Health

What snack do you turn to between meals, after a workout, or following a physically demanding project (like running a race or putting in the garden!)? Snacking choices say a lot about what the body needs – to replace and rebalance nutrients, restore fluids and enable overworked parts to recover.

One of the things I love about writing about food is trying new ingredients. When I run across something at the farmers’ market or in the grocery aisle I haven’t cooked before, it almost always ends up in my cart. When amaranth (pronounced ah-mah-ran-th) found its way into my kitchen last month, I was skeptical but curious about what this tiny grain had to offer.

Trying new ingredients usually ends up one of three ways in my kitchen:

This is the first post in a series on making your own sourdough bread. Stay tuned next week for the full starter recipe and the step-by-step, day-by-day process of growing a sourdough starter.

If you asked me to name my favorite flavor profile, it wouldn’t be salty, sweet, or bitter, but sour. I adore sour things—yogurt, sauerkraut, kombucha, cultured butter…the list goes on. Part of the reason may be that when it comes to food and drink, sour flavors feel balancing to my palate. Combining tangy sauerkraut with corned beef balances its saltiness. Eating plain yogurt with fruit balances the fruit’s sweetness. Adding a squeeze of lime to pad Thai can elevate the dish to a new level, simply by bringing all of the other flavors together.

This post is part of an ongoing series on Wellness, which looks at the importance of health and healing in living a Simple, Good, and Tasty lifestyle. Also check out the previous Wellness posts on massage as preventative care and the controversies around calcium.

This is the tenth post in the series Great Grains, highlighting unusual whole grains and easy ways to incorporate them into your diet.

This is the ninth post in the series Great Grains, highlighting unusual whole grains and easy ways to incorporate them into your diet.  Check out posts on bulgur,

Everyone knows about the new-year, new-you mindset. I mean the idea that, come January 1st of the New Year, we will all dedicate ourselves to becoming radically better people. We will make lists of things we plan to change about ourselves or do differently, and swear that we will “really be committed this time.” Yes, New Year’s resolutions. And for better or worse, Americans make them every year.

I’m a sucker for color, I admit it. I’m sure anyone who knows me or even sees me on a regular basis could attest to that statement based solely on the clothes I usually wear. One might even guess that my love of color is simply inherent, given the color of my hair (a rather unusual and interesting shade of orange-red). I have also been known to make a big deal about the colors of the autumn leaves or the shades of pink and orange in the sky at sunset, and I’m that person who is always talking about the colors in someone’s flannel, or the stripes on someone else’s socks.

This post is part of an ongoing series on Wellness, which looks at the importance of health and healing in living a Simple, Good, and Tasty lifestyle. Also check out the previous Wellness posts on massage as preventative care and the controversies around calcium.

This is the seventh post in the series Great Grains, highlighting unusual whole grains and easy ways to incorporate them into your diet. Check out recent posts on teff, barley, and rye.