YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Watercress-Grapefruit Salad

Make yourself this sweet little salad, just for you or just for two. It’s an exotic bunch of ingredients, so it’s unlikely that you will have all these ingredients in your kitchen when you’re ready to put it together. And it will probably help to take the recipe with you when you go to the grocery store to collect your ingredients. But here’s a trick: you can make this salad two different ways, one easier and the other more involved. Buy all the ingredients for the fancier version, or skip over the [bracketed ones] for a simpler version. Either way, it’ll be [simply] delicious. Continue reading




Winner by a Mile

Last year, an article entitled “Can We Say What Diet is Best for Health?” was published in the scientific literature, and James Hamblin wrote a story about it for the Atlantic. He called it “Science Compared Every Diet, and the Winner is Real Food.” You know, I would have edited out the word “Real” and then called it, simply, “Food.” The original article was written by David Katz and Stephanie Meller, of Yale School of Public Health. Continue reading


Can I Eat Fruit?

Recently I’ve been asked by a number of people whether it’s okay to eat fruit. You know it’s relatively high in sugar; they’re worried about whether they should be eating a food that contains a lot of sugar. It’s fine. As long as the sugar is enclosed in a fiber matrix, and as long as you don’t already have a blood sugar problem (like uncontrolled diabetes), feel free to eat fruit. You can trust me when I say that apples and oranges are absolutely not what’s driving up our collective weight. The obesity epidemic is not being caused by fruit. Continue reading



A Novel Approach to Epic-Sized Portions

Most of us keep a budget of some kind; limits keep us on track. It may be tight and to the penny, or it may be simply a rough idea of what’s available. Whether you are used to flying commercial or private, eating off paper plates or porcelain, keeping your accounts flush and staying within a budget helps to avert disaster and to achieve long-term goals for yourself and your family. Continue reading


YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Strawberried, Blueberried Salsa

The Free Dictionary defines salsa as a spicy sauce of chopped (usually raw, but not always) vegetables or fruit, especially tomatoes, onions and chili peppers. You may not have realized, however, that salsa doesn’t necessarily mean tomatoes. In Spanish, salsa means, simply, sauce, and salsa comes in lots of different versions, such as negra (black, with dried chilis) and verde (green, with herbs and tomatillos), not to mention, of course, roja (red, with plenty of tomatoes, onions and garlic). This particular salsa features berries to grand effect! Continue reading



YOUR HEALTHY PLATE: Sweet Potato Tzimmes

Wishing all my friends, family and readers a happy and HEALTHY year ahead, starting with this gorgeous sweet potato tzimmes, which will definitely make an appearance on our holiday table this coming week! Read through before you start — the magic is in how you prepare the baking dish. It should be good and hot, the oil fragrant and almost spitting, before you fill it with the ingredients. Continue reading