I was referred (thanks Summer!) to a page listing the 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1.00.

Also, if you are at all interested in someday traveling the country with an RV or tent, check out her article on Modern Day Nomads. Here's the story of how it all came about.

Of course nomad living just gives me homeless-with-kids flashbacks, but I've known people who were quite happy to live that way. I think it works much better for those without dependents, though I clearly got a sense at Leo Carrillo that there were still people with kids making use of the campgrounds out of homelessness rather than for fun.

Food banks see up to a 20 per cent increase in volume over 2007. Gardeners are asked to grow extra produce to feed the hungry and extra donations are needed.

http://www.secondharvest.org/ (you can use your zip code to locate the nearest chapter)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/06/26/growing.xtra.ap/index.html

Second Harvest is one of my own favorite charities because I remember the years when I needed to make use of foodbanks. Salvation Army also helped me out more than once.

Think of the vegetarians if you donate actual canned goods at a drop off and put in some vegetarian friendly soups and protein sources.

Potato Filling for Masala Dosa

2 medium-size new potatoes (about 12 ounces), boiled, peeled, and diced into 1/3 inch cubes
1 1/2 tbsp ghee or vegetable oil
1/2 to 1 tbsp scraped, fresh ginger root, minced fine
1/2 to 1 tbsp scraped, hot green chilies, minced very fine
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
6-8 fresh or dried curry leaves, if available
1 tsp. coriander powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp chat masala, if available
1/3 tsp tumeric
1/3 to 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp minced, fresh coriander leaves, aka cilantro (or parsley leaves if unavailable)

Heat the ghee or oil in a 10 frying pan over a medium flame until a drop of water dances on the surface. Drop in the minced chilies and ginger root and fry until they start to brown. Add the mustard seeds and fry until they sputter and pop. Immediately add the curry leaves, then the diced potatoes. Stir well.

Sprinkle in the four powdered spices and salt. Saute for one minute. Pour in the water, lower the flame, and cook until the vegetable is dry (about 5-10 minutes).

Remove the pan from the flame and blend in the lemon juice and fresh or dried coriander leaves.

In some versions of this recipe the potatoes are mashed in the skillet when tender.

Dosa pancakes

The easiest way to make dosa pancakes is to buy a powdered mix at the nearest Indian grocer. Follow directions to create a thick batter which you will pour and then smooth into a thin pancake. Cook for about 30 seconds and add ghee to the pan to crisp the edges. After one and a half to two minutes of cooking, lift the edge and check if the bottom is properly browned. When it is you can turn the pancake and cook the other side for about two minutes.

Remove the dosa, place about 2 tbsp of the filling on one half, fold and over with the remaining side. Dosas can be kept hot in a 250 F oven. Cover with coconut chutney just before serving or have chutney on the side. Dosas are often served with sambar, a spicy soup.

The long version of dosas involve soaking rice and split urad dal overnight, blending together, adding salt, and letting sit to ferment for 24 hours before making your pancakes.

Coconut Chutney

1 and 1/2 cups fresh grated coconut, packed loose
1 cup plain yogurt or 1/2 cup yogurt and 1/2 cup sour cream
1 tbsp peeled, fresh ginger root, chopped fine
2-3 tsp seeded, hot green chilies, chopped fine
1/4 tsp asafetida powder (hing)
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 to 3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp ghee or light vegetable oil
1/2 tbsp split urad dal if available
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black mustard seeds
10-12 curry leaves, fresh or dried, if available

Combine the coconut, yogurt, ginger root, chilies, asafetida, pepper and salt in a 1 quart bowl.

Heat the ghee in a small frying pan. Fry the urad dal, cumin, and black mustard seeds until the cumin and dal are brown and the mustard seeds sputter. Remove from flame, toss in the curry leaves, and wait 10 seconds. Pour spices into the bowl and mix well. Place over dosa pancakes. Can also be used as a dip for pakoras.

I was doing research to try to find the best way to encourage a young, food-phobic boy that I sometimes babysit to expand his menu a bit. It had become clear that the "just try a bite" strategy wasn't working. I remember being a "picky eater" which is such a benign description of what can be a serious problem for some people. I have managed to expand my diet over many years but as a child I had a very narrow range of foods that I could tolerate. Trying new foods actually made me nauseated and I would gag on some things. I recall the horrors of gristle in meat and the sliminess of the seeds in tomatoes--which I carefully cut out of each slice.

