Wayo and Lainey proudly display one of their gorgeous, delicious plates at Casa de Luz in San Diego
Wayo Longoria Creates a Dining Room Where You Are a Family Member
When you are on a whole foods, plant-based diet, finding a restaurant for an enjoyable meal can be a challenge. Eduardo (Wayo) Longoria solves this problem for you with San Diego’s Casa de Luz, an inviting dining room that serves certified organic, plant-based, (more…)
An inventive presentation can make your delicious fruit even more tempting
Easy Elegance for Picnics and Get-Togethers
If you are figuring out a fast, easy dish for any gathering, from a summer picnic to an elegant dinner party, fruit salad is your solution. Colorful fruit salad is gorgeous and tempting, bringing an orchard to your kitchen.
You don’t even need a recipe for fruit salad. You can make it on a moment’s notice, assuming you keep lots of fruit in your house. Hopefully you do this anyway, since fruit is a pillar of a healthy, whole foods, plant-based diet.
Fruit salad is the ultimate in uncooking. You can even let young children help assemble it. In fact, letting kids have fun in making meals with healthy foods is one of the best ways to get them launched on lifelong wise eating choices.
Here are some hints to making your fruit salad memorable and irresistible.
Enjoy your fruit salad outdoors on a picnic blanket in a green space, at the beach, or in a sunny nook in your house. Appreciate all that nature put into the fruit – the soil, sun, pollinators. Smile at nature’s greatest bounty.
Include a range of colors for visual appeal. The fruit salad will also be more interesting (more…)
The bees were so interested in the lavender that they did not both the human visitors. These bees were too busy with their tasks of pollination and making their own food to fly up to us.
Enrich Your Cooking With the Distinct Taste and Fragrance of Lavender
I’d never seen so many hard-working bees. As I relaxed into the rural vista, surrounded by fields of lavender in stunning purples, the hum of the bees soothed me into bliss. The fragrance of the flowers was the final calming element. Stress melted and vaporized.
I was at Keys Creek Lavender Farm in eastern San Diego County during the last weekend in May. The peak blooming season this far south (more…)
The beach gets crowded on a sunny day. The most popular activity is simply taking the sun. On an overcast day, people go home quickly.
Can a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Diet Do What Sunscreen Can’t?
Life on earth evolved with the sun. Plants, the base of the food chain, harness solar power through photosynthesis in leaves. Animals live off the energy and nutrients in plants. Over billions of years, plants and animals have perfected their relationship with the sun. Living things have evolved safeguards to benefit from the sun without succumbing to its power.
Yet today, sunscreen manufacturers would have you believe that the sun is your enemy, a cancer promoter. Instead, you are supposed to trust the chemicals in sunscreen to safeguard your health. The fact that sunlight is free and sunscreen drained (more…)
Davie Maxwell and his mom in the seedling greenhouse of Hidden Oasis farm. Davie starts his leafy green powerhouse crops out from seeds.
Davie Maxwell Pioneers Compassionate Farming for Delicious Leafy Greens
Whole food, plant-based diets and veganic farming are natural partners. Veganic gardeners grow crops without manure, bone or blood meal, or other animal products. While plant-based nutrition is a blossoming trend, raising cruelty-free crops is evolving more slowly.
Using veganic methods, Davie Maxwell grows the world’s healthiest, tastiest leafy greens on his 5-acre Hidden Oasis farm near Vancouver, Washington, a short drive from Portland. I was deeply impressed with (more…)
Me and David at the table just before dinner. David cooked such an excellent feast that I'm still thinking about it. Yet the recipes he used are designed for easy home cooking by anyone who want to eat healthy with a minimum of time in the kitchen.
David Gabbe Makes the Veg World More Delicious
Do you ever look around your kitchen and feel uninspired? You want a simple, tasty meal but can’t quite get it together to cook something.
David Gabbe, a Portland-based vegan cookbook author, cooking instructor, and speaker, can help you out. I was fortunate, on a recent trip to Oregon, to savor an excellent dinner at David’s house with him and his wife, daughter, and son-in-law.
My spirited, friendly hosts offered such a variety of enticing food that it was hard to know what to eat first. I ended up with a plate crammed with a whole grain medley, tofu cubes, Mexican-themed casserole, corn bread, baked yams, and kale salad. Home made chocolate truffles (more…)
Whole grain bread, two kinds of kale, and romaine lettuce are the appetizing basis for my next green sandwich
These Toppling Creations Can Be Your Go-To Lunch
Green smoothies are everywhere. Thousands of recipes offer intriguing ways to blend leafy greens, such as kale, chard, and spinach, with fruits, plant milks, chocolate, ice, and more for a thick, cold, satisfying drink. Often filling enough to be a meal on their own, green smoothies can be a delicious part of a whole foods, plant-based diet.
Green smoothies often aim to be slightly sweet. People who are not much into (more…)
These three excellent books will myth-proof your mind against dangerous industry tactics
Protecting Yourself Made Easy
The corporate takeover of health is here. You can see the results in soaring health care costs, millions felled by preventable illness, and acceptance of chronic disease as a way of life.
This post is the hundredth blog on my site. Myth-busting remains my specialty and whole foods, plant-based diets my passion. I’m celebrating by sharing with you three books that taught me how to spot corporate disinformation as easily as a keen-nosed dog can find smelly garbage. These models of myth-busting inspired me in writing The Perfect Formula Diet and still keep me going:
Here are insights from each book.
THE CIGARETTE CENTURY
While pretty much everyone these days admits cigarettes are unhealthy, what you might not know is the sordid history of the tobacco industry. These corporations pioneered underhanded methods to deliberately (more…)
Debby before she delves into the journal articles of the day
The Trick Is To Keep Learning As Health Grows In Stages
Debby, The Healthy Librarian, was only 30 when she watched her parents’ dreams of idyllic retirement years turn into a health nightmare. Her dad suffered a massive stroke. “My parents were going to retire, travel, enjoy grandkids. Instead, the stroke changed everything. My dad could not talk, read, or understand language, and in spite of continual health declines, additional strokes, and seizures, he survived for 16 years after his initial stroke. My mom’s whole life became his care,” Debby told me.
After Debby lost her dad, her mom suffered a series of “mini-strokes.” The damage accumulated. Her final years were marred by vascular dementia, heart disease, and osteoporosis. Debby, as caregiver for both her parents, was both heartbroken and transformed by their tragedies. She delved into medical research to find out how to keep from following in her parents’ health footsteps.
I was delighted to meet Debby, a fellow medical article fan, at a Wellness Forum conference. She has been generous in sharing the highlights of her research analysis (not to mention lots of yummy recipes) at her blog happyhealthylonglife. She is also generous in sharing (more…)
Getting older does not have to mean slowing down.
Six Ways Whole Foods Fuel Long and Active Years
An enjoyable retirement is a great American dream. People save up financially for decades, often planning to spend retirement traveling, with family, and fulfilling long-postponed goals.
The sad fact is that many have their retirement kidnapped by poor health. Americans with Medicare see an average of seven different physicians in a year. Even at age 55, more than half of people have more than one chronic health condition. These medical problems vacuum up money needed for more fun and meaningful activities. The pain and disability of illness are potent barriers to desired activities and quality of life. Yet much of this suffering can be avoided and even reversed.
Whole plant foods are healthy life span enhancers that work together as a powerful team. Here are six reasons why.
• Protective phytochemicals
• Perfectly packaged nutrition (more…)
