Shahar Madjar, Journal columnist

In my last two articles, I told you about highly restrictive diets such as the Twinkie Diet. I wrote: Highly restrictive diets “will result in weight loss, perhaps even rapid weight loss, but they come with a hefty price: poor nutritional value. They ignore the complexities of the human body and its needs … These diets shouldn’t be called Fad Diets, but Mad Diets.” I wrote that proponents of highly restrictive diets consider food as a mere source of calories, ignoring the fact that our bodies need a variety of “fuels” that can be found only in a well balanced, nutritious diet. I also wrote, … “food isn’t merely fuel, nor just nutrition. It holds memories, it ignites the imagination … and it carries meaning.” I promised to discuss these qualities of food and present to you a recipe I call Uncle Sasho’s Rippling Eggs.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself, What are my memories of great food?

Here is my own answer to the question: My memories of great food are associated with meals I shared with friends and family–during my childhood, and later in life; at home and while traveling abroad; through meals and dishes I have tried for the first time, and for which I have returned to the same restaurants, that were often miles, and even an ocean away, over and over again. As I am writing, the memories of meals I shared as a kid with my parents are so vivid that I can smell the Romanian kebab served in one restaurant in downtown Haifa, and that of the Bulgarian Kefta I have tried at another. And I can taste the sweetness of vanilla ice cream served in a tall plastic cone in a market just miles away from my childhood home. There were other memories I can easily recreate in my mind–a Greek salad in a dark alley in Athens, a Turkish Burek on Mount Carmel, a Viennese apple strudel in Austria, and my first sizzling steak at Sizzler in New York. What I mean to say is this: Food isn’t just fuel, nor just nutrition. Food holds memory.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself, What am I going to make for dinner tonight? In thinking about this question, you must call not only upon your memory, but also upon your imagination and creativity.

When it comes to food, my imagination works in images, flavors, and textures. Some ingredients stir my sense of beauty even in their rawest shapes. I find beauty in the symmetry of an apple, the roundness and redness of a tomato, even in the curves of a banana. And, in admiring the beauty of raw food ingredients, I am not alone. The Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has created an art piece, a sculpture, called “Comedian” which according to The New York Times “despite its price [collectors had paid up to $150,000 for it] and ironic humor, it is at its heart a [real] banana that one tapes to a wall.”

But mostly, when I prepare a meal, I search not only for the natural beauty of the raw ingredients, but for their potential to transform into a final product that is beautiful, in perfect texture and taste. I cut and dice, cook and grill, saute and bake, add and mix, and finally, if needed, add salt to taste. I compose and then present the food I had prepared as artistically as I possibly can. And when I consume food made by others, a similar process takes place: my mind is constantly searching, imagining the raw ingredients and the process that have transformed them into the final dish. You see, food is the product of imagination.

What do I mean by “food carries meaning”? Is there meaning to food beyond it being fuel, a source of nutrition and of pleasure, a vessel that stores memories, a vehicle that drives our imagination? I wanted to answer this question with a story about my uncle Sasho, and, while at it, give you his fabulous egg recipe. But my time is running out. To be continued.

Editor’s note: Dr. Shahar Madjar is a urologist at Aspirus and the author of “Is Life Too Long? Essays about Life, Death and Other Trivial Matters.” Contact him at smadjar@yahoo.com.