Food for Thought

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Food for Thought! Since this town is full of foodies, Atención is compiling, sorting and publishing some tidbits each week about what foodies love about San Miguel de Allende. Information about restaurant openings, new favorites at the market and helpful suggestions are all encouraged.

In addition to your submissions, we will highlight a weekly food-related word or term in Spanish to help folks navigate through shopping and cooking at home. Stay tuned…



News

Andanza is a lively, smart restaurant opening in Casa Sierra Nevada’s Casa Principal at Hospicio 35 on September 22. The cuisine celebrates Mexican tradition with a modern flair, made from seasonal local produce, and served in fresh and sophisticated style. All menu choices, from the upscale bar cuisine to the main courses and incredibly tasty desserts, are created by Executive Chef Gonzalo Martinez, a native of San Miguel. For reservations or more information, call 152-7040.

Juan Carlos and Ana Laura from Nirvana have transformed the space formerly occupied by Azafrán at Hernandez Macías, 97, into Gallo, serving traditional Mexican fare. Judging by the attendance at the opening last weekend, we are all expecting great things from this seasoned pair of restaurateurs. For reservations or questions, call 152-7482 or 152-7507.



Foodie terms of the week

Aplanado—flattened, from the verb aplanar, used in context to order milanesa-style cuts from your butcher (pollo aplanado, for example)

Las huacales y las patas–chicken carcasses and feet. Don’t be offended, as these are the ideal ingredients for making your own chicken stock at home. You can buy them by the kilo at any good polleria around town—just make sure to cut the toenails and peel off the skin!



In Season

As the evenings start to cool off and blankets are pulled out of closets, it’s time to start making soups again. Pozoles, caldos, gumbo with sausage from BBQ Bob’s, crema de flor de calabaza….so many incredibly tempting local options. The essential foundation of all delicious soups is always a great stock. To make your own Mexican-style chicken stock, all you need is a handful of ingredients—2 kilos of assorted huacales y patas, a quartered onion, sea salt, and a teaspoon of Mexican oregano or marjoram. Cover the chicken parts in enough water to come a few inches above the surface, add the quartered onion, bring to a boil, then simmer for four hours. Let the stock cool overnight, skim the fat, re-boil with salt and herbs to taste, and voilá— homemade chicken stock. I recommend pouring your treasure into one-quart containers and freezing them for a chilly Sunday afternoon. Buen provecho!

Food for Thought is compiled by Atención staff, so please send your recommendations, news, ideas, thoughts—250 words or less with Food for Thought in the subject line— to edit@atencionsanmiguel.org. 

Repairing endangered relationships: Bringing intimacy back
By Norman Araiza

Intimacy is the lifeblood of any meaningful relationship and trust is the framework that provides its structure and support. Without either, the relationship limps along. Although most loving relationships are founded on these premises, over time unhealed wounds and disappointments can eat away trust, and intimacy may be lost. 

Simply put, intimacy is telling secrets about ourselves. It’s letting another person know that we trust them by exposing our vulnerabilities and disclosing privileged information about who we really are and how we got that way. It’s about expressing hurts and fears and sharing our dreams and hopes for the future. It’s about making that person special by allowing them to see a part of our selves that we show to few others. 

Most endangered relationships suffer from the loss of intimacy that can be thought of as the glue that holds them together.

Relationship counseling begins by asking to hear the stories of how they met. All couples have their stories about their initial attraction, early feelings that were so strong they couldn’t stay apart. They remember how important that relationship was to them, how cherished and valuable it was. Then we explore what happened to bring about the loss of trust and the abandonment of intimacy. For some, it was the heartbreak of betrayal from an extramarital affair. For others, it was a gradual change over the course of raising a family where personal needs took a back seat to a child’s more pressing needs. With yet others, it was the loss of hope from unfulfilled promises; a disillusionment that judged the offending party unworthy of achieving intimacy. Usually it’s not a conscious decision. Only after giving the subject considerable thought is the couple usually able to define how the injury occurred. I then lead the couple to express the mutual pain that each has suffered through their loss of intimacy and encou
rage them to express their anger, being careful to provide each with the all-important measure of safety that secures the integrity of the relationship. Expressing the anger in a healthy way is an important process in removing the obstacles to intimacy.

