Adventure in Walnut-Land

Last month, I spent two days attending the Food for Your Whole Life symposium in New York City, and learned a great deal about the current state of research into Nutrition and Food Science (as well as the public's skewed perception of media magnets as experts in Nutrition). I also learned A LOT about walnuts, since the event was largely sponsored by The California Walnut Commission. I was greatly impressed by the walnut-inclusive recipes served during lunch, and decided to seek out more.

Then I hit a familiar roadblock.

Being a Registered Dietitian (RD) does not automatically confer culinary knowledge, interest, or skill...in other words, there are plenty of RDs who love to cook and demonstrate pronounced expertise in the kitchen. I am not one of them! My pal Debbie Brinckman [MS, RD, CD-N] is a great example of this. I often remarked to her during our Dietetic Internship (DI) that I really didn't fit the "RD as kitchen wizard" mold, and would find myself in a blind panic over assignments involving the simplest of dishes. While simultaneously keeping up with assignments, dropping her daughters off to various activities, making her quietly patient husband's head spin with dramatic stories from the DI, and whipping up five-course meals for fun, Debbie would laugh at me incredulously but encourage me nonetheless: "Oh, that's easy...now this is what you do!!!" While I loved writing and editing lit reviews, Debbie was a natural providing a classroom of kids with nutrition education. She is also a "glass half full" sort of person, yin to my yang, and these complementary aspects bonded us and helped us survive the stressful DI experience. 

Thanks in large part to Debbie and people like her, I am now willing to investigate more adventurous recipes and take them for a test run, even though there is a large likelihood they will fall a bit flat. (I am a realist!) Irrespective of status as an RD, kitchen wizard, and/or culinary clutz, give some of these recipes a try. You might surprise yourself. 

For selected PDFs from the Food for Whole Life symposium, click here.

For a full archive of my nutrition articles for OKRA Magazine, click here.