Food Miscellany

Okay, every now and then (I think this is the second time) I ask you to humor me as I write not about Maggie, but just about what's on my mind. Right now it's food.

For some reason today everything I'm reading and thinking about is food! First I wanted to share two great websites with you that are related to healthy living. I know many of you are health-conscious so I think you'll appreciate these. The first website, found here, may seem like it's only for women but it's not! It's called Hungry Girl and it's got lots of tips and information on healthy eating, but it's in a really fun, hip format so you don't bore yourself to tears. You can also sign up for an e-mail newsletter. This site's articles are sometimes used by Yahoo, so if you need someone else's praise besides mine, well, there you go!

The second website is one of my new favorites. It's called Map My Run and can be found by clicking here. You simply type in your zip code, a map pops up, and you plot a starting point, an ending point, and any other points in between, and it tells you how long your route is. It's very user friendly and helped me map out a new course!

I'm also reading a book now called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. It's essentially the story of how the author and her family decided to be a living food experiment for one year. They moved to their farm in North Carolina and for one year ate only food they grew/raised on their farm or was grown/raised locally. It's a really interesting read and has put things in a different perspective for me. She writes about how now that the year is over they still primarily eat only locally- or self-grown food, but she allows herself the luxury of Alaskan salmon or other non-local products occasionally. When you really think about it, it DOES seem rather decadent to eat a food that was caught in Alaska and then shipped on ice thousands of miles to your supermarket.
According to the co-author, Kingsolver's husband, Steven L. Hopp, "if every US citizen ate just one meal a week composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast." (Of course there are references in the book for this but it seems kind of silly to have references in my blog. If you want to know what they are I'll e-mail them to you.)
I know you all don't read this blog to hear my opinion on all this, but I just appreciated thinking about things in a different way and I wanted to encourage the people around me to start considering things differently as well. So let's all go to the Farmer's Market and buy some local produce! (It HAS to taste better than stuff grown in California or Chile and flown in here a week after it was picked!)

Thanks for indulging me if you made it this far! Please feel free to post on this subject or if you have a differing opinion - I'd love to hear what you think.