Tara Carpenter, NC.
Nutritional support for people on Body Ecology Diet (B.E.D.).
I was born in the 1970’s with a natural upbringing and mother who made our meals from scratch. I attended Montessori Farm School where we made lunch together; when I started public school in 5th grade, I was certainly the only child with lentil soup in a thermos and cornbread in a cloth napkin! We kept chickens, gardened, and sourced organic food.
Our home was near Plymouth Plantation where the Mayflower II docked and we visited often on field trips because my mother owned a school and also home-schooled my brother and sister. I loved to cook with the pilgrim women in stone firepits on dirt-floor kitchens. Most of our summers were spent with an Amish family in Pennsylvania with slow practicality of living close to the land. Here is a photograph of my mother in our kitchen …
When I was 12, I opened a natural restaurant called Fat mama’s in my family kitchen and invited neighbors to dine with a seasonal menu. At 14, I bound a cookbook for kids with allergies. At 16, I ate pizza and drank beer until 3rd year of college when I studied abroad in Tasmania and a friend had me for supper; the smell of bread baking, herbs drying from rafters, and soup simmering on stove brought me back to my home natural roots! Soon after, I canoed Murray River to practice Vipassana meditation.
In my senior year of college, I worked at Whole Foods with others who did wheatgrass shots and colon cleansed in tiny dorm bathrooms! I yearned to learn traditional principle of yin and yang and how to prepare food for healing the digestive tract. On the day of graduation, I traveled to California to apprentice with master cook, Cornelia Aihara; I chanted, walked barefoot in morning dew, administered ginger compresses to people with cancer, and cooked in a kitchen above a root cellar filled with wooden vats of soy sauce, umeboshi, and miso paste.
My twenties were spent baking sourdough bread, making yogurt, and sugar-free desserts for a community of 250 at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Perched on the cliffs of Pacific Ocean, I trained as a masseuse, become a Hatha yoga practitioner, danced The 5Rhythms with Gabrielle Roth, and had the pleasure of cooking at Tassajara Zen Monastery.
I dreamt my whole life of becoming a mother, yet unfortunately I was one of 1% of women with a rare prenatal condition (hg) that left me unable to lift my head, drive, watch t.v., read, or drink more than a teaspoon without extreme nausea and vomiting. This condition lasted 12 weeks with my 1st baby, 17 weeks with my 2nd (miscarriage), and 40 weeks with my 3rd – a total of 69 weeks. My pregnancies instilled inside of me, the ability to see light in times of hardship when the tunnel is long and dark. Thankfully giving birth was wonderful and I could have done that 100 times!
When my 1st child started solid food he had non-stop diarrhea, weight loss, and dehydration. I did not know how to help him. A week before he turned two, I admitted him to the ER for listlessness and he was diagnosed with “borderline” Celiac Disease. I left the hospital terrified as the doctors said only to “remove most gluten from his diet”. I was a single mother working 70-hour weeks with no support from the father. Thankfully, I had studied food to know to remove ALL gluten plus top allergens (soy, nuts, dairy, etc.) to give his gut time to heal. In a matter of days I watched him bloom!! His transformation showed me how food can heal and harm.
For much of my adult life I have been a Personal Therapeutic Chef in the hills of Hollywood to the valleys of Vermont where I live. I now limit this service to those with serious health issues and encourage others to inquire about customized meal plans I create that you can easily follow and have prepared by a friend or family member in your home kitchen.
In 2014, I earned my masters in Holistic Nutrition to offer step-by-step guidance to people on Body Ecology Diet to heal localized or systemic yeast/fungal infections. I personally practiced this way of eating and in the throes of my healing made a promise to help others if I got better. Which I did and I am grateful to the founder of this program, Donna Gates, for her efforts in bringing this program out into the world.
Reclaim Your Inner Smile.