After doing my research, I found out that my own problems were pretty mild compared to what some people experience and that for the more extreme cases it never gets better. Imagine, if you will, knowing that you will gag if you try new foods and going to a party or dinner at someone's home. You don't want to offend your hosts or make them feel like their cooking is not appreciated, yet most people don't understand this problem and will try to cajole you into trying new foods. You know you will gag or even vomit if you do--and they don't realize this. Some will even laugh at your concerns. This is a problem that really isn't talked about or explored on talk shows. So you avoid dinners, trips to restaurants, barbecues, and all of the many food-oriented gatherings as much as you can. What kind of social life would you have? How often do we do social things that don't involve food?

The only good advice I found for kids with this problem was that if kids are exposed to the presence of various foods regularly, eventually the "newness" factor would be lessened and they might try them. It's also apparent that people with this problem do better with simple, bland foods rather than spiced or complex foods. (I nearly starved when I joined the Hare Krsna temple because all of the foods had multiple vegetables in sauces and I couldn't even tell what was in them. But after a couple of months I finally got used to the smell and appearance of some and was sufficiently hungry to try them--and now I love [most] Indian food.) Texture is often a factor--some like only raw or only cooked vegetables, or like them cooked one way and not another (crisp vs. mashed and so on).

I also learned that this problem can run in families. I have a grandson who is a picky eater and my children each had certain things they never learned to like. My daughter was also phobic about eating in public and hated going to restaurants.

There's not even a standard term for this problem. Two I saw that were gaining some popularity were Selective Eating Disorder and Food Neophobia (fear of trying new foods).

Here are some sites I found:

Psychology Today article

http://www.pickyeatingadults.com/

http://www.greatbigvegchallenge.blogspot.com/

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/1010picky1010kids.html

http://adultpickyeatersuk.wordpress.com/

http://www.fussy-eaters.com/

Courtesy of markedformetal: fresh spinach soup.

This could easily be vegetarian with vegetable stock. It reminds me of the zucchini soup I used to make, but I used milk with a little bit of sour cream instead of full cream. One could reduce the fat content of the soup by using lower fat dairy with just a touch of cream or half and half.

Frederico's Chiffon Cake (from handwritten recipe card handed down from my Mom, the only one I have)

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup vegetable oil
8 eggs, separated
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 cup sugar (reserve)
1/3 cup lime juice
grated peel of 1 small orange (1 1/2 --2 tbsp)

Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan; set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

In a sifter, combine flour, cornstarch, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, baking powder and salt. Sift into large bowl. Add oil, egg yolks, and orange juice. Beat with electric mixer on high speed until thoroughly mixed. Beat egg whites in a large bowl until stiff. Fold batter into egg whites gently but thoroughly. Turn into prepared pan. Bake 40 minutes.

Mix 1/2 cup sugar remaining with lime juice and orange peel. Spoon mixture evenly over cake and bake 5 minutes longer. Remove cake from oven and invert pan over the neck of a thin bottle. Let cake hang on bottle until thoroughly cooled, about 3 hours. or invert pan over custard cups. Run knife around sides of cake and tap bottom on hard surface until cake is loosened. Do not frost.

http://womansage.org/blogs/jhaas/2007/08/13/heres-to-our-longevity/

Great post about the newest statistics about our longevity as a nation and how it's falling behind other nations. We're also falling behind in other ways such as height and infant mortality.

Universal health care, anyone? More time off so we have energy to be more active? Smaller portions of food served or sold pre-packaged? Less sodium and corn syrup in our processed foods and more whole grains? Raise minimum wage so poor people can actually buy good food and enough of it?

We can turn this around if we have the will and demand that our legislators do something about it, as well as finding the time to exercise and cook better foods for ourselves.

Ran into this url on ecauldron and loved this blog--great healthy ideas for lunch boxes that are for kids but would please adults just as much.

http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/

And the cute lunch box used in these lunches? You can get one here.

X Post from Gaudiya Repercussions...

I see the subject of food and eating coming up recently in my f-list and of course it's an ongoing issue for me too. So I thought I'd share a portion of my post on the subject from my forum in case it resonates with someone.

I am more of a stress-related grazer than a binge-eater. Years ago as part of my body image work I went on a "recovery from dieting" program. My relationship with food was a mess after years of crash dieting and growing up in a family of crash dieters. Foods were all divided into strict categories of good and bad, and I associated the "good" foods with starvation diets I'd been on.

The rules were simple:

1. Eat only when hungry.

(This was mostly a challenge of recognizing when I was hungry and eating right away. I found I was more likely to go past that point and only eat when I was starving, 6-8 hours following the last meal.)

