Snow Food

It's snowing.

I've just come in from the early morning Westie walk, my feet are still cold, and to warm myself up I'm dreaming of Sophie's breakfast quinoa, Vincci's risotto, Kathryn's spiced salad (& a picnic next spring), Kelly's latest recipe (Moroccan Spinach and Chickpeas), and Lucy's...well any of Lucy's recipes or photos will nourish me.

 What are your favourite cold weather foods?

Planet Green stays on my 2008 reading list

Do you ever feel like this frog in a pond of aquatic plants,  drowning in the sea of blogs?

One of my decluttering and simplifying steps during this first week of 2008 is to discontinue all but two of my RSS subscriptions on environmental/sustainability topics. This has nothing to do with their quality, which is excellent.  Unfortunately, I just can't read fast enough to keep up with the volume of posts.  It seems pointless to keep "starring" articles I have no time to read critically or with a view to changing my behavior. I think a better strategy will be to set aside time periodically to do focused searches on Grist, Treehugger and Worldchanging.

In a recent post, I mentioned that Planet Green is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs -- a daily must-read. It's one of the two environmentally-flavoured RSS feeds I'm keeping.  Actually, calling it "green" or "environmental" is too limiting. Nearly everyday there are posts that can be tagged with "health", "food", "cooking", "nutrition", and most of all, "practical."

Here are a few of today's posts -- I've selected the ones I think would interest other dietitians:

• Soup of the Week
• Follow the 3-Month Rule for Fruits & Vegetables
• Cook with Foods that Fight Cancer

I'm particularly looking forward to Kelly Rossiter's series of posts on this third topic. She writes:

We are constantly inundated with studies and information regarding food that is potentially cancer causing, as well as foods that we should avoid eating to reduce the likelihood of the disease. When studies conflict, it becomes difficult to know what to believe. Richard Beliveau and Denis Gingras are taking the opposite tack and are writing about foods that we should be including regularly in our diet. ....Beliveau is a professor of biochemistry and the chair in the prevention and treatment of cancer at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Gingras is a researcher in the Molecular Medicine Laboratory of UQAM-Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal. Together, they have come up with a common-sense book which carefully outlines the properties of these foods and why they are so efficacious.

"They're super foods"*

While I was writing the draft of this post, I realized that despite the name of my blog, neither greens nor berries have yet been a topic of a post. Here is a feature article from the online version of the Nutrition Action Healthletter on how eating leafy greens benefits our eyes, bones, brains and other body parts' longevity and integrity:

The Greens Party

(*Tufts University researcher, Katherine Tucker, referring to leafy green vegetables in the linked article.)

Credit: photo of Mesclun mix by random duck used under this Creative Commons license.