Life is Healthy

From wine to couscous to exercise, the advice and tips and experiences you write about in your comments and emails continue to motivate, amuse, teach and make me think. What a gift you all are to me! Thank you!

I want to address three emails and comments I’ve received in the last week, starting with must-haves at the grocery Store. Joy asked me about this and I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask you what your “must haves” are.

Here’s what my grocery list looks like most weeks. Some things, like onions and potatoes, I don’t buy every week because I buy them in bulk and they keep. These are just the things I can think of in order of how I select them aisle for aisle in the grocery store:

Spinach
Mushrooms
Edamame
Shredded carrots
Strawberries
Asparagus
Red leaf lettuce
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Baby carrots
Green beans
Peppers (mostly red)
Cilantro
Broccoli sprouts
Bananas
Apples
Blueberries
Melon
Potatoes
Onions
Brussels sprouts
75% reduced fat Cabot cheese
Fat-free sour cream
Yogurt
Eggs
Sugar-free pudding
100% pure pumpkin
Pam cooking spray
Cherry scented prunes
Dried beans (all types)
Brown rice
Whole wheat couscous
Whole wheat egg noodles
Whole wheat pasta
All kinds of mustard
Boca burgers and “meat” starters
Frozen spinach and other veggies
Hummus
Lite 100% whole grain English muffins
Werther’s Original Caramel Hard Candies
And tonight I bought some FF, SF vanilla frozen yogurt

I also love green tea, PB2 (dried peanut butter at www.bellplantation.com), fruit spread, pita, corn tortillas, (I know I’m forgetting a ton of stuff), whole grain crackers, Shredded Wheat ‘n Bran….

What’s on your list that’s not on mine?

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Shelly asked me how the refried bean recipe turned out using dried legumes. It went GREAT! Tasted fabulous! I was glad to regulate the sodium content and heat. It makes a great sandwich spread and dip.

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Finally, icatch22 wrote this in response to my blog about how I need to eat/chew something when I’m on a writing deadline: “I saw your story on CNN and tracked you down. This blog reminds me of a conversation I had the other day with an herbalist colleague of mine the other day. I mentioned to her that I used to love chewing gum. During school and college, I chewed gum all the time! I never smoked, but needed that oral fix. She told me a theory that when you stimulate the roof of your mouth, you are actually connecting to the part of the brain for learning. Not sure if that's true, but it may explain the oral fixation when you write.”

I LOVE this theory! Thank you icatch22!

And thank you again to all of you awesome readers of my blog. You are my friends, my community and I am so very grateful you are here and listening and responding.