Survival Food

There’s a love affair going on in the Lloyds’ Hampden home. “I love my wife and I want her to be around for a long time,” Thom Lloyd says, looking over at his wife, Jeni. She gives him a thumbs-up.

“I want to stay cancer free and Thom is helping me with this goal by cooking and feeding me well,” Jeni says.

In 2005, Jeni Lloyd was diagnosed with breast cancer. Like many cancer patients, she was overwhelmed with learning about her condition, and pending chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Thom took on the full-time job of self-educating on beneficial foods and supplements, what is sometimes known as complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM.

“Hippocrates said, ‘Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food,’” Thom says. “I started doing research on healing foods like garlic, the use of broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes, and herbs that are good for you.”
The determined spouse of 22 years immersed himself in web research, admitting some of what he read about was offbeat and scary. Using the science-based information he found through the major cancer centers and researching websites, Thom took on the dual role of his wife’s personal nutritionist and chef.

“Thom was sure to get the doctors’ approval with everything he did in my healthy eating, and he kept me shielded from everything I didn’t need to know at the time,” Jeni says after taking a sip of her pomegranate punch. “I needed that safety net, someone to take over, and Thom was my security blanket.”

An environmental researcher by trade, Thom quickly gravitated to organic foods. “You wouldn’t spray Raid on your cereal, so why would you eat foods that have been sprayed with pesticides?”

Healthy food does not mean flavorless, not by a long shot. It can’t, since his wife is admittedly a picky eater. Tonight, Thom spreads out the dough in preparation for one of Jeni’s favorite recipes, sun-dried tomato spinach bread. The recipe has what both spouses require for a good recipe—it’s made with “healing” ingredients, and it tastes good. “My mom always made
sausage bread loaded with two kinds of Italian sausage and all kinds of cheeses when I was growing up,” Jeni says. “So when I would come home from having chemotherapy, I’d crave comfort food like this.”

Thom’s research led him to learn that mushrooms needed to be in the mix. “Shitakes are an immune system builder,” he says, as he stirs in the finely chopped mushroom. Jeni smiles. “This is how Thom sneaks something into a meal that I really don’t like.” Liking it or not, Thom’s persistence and skillful cooking now have Jeni and their daughters hooked on healthy eating. “There’s compelling data that foods can offer change, and if someone proved eating grapefruit would avoid recurrence of my cancer, I’d order a truckload a day,” Jeni says.

Spinach is among the foods listed in his shoppers’ guide of produce with high levels of pesticides, so Thom works with organic chopped frozen spinach for this meal. “The trick here is to squeeze all the liquid out of the spinach after cooking and the tomatoes after you’ve reconstituted them. You can use any type of healthy sausage you want and the dough is up to you, as well. Just be sure the spinach is organic to avoid the pesticides.”
This recipe that Thom created has been altered and adapted as taste-testing spurs them on to make improvements. The spinach bread, he says, “is fun to eat and easy to cook, as you can continuously vary the fillings and keep it new.” Some recipes, however, aren’t salvageable.

“When we try a new recipe and it really stinks, we laugh, saying that’s another lesson we learned,” says the self-taught nutritional chef. Thom does come to the kitchen with some experience. “I come from a long line of butchers, and I watched my dad when I was growing up. However, I learned more from cooking on my own and eating really badly cooked meals.”

As the meal is cooking, Jeni looks on with curiosity. “It smells good. If I can’t smell the shitake mushrooms, I’m happy,” she says as she munches on her salad of greens, topped with dried cranberries, walnuts, and blanketed with a pomegranate-based dressing. She reaches for a piece of the spinach bread. “But I will take a marinara dipping sauce.”

While it was a long road for Jeni going through her treatments, it was not an easy journey for her co-survivor on a mission. “It was a long time convincing her,” he says. “I’d say, ‘Jeni, can you take a look at this, it seems reputable.’” Even today Jeni chuckles about Thom writing in her Caringbridge web page about what she ate each day. “It was his ritual to feed me and make me strong again.”

Thom Lloyd’s repertoire of creations continues to grow every day by trial and error. His wife likens it to the recipe for a happy long-term relationship. “Adversity and variety make a good marriage great.”

Serves 6–8

Large package whole wheat pizza dough
1/3 cup thinly grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup thinly grated Asiago cheese
1/3 cup part-skim mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup organic sun-dried tomatoes
1 lb. organic frozen chopped spinach, thawed
and squeezed to remove water
4 oz. organic shitake mushrooms
2 links chicken sausage, precooked
4 cloves organic garlic
2 Tbs. organic extra virgin olive oil
1 pinch sea salt
5 oz. boiling water

Pour boiling water over sun-dried tomatoes in a bowl. Cover and let stand 5–6 minutes. Drain water and let tomatoes cool. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Dice garlic; heat a medium sauté pan over low heat. Add olive oil to the warm pan; add garlic and sauté for 30–40 seconds. Add the spinach and heat mixture until spinach appears to be drying out (about 5–6 minutes). Remove mixture from pan and place on a plate lined with three paper towels. Set aside to cool.

Squeeze the excess moisture from tomatoes. Place in a food processor with the cleaned shitake mushrooms and pulse until well-blended. Add a pinch of salt to mixture and sauté for 4 minutes over medium heat. Remove from pan
and set aside to cool. Remove skin from sausage and dice into small pieces. Sauté over medium heat for 4–6 minutes; remove from pan and place on paper towel-lined plate to cool.

Roll the pizza dough into a rectangle (approximately 15" x 18"). Spread the spinach mixture, sun-dried tomato mix, sausage, and cheeses on two-thirds of the pizza dough, along one of the long edges. Roll the dough starting from the long edge where the fillings were placed toward the uncovered section to form a loaf shape. Place the loaf on parchment paper on a large baking sheet, slicing three 1" slits to allow steam to escape. Bake for 28–30 minutes, until golden brown.