In my essay last week, I wrote about how fruits and vegetables can be a beneficial part of your diet and your well-being. Online I learned that one of them, the tomato, has an annual production of 60 million tons, 16 million more than the second most popular fruit, bananas; and apples are the third. The “Joy of Cooking” cookbook lists 64 tomato recipes.

An article written by K. Annabelle Smith, which was originally published in Smithsonian Magazine, with the intriguing title “Why the Tomato Was Feared in Europe for More Than 200 Years” got my attention.

Tomatoes originated in South and Central America at about 700 A.D., and have had a very interesting journey. They were brought to Europe after the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs Empire. In the article about tomatoes, I learned that while tomatoes are fruit that are botanically classified as berries, they are commonly used as vegetables. This is perhaps why in 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Mother Nature by declaring tomatoes were not fruits, but vegetables. 

Most of us are familiar with the processed fruit, which is harvested by machines while still green. Some producers even shape tomatoes in squares for more productive packaging. I personally prefer Heirloom Tomatoes, which I’ve purchased at farmers markets and in specialty stores. Smelling them brings back a memory of my childhood. When I was a teenager, a group of us broke into someone’s greenhouse and stole big ripe tomatoes that we then threw at each other. As a teenager, I also liked to drink tomato juice which was sold at local vegetable stores. The last time we used tomato juice was some years ago to give our corgi dog a bath, after he was sprayed by a skunk.

I paraphrased my title from a quote by Earl Nightingale, “We become what we think about most of the time, and that’s the strangest secret.”

Actually, those two statements are interconnected, and this is the strangest secret. A lot of people, even those who are on a diet, do not think about the real reasons why, they want to lose weight and often they gain it back. Many eat without thinking of what is going into their mouth, whether it’s eating for comfort or hunger.

We lived in Israel when I was 28. One day, my wife Elfa suggested that we should follow a vegetarian diet. At the beginning it was challenging, since while I was growing up in Riga, Latvia, I ate a lot of meat (my father managed a meat store). However, I was considering myself vegetarian, and only ate vegetable based food, and gradually my body and more importantly my brain adjusted. Later on, when we moved to San Francisco, we went to a nutritionist who advised us to add fish to our diet and so we began to follow a pescatarian diet. And again, our bodies and minds adjusted. Our experiment started forty-five years ago and we are still following this diet today. As a result, I am a healthy, energetic individual, who plans to keep serving others for many years to come. I believe, what I eat and my lifestyle will allow me to live until I am one hundred-and-twenty. And then I will make new plans.

When we grew up in Riga, Latvia, every autumn we would go to a local forest to pick mushrooms. So when I saw an article on October 1, 2020 in “The Wall Street Journal” titled, “Russia’s Love Affair With Fungi Has Mushroomed in Pandemic”, it brought back pleasant memories. I sometimes use the analogy of how to pick mushrooms with how to find clients. First of all, you need to know which mushrooms are edible and which can be poisonous (think about clients). Then you need to know where to find mushrooms. You can spend the whole day walking in the forest and only find the wrong ones.

It is a good idea to bring a backpack to keep an extra shirt, since the temperature can change, or if it rains, mosquito repellent is a must, and you also need an extra knife, water, snacks or sandwich and a compass. Nowadays, a mobile phone can serve many functions, if there is cell phone service. But finding mushrooms and bringing them home is only the beginning of the process of appreciation. They need to be cleaned (very dirty work), preserved and then cooked, dried or marinated. This last type is good with drinking Vodka, which is a Russian tradition. While describing how to pick the mushrooms, I realized that the method of processing mushrooms is similar to the processing of mortgage loans. Finding a client and filling out the loan application is only the beginning, and there are many, many steps to get the final results.

You might have heard about how dog owners start to resemble their dogs. Research has been made to verify this phenomena. One of the reasons may be that people choose dogs that look most like themselves (Do I really look like Max?). There is also some research that shows that it’s not just appearance; our dogs may also share our personality traits.

One of the books in my library is called “Inside Your Dog’s Mind” with the subtitle, “What They Really Think”. There are twenty articles written by different authors with the titles like. “Why We Love Dogs (and They Love Us)” and “Listen Up”. The last one was recommended to train your dog to do what you want, using positive reinforcement, which suggests that humans think they know what is right for their four-legged best friends. But do we really know? To find out, I consulted an article written by Gregory Berns, which appeared in Scientific American titled, “What Does Your Dog Really Want?”. 

Of course I am not a scientist and have only one dog, our Labradoodle Max. During our three years together, Max has taught me a lot, while ensuring me that I know what he really wants (besides food and praise) – to play ball. Max is very smart and expressive. He speaks with his body language; particularly, his paws and his eyes. Sometimes I am slow to learn. Max patiently waits until I get it, and then he continues to encourage me to play with the ball. In my photo-story book “42 Encounters with Dog Lovers”, which you can buy on Amazon, I outlined seven lessons that I’ve learned from Max. Here they are;

1. Life is a Game

2. Life is Short

3. Life is Sharing Love

4. Life is a Journey

5. Life is Making New Friends

6. Life is a Cycle

7. Life is Learning

Tomorrow begins the cycle of reading the Torah from the beginning.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 13 1-4). For over 35 years, I’ve started my mornings with reading daily portions from the Torah, and each day I find something new that I did not realize before. For example, to whom God is talking about manifesting light and announcing that the light is good? And what about the separation between the light and the darkness? Since the purpose of the creation was to make the world ready for the first humans, Adam and Eve and their descendants, perhaps God was addressing the modern humans in his message. We are living in a time surrounded by a lot of darkness. Can we separate it from the light, or do we need God’s help?

Nevertheless, I also know that while focusing on finding light – it is already there.

I met an old friend on Sutter Street, who is a doctor, and whose clinic was in the neighborhood. He never stopped working and witnessed how Downtown had become crippled with darkness. He pointed out on the windows of the Leica photo store covered with plywood. I remarked, “Covid”. “No”, he said, “Black Lives Matter”. The note on the plywood covering the door stated, “Unauthorized Entry Will be Met with Armed Response.”