I also like to wait things out to see if they will blow over. A lot of the time they do.
I used to get cupped by this woman who lived in Humboldt Park in Chicago. It was extremely grounding for me and I considered it to be an essential health practice. I try to trust what my body needs and attend to it in a way that makes sense to me. I am currently looking for an affordable NYC-based cupping situation if anyone has any recs.
★ I like building myself a solution when something has gone wrong in my body. Usually it works but sometimes it doesn’t. Tea tree oil and apple cider vinegar are cures for almost anything. For a while I was convinced I had intestinal parasites because my cat had parasites, so I was doing and eating a lot of crazy things that I don’t think were very safe in retrospect. I don’t think I had parasites, I think I was just feeling lost in life and needed something to cling to (insane diet/vitamin/weird substance regimen to exorcize my phantom parasite). Many years later Emma revealed to me that she was also fighting a phantom parasite during this same time. We just both kept it a secret.
I try to trust my body within reason. I think swelling and fever are not things to be combatted because your body is reacting in these ways to protect you. If something hurts I like to pay attention.
Do you have any guiding principles?
✿ I try to practice doing what I say I am going to do. It is impossible to do this all the time because I like to lie. I have been making an effort to follow through. But if I really don’t like a book I don’t need to finish it.
★ I try to eat something purple everyday. Usually it is blueberries. I only eat pancakes on special occasions. I only drink clear liquor. I don’t eat pasta unless it is an activity with a loved one. I don’t listen to music or anything else when I am walking around because it makes me feel like I’m not really outside. I don’t buy things online after the sun has gone down because at night I’m not right in the head and I might feel differently in the morning. I broke this rule last night and now I have a pair of shoes on the way that I don’t want.
I have this idea I call “eat your plate” which informs many of my decisions. It is essentially the idea that you should metaphorically eat the food that is put on the plate in front of you and to not turn your nose up at what is on tonight’s menu because you are waiting for something better to be put on your plate tomorrow. To eat your plate means to take the opportunities that appear in front of you in the present moment even if it might not be what you were hoping for. This could mean going to a scary party you were invited to or taking a weird job or reading the book someone left on the ground outside your house. Eating your plate also means living with the consequences of your actions, whether good or bad. Someone once asked me what my version of church was and my answer was the color red.
Where do you look to for information or advice?
✿ I ask my mom. She often offers information or her opinion about my health completely unprompted. She is also pretty prone to self-experimentation and likes to commit to a health food experiment. She used to put butter and collagen in her coffee and didn’t eat gluten for years. Now she only drinks matcha and tries to eat 30 different vegetables every week. I have similar habits of implementing a new diet-related-practice to see if it will solve all my problems. I will also go on incognito mode on Google Chrome and search for hours on end about the possible source of my symptoms. There are a lot of freaks on the internet trying to solve their problems and I sometimes borrow their methods.
There is an old guy who runs Ridgewood Chocolate, which is not so much a chocolate store as much as it is his private palace to preach his ideas about health. Priya and I went in there one time and he kept us there for at least 20 minutes talking to us about the mind stomach body connection and how his chocolate will transform all of these things. I went back to purchase a bar of his chocolate, and he told me I would see my true self for the first time and I could experience nirvana if I ate it. He said I was halfway there when I agreed with him that food can be medicine. I don’t know if I trust him but I had fun talking to him. I am pretty open to information and advice, if anyone would like to offer any.
★ When I was 22 I lived in a beautiful mansion that was falling apart in Ohio. My landlord lived with his wife on the first floor and me and my friends lived on the second floor. His whole life revolved around alternative medicine and his diet. Every time I would see him in the backyard he would tell me about his black market vitamins and supplements and give me recommendations on what I might need. On the third floor of his house were rooms and rooms and rooms full of his books and tools. I found a copy of Eating in Eden and I read some of it. When he would go out of town I would take care of his chickens and eat their eggs. Everyone thought he was crazy but he was like my oracle. Sometimes I still text him. He is 70 years old but really knows how to use ‘LOL.’ My ex-landlord and my mom are my health oracles.
I am currently reading Nourishing Traditions. I don’t have anything to say about it yet.
What’s your perfect meal?
✿ Right now my perfect meal is cherry tomatoes on top of cottage cheese. Earlier today in the park my perfect meal was a thermos of coffee with cream.
Tonight after work my perfect meal will be rice with egg, soy sauce, microgreens, and kimchi. (What I actually ate after work was two shots of tequila, two Miller High Lifes, and $1 pizza.) Sometimes my perfect meal is a burger and a dirty gin martini.
I love to eat whole carrots raw when I don’t know what to eat. Sometimes I cannot remember what other types of food there are besides Asian, Italian, and Kale Salad. I put too much garlic in my food.
I definitely eat too much salt and I love hot water.
I have recently been keeping a kiwi wrapped in paper towel in my bag and eating it at the park.
★ The things my mom cooked for me when I was a kid are the same things I cook for myself now. Steamed vegetables and sweet potatoes and brown rice. I was a head cook in a food co-op in college with my best friend. We cooked lunch every Sunday for 100 or so people. The co-op shaped what I think of as my baseline diet. Rice with tofu or lentils, side of raw vegetables, side of roasted vegetables, chunk of bread with butter. There are certain things that I will be obsessed with forever: Ezekiel bread, fitness bread, cottage cheese, raw tofu, baked sweet potato, frozen chocolate chips, plums, banana split, yogurt with frozen blueberries, maraschino cherries, hotdog. I eat a lot of hotdogs from the bar next to my house. They are made of chicken and they are free.
What advice would you give to your past self?
✿ There are an infinite number of ways to live a life. Don’t worry too much about the future because the present matters just as much. You’re allowed to do whatever you want, and you’ll get to reap the joys and sorrows of that.
★ It’s not about your body, it’s about your brain. If you feel like you don’t have any friends you probably do have them. You have to let people do what they want to do even if it’s the worst thing in the world. Be thankful for homework while you have it.
What advice would you give to the person reading this?
✿ I would suggest asking random people to hang out.
★ Write everything down, make your bed, stop listening to music.
What would you like to see/create more of in the world?
✿ I have been trying to figure out how to make the perfect granola cookie, different from an oatmeal cookie. I want the cookie to be soft and the granola to be hard. I have been workshopping but haven’t gotten it quite right. I would also like to see more people experiencing a lust for life, but maybe that’s a lot to ask for right now.
★ I try to invent homework for myself. For a while I was going to the library with my fake boyfriend and we would do our “homework.” That was a really special time and thing. Right now my self-prescribed homework assignments are writing with metal, building a new closet, making one drawing everyday, making a sound journal with an iPod, creating the perfect birthday present, bake sale with Emma, and getting rid of lots of my belongings. I am also trying to relearn French.
Note: this Q&A was originally published via Mailchimp. Read the full issue here.
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