I’ve had a relaxing, yet busy and productive week.  Last Friday, after I closed on my mortgage refinance, I got a few days off to enjoy the 4th of July weekend and recuperate from the month long fiasco of daily copying of financial documents before I had to begin working on the August issue of Horizons Magazine. I didn’t know until the very day of closing whether I would close at all or not, so when I did, it was a big pressure off me.  I took a few days off to decompress and ended up sleeping a lot.  I also didn’t feel like cooking much and so I made my favorite garlic parsley hummus and some babaganoush and ate it all weekend with pita triangles. When I’m feeling stressed, it relaxes me to cook and I love creating healthy and low fat versions of my favorite foods.  I used to think of hummus and pita as a snack, but now I realize it’s a meal in itself.  I enjoy food so much more since I changed to a healthier diet.  Simpler foods satisfy me and I eat a lot less of them. Continue reading →

I just posted some of my delicious, low fat vegetarian fake meats and substitutes I like at the Goddess Grub website. Here’s what I wrote:

GODDESS GRUB TIP: While I mostly eat and prefer natural, unprocessed foods, there are times I crave a burger or meatballs or a hot dog.  Many of them are made from TVP, or texturized vegetable protein.  MMM, sounds yummy, huh?  The flavoring comes from the spices and other ingredients.  The TVP supplies protein, nutrients and the meaty texture we Westerners (Americans) have all grown up on. Continue reading →

Yesterday I made this really good salad.  I didn’t want to have any meat, but I wanted substance, since the salad would be my entire dinner.  So I opened a package of chopped romaine and chopped it even further, then I added some sliced red onion and chopped black olives, tomato and capers.  Then I chopped a giant Golden Yukon potato and cooked it in a nonstick frypan until the pieces were almost crisp.  Halfway through, I added a bunch of drained, cooked garbanzo beans and kept tossing them all together.   At the same time, I sauteed a sliced onion in another pan until it carmelized and that went on top of the potatoes.  If you cook the onion with the potato, the potato will steam instead of saute, and I wanted to trick myself into thinking the potato pieces were meat, so I kept them crisp. Then just dump the potatoes on top of the salad, then the onions on top of the potatoes, then mix with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Hi, some of you could care less about this and others have asked me for it, so that’s why you are getting it.  I got great news last night.  I’m incredibly healthy!  In February of this year, I changed my eating habits to dramatically reduce fats and processed foods.  Sixty days ago, I got tested with the Pharmanex® BioPhotonic Scanner.  The scanner is the only non-invasive device that claims to measure carotenoid levels in human tissue at the skin surface using optical signals. Carotenoids are members of the antioxidant family. Continue reading →