Friday Round-up

I've been "blog-lite" (the techy term for not publishing regularly) for the past 11 days because I've been tending to other research and writing tasks. At the end of the day, I had literally run out of words or felt saturated by them so wasn't up to blogging.

I haven't done a round-up since late September (so much for my plan to make it a weekly feature) so my first post-hiatus post will be an annotated collection of links to food, nutrition and food-gardening items that I've starred in my Google Reader or stumbled upon serendipitously. I'm sharing them here in case you might also find them interesting and relevant to your practice or studies.

As I "mature" as a dietitian (I've been practicing for 20 years), I find myself studying food and nutrition from different perspectives. You may have already viewed my gardening blog within this blog. Some dietitians have a passion for cooking; I have a passion for sowing and growing. My dream: a food garden plot, or at least a pot, for every urban home because I believe our appreciation and understanding of food (really, life itself) is enhanced by gardening. So naturally I was excited by this concept:

Garden Mosaics -  a program connecting youth and elders to investigate the mosaic of plants, people and cultures in gardens, to learn about science, and to act together to enhance the community.

Speaking of appreciating food, here are my newest "foodie" finds:

Apartment Therapy: the Kitchen - this "sister-site" to Apartment Therapy promotes cooking and eating at home. I find the archives page the most useful starting point from which to browse.

The Cook's Thesaurus - a comprehensive cooking encyclopedia with a long-term Web presence

Orangette - "a blog-style collection of stories, often autobiographical and always gastronomical'; the Boston Globe says it has "great photography, writing, and unique recipe twists."

RD-2B and Ceci n'est pas un food blog are two attractive and well-written blogs by Canadian dietetic students that have impressed, inspired and informed me. They make me feel positive and excited about the future of the profession.

The political is another perspective from which to study food and nutrition -- the current "hot" topics and controversies. To keep abreast of these I read Marion Nestle's blog as often as possible. Although most of her posts are about U.S. policies and events, reading them triggers questions in my own mind (e.g., what are the equivalent Health Canada regulations?) and motivates me to look for the answers.

I was also intrigued by the passoniate debate about saturated fat (bad versus benign versus good) that followed Marion's post, Trans Fat Dilemmas. This is a controversy I want to learn more about, particularly because I provide education to stroke patients and families.

Finally, the writers of the 100 Mile-Diet blog consistently publish an interesting food story-a-day, and below are a few posts that I want to keep for future reference. I unfortunately completely missed out on the Wheat Festival, which was on Vancouver Island, but I hope it will be repeated next year and/or there will be a similar event on the Mainland.

"Locavore" Word of the Year
From Wheat-Free to Wheat Festival
Our Thanksgiving Dinner