On This We Must Insist: Fight For Your Time!

Anne Lamott may not approve of this post.  Actually, she might not mind the post so much, as it's something I enjoy and something for me, but the fact that I will post a link to it on Twitter would probably driver her batty.  Or more likely, she'd just sigh and ask rhetorical questions like, "Didn't you read what I wrote?  Didn't you get it?"

Anne Lamott is one of my heroes.  She's a writer who I ardently adore, who makes me laugh out loud, and who speaks to me (as she does to all of us) with her blunt honesty.  She slays and saves with one deft stroke of her pen, or her keyboard, as it probably is.  I'm always delighted to find pieces she's written, and I wish she would join Twitter so that I could follow her.  You can never have too much Anne Lamott.

Alas, she will never join Twitter.  Never.  That much became clear to me in the current issue of Sunset Magazine (April 2010) where she writes a first person account called "Time Lost and Found," and demands that we put ourselves first.  And to do that, she tells us, "your manic forms of connectivity -- cell phone, email, text, Twitter -- steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement."  I told you she won't join Twitter.  She's too busy living a rich life of amazement and wonder, and probably a little neurosis thrown in for good measure.

5 Minute Meal: Warm Fennel and Chickpea Salad with Lemon and Parsley

The lovely fennel bulb.  Fennel is a relatively new love for me, and I love this simple, fast recipe to prepare it.  Honestly, fennel doesn't look like much, and its cheap price -- it can usually be found for $1 a bulb -- makes it easy to overlook as nothing special.  But fennel has a lot to offer health-wise, in addition to taste-wise, and its lovely, slightly licorice-y taste.  Trust me, it's a delicate, mild flavor.  It's not like you'll feel like you're munching on a bag of black licorice candy.  So put your mind at ease, and give it a try!  Besides, for $1, what do you have to lose?

What you'll gain health-wise with fennel: it's a good source of vitamin C, fiber, and potassium, among other vitamins and minerals.  This page has great info about the health benefits of fennel, if you want to read more.

But let's get cooking!  Here's what you'll need:

-- 1 good-sized fennel bulb (or a couple of smaller ones if that's all you can find)
-- extra virgin olive oil
-- 1 15 oz. can chickpeas/garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
-- 1/2 fresh lemon
-- handful of chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley
-- salt and pepper

Eat a Rainbow: Go Boldly in the Direction of the Produce Section!

This morning, as I had my "superfoods" breakfast of steel-cut oatmeal with blueberries, walnuts, a sprinkling of ground flaxseeds, and a dash of fortified, unsweetened soy milk (the more adjectives you can use to describe your food, the more health-righteous you can feel), I remembered an article I'd read, "Why an All 'Superfoods' Diet is a Mistake," that talks about how it's possible to get stuck in a superfood rut.  Of course it's very easy to get stuck in a regular old food rut (actually, this blog forces me to break out of the routine of cooking the same old things), and apparently even if you're eating all superfoods, and only the same ones, you're still in a rut.

Variety is indeed the spice of life.  We gotta mix it up, my friends.  (That's why tomorrow I intend to have a giant donut and coffee to balance my healthy breakfast today.  Kidding, I guess.)

That's where the rainbow comes in.  Fruits and vegetables are magical foods that have fantastic abilities to do good stuff for us, some of which we know, some of which is being discovered, and there's a ton more that we don't know, like the way they synthesize together after we've eaten them to do magically wonderful things for us.  Turns out eating as many different kinds as we can is better than eating a lot of just a handful of varieties, even if they're superfoods.

5 Minute Meal: Chipotle Black Bean Burritos (with all the fixins)

We eat a lot of burritos in our house because they're tasty, super fast to make, and they've got a lot of great nutrients in them.  Black beans are of course loaded with fiber, but they're also ridiculously high in antioxidants.  In fact, all beans are antioxidant superstars, so be sure you're eating them.  And yeah, if you're not used to eating the infamously "musical fruit," start slow, but keep eating them!  The more you eat beans, the better you can digest them.

Okay, onto the 5 minute meal.  Actually, this may be more of a 10 minute meal, but it's still super fast.  And I'm going to share a couple of tricks to make your average black bean burrito pretty darn extraordinary in taste and nutrition.  Here's what you'll need:

Thought for the Day: It's The Little Things, After All

"Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves, is important.  The reason it's important is that fundamentally, when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering.  We're discovering the universe." -- Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Isn't it funny how we need to learn to be kind to ourselves?  How we'll run ourselves ragged for other people and their needs, while we neglect ourselves and our needs until something breaks and we finally become aware?  Why is it that the easiest person to put last is ourselves?

Remember when you were a kid, and it was all you, all the time?  Kids are notoriously self-centered, and I'm not suggesting that's the way to go, but somewhere along the line we're taught that, no, in fact you are not the center of the universe.  We get the message that we should put our heads down, and get busy working.  (And usually, not for ourselves and what we want.)  Talk about taking the fun out of it.