Glorious summer

Hi Folks,

Sorry I've been absent so long. This is going to be a busy, busy year. I've been taking pictures of various things I've been preparing, but just haven't had a chance to sit down and post! So I decided just to write a quick post here without pictures.

Well, the highlight of the last few weeks is that I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Health Getaway. That was so much fun. I was expecting to be inspired, to learn a lot, and to enjoy not cooking for a week! But it turned out even better than that. I had sooooo muuuuuch fuuuuun making new friends and gabbing at each meal and exercising with them every morning. It made an impact on me how important community is. It's hard for people to adopt this program of eating, because you feel so alone doing it. So that's a reason we need to support each other. I'll try to keep posting more and please feel free to write comments and questions.

Some highlights of the Health Getaway were: 1) great lectures, as always. I got reinforced how important it is to eat healthy to make up for the first 45 years of my life when I did not. Cancer takes about 30-40 years to show itself after exposure to all the harmful toxins in our environment and diet. Fortunately, a healthy diet works to reverse cancer, so we need to flood out bodies with phytochemicals and micronutrients to allow our cells to repair. Onions, mushrooms. garlic, and cruciferous vegetables work to reverse cancer. The lectures on osteoporosis, heart disease and diabetes were disturbing to me because of what he told us about the harmful effects of the drugs used to commonly treat these illnesses. Wow. It is shocking and upsetting to me how our medical system is set up to feed the pharmaceutical companies, rather than heal people. 2) A screening of the movie "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead"' but Joe Cross. This is a must-see and will be available to the public in about 6 months I think. 3) A lecture by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. They are doing and planning great things to encourage people to eat healthy. You can watch these changes happen by visiting your local Whole Foods. 4) The great food, which I didn't have to cook. and 5) best of all, hanging out with my new friends. 6) Oh yeah, and I entered the talent show. It was a blast, well, not my performance, but watching and laughing with everyone else.

Foodwise, I've been enjoying simple delicious foods from the garden and co-op. Tonight I had onions, garlic, greens, and herbs from the garden cooked up in the pressure cooker for a couple of minutes, and added my yummy beans, a Tbsp of pine nuts, and a bit of spicy pecan vinegar. It was yummy! I've got lots of greens in the garden--collards, kale and chard, so am eating them every day, cooked or in smoothies. We also have eggplant that I sometimes steam and blend up with a Tbsp seeds, making a sauce to add to the greens. Here's another yummy thing I made this weekend: cabbage salad made with cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli (optional), cherries, grapes, apple, orange, and vinegar (d'angou pear and blood orange). Just throw it all in the food processor using the grater blade. This was soooo good with the cherries and grapes, like dessert! I've also been making smoothies with greens from the garden and yummy berries from the co-op. Add a little vinegar, lime or lemon to cut the bitterness of the greens. A note on the smoothies: I mix collard greens half and half with romaine lettuce. All collards is a bit too strong. I use about 2 oz of collards, 2 oz of romaine and 1/2 lb of fruit per smoothie (though I make a double batch at a time). That's about it right now, just eating lots of greens, beans, nuts&seeds, and fruit.