What is your "Wool-eee"?

As I have blogged in a previous entry I recently read the book, "Keeping the Feast", by Paula Butturini and was fortunate to enjoy lunch with her yesterday and hear her speak last night. The heart of her book is about how a family heals and deals with mental illness, specifically depression. It is an extremely touching and moving book and I commend Paula for talking so honestly about her husband's depression and helping to lift the stigma of mental illness in society. That is the deep and tough aspects of the book...but there is another cool aspect of this book, as well. Woven throughout the book are these wonderful memories of Paula's childhood meals and family traditions growing up in a big Italian family. She included the food stories to give herself and the reader a break from the grim reality of the very challenging times of her life surrounding mental illness.

In particular she describes in detail the voglie, "VOHL-yay" or as Americans would pronounced it "Wool-EEE" that can be described as cravings that her family experienced. While this Italian word can mean anything from wishes, wants and desires to longings, fancies or whims, for Paula this word only meant one thing - deep, impulsive hungers for some seasonal feast. She talks about how everyone has their own person wool-ees and throughout the book she describes various ones she has depending on the season. From asparagus to figs, from spaghetti with clams to the multitude of fresh fruit and vegetables she found at the market in Rome where she lived, she described these cravings for fresh, wholesome non-processed food in her life.

I loved all of this stuff about food and began to think about my own wool-ees. In the past, before I joined Weight Watchers I can definitely say I often had cravings for things with sugar in them...cookies, candy, bakery items, etc. However, through my Weight Watcher's journey I've noticed something remarkable. I don't have cravings for sweet stuff anymore really. I actually do get these wool-ees for fresh fruits and vegetables. And like Paula, they are seasonal! Some of you who have read my facebook status updates regularly can probably attest to this as I've raved about things like spaghetti squash, and butternut squash soup recently. During the summer I was more into berries and peaches.

I actually think I would make a distinction between a craving and a wool-eee. For me a craving is more something that is brain or heart hunger while a wool-eee is more for physical hunger. In other words, if I crave something like a chocolate chip cookie I probably am hungry in my head or heart - it is probably a cognitive or emotional need or craving. But a wool-eee is more of a craving that results from actual physical hunger...for good and nutritious food that the body needs. It is amazing what a wonderful "machine" the body really is. I believe that we are hard-wired with these needs in place to encourage us to eat food that we need to live, work and love healthily and productively. We just need to be able to listen more.