I’m Amy Kweller MS, RD, and I’ll be contributing to The Pear Dish blog to discuss pears, nutrition, and leading a healthy, happy life. I hope you find this information helpful and interesting, and that this becomes a venue for a dialogue about how pears can fit into your healthy lifestyle!
When I meet new people and tell them that I’m a Registered Dietitian (RD), sometimes the response is a surprised “Why did you choose to become a dietitian?” This isn’t the easiest question to answer, since my passion for nutritional science has changed over the years. But, I always come back to the food. Food is at the epicenter of our society; some of my earliest memories are in the kitchen preparing food, and celebrating with family and friends over food. Even now, I love to cook for friends, experiment in the kitchen, and basically play with my food!
Indeed, there is nothing more amazing than sustenance cultivated from the Earth. One piece of fruit starts as a seed that becomes a tree, a flowering branch, and eventually a fruit that enfolds the next generation tightly in its core. A farmer’s hands pull a variety of shapes and colors of fruit rich with goodness from the tree. Then the bustling market sells the fruit that turns from emerald, to gold, to crimson in a few days time atop the counter awaiting the next feast. We commune over food, laughing, unwinding, enjoying the fruits of life, the nutrients becoming the very body holding the fruit in hand. The science of food isn’t really about what we eat, but how life transfers from one living organism to another, physically and socially.
What we lay on the table is how we nourish our bodies, our lives, and our cultures. Food is an art and a science. Consider the modest pear; it is sweet and simple, adored the world over. The pear has been immortalized for thousands of years in diverse venues, literature, pottery, paint, textiles, and of course, the culinary arts. Cultivated for her delicate figure, perfectly smooth skin, luscious flavor and texture, her prized nourishment, the pear embodies the beauty of food, the communion of food, the science of food.
So welcome to this world of beauty and science, the world of the pear. Please share any ideas, recipes, or questions that you may have. I hope you visit often, learn a few things, share a few things, and enrich your life with the bounty of the harvest