L'Italo-Americano

M aggie Battista is the first to admit she has a compli- cated relationship with food. Throughout most of her life, she struggled with the back-and-forth of dieting and weight gain. There were some interesting family dy- namics along the way, as well. Battista, a cookbook author and food entrepreneur from Boston, grew up in a multicultural house- hold. As a young woman, her mother moved from Honduras to New York, hoping for a glamorous career in modeling or in the movies. Her father, the son of Ital- ian immigrants who came from Naples, had just returned from the Viet war. The two met, fell in love and married. Growing up, food was at the core of her everyday life. "I was the product of two cultures who expressed themselves with gener- ous amounts of food," said Bat- tista, speaking recently at the Book Larder, a community cookbook store in Seattle's Fremont neigh- borhood. Battista has just released her second book, "A New Way to Food" and was making the rounds as part of a book tour. "Our house was always full of kids and adults," she said. "Besides my parents, my sister and myself, my mother's brother, his wife and their three kids lived with us, as well. Our lives seemed to revolve around family, food and parties." RITA CIPALLA one at a time. Throughout the yearlong process, she kept a detailed food journal, recording how each item she ate made her feel when she ate it, a few hours after eating it, and the next day. "By letting my- self experience my feelings during and after eating, I learned more about myself and my relationship with food," she said. "I discovered I was suppressing many emotions through eating. It was something I never really thought about be- fore." Battista started slowing down around food, taking a few deep breaths before going to the fridge for a snack. "I would give myself five minutes to think about what this food meant to me and what I was feeling at the time," she ex- plained. "If I still wanted it, fine. But then I would know it was my decision and I made it con- sciously." In A New Way to Food, Bat- tista shares many personal and candid stories that chronicle her struggles and victories around food, and she offers insights and tips on building a lasting, healthy relationship with it. More than 100 recipes are included that are delicious and wholesome as well as mainly dairy-free, refined sugar-free and plant-based. Need a recipe for cashew crème fraîche? You'll find it here. Battista likes lists and shares several of them with her readers, including what's in her pantry and in her freezer. She also lists a se- lection of foods she eats every day, occasionally or once a year. On the "annual" side of the list, she put fried mortadella sand- wiches. "My mother would hide the cookies from me," she explained, "yet when I was hungry she would go in the kitchen and make me a fried mortadella sandwich. I still can't figure out how that is health- ier! But mortadella sandwiches re- mind me of my childhood and once a year, I allow myself that treat." Battista acknowledged that everyone is different, and that im- ages of movie stars or fashion icons are not practical or realistic for most people to achieve. In- stead, she recommended accepting the body you've been given and combining healthy thoughtful eat- ing with a healthy lifestyle. She also suggested that people prioritize their well-being just as they would prioritize their careers, spouses or partners. On her cal- endar, Battista keeps track of her work commitments and, in the same space, records details about her eating and health status. "Put self-care as your #1 priority," she advised. With her new book as a guide, readers will be one step closer to establishing and maintaining a healthier relationship with food and with themselves. As her book says, it's a new way to food. On Saturday nights, the Latin side of her family would reign. Out would come the beans, rice and fried plantains. Sundays were reserved for Italian food. The fam- ily would often eat at her Italian grandmother's house where pasta was usually on the menu. To this day, Battista said her favorite com- fort food is baked ziti. Battista's mother was very body-conscious and always on a diet. "She wore glittery, shiny clothes that hugged her curves," said Battista. "I was just the op- posite. I dressed in baggy, shape- less clothing and was pretty much a fat girl since the age of eight." Battista went to journalism school and then worked at several high-tech companies, including TripAdvisor, Matchmaker and Wired. She realized she had a tal- ent for creating an environment, online and offline, where people could learn and enjoy themselves while doing it. She decided to combine her passion for food with her expertise in building community. In 2007, she founded Eat Boutique, an on- line food shop and story-driven recipe site. Buoyed by the success of that enterprise, she then started hosting and creating pop-up food markets. In 2015, she published her first cookbook, "Food Gift Love," a compendium of recipes for innovative and tasty food gifts. Her latest enterprise is an on- line community of women food entrepreneurs known as the Fresh Collective. The group launched a series of podcasts called Made Fresh, which feature candid con- versations about food, work and relationships. Battista continued to struggle with her weight and body image, trying diet after diet. Nothing seemed to work. Five years ago, she called it quits: No more diets. Instead, she began to eliminate things from her diet, such as dairy, gluten, meats and processed sug- ars, taking stock of how she felt after she eliminated each item, and then slowly adding them back in, Maggie Battista's journey to creating a more positive relationship with food SEATTLE ITALIAN COMMUNITY In "A New Way to Food," food writer Maggie Battista offers tips on how to build a healthy relationship with food. (Rita Cipalla) THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 26 L'Italo-Americano Maggie Battista's first cookbook was "Food Gift Love," which helped readers create innovative and tasty food gifts. (Eat Boutique)

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