Super…Nutella?

My kids LOVE Nutella (and okay, who doesn’t? hazelnuts, aka Filberts (does anyone actually call them Filberts anymore, really?), cocoa, sugar? I’m down. Or, well, I used to be when I consumed sugar like a Hummer H1 chugging gas on the 405 freeway during rush hour. Still, I love those flavors of hazelnut and chocolate, […]

Taste of Summer – The Last of The Freshly-Picked Strawberries

Another cool morning here in Maine…I can sense the end of summer nearby, and it’s far too soon. Breakfast this morning: my vanilla yogurt, Qi’a superfood cereal, and the last of Pike’s strawberries.

Steak: It’s What’s for Dinner!

I swear every time I make some sort of steak for dinner, I hear the deep baritone of the Cattle Association (which I’m assuming is meant to sound like a hardened ranch-hand) saying, “Beef! It’s what’s for dinner!” (ba-da-dum!). I don’t eat a lot of red meat, but my kids are hard-core carnivores, so occasionally […]

My Life as a Martian

I wonder sometimes if I’m the only person who struggles with feeling like an alien within her own family. Most of my mother’s side of the family, who believed strongly in the value of keeping up appearances, despised my father because of our religious beliefs and his social inabilities (Asperger’s Syndrome was not as easily […]

Soba – the Un-Pasta

As I mentioned earlier this week, I’ve been on a sort of cleanse – not a hard-core juice or smoothie cleanse, more of a three-juice-a-day-cut-out-the-sugar-and-pretend-I’m-a-vegetarian-for-a-few-days kind of cleanse, and I’m finding this more balanced approach is helping me get my mental state back on track (I also resolved to not step on the scale anymore…or, […]

Upgrade Your Breakfast

I’m always on the hunt for new things I can eat quickly for breakfast. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because I’m a label reader (if it has ingredients I don’t recognize, I usually don’t buy it), and I like to start my day with whole foods that deliver a lot of energy without […]

Vegetarian After 6

A few months ago, I read an article in Outside magazine about Mark Bittman, a food columnist who recently published the book, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good. I liked his overall concept: pressured by his doctor to make changes in his diet, he […]

Finding Happy

“What makes you happy?” It’s a question that I think most of us ignore or never even bother asking while we’re caught up in the day-to-day living of the life we have. Up until recently, I’ve sort of confused “happiness” with some form of contentment on the shallowest levels. If I look happy – I […]

Grow Your Own

I used to hate bugs. Seriously. Hate. Bugs. As in, if a bug flew within my personal space bubble, I would flail my arms and yell, so that anyone looking on from a distance probably thought they were watching me experience a violent seizure. But two years ago, I finally found myself with space for […]

Artichokes: More than a Veggie with a Pun-ny Name

I was an extremely picky eater growing up. I blame this in large part to my bio-mother’s cooking skills (or lack thereof). However, as I started teaching myself to cook (watching the entire PBS cooking show schedule every weekend) as a teenager, my palette started to finally widen out. Still, oddly enough, one vegetable I […]