This is the first ever guest post on my blog! Lately, some people in my close circle have been writing posts that touch me on a really deep level, and I want you to see them, too. It’s that feeling of OMG! Did this piece ever nail it on the head! It’s like a good book. You just want to tell your friends.

This post is from my dear friend Marti Wolfson, MS, who has appeared on my blog several times — most recently in Foods to take when you travel (when she was starving on an airplane at 26 weeks pregnant) and last fall in Soup Session with the extraordinary Marti Wolfson, when we had SUCH a good time chopping and cooking up Spicy Thai Carrot, Corn & Tomato Bisque soup.

Lentils are the underdogs of the pulse, bean and legume food group, the unsung heroes, worthy of more attention and respect. If you’re not integrating lentils into your food world, I have some tips for you.   A few easy tweaks in their preparation makes their texture terrific instead of blah (a game changer!) and their flavor zooms up on the dial with a few well-chosen ingredients.

Let us take a moment to savor the sumptuousness of the summer harvest! And to select a few glorious things to do with it. My dear friend and neighbor Julie Burford and I already have our tried and true traditions and are happy to share. We’ve got you covered.

Traveling this summer? When it comes to food, I suggest you be prepared! 

My dear friend and her husband came to visit us in California last month. She was 26 weeks pregnant and traveling from the east coast, a LONG travel day. She had planned ahead and ordered a special meal for the plane… which turned out to be disgusting, virtually inedible. Oh, dear! She asked the flight attendant if she could rustle her up a cheese plate. To which the attendant flatly said, no. We don’t have any extras. My friend said, I’m a pregnant woman! Get me a cheese plate!!!  You do not want to mess with a hungry pregnant woman!!!!  Startled, the flight attendant rummaged through the food cabinet, and wouldn’t you know, she found one. 
 

One of the challenges of creativity is knowing when you have to shift gears and change. Getting into a groove can be wonderfully productive… but then it can get stale. As a creative chef, author and educator in the food world, I’ve been passionate about food and health for decades, and my focus has been on translating the science to the plate.

The last thing people think of when it’s boiling hot outside is soup! We have this notion that soup is a warm, nourishing hug. So true! But it’s even more. Soup can also be that deliciously chilled, tastebud-thrilling tonic we need in midsummer. It’s like that quick dive into the swimming pool — bracing, flavor-packed, nutrition-full.

What, I ask you, could be more sublime for summer than salads?

I have a history with salads. When I was growing up, my father was called the Condiment King, because he manufactured salad dressings and mayonnaise. Our fridge was always filled with sample jars of the latest dressings, so we were very on trend salad-wise. My father truly loved salads. He had his Sunday salad, his Thursday salad, his Saturday salad, and they were all different. In other words, salad was a BIG thing in our house!
 

What you can drink during the summer months that’s refreshing and different? And not soda!

The reality is, sodas are bad for your health. Want details?

Berries! So small, so adorable! If you really look at your berries, you’ll see each one is unique. I have a small sketch pad I carry around in my back pocket, like a journalist walking around with her reporter’s notebook.

Did you know that two-thirds of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease are women? And that we don’t know why? Maria Shriver founded The Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement™, a global alliance, to help find out. This month I participated in her annual Move for Minds event, a day focused on the mind/body connection and raising funds to wipe out Alzheimer’s. As Maria says, “Women are at the epicenter of the Alzheimer’s crisis. That’s why we must be at the heart of the solution.”
 

Last week I had my family for dinner, including my absolutely engaging, never-can-do-wrong 10-year old grandson Brandon (who loves broccoli). I have a rule at my table: there are no screens of any kind. Nobody pulls their phone out, for any reason (which is much harder for my husband than anybody else!). Dinner is family time. 

There are some people who, for various reasons, assume monumental importance in our lives. Fredi Kronenberg was one of those for me. Like everyone who knew her and her work, I was a HUGE admirer.  A consummate researcher, she was a champion of integrative medicine and the food as medicine movement, especially for women’s health issues and those dealing with cancer. She was also my very dear friend.

Is this not one of life’s great mysteries?

True confessions: I’ve written 4 cookbooks with a 5th on the way (about which, more soon) and I have a personal library of 560 cookbooks. YOU’D THINK I’d know what to cook for dinner, like for the next 2, maybe 3 years?

As many of you know, art is a big factor in my life. Whether composing a gloriously vibrant plate of food or a painting in my studio, the process seems the same to me: a playground for curiosity, an openness to inspiration, and a love and respect for the materials I’m working with.

How many times have you attempted to make a recipe and gotten to the end only to find it’s not quite what you’d hoped it would be? And then not known how to fix it? It’s frustrating! It’s like, wait a minute! I did everything I was supposed to do, now what!
 

My friend Andrew Faulkner, a painter, digital artist, and printmaker, works down the road from me, but I met him on an island in the middle of the Pacific at a painting retreat! While on retreat, he expressed a desire to eat in a healthier manner. Not surprisingly. People often share such aspirations with me, perhaps even make them up on the spot when they hear what I do. But Andrew seemed in earnest. 
 

I'm delighted to share this delicious post from our archives — one of my all-time favorites, as you will imagine since I am a self-proclaimed spud slut! There! I said it. No truer words. And I may be a bit counter-culture by championing potatoes, but hear me out, and learn that yes! Potatoes can be a marvelous, and especially delectable, part of a healthy diet.

Did you know that potatoes are a dream food?

They are soul-satisfying, comforting, scintillatingly delicious, and full of extraordinarily healthful properties. So why do people dis them? What’s not to like? 

It’s no secret that I am an avid cookbook collector, and that I am deeply beholden to the exceptional cooks that have gone before me. Back in the day before food television was busy creating celebrity chefs, there were a group of amazing women cookbook authors, scholarly ambassadors, who brought food from afar to our shores. Julia Child introduced us to French cuisine, Alice Waters brought us fresh, farm-to-table cooking, and Paula Wolfert shared Mediterranean cuisine.

When I say “carbohydrates,” do you picture bread, bagels, pasta and pastries? Well, yes. But that’s not the WHOLE picture. See the gorgeous plant foods above? These have carbohydrates in them, too, what are called COMPLEX carbohydrates. I want to be clear as a bell that the effects of simple vs. complex carbohydrates on the body are totally different.

It’s official — it’s spring! Some of my favorite foods will be arriving in the markets soon. In fact, I just had my first asparagus!!! I’m SUCH an asparagus stalker (pun intended). Every late winter I’m in constant contact with a favorite farmer about the expected date of arrival of the elegant long ladies of spring, and I just can’t WAIT! I bring it home and roast it. It’s like candy for me! And yet it’s an unbeatable spring tonic for the liver and gallbladder. Talk about win/win.