The agave nectar baking book is coming along well. I look forward to telling tales of cupcakes when I write my review. Meanwhile, since I received a gorgeous pie plate to review, clearly I’ll have to make a pie from the book!

Feeling somewhat inspired by the superfood cookbook, I tried adding several spoonfuls of pureed cooked pumpkin to my morning meusli, along with a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and some agave nectar. Nothing like feeling almost as though you’ve had pumpkin pie for breakfast, knowing that you’ve just tricked yourself into adding a healthy vegetable to another meal. All healthy things should be so easy.

Speaking of healthy, this is so cool: Wellternatives is a frobby you can access to help you get nutrition info about dishes at restaurants, and healthier menu suggestions as alternatives. I played with it a bit and it seems genuinely useful.

And finally, not at all apropos of healthy things, here are some new reviews for you: while I wasn’t at all fond of Savannah Russe’s Under Darkness, I had a lot of fun with Jasmine Haynes’s Show and Tell!

It was an odd quirk of timing that I found out that celiac disease runs in my family just when I had a review copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Gluten-Free Eating in my review stack. Naturally I bumped it to the top so I could read all about it. Celiac disease is a condition in which the ingestion of gluten results in damage to your intestines, reducing your ability to absorb nutrients. Most people don’t understand the severity of this illness or just how strict you have to be in your diet to avoid further damage. I was very impressed by the depth of information in the above book, as well as the tone of encouragement and the wide array of helpful suggestions.

By the way, if someone in your family has celiac disease, strongly consider getting tested. If there’s a family history, you’re at greater risk for having it yourself, and you really don’t want to let it go undetected. I expect to find out for myself whether I have it when my biopsy results come back in about a week.

I expect to post a goodly handful of reviews this week, possibly including a second one later today. I’m done cooking with (and almost done reading) the ’superfood cookbook,’ and I’m done with Ronald Cutler’s The Secret Scroll. I’m also in the middle of cooking with an agave nectar baking book. Speaking of which, here’s a photo of some of the interesting ingredients we’ve been cooking with of late:

There’s a bottle of dark agave nectar, and some of the best pasta I’ve ever had (let alone the best whole-grain or gluten-free pasta). You can sort of see a tin of smoked paprika toward the back left; one of the authors of the gluten-free eating book recommended it, so when I saw it I couldn’t help picking it up. The baggie toward the back right is filled with Amaranth seeds, which are quite yummy in baked goods (I like to add a tablespoon to pancakes). As for the big bottle supporting the empty pasta bag… well, that one is homemade vanilla extract! YUM!

Many of the friends we’ve made in the last couple of years are in the SCA: the Society for Creative Anachronism, and have been for decades (literally). They aren’t as active as they used to be, but they definitely still participate. We visit a friend’s house for fighter practice in Virginia nearly every weekend (at least, on those weekends that we don’t go to the same house for D&D).

Anyway, I’m still pretty new at the photography thing, but I did take a few photographs to share. The guy in the plain white tabard is my husband; he’s borrowing a shield at the moment, so that isn’t his device. The knight in green and gold is Jervis, who comes up with so many of the slogans on those T-shirts we love to make. The fellow in red-and-tan (not in armor) is Cian (his SCA name), another friend. And I couldn’t resist including a photo of the pouring rain we encountered on the ride down—it was so bad we kept passing car wreck after car wreck. Here’s hoping all those folks got out alive.

Anyway, here’s a slide show of those photos:

I also included a slide show in today’s book review, the first of our cookbook reviews with images of some of the foods we made: Erik Sherman’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pizza & Panini. Also, last week I reviewed Julie Leto’s Phantom Pleasures.

I have a camera. Yes, yes I do. I have my first ever digital camera. Yeah, I’m behind the times, so sue me.

One of the things I want to do with it is include photos in the cookbook reviews to make them more interesting—this way you can see for yourself how the recipes came out.

(I expect this could be particularly interesting when things go… wrong.)

Anyway, while it’s true that I’ll end up taking way more images of the cats than any person should, here’s a taste of other things to come. And yes, this was tonight’s dinner:

The one thing that all ‘experts’ on health and eating (whether they’re doctors, nutritionists, or just proponents of the latest fad) seem to agree on is this: colorful, non-starchy veggies are healthy. They go back and forth on everything else, but not that. Of course, most of that back-and-forth could be accounted for if people just used a little common sense—everything in moderation, and the farther removed it is from the kind of diet we were designed for and eating over the last few thousand years, the more you should exercise that moderation. Seems to make sense to me, anyway.

So, yeah: vegetables. Whole grains. Good water. Fruits, whole, not juiced, so they have fiber to slow the blood-sugar spike.

