Catching Up and Readjusting!

I've just been catching up with everyone's blog posts from the past week - sounds like everyone is off to a great start for the new year! Readjusting after our two weeks in Florida was made even more difficult by abnormally low temperatures and an unusually tenacious snowfall last Sunday, which is still on the ground - not normal here in Belgium by any means. At least this will make the normal winter temperatures seem nearly tropical once we break free of this cold snap!

But as I get back to my definition of "normal" I have been taking some needed down time to read the stack of books I brought back...one of them I'd like to mention is the recent book by Mark Bittman, "Food Matters. A Guide to Conscious Eating". I just finished it last night (yep, in the middle of the night, still not sleeping on Belgian time) and it is really good. If you have read Michael Pollan this will all be familiar territory as far as the reasons for changing your eating habits (for Bittman the main arguments are environment and health). His personal prescription is to drastically reduce consumption of animal products, simple carbs, and junk food. The way he puts it into practice is by eating "nearly vegan" until the evening, when he has a (generally healthy) dinner of his choice, which may sometimes include meat, fish, pasta, white bread and on occasion, classic desserts. I think this is an excellent approach for people who are put off by the "extremeness" of going vegan overnight, and as we all know, doing something, some small step, towards a healthier diet, is way better than doing nothing at all and keeping our head in the sand about the destructiveness of the typical American diet.

The nice thing about Bittman's book is that it includes lots of creative recipes. I was making myself all hungry last night reading through all of them! I certainly like his approach to keeping recipes simple as far as not having huge long lists of odd ingredients, emphasizing whole foods as opposed to "products", and the ideas he gives for variations for nearly every recipe.

While reading "Food Matters" certainly doesn't make me want to add meat back to any of my meals, it does reconfirm my committment to a plant based diet and makes me feel good about the approach of my husband and kids to food: they are not vegan themselves but they do tend to eat mainly vegan in the meals I make at home without complaint (mostly!) and when we are out it is their own choice. It's not really that big of a deal in our family and I am happy that this way of life is hugely beneficial to their health while reducing our impact on the earth.

And now I am off to try Bittman's lentil soup recipe from his huge cookbook "How to Cook Everything" which Jenny has and loves. Something warm and comforting for this cold day!

And in case I don't make it back here before Sunday, I want to send a huge Good Luck out to Jenny who is running her first marathon on Sunday morning in Orlando! She is hoping that lots of us will run on Sunday morning "with her", so if you can, please keep her in your thoughts on your Sunday run. If you have been following her blog, you will know how dedicated and committed she has been with her training so we all expect her to do well and have a great race. Not only that, I am so proud of her already for completing such a rigorous training schedule and being a huge inspiration to me personally.

You are going to ROCK it, Jenny! Go, go, go!