Seasons of the Terroir

Integrating food as medicine with my cancer treatment.

On April 5, 2022 I received the news that cancer had spread to my brain through my cerebrospinal fluid and I was given 2-4 months to live. My two year anniversary of survival is certainly a date to celebrate but it’s also just another day where I sleep, wake, eat, work, and wonder why I’m still here.

I spent the afternoon at the cancer clinic on Friday receiving my every-six-weeks infusion of immunotherapy and a chat with my oncologist to go over blood work. Six weeks from now I do another round of surveillance scans of my brain and body and another dose of immunotherapy. In between visits I do my best to not think about cancer and focus on what I can do to stay healthy, especially in the foods that I eat.

Annie and I have been watching cooking shows recently, particularly Mediterranean style cooking with an emphasis on vegetables. I find chopping vegetables with a favorite music playlist — from Billie Holiday to Chet Baker — to be therapeutic. I love the process of cooking loosely from a recipe, foregoing a measuring cup and spoons and leaning on intuition, layering spices to build a flavor profile, then reassembling ingredients I cooked separately with careful timing of roasted vegetables for perfect texture.

A beautifully plated dish with a thoughtful garnish is an act of creativity and a reward for the senses. We have thousands of taste buds that signal our brain through cranial nerves to taste sensations of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory (umami). During the time spent bringing the dish to the plate I contemplate the terroir — the climate, soil and topography — of the food. The preparation and cooking of the meal readies the cells of the body to absorb nutrient rich molecules to build my microbiome and bolster my immune system.

For Annie, avoiding certain foods and including others can help relieve the inflammation that causes her rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. For me, I want to keep the cancer at bay as long as I can.

The immune therapy drug infused into my vein every six weeks was created in the laboratory to unlock the clever cancer cells that hide from my natural immune system. This “checkpoint” is removed by the drug so my immune cells can recognize the tumor cells and eradicate them. This works in about 20-25% of patients like me. The rich nutrients in a Mediterranean diet is a complimentary therapy, a way I can deliver vitamins and minerals to rebuilding my body through whole foods, a food as medicine philosophy, a synergistic approach between a modern drug and an ancient diet.

Dr. William Lee wrote a book Eat to Beat Disease with the mantra to treat “Food as Medicine.” I took that saying to heart with everything that passes my lips.

Michael Pollan famously said: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” And by food he means real, whole food, not processed, preferably organic and grown locally.

It doesn’t mean Annie and I don’t enjoy dessert now and then, or opt for a smash burger and fries at our favorite food truck spot as a special treat. It’s a way of thinking by stopping for a moment and acknowledging the power of my choice to give my body what it needs to be fully alive. When in doubt, or away from the kitchen, I’m comfortable eating less or not at all, bypassing all fast food options to nibble on a baggie of walnuts and dried fruit.

Our local Farmer’s Market opens on May 1, a day I marked with a happy face on my calendar. After a long winter in Bend, Oregon eating cabbage, squash, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, broccoli and frozen fruit I look forward to buying from the local farmer’s and trying the greens of spring and the colors of summer, especially dark fruits like Oregon blackberries and huckleberries and plums.

There is something special about buying from local farms each with their own terroir. This is particularly true with honey. Local beekeepers bottle the nectar once the bees harvest the pollen in their surrounding climate. In Central Oregon, bees sup the nectar of orange globe mallow, Western blue flax, showy milkweed, and lupine to name a few. Some people believe ingesting local honey is a cure for seasonal allergies. It’s on my shopping list for opening day.

I met a beekeeper in Santa Barbara who poetically described the process of beekeeping in a 3 1/2 minute video I shot with my son, Nils, that you can view below. Not so poetic were the bee stings I received when a small swarm attacked me when I thought I was at a comfortable distance from the hive, forgoing the head netting so I could see through the viewfinder of my camera.

There are some threads in my life that may seem disparate at the time, like feeling drawn to film a beekeeper for a personal project. With age and disease comes understanding and these threads of interest I’ve collected stand out and are woven together in a fabric of knowing. The last shot of the video— golden honey poured into a jar backlit by the sun—is an image I return to in my mind when darkness comes, a reminder of the sun as the source of all life and honey as a symbol of all that is possible.