The Lost Kitchen-Fearless Fabulous You June 19

The Lost Kitchen-Fearless Fabulous You June 19

In “The Lost Kitchen,” a daughter writes a memoir of caring for her mother with advanced #Alzheimers. The more than two dozen recipes she shares capture memories of her mother and remind us that writing and cooking can be therapeutic. Meet poet and author, Miriam Green, on #FearlessFabulousYou June 19th 12 oon EST W4WN Radio – The Women 4 Women Network

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Don’t Toss These Out!

I am a believer in zero-waste cooking I grew up in a house where food was regularly thrown away. It drove me crazy! That’s why I recommend books like Lindsay-Jean Hard’s  Cooking with Scraps: Turn Your Peels, Cores, Rinds, and Stems into Delicious Meals. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), nearly half of America’s food supply is wasted, around 133 billion pounds. Wasting food is a waste of money, but it also hurts the environment because food dumped into landfills produces methane gas, a big contributor to global warming. Why waste food if you can repurpose it? Canned food

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Ayurvedic Cooking Tips for a Healthy Diet

Ayurvedic Cooking Tips for a Healthy Diet

It seems like everyone I know is on some kind of diet this winter to lose weight. I have friends on Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Nutri System, Dr. Oz Diet and The Zone Diet. I’m getting pitched on paleo, alkaline, magnesium, PH balancing, you name it! I have to wonder: What’s Fact and What’s Quack? During my studies at Institute for Integrative Nutrition I learned 100 dietary theories. The simplest approach is the one I adhere to: eat food in moderation and in smaller portions; mainly plants and lean proteins; exercise more and hydrate more. One area that fascinates me is

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A Mystery Meal Cooks Up Inspiration

A Mystery Meal Cooks Up Inspiration

The invitation was sudden, subtle and enticing. Boarding the bus to New York this past week, we ran into someone we’d recently met at a dinner party.  He quietly came over to us after we were seated and said, “Would you like to come to my house for a mystery meal?” “Why not!” We answered, intrigued with the idea. Let’s face it: David and I have been in a dining rut at home eating various versions of greens, beans, mushrooms and fish every night. We could use a little mystery to spice things up. He asked us about our food

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Why Family Meals Matter

Why Family Meals Matter

While many families gathered around the Thanksgiving table this week to enjoy a delicious meal and share stories, think about this: The family meal is a dying tradition the rest of the year. In the past 20 years, the frequency of family dinners has declined 33 percent according to the meal planning service, The Six O’Clock Scramble www.thescramble.com. In 1970, Americans spent 26% of their food budget on eating out; by 2010, that number had risen to 41%. During that time, rates of obesity in the United States more than doubled. Many of you may say, “But I have no time to

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Fearless Fabulous Women: Ann Ogden Gaffney: Cook for Your Life

In the early 1990s, fashion industry executive Ann Odgen Gaffney found herself cooking and caring for a designer in the industry fighting AIDS, The experience taught her to be fearless which was especially helpful when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2001. Fortunately, Ann recovered following her surgery and her life went back to a new normal….well, sort of. A second diagnosis of unrelated breast cancer came later and was a more difficult journey with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Ann learned from this experience that cooking was solace and nutrition was essential to manage side effects from treatment and support

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Alana Chernila’s Homemade Kitchen Wisdom: Books By Fearless Fabulous Women

“Do Your Best, and Then Let Go” So reads one of the 13 chapters- and morsels- of kitchen wisdom in Alana Chernila‘s new cookbook, “The Homemade Kitchen.” This is a book whose message is as much about how to approach life at a slow, measured and pleasurable pace as it is about about cooking with the same intentions. “Start Where You Are.” “Feed Yourself.” “Put Your Hands in the Earth.” “Do the Work.” “Slow Down.” Alana has these phrases and others taped to her refrigerator. I do the same thing on mine with inspirational quotations such as: “Just as the

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What’s For Dinner….Again?

When people ask me what I like to make for dinner I usually answer “Reservations.” This stems from my childhood. I had a busy mother who worked full time, earned her Masters Degree at night and volunteered for numerous civic and charitable organizations. She loved to food shop but was usually to occupied to cook. We had a lot of wasted food in our refrigerator!  Dinner was usually something rapidly prepared or heated from a bag, box or can. Dining out was where the adventure started. Mom was happy. Dad was happy. I was happy. The meals tasted different and it was a

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Trimming Your Waste- Why It Matters To Stop Trashing Your Food

Getting wasted is growing in popularity. I don’t mean drinking yourself silly and getting trashed. These days getting wasted means becoming more grounded and conscious about the food we eat and utilizing every part of it rather than throwing it out. In other words: Don’t trash your dinner. The United States is an agricultural wonder abundant in food. Stores stock hundreds of products both farm-raised and man-made. Restaurants and food shops are on every block in cities and towns. Yet, we waste more food than we ingest, and more than 46 million Americans are living with food insecurity (lack of food).

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Can You Eat on $4 a Day?

Can you eat on a $4 a day budget? I bet your $4 latte or juice you say you can’t. But $4 is the daily budget 46 million Americans must survive on to eat, based on the allocation of SNAP, the U.S. government’s food stamps program. And millions more, including cash strapped working parents, fixed income retirees, students and grads entering the workforce, live with similar limitations. We’re talking food and nourishment and the fact that many people don’t have enough on their plates for themselves or their families despite living in a country where food is plentiful. It’s called food insecurity

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Getting Things Off My Chest: The Sixth Sense in Flavor

In the world of cooking and gustatory pleasure, the sensation of taste can be categorized into five basic categories: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. The latter is a Japanese term for a savory, stimulating sensation that is meaty but not in the “red meat” meaning of the word. Umami fills your mouth with pleasure. I like to experience all five senses when I eat and I hope to convey them as I improve my cooking ability. But I think I have identified a sixth sense. It’s why homemade dishes you remember as a child tasted so good and why I can’t seem to

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Fearless Fabulous You!- Claudine Pépin-Kids Cook French

If there’s one person who knows about learning to cook as a young girl it’s Claudine Pépin.  Daughter of renowned French Chef Jacques Pépin, Claudine grew up in a home filled with aromas of good food, fabulous family meals and lessons on classic French techniques. As an adult, Claudine has cooked alongside her father in several James Beard Award-winning PBS -TV shows including: “Cooking with Claudine” (Best National Cooking Segment, 1997), and “Jacques Pépin’s Kitchen: Encore with Claudine” (Best National Television Cooking Show, 1999) and “Jacques Pépin Celebrates.”  And she has appeared many other shows including “Good Morning America” and “Cooking

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