Through insight into the cause of the original loss of intimacy, and the realization that the circumstance that caused the original rift is no longer relevant, a new opportunity presents itself. 

Rebuilding a healthy relationship is all about taking risks; approaching things in a different way. Usually it involves forgiveness and letting go of the past. most endangered relationships are unable to make the transition from non-intimacy to true intimacy without professional assistance. If it was that easy they would have done it before the relationship became endangered. 

I salute those couples who still value their relationship enough to make that leap of faith and pick up the phone to make that first appointment. Don’t expect your partner to do it. Whoever has the problem is the one who has to do something about it. If your relationship has seen happier times and you still have hope that with some effort and assistance you can re-create a meaningful, satisfying relationship, do it now for yourself and the people you love. Even if you have lost respect for your partner, you need to respect what the relationship once was. You are worth it. Your relationship is worth it, your family and friends are worth it. Broken relationships affect everyone in your life. 

Norman Araiza, M.A., is an American-trained psychotherapist and marriage counselor enjoying a limited practice in SMA. He can be reached at 152-5454; email: 2gatos10@cybermatsa.com.mx. 

A Key to Good Health: Don’t just do something, sit there
By Nataraj Ishaya

If you were offered a powerful way to enhance your health that is simple, easy and enjoyable, would you use it? Well, let’s see.

As our bodies grow older we spend much energy treating the effects of what we’re told is aging; visits to doctors and therapists, treatments and medications become part of our regular itinerary. We assume that this is the natural course of aging. But the cause is not aging as such.

However, for the last 20 years, Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., a world renowned cellular biologist, has been championing a new paradigm that offers you a profound and determining role in your own health support. The story of his groundbreaking and innovative research, which he calls “The New Biology,” is told in his bestselling book, The Biology of Belief.

The New Biology clearly explains the effects that our thoughts and beliefs have on our health. Here’s how. “The body is actually endowed with two separate protection systems, each vital to the maintenance of life. The first is the system that mobilizes protection against external threats—the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. When there are no threats, the HPA axis is inactive and growth flourishes. However, when the brain’s hypothalamus receives an environmental threat, it engages the HPA axis.

“Once the adrenal alarm is sounded, the stress hormones released into the blood constrict the blood vessels of the digestive tract, forcing the energy-providing blood to preferentially nourish the tissues of the arms and legs that enable us to get out of harm’s way. Redistributing the viscera’s blood to the limbs in the fight-or-flight response results in inhibition of growth-related functions; without the blood’s nourishment the visceral organs cannot function properly. The visceral organs stop doing their life-sustaining work of digestion, absorption, excretion and other functions that provide for the growth of the cells and the production of the body’s energy reserves.”

Furthermore, in addition to fight-or-flight protection, “The body’s second protection system is the immune system, which protects us from threats originating under the skin, such as those caused by bacteria and viruses.... When the HPA axis mobilizes the body for fight-or-flight response, the adrenal hormones directly repress the action of the immune system to conserve energy reserves.”

This explains why doctors tell us that stress is a prime contributor to many of the ailments that they treat every day, including heart disease, chronic fatigue, anxiety attacks, depression, sleep problems, high blood pressure, poor immune function, flu, viruses and migraines.

So what triggers the fight-or-flight response and thus the HPA axis? Lipton tells us, “We are constantly besieged by multitudes of unresolvable worries about our personal lives, our jobs and our war-torn global community. Such worries do not threaten our immediate survival, but they can activate the HPA axis, resulting in chronically elevated stress hormones.” 

What can we do about this constant stress? The simple key to the self-care mentioned above is called meditation. If you think it is just for “spiritual people,” think again. Meditation practice is a key element of some progressive mainstream health care programs, including those of Dean Ornish, M.D. and Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. 

Furthermore, according to Donna Eden, author of Energy Medicine, “… people who meditate regularly tend to have an unusual degree of strength and resilience in their basic (energy) grid.”

Now you know the choice for better health is yours to make. I encourage you to choose wisely.

Nataraj Ishaya lives in San Miguel and teaches The Ishayas’ Ascension form of meditaion. He welcomes your comments and questions and can be reached at sma_ishayas@yahoo.com.