Heading into 2012 means shedding a few holiday pounds that Mike and I accumulated on the “experiment” (see his blog) we undertook. So for the next several weeks we will be trudging down the nutritional holy road of near-abstinence from carbs and total abstinence from that carbohydrate gateway drug, alcohol. It’s only day 5 and we’re already feeling a world better and lighter and sleeping more soundly. Normally, we’d have gotten with the program on January 2, but this year we didn’t get started in earnest until January 9, because of a big dinner party commitment we’d accepted down in LA (that included some very nice wines) that we didn’t want to miss out on.

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When you find yourself longing for a return to the ‘old ways’ of eating, you may be thinking about Granny’s Sunday pot roast. But if you really want to return to the old ways, Julie and Charles Mayfield’s Paleo Comfort Food is the ticket.

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As I’ve mentioned in these pages many times, I have an extensive cookbook library that takes up several bookcases in our homes–duplicated in many cases, since we split our time between two houses. I’m not sure of the exact count, but it’s up there. Guests to our home often ask if I really use them all. The answer is that while I enjoy them all for different reasons, out of that huge collection, there are but a few that I just couldn’t live without. A handful that I would call must-haves any kitchen library. I often give one or more from this group as a gift to a newly married couple and have made sure my own children’s kitchens have them, for my own use when there as well as for their edification.

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About once a week I get a letter from someone asking if there is a good book on how to feed kids to keep them strong and healthy or to help them lose weight and get fit. There aren’t many and we even know of some good ones that couldn’t find a publishing home. With 1 in 3 kids overweight in this country, you’d think that a book about any program that addressed childhood obesity successfully would be a cinch to sell well. And yet, historically, they don’t sell strongly and thus the publishers’ lack of interest. Maybe it’s because the book’s buyer is the parent, but the actual target is the kid.

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A reader sent us a heads up on a just out Newsweek article by Anne Underwood, titled “Mmm Tasty Chemicals” about the upcoming publication of a sort of tell all book about America’s iconic junk food: the Twinkie.

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No doubt you’ve heard the recent news that has the archeological world all atwitter of the remains of a 1st Century Roman cargo ship, originally discovered in 2000, in shallow waters off the coast of Spain. News of a major shipwreck find always grabs my eye, because of a strong interest on my part (and a mild to moderate obsession on Mike’s part) with the romance of discovering and excavating a shipwreck.

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Today I spotted an interesting article by Tom Avril (Scripps-McClatchy News Service) titled in our local paper: Researcher counters meteor versus dinosaur theory of extinction.

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Many thanks to blog reader, Amy, for alerting me to yet another reason the demand for almonds has gone up: the arrival of an unsweetened almond milk product line on store shelves that has apparantly been the new buzz on the Protein Power Discussion Forum of late.

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A few days ago, I saw an article by AP writer Candice Choi that was picked up in our local paper titled: Read more »