Book Review & Quick Summer Recap...

Summertime finds me spending more time outside and less time inside which translates to less time spent reading and blogging.  You may have noticed my lack of presence during the summer?

That being said, I am wading back into reading and have updated my Books tab at the top of this page.  I will try to keep it current...

This summer was very much characterized by rain and clouds, but we were able to spend ample amounts of time hanging out at the pool, traveled several times to visit with family, attend weddings and birthday parties, and enjoyed working in our little garden.

We switched over to raised beds this year and currently we have two 4x4 boxes.  This is a small start towards my dream of basically "gardening" our entire back yard.  I would love to have fruit trees and bushes, and lots of garden boxes all over.

In the Spring a crazy person took over my being and decided to start running, something I have always hated.  Everyone said that in order to stick with it you need to sign up for a race, so I did.  I ran/walked (it was about 1/2 - 2/3 walking) my first 5K in June.  It was a great experience and pushed me to continue trying to run.  I have since discovered that I prefer running intervals and have more fun doing that.  I am much more likely to get out there an do it if it's something I enjoy so I've been working through an interval training program for the last several weeks.

The running led to a quest for healthier eating, which led to starting a low-carb program, which led to whole foods, which led to real foods, which has opened up a huge, gigantic vat of information on holistic living, organic food, etc, etc.  I think I have been avoiding this path for a while because I was overwhelmed by it and felt like innocence was bliss.  Sadly and thankfully, I am at a place where I can no longer ignore it, so I am diving in, researching and learning as much as I can and trying to do the best that I can with the resources that are available to me.  This has led to me requesting all sorts of books from all over my state, and the people at my library probably roll their eyes every time I come in to pick up my next stack of books that have come in...

All of this has inspired several posts that are still floating around in my head, but as we head into Fall and Winter, I hope to get back into regular blogging.  

For today, I leave you with a brief book review...

Click HERE for more info

I recently read a blog post that contained links to several books regarding food, specifically real, whole foods and eating organic, etc.  This was one of the books.  I took it with me on a trip to visit family, and devoured it in less than 2 hours while sitting around listening to other conversations.  It is a very easy read, and the writing as well as the illustrations are very entertaining.  

Once you get past the introductions, of which there are three, the rest of the book is broken into 3 sections:

• What should I eat?  
• What kind of food should I eat?
• How should I eat?

The answers to these questions, and the guidelines for eating can be easily summed up in seven words:

• Eat Food.  Mostly Plants.  Not Too Much.

From here, the author gives a collection of 83 "rules" for eating.  Some are what you might call no-brainers, some really make you think, some might disgust you, some might seem silly...  For each rule, there is a brief explanation.

A few of my favorites are:

• Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce.
• Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk.
• Have a glass of wine with dinner.
• Pay more, eat less.
• Try to spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.
• Treat treats as treats.  (no snacks, no seconds, so sweets - except on days that begin with "S")
• Break the rules once in awhile.

This was definitely a lighter read than a lot of the other books I have acquired on the topic, but I enjoyed it, learned from, and definitely recommend reading it.  My favorite illustration is on the page following Rule #13, "Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle."  It is most amusing, but you'll have to get the book and look at it for yourself.