Balance, Recovery & “Falling in Love with Food” with Gena Hamshaw
Photo by James Ransom
Gena Hamshaw is a nutritionist, cookbook author, and the brilliant, beautiful mind behind the blog The Full Helping. For Gena, food is a vehicle for good nutrition and a source of deep enjoyment. It should always taste good, satisfy your appetite, and give you joy.
Gena hasn’t always had such a charmed relationship with food. After years of struggling with an eating disorder, she now shares her story (and others’) in the “Green Recovery” series on her blog. And in her work as a nutritionist, her goal is to help her clients make more nourishing and self-loving choices, break toxic and fearful cycles with food, and develop a more harmonious relationship with eating; as she says, “to fall in love with food.”
In her tiny New York City kitchen, Gena is always experimenting, and everything she makes revolves around finding balance. Sometimes that’s a big bowl of veggies, and sometimes that’s an impulsive batch of blondies.
We called Gena up to talk about her food journey and inspiration, that tiny kitchen, and the (secretive) third cookbook she’s working on...
Gena’s Avocado Ginger Green Smoothie. Click here for the recipe.
I’m amazed at what comes out of your tiny New York City kitchen. How do you do it?
I grew up in New York, so small kitchens are the only kind I’ve ever cooked in. I guess I don’t really know what I’m missing, and maybe that’s a blessing! Working in a small kitchen involves being OK with mess. At any given moment, I may have to put a pot or pan on my hutch, desk, coffee table, or even the floor, and I’m often rearranging everything. Every square inch of my space goes to use!
I’d love to know more about this cookbook you’re working on… This is my third cookbook, but it won’t be published until Spring 2018. The title is not final, and I can’t say much about it yet, except that it’s 100 vegan recipes. Unlike my other cookbooks, I’ve had a pretty good amount of time to work on this one, which is really nice. It feels so luxurious to have time to think these recipes through and experiment with them.
Golden Butternut Squash & Chickpea Curry. Click here for the recipe.
How do you decide which recipes to share on your blog?
My philosophy has always been to share what I make and eat at home. I don’t want my blog to be a very carefully curated set of recipes so much as a real-life reflection of how I relate to food and what I choose to nourish my own body with.
What are your most popular posts about?
In terms of recipes, whatever I love is usually what other people are going to love. If I try something, love it, and share it immediately - those are the recipes my readers get most excited about.
In terms of nutrition, I have a couple posts that feature how to source particular nutrients, like protein or calcium, through food and recipe ideas, rather than abstract number recommendations or RDAs. I think it’s so important that we tie nutrition information back to the food we eat.
And then, my posts about eating disorders seem to resonate very deeply with people. My own relationship with food is pretty hard-won, and it’s important to me to use my voice to talk honestly about those topics.
Creamy Fusilli with Beets, Kale & Pine Nuts. Click here for the recipe.
Can you tell me a bit more about your Green Recovery series and how you decided to start it?
I am vegan, and I am also a survivor of a long battle with anorexia. When I first went vegan and started writing about it, I was ashamed to talk about having had an eating disorder. I was worried that my struggle would cast a negative light on plant-based eating. Over time I realized that there were so many men and women who had found peace and a new perspective on food through becoming vegan - looking at food not just as calories, but as a way of doing good in the world. And that can be a really empowering thing for someone who has lived through this particular struggle.
I thought, “Maybe there’s something powerful here going on between vegans and eating disorder recovery.” That’s what the Green Recovery series is about. It’s an attempt for me and others (who have contributed) to shine some light on how choosing a compassionate diet helped heal our relationships with food.
Photo by Jeff Skeirik
What inspired you to start blogging? What inspires you today?
When I started, I had just gotten into raw food, which I was really excited about. Blogging was a way to share my enthusiasm and to have a place to share recipes. I’ve left the raw lifestyle behind, and nowadays my blog is really a place where I share my life with people. It’s the life of someone studying nutrition, but most of the time it’s a space in which I can meditate on food as a form of self-care. My posts these days are less about being an “expert” (though I do enjoy putting on the “expert” hat every now and then and getting into the nitty-gritty of nutrition) and more of a narrative - an opportunity to reflect on my experience through the prism of food. It feels a lot more intimate now.
How do you decide what you’ll eat in a day?
I like to think of my food choices as being at an intersection of nourishment of the body and nourishment of the spirit. As someone who studies and cares about nutrition, normally I will very methodically plan out my meals for the week (even though those plans don’t always stand the test of time), and I make a shopping list and do some batch cooking. I’m always thinking about sourcing nutrients properly, and about variety and balance.
But I’m not someone who looks at food exclusively as fuel or medicine. There are plenty of things I eat that don’t really serve a nutritional purpose; they’re just there to give me pleasure. For example, this week, I whipped up a batch of blondies, just for fun and just for me. They ended up being so good that I put them on the blog.
Gena’s Tofu Tahini Scramble. Click here for the recipe.
Can you say a bit more about your food philosophy these days?
I think that at this moment in our culture, there’s a renewed interest in food and where it comes from, which is great, but there’s also a lot of anxiety around food. It’s great that we’ve gotten curious about agriculture and in the idea of food as medicine, but the dark side of this curiosity is that suddenly people are really obsessed with and worried about everything they eat, and the danger is a kind of joylessless about the act of eating.
I don’t think that everything we eat has to serve a nutritional purpose. Food is nourishment, and it can do incredible things for our body and for healing. But pleasure, enjoyment and happiness are a vital part of the act of eating, and they’re essential to good health, too. I’m interested in crossing those boundaries; I’m interested in that “sweet spot” of balance.
To follow Gena’s delicious and balanced recommendations - customized for you - visit her Lighter profile. Her meals are created with mostly whole food ingredients, but she also loves the occasional indulgence!
More from Gena:
The Full Helping
Food52 Vegan
Choosing Raw