2. Eat exactly what you want.

3. Eat until you are full and then stop.


This really did a lot for me. First of all, I learned to get more in tune with my hunger and satiety signals. For someone who had dieted since I was 9 years old, I had long since lost consciousness of my body's cues. Dieting sets you up for eating disorders precisely by disconnecting from these cues and divorcing eating from hunger alone.

Secondly, I gave myself permission to eat whatever I wanted. It was the rule! For the first time in my life I wasn't eating according to some rigid code or else violating that code and hating myself for it. At first yes, I went for the forbidden foods. After a couple of months of this I started to grab a candy bar one day, took a look at it, and decided that no, I didn't really want that right now.

I began enjoying the "good" foods once again, now that they didn't mean depriving myself of the forbidden or "bad" foods.

I relaxed around portions of snacks because I wasn't merely having a binge between harsh diets. I could have this stuff any time I wanted, so I didn't need to scarf it down like someone was going to snatch it away from me if I didn't eat every bite.

As Dave could tell you, snack foods generally last awhile around me now and I don't eat whole bags of them in a sitting.

I can generally maintain my weight easily. It's losing it that takes extra effort. While I am at the high end of my set point range right now I never go beyond it. But that seems to work in both directions--I never seem to break through the other end, 60 pounds lighter, to even more weight loss. I keep doing the same things or exercise a bit more and the scale just doesn't go below a certain point. I have concluded that's just where my body is able to go at this point, after so many years of crash dieting. My body has been through so many self induced famines that it holds on to what it can.

I found this while surfing for other recipes and it looks good, so I thought I'd pass it on:

Here’s Susan's Original Tequila Cream Pasta recipe in all its glory. It makes a wonderful dish that can be enhanced with some fresh, cooked shrimp. She’s tried several brands in this dish, but finds a 100% agave blanco is the best to use. Try it yourself and enjoy! It's truly delicious.
Ingredients:

* 2 tbsp butter
* 1 large onion, thinly sliced
* 3 tbsp dried basil
* 3 tbsp minced garlic
* 1 cup half-and-half cream
* 1 28 oz tin peeled tomatoes pureed (or use equivalent fresh tomatoes)
* Salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste
* 1/2 cup 100% agave blanco tequila
* Spaghetti for four
Process
* Melt the butter in a frying pan.
* Add onion and cook until clear.
* Add pureed tomatoes, basil, salt, pepper, garlic.
* Cook at medium-low heat for 20 minutes, until thickened.
* Add cream and simmer while you...
* Cook the spaghetti (pasta).
* Add 1/2 cup tequila to sauce. Cook for several minutes more, then serve on spaghetti.
* Top with grated parmesan cheese.

Serves four.

Notes:

* Add the tequila last to preserve its flavour. Cook it only long enough to warm it, but not entirely eliminate its alcohol - if you want to retain its bite.
* Ian adds a healthy dose of habanero sauce to the mix for his serving. If your eyes don't bleed, then it's not hot enough for me!
* Ripe plum tomatoes work best when using fresh, but others are also good - if they are not the usual grocery store cardboard tomatoes.
* Although you can never have too much garlic, it can over-power the tequila taste.
* Fresh cilantro is another nice additive in this sauce.

So far I've lost 8 pounds this month. I hope to lose 12 more before my surgery date. Now that my heels have had a chance to recover from standing in line on the stone floors of the bank I went to every day for my former employer, I am ready to start walking again. That will definitely help the weight loss and the metabolic resistance and triglycerides, plus boost the HDL (good cholesterol).

If the heel pain starts up again I may have to get a membership at a club to go swimming regularly and do water aerobics. My podiatrist actually doesn't want me to walk at this weight (there's a nice catch 22) because I have a deformity of gait that puts pressure on the tendons going up the inside of my legs. He warns that they can become inflamed and burst, necessitating surgery. Perhaps I can alternate walking and water aerobics when I get my 401K money. In the meantime I'll keep an eye on how tender they get and how my heels are doing and lighten up on activity as needed. I will also add some strength training. I'd love to get a punching bag too. I wish I didn't have to store my car in the garage, because it would make a nice work out area. I guess I could get things that I use while parking my car on the street, then put them aside so I can park the car at night. I'd like a basketball hoop too.

It's really helping to be able to do my own cooking again. If only I could get rid of the ants I'd cook even more and make myself some bread too. Periodically they gross me out by over-running my kitchen. I guess they're avoiding the rains we've had.