cookbooks

Food Synergy

My friend Elaine Magee sent me a preview copy of her new book Food Synergy: Unleash Hundreds of Powerful Healing Food Combinations to Fight Disease and Live Well and I almost forgot about it! I just happened to glance up at the bookshelf one day last week and saw it and realized I didn’t take it to Charleston to read over the holidays like I’d planned. So, I read it yesterday.

First, it reads just like Elaine talks which is something I always find amusing about her books. Since I know her and have talked to her often, I can hear her voice as I’m reading.

Next, because I’ve been listening to Elaine talk about Food Synergy for years, I felt like I was taking a refresher course rather than learning anything really new.

As always with Elaine’s books, I loved the menus and the handy charts and the recipes. As soon as I finished, I handed the book to TW and told her she could plan next week’s menus using Elaine’s Food Synergy tables, menus and recipes.

The book isn’t available until March 4, but you can pre-order a copy on Amazon – right now it’s listed at $13.57. Well worth it if you’re interested in using a healthy diet to BE healthier.

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Life! Force! Energy!

Alrighty then, that pretty much sums up my feelings about Raw Food Life Force Energy: blah blah blah. But, I’ll expand on that.

First, the book itself – once you take the jacket off, the book screams Life! Force! Energy! Awesome color choice. Awesome texture, kind of soft but firm and smooth. Cool. Nice book to hold. I found myself wondering right off the bat why we needed “Acknowledgements” “Forward” and “Introduction”. Couldn’t we have just gotten on with things? I appreciated the index in the back. I think some of the other “charts” and such should have also been in the back, along with the 21 day plan with a better layout – but I’ll get to my issues with the 21 day plan in a second. The questions and answers were a nice way to tie things up and answer some situational type questions that obviously come up while reading the book.

Next, the writing. Life! Force! Energy! Ack. It read like an infomercial. Total and complete turn off for me. Anything that guarantees “Effortless abundant weight loss” makes me suspect and that’s pretty much the way I felt all of the way through the book. Bad idea to start the meat er flesh of the book with that statement. Very bad idea.

I must say that while I am not a “raw foods believer” I do believe that many of our weight and health problems are related to the SAD (Standard American Diet). As someone who spends the day talking about diet, I AM very interested in the raw food movement. So I’m not totally blowing off this book.

I do think claiming Life Force Energy is a bit much. And the whole vibrating thing just left me cold. Yes we should be taking in a ton of vegetables, preferably organic and yes raw would be ideal. Also whole grains and a lot less processed JUNK. Agree, agree, agree. I am also very interested in food combination theories and I can see how that might work for many, many people. Overall, the whole raw food movement goes just a bit too far for me.

They lose me, and this author lost me specifically, in these areas:

1) Flesh, even organic free range chicken and eggs and such, have the aura of death and so they should not be eaten because of the negative effect on the human spirit, body and “Life Force Energy”! Cheese and milk from these poor DEATH FLESH creatures is bad but cheese and milk from goats is great! Okkkk then. Also apparently FISH don’t have the DEATH FLESH or as much DEATH FLESH so fish is OK! That makes absolutely no sense to me. Either you go all out or you don’t.

2) Juicing. Ack. No thanks. I don’t do juice for any reason. Ever. Really. I don’t want to drink my vegetables and I don’t want to drink my fruit. An occasional fruit drink is fine, no problem, but all of this push to JUICE! is INSANE! (I’m using a lot of ! because the book used a lot of ! INFOMERCIAL!) Drinking my breakfast of vegetable juice until 1/2 hour before lunch just doesn’t work for me.

3) Colonics. No, I’ve researched this and researched this and I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that we need to use colonics for any reason. Eat raw foods or more raw foods, I can get behind that. But as soon as you start to tell me to take an enema or have a colonic, I’m done.

4) Don’t keep selling me stuff in your book! Probiotics are something I can get behind until you tell me that the only ones that really work are the ones you sell on your website. Nope! Done! Infomercial!

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s look at the 21 day program. Waste of paper! Every single day is exactly the same except for day one when you’re told to “eliminate” first thing in the morning and do that every morning… and you’re given the option of a pre-dinner snack of a POUND of RAW carrots! And day 3, day 9, day something else when you’re told to use an enema or have a colonic. Yes, you’re given ideas for meals or for relaxation and you’re given homework as well. Those relaxtion tips and homework ideas – I’m good with those. But the layout for the 21 day plan could have been better, handled more efficiently and saved paper (not to mention my time.)

The recipes. I can take them or leave them. Mostly leave them because they didn’t knock my socks off. They weren’t BAD and I could see myself referring to a few of them from time to time. Even some of the juice drinks, excuse me, Elixirs!, were interesting. I think I expected more because I’ve read so many good reviews about Rose’s first book.

So – scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best vibration! I give it a 4. If it didn’t sound so much like an infomercial, it probably would have gotten a 6.

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Lose Weight! Win a Free Cookbook!

Y’all know Carmen, right? Of course you do, everyone knows Carmen.

Since you know her, you know she lost a whole lot of weight and is doing a fantastic job of keeping it off. (That whole keeping it off thing is a lot harder than losing it sometimes.) How did she do it? The smart way. The only way I encourage people to do it. She ate less fatty food.

That’s it, that’s her secret. It isn’t much of a secret but often it takes someone like Carmen to show you the way. Luckily, she’s up for the job and she’s launched a brand new blog called The ELFF Diet.

I don’t like to recommend diets or dieting or anything like that on my blog. In fact I really try to avoid it. But in this case I’m going to do more than recommend her blog and her ideas, I’m going to entice you to go over there and learn from her by offering a prize. One for you and one for Carmen. But you have to work for this prize. (Carmen doesn’t, she’s already done the work and is continuing to do the work by maintaining and by helping others.)

In order to win the prize (and help Carmen also win the prize) you need to go to The ELFF Diet blog and comment on one of her blog posts and be sure to say “Denise said you were smart when it comes to dieting.” That is it, that’s what you have to do. I’ll be checking her comments and she’ll be glad to tell me if you followed directions. Or you can come back here and post a comment to me telling me that you did it.

In two weeks I’ll put all of the names into an empty Cheese Straw box and Michelle Belle will pick one. We’ll post the video of the drawing of the winner ’cause that will be fun, won’t it?

Oh I should tell you what you’ll win, right? You’re going to win a cookbook. A cookbook by a dietitian I have no qualms about recommending any time, The Recipe Doctor, Elaine Magee. It will be your choice – you can either have Fry Right, Fry Light or Comfort Food Makeovers. The one that you do not choose I’ll give to Carmen!

The reason I have selected this prize is because Elaine also believes you can lose weight and be healthier by eating less fatty food. Her recipes help you do just that. She lightens our favorite recipes without losing any of the great taste. She’s a foodie, you can trust her.

What are you waiting for, go check out The ELFF Diet and tell Carmen that I think she’s smart when it comes to dieting!

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Books, Books and Surrealism

First stop, after Cafe Nero for breakfast, was Foyles on Charing Cross.  OMG – better than the Tattered Cover in Denver because it’s well lit and modern and the books are new – except of course for the antiquities which I missed but TW saw – and bought… We spent a very long time there and could have spent a full day if we had left Master J at home.  E asked to go back at 5:30pm – even after a full day out.  It was that good.

Then we went back across town and walked down Portobello Road, without getting pickpocketed though someone else did while we were there, and got to Books for Cooks just in time to get a table for lunch.  I enjoyed the shop, and the lunch, so much that I PURCHASED COOKBOOKS.  TW also purchased cookbooks.  And, I bought one for RJ too but I don’t think she knows that I did.

We went home and dropped off our books and took a 15 minute breather and then headed across town in the other direction for a walk past Big Ben and a visit to Dali Universe.  Not enough paintings, a lot of sketches and watercolors but the sculptures… fabulous.  If we could combine Dali Universe in London with the Dali Museum in St Pete… now that would be a Dali museum! The kids enjoyed the trip more than I thought they would.  Surrealism is always interesting and at the end of the musuem they have a gallery with Dalis (and Picassos and Chagalls) for sale.  We all picked out one or six that we would like to buy.  Ah to own a Dali.

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Cookbooks for Christmas

This was a big Christmas for cookbooks at the Flamingo House. Here’s scoop:

Elaine Magee, who I adore and have the pleasure of working with sent me her new Comfort Food Makeovers cookbook. I read the introductory pages and sifted through the recipes on Christmas Eve. Awesome, as are all of Elaine’s books.

Speaking of Elaine’s books, I gave the Fry Light, Fry Right cookbook to my mom, my ex mil and TW’s mom. I have a copy for Jenn but seem to have left it at home so I guess she’ll get it for her birthday or something.

I gave TW and prince Joe the Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt cookbook that I saw mentioned in the Village Voice cookbooks for the holidays article. It’s a foofy little book with lots of interesting (and impossible to find in our little college town) ingredients. I bought it because Joe loves grilled cheese but he doesn’t love his mother’s grilled cheese. He loves mine.

Michelle and TW got Shakespeare’s Kitchen. Lots of yukky meat recipes but interesting all the same for the Shakespeare effect and it will be interesting for them to play with.

Oops, forgot I also bought my Son In Law the Weber’s Real Grilling. He seemed pretty excited about it.

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