I don’t mean at the extremes – if you eat massive quantities of junk food, it will affect your health. Profoundly. I mean at the margins - like what if you started eating muffins every morning for breakfast rather than omelets, had chocolate every afternoon, cut way back on your greens and sometimes had cereal for dinner. What if this became a habit – would it affect your health? I wonder, because this has started to happen to me.
I have a cold. So does Finn (my 8 month old), and my neighbor across the street and our doorman and as far as I can tell pretty much everyone that we’ve encountered over the last week. I feel comforted to not be alone in my congestion, but my cold seems to have taken up residency and shows no signs of wanting to vacate. So at this point I’ve decided I’m just going to have to feed it. (Or is it starve a cold, feed a fever?….)
I feel the same way about Thanksgiving as I do Halloween – if you’re going to celebrate it then celebrate it! Don’t give out homemade granola bars with carob nibs and don’t under any circumstances eat Tofurkey. When it comes to pretty much any holiday, I’m a believer in the 80/20 rule – 80% of the customs/food etc should to stay the same, while 20% can have a twist – even a healthy twist if you wish.
At Thanksgiving, best not to mess with the “bones” – or the bird – of the occasion, but the side dishes are fair game. I love seeing one I’ve never seen before or a spin on a classic amidst the familiarity of classic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and Brussels sprouts. I once added chestnuts to the Brussels sprouts which was extraordinary and I’m a big fan of creativity being taken with the mashed potatoes.
Want to get creative with the salad? Get the recipe on the Attune Foods blog!
{A post I wrote for Attune Foods}
As Halloween approaches and I see the bags of 3-bite candy in the store, I feel 10 years old again. I had a sweet tooth and I could never get the candy – that lived in an orange plastic jack o’lantern - to last more than a week. My older sister would still have her candy at Christmas but I was all about living in the Snickers moment and not over thinking the fact that rationing might be a good idea.
Fast forward a few decades and not much has changed. A pint of Chunky Monkey in the freezer is pure torture and a bag of Tate’s Chocolate Chip Cookies on the top shelf might last a day.
What to do? Limit the self inflicted pain and make sweets that are actually good for you…
My favorites? Find out on the Attune Foods blog!
Arsenic. It’s in your rice. And if you’ve been following the recent hooplah over the high (and potentially cancerous) levels that have been detected, you might be tempted to never eat rice again. What food IS safe these days??
After I had Finn, my eating habits start resembling that of a teenage football player. The physical demands, however, are also similar to that of a teenage football player, so in the weight department it was really a wash. When I got serious about dropping the final five though, I knew that cutting way back on food was not going to do it (the team needed me to keep my caloric content high), but the vain cheerleader in me needed to get back into her skinny jeans. The “diet” that kept all sides happy? Low glycemic foods — ie. the slow-burn, slow digest kind. I didn’t care about the caloric content, or the fat content, all I focused on was the slow-burn kind (and yes, cheese is on that list).
{A post I wrote for Attune Foods}
In the world of food, it doesn’t get more basic or humble than bread. You want to go even a notch further on the humbler spectrum – stale bread. Besides making bread crumbs or feeding the birds, there’s not a lot of roles for stale bread, and given that its likely the least expensive food you’ve bought that week, there is usually little grieving when it’s tossed into the trash.
I have an extreme aversion, however, to throwing out food – even stale bread. I don’t know where it comes from – its not like I grew up during the Depression. I grew up in the age of Ziploc disposable baggies and single-use Tupperware containers, but I can’t throw food away. I’ve gotten pretty creative with food re-usage; some of the ways I’ve extended food life include…
Read the rest here….
We were on the deck of our beach house last weekend, mourning the end of summer when my friend, leafing through Bon Appetit magazine, reminded me of how fabulous summer squash is, ie. the yellow and green squash with the edible skin. (The green ones I always call zucchini but summer squash is what you call it when you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about in the seasonal/local food world – actually summer squash is really the name for the group of squash that has the thin edible skin as apposed to winter squash that you have to peel) …Anyway, she reminded me how fabulous raw summer squash ”salad” is.
{A post I wrote for Attune Foods}
Does this sound familiar? It’s late afternoon, you’re beat but there’s tons still to do. You can’t nap because if you do either your boss will fire you or your family will, so the only option to boost energy reserves is to eat. And what you really want to eat are the kettle chips that are one dollar and one plunge off the vending machine shelf, away from your mouth, but you know you should eat the carrots you packed this morning, back when you were feeling rested and flush with resistance. But alas, it’s not 8 am, you’re not rested and the chips are staring at you longingly and you’re returning the affectionate gaze. Mae West famously said, “The only thing I can’t resist is temptation” and if I’m ever hit with the deadly triplets of tiredness, stress and hunger – I can’t either. The chips win.
Read the rest on the Attune Foods Blog!
It all started when Amy brought some of the stuff with her one weekend. She was probably thinking it would last the three days, but it didn’t help that I kept sneaking hits when no one was looking. Unwilling, and unable to stop, I just kept going, hoping no one would notice and not having the willpower to do anything about it even if someone did. The look of it, the smell of it, the taste of it, the rush as it went down my throat … The narcotic? Romesco spread. If you’ve ever had it – you get it.