I can’t entirely give up meat and it’s one of those things the ‘experts’ go back and forth on. However, I do recognize that it is a lot harder on the environment than eating a similar amount of vegetables (it takes so much more in the way of resources to produce that meat), and vegetables are better to eat in bulk. So over time I’ve gradually slid into a semi-vegetarian diet. Usually we get a freezer pack of meats from our butcher, which we know are good quality, then once a week or so we take a package out of the freezer, thaw it, and make something with it. Occasionally we have a little deli meat as well, although we’re trying to avoid the ones with preservatives these days where possible. We got some natural turkey breast at the Whole Foods market last weekend, and I was really surprised to discover how much more flavor it had than the stuff from the grocery store. We used one slice at a time in whole wheat wraps with plenty of veggies, so it served as a satisfying bit of flavor.

Although I’m not a vegetarian, I do use vegetarian cookbooks, because they’re a wonderful source of delicious and nutritious vegetable recipes. I particularly enjoyed reviewing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, Third Edition, which contained a whole lot of fascinating information on nutrition and the like.

I also got a kick out of Food 2.0, by Charlie Ayers, the chef who cooked for Google. It’s got some amazing natural foods recipes in it, including a smoothie recipe that knocked my socks clean off.

Lately I have a new morning routine. While the cats eat their breakfast (which takes a good 10-20 minutes since they eat a raw diet), I leave my meusli to soak. It’s a slight variation on a fantastic recipe from the CIG vegetarian book; I just use dried cranberries instead of raisins (I like the tartness) and plain kefir instead of yogurt (I like the consistency), and I add a squeeze of agave nectar. I do my stretching from Stretching Illustrated or some yoga. I have my meusli, which fills me up better than oatmeal, cereal, eggs, or anything else I’ve tried, and I have some V8. (Yeah, it’s got a lot of sodium, but it’s a start, and it’s better than hot chocolate or OJ.)

I should be better about having veggies for lunch, but I’m lame and often have kefir with agave, more meusli, or leftovers. Sometimes we make a bean salad or something similar ahead of time for our lunches (it’s easy for my husband to pack in a cooler), in which case I might have that. Then there’s dinner, which could be just about anything, but these days is likely to be heavy on whatever produce looks good.

I won’t claim I’m suddenly losing a ton of weight or anything. I still need to get more exercise than I do, as well as eat less (I’m a compulsive over-eater with a wicked sweet tooth). My medications also don’t help—when I got switched from one ADD medication to another a couple of years ago, I suddenly gained more weight than I care to think about, and I have to fight just to keep from gaining more. But at least I have more energy when I eat well, and I know by eating less processed foods and less sugar I’m reducing the chance I’ll develop type II diabetes (which does run in the family) or other, related problems.

Then there are articles like the one that discusses a possible link between chemicals in body products and breast cancer tumors. Chemicals are being found in people’s bodies that probably got there through things they apply to their skin, hair, etc., and those products don’t have to abide by the same strict safety guidelines that foods do. You can’t avoid exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, but you can at least reduce it. I use all natural products when possible (it’s a little tough for me because I’m allergic to aloe, which is in almost everything), buy organic when I can afford it, and don’t use most cosmetics.

I never thought of myself as a health nut, but as I hit my mid-30s I’m kind of becoming one. Maybe I’ve just been made more aware of my health by recent changes in it (like the pains that seemed to be gallbladder problems, but might be ulcers instead). Maybe I’ve just started noticing the quality of life that some of my older friends enjoy, and others don’t, and I’m making some decisions about what I want to be capable of in another ten, twenty, or even forty years.

At any rate, it’s the sort of thing you have to think about sometime, and act on eventually. Otherwise you run out of time.

Today’s book review is of Elizabeth Vaughan’s amazing fantasy-romance Dagger-Star.

Okay, I didn’t get a review written yesterday. But I have two books read & ready to be reviewed for this coming week (one fiction, one non-), and a cookbook almost ready (cooked from, but I need to read more of it). Speaking of cookbooks, this week we’re cooking from Food 2.0, the cookbook from the chef who cooked at Google for years. Our first experiment from it—a smoothie—was awesome. In order to get everything we needed we made a rare pilgrimage to the Whole Foods Market. Usually the prices there are insane; however, the prices there don’t seem to be rising as fast as elsewhere in response to the higher gas prices, so it no longer seems quite so ridiculous to shop there now and then.

We went to see a movie today (Ruins? The Ruins? Whichever). It was definitely fun, if not overly new or different, and it had some nice touches to it. Mostly it made me curious to read the book, which at this rate will happen on the fifth of never. Sadly, the movie popcorn was so bad it made us mildly ill. I’m used to cruddy movie popcorn, but this went above and beyond. Blech.

I felt like doing something semi-productive this evening, so here are two more re-worked MMORPG T-shirt designs:

It’s our “Murlocs of War” and “Gnomes for Breakfast” designs (’Cry havoc! and let slip the murlocs of war’; ‘Gnomes they’re not just for breakfast any more, they’re also for between-meal snacks’).

Hopefully tomorrow I can get a little gardening done around chores, cooking, reading of review books, etc. Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

My visiting friend and I are making a couple more recipes out of the chocolate chip cookbook. Surprisingly for a Chronicle cookbook, there appear to be some… problems… in this one. There were multiple things in the cheesecake bar-cookie recipe that left us scratching our heads in confusion; I’ll give you more detail in the inevitable review. I’m looking forward to getting a digital camera at the end of next month; this is the sort of thing where I’d love to be able to post pictures of the ways in which a recipe clearly isn’t coming out as it should. Next we’re making a berry-chip cake, and some ‘make-ahead mashed potatoes’ to bring to a friend’s house this weekend.

