01 09 10 Tweet Dietitians Eat Chocolate Too: Savory Food Reads For Summer

Monday, August 12, 2013

Savory Food Reads For Summer

Summer is a laid back stress free season.  Even if you're not going back to school you might want to keep up to date on the nutrition world or just on the food scene.  Here are a few to pick up for your end of summer beach reads or al fresco lunch.

Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites
Author: Kate Christensen


Review from the Christian Science Monitor:
"Chronicling her American girlhood from the early 1960s (at the end of the Baby Boom), to her present life as a writer and blogger in Maine, the book is an honest portrayal of the forces that have shaped her: love and loss; joy and pain; trust and despondency. In those 50 years, the author turned to food – to nourish away gloom, to celebrate, to reconnect with lost years. The book includes a smattering of recipes: Anadama bread, Yorkshire pudding, rabbit stew, among others.
Originally written as blog posts, the book’s brief chapters read like complete stories in themselves. Christensen, author of seven novels including "The Great Man," winner of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award, writes wonderfully. Her clean prose is sprinkled with witty phrases and wry observations."  
Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health
Author: Jo Robinson.

From, 
http://www.eatwild.com/:  Approximately 10,000 years ago our ancestors began to domesticate animals for food and choose plants to grow in their gardens. The choices we have been making ever since then about what to feed those animals and what plants to grow have had a huge impact on our diets. In Pasture Perfect Jo explained the benefits of eating meats, eggs, and dairy products from animals raised on pasture—their native diets. In Eating on the Wild Side, Jo points out the dramatic nutritional difference between the wild plants in ouroriginal diet and the fruits and vegetables we eat today. Some wild potatoes, for example, have twenty times more health-enhancing nutrients (antioxidants) than our modern russet potatoes. Wild tomatoes have up to 30 times more cancer-fighting lycopene than most supermarket tomatoes. 

Drawing on the cutting edge research that technology has made possible just within the past two decades, Jo takes us on an enthralling journey to learn more about our original plants and when and how we stripped away their nutrients. Fortunately, she doesn't just leave us there. She also provides information about which present-day varieties come closest to approximating the nutritional values of our wild plants, and teaches us how to forage in the grocery store for nutritional bargains.