Then maybe I’ll indulge in some World of Warcraft; I’m rather enjoying all the new content from the latest patch!

Today’s review is a sneak peek at Christie Ridgway’s How to Knit a Wild Bikini.

I forgot one thing on that list yesterday: we had to trim the cats’ claws. That’s always a real adventure. It’s made easier by the use of Kitty Kaviar as a reward (freeze-dried bonito flakes), but things got interesting when the cats heard another pair of cats fighting in the next yard over. Or mating—with cats it’s hard to tell.

Today’s review is of actor/writer Emmett James’s wonderfully entertaining memoir, Admit One. I highly recommend that you give it a read!

Meanwhile, we improvised a dessert this weekend that I have to share.

Tropical Turnovers

• Frozen sheets of raw puff pastry
• Fresh coconut, shredded. If you can’t find any, use unsweetened dried coconut. If you can’t find any of that, use sweetened (found in the baking aisle), and reduce or remove the agave nectar, honey, or sugar from the recipe.
• Crystallized ginger, minced
• One ripe banana, diced
• One tablespoon agave nectar, honey, or sugar
• One quarter cup water; more as needed
• One egg, lightly beaten

Filling: Combine a small handful each of coconut and ginger in a small saucepan. Add the banana, sweetener (if using unsweetened coconut), and water. Bring to a boil and simmer until all ingredients are tender (add more water a tablespoon at a time as necessary) and the liquid has all but boiled away.

Pastry: Prepare pastry as instructed on the package for turnovers. (The Trader Joe’s package we had said to thaw briefly at room temp, quarter each sheet of pastry, and brush with egg.) Put a spoonful of filling in the middle of each square, fold over, and seal shut. Brush with egg and bake as instructed on the pastry package.

Serve as is, or with a drizzle of honey, agave nectar, or even maple syrup.

The rough amounts of ingredients above made enough filling for two sheets of puff pastry, or eight turnovers. Adjust amounts as necessary for different results.

Agave nectar is officially one of my favorite discoveries ever. I first read about it in Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking. It’s a sweetener in syrup form made from a cactus (the same one that gives us tequila), and it has an extremely low glycemic index—meaning it takes a comparatively long time to get converted into blood sugar. Those with blood sugar problems such as diabetes know this is an extremely useful thing in a sweetener.

I hate artificial sweeteners. They leave a bitter, chemical aftertaste in my mouth that I can’t stand. So, I decided to try agave. There’s some history of type II diabetes in my family and I’m prone to mild blood sugar problems, so it seemed like a good idea. Now I’m completely stuck on it. One of my favorite ‘I’m trying to be healthy’ snacks is a tall drink of plain kefir (a cultured milk drink, basically liquid yogurt) with a tablespoon or two of agave stirred into it. I also used it last night when a coffee ice cream soda drink called for a bit of sweetening; it dissolves in cold liquid much more readily than sugar.

The only problem is, the little 8 oz bottles I can get at the Whole Foods Market cost more than $5 each. Ugh. Not something I want to start using wholesale as a substitute for corn syrup in recipes. Then it occurred to me to go look at Amazon. They sell everything now, right? Right. Any moment now UPS is going to show up with a couple cases of bottles that run much cheaper than the stuff I can get at the store. YAY!

Also today, it seems I got tagged for a meme, so why not. Here we go:

• Write your own six word memoir
• Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
• Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
• Tag five more blogs with links
• And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

It doesn’t make sense as a sentence, but that suits me.

I’ve seen this meme just about everywhere, so instead of tagging specific people, I’m going to do an open tag. If you haven’t played yet and want to, just leave a link to your post in the comments!

Today’s review is of The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to More Not So Useless Facts.

Today’s review is of Margaret M. Wittenberg’s marvelous New Good Food. It’s a fantastic reference work for folks who want to know more about and make use of whole foods of all kinds.

Speaking of healthy cooking, it looks like I’ll be getting my next scan next Monday to see if my gallbladder has deteriorated enough to remove yet. Hopefully so. That won’t necessarily cure all ills, but it should at least get rid of that nagging soreness and the tendency to sometimes hurt when I laugh.

We’re finally going to get to grow some tomatoes in the garden this year, so I also finally picked up a tumbling composter. I LOVE getting to compost. There are just so many good things about it. Your waste produce and excess fallen leaves don’t go to waste as trash—instead they feed your bushes, your trees, your flowers, and most delightfully, your edible produce. You also don’t have to spend as much money on soil amendments and fertilizer if you’re making your own. It’s a long-term money-saver AND a waste reducer. Hard to beat that. I can’t wait until we’re picking home-grown tomatoes.

In homage to the well-dressed vampire we’ve managed to become enemies with in our D&D campaign:

I’M DEAD
I just wear it well