Article: Intentionality and Food by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.

Intentionality and Food
By Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.,
Author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach

"Made with love" is an ingredient I have often seen on home-made packaged cookies and other home-made foods in health food stores. It always seems like a sweet and nice thing to say, but without real meaning, a friendly, new-agey kind of sentiment. Turns out it's quite real, and measurable.

Let me set the context for this column for you. At this time, I am the president of a small non-profit organization called Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (FIONS). The organization it sprang from, IONS, was started by astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D., after he had an epiphany on his return from the moon that everything is connected. We offer a variety of programs, events, and dialogue groups in the NYC area, with a focus on consciousness and multiple ways of knowing.

One program we offered a few years back was a presentation by Dean Radin, author of The Conscious Universe (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) and Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. (New York: Simon & Schuster -- Paraview Pocket Books, 2006). Dr. Radin has been Senior Scientist at IONS since 2001, and has been studying the effects of mind on matter for quite some time. He even worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the US government. During our event, he talked about his experiments with random number generators, which generate strings of 2 numbers at random. When an operator or study subject tries to influence the numbers with their intention, these machines seem to show some responsiveness -- they skew towards what the subject intended in a statistically significant way.

As he was talking, I realized that his straight data supports the idea that mind interacts with matter. Then I thought of the very common idea of "cooking with love" -- which suddenly seemed entirely plausible. At dinner later with Dr. Radin I mentioned to him that perhaps there should be some research on the effects of the mind on food and cooking.

Well, Dr. Radin is a man of action. He set about to do just that, and published a paper in the fall of 2007 where he shows, in a placebo-controlled trial, that the focused intention of shamanic healers enhances the beneficial effects of chocolate. See his video on this at www.oneminuteshift.com. (Radin DI, Hayssen G, Walsh J. 2007). Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Volume 3, pp. 485-492) He was kind enough to credit me with sparking the idea.

You realize what this means: that the mood of the cook can affect the mood of the people eating the food. As mentioned, this is not a new idea. If cooking with love enhances the flavor and energizing effects of your dinner, what happens when you cook with anger? Years ago my then-husband and I found ourselves in a nasty fight after leaving a restaurant, and the fight was over nothing at all. It was just the mood. We finally figured that the chef must have been really cranky.

How about cooking with sorrow? You may remember a well-known movie called "Like Water for Chocolate", where the tears of the cook ended up saddening everyone at a wedding. Apparently, that notion is no longer so far-fetched.

So what to do with this information? You cannot always control how you feel. But what you can do is be aware of it. When you get ready to cook your family's meal, take a moment to focus and center yourself, acknowledge any disturbing feelings, and try to let them go. Put on your favorite feel-good music. Sing along. Think of pleasant places, people you love. Corny, isn't it? But it works. If it doesn't work, leave the kitchen, and either get someone else to cook, or order in from your favorite local restaurant. You will all be much happier, even if the food is not as good as your own.

Same idea if you are cooking for yourself. If cooking is an activity you really enjoy, if it helps you get out of your daily grind and move into a more pleasant mind-space, then cooking for yourself is an excellent idea. But if you've been out at work all day, come home tired, and try to throw some dinner together, the meal may not feel nourishing at all. If you cook for yourself out of obligation and you resent it, careful -- you could make yourself sick from your own crankiness. Better delegate the cooking to a professional, which is a much better idea than trying to subsist on dinners of protein bars and dry cereal. Nourish yourself by delegating the work, and spending a little money on decent food that someone cooks for you. Great if it's organic, but even if it's not, it's still worth it.

When I was writing my book Food and Healing, I couldn't cook for myself. I could cook for my children and for my classes, but for myself, I couldn't because I had no energy left. So I ate lunch out at the coffee shop most days that I was writing -- isn't that ironic? And the book came out good enough that it's still selling after 20+ years.

There is another aspect to intentionality in regards to food, and that has to do with the mood of the eater, not the cook. I know plenty of people who are so worried about eating right, that they think everything they eat is not good enough. They think, "this is not organic, it is full of pesticides," "the chemicals are going to kill me," "for sure this will put weight on me," and so on and so forth. Such a negative mindset is guaranteed poison in the energetics of your meal. Think of the alternative -- you are lucky enough to live in a time and place where you have enough food to choose your meal ingredients. Your main problem is what you will eat, not if you will eat. Be grateful that you have such abundance, and that your body knows what to do with it.

To show your gratitude, bless the meal. Saying grace, "gracias", is an ancient ritual that still lives today, and it helps elevate the mood. While Dr. Radin asked trained shamans to enhance the chocolate, all of us human beings have the ability to affect matter with our minds. Even if it's not statistically measurable, it will be measurable by feeling. You may want to run a little test: eat the same meal, if you can, with two different attitudes: one, where you're cranky and you don't like anything, the other where you are full of love and gratitude. Then notice the feelings -- and don't discount them. They are ingredients in your food just as much as the onions and the flour.

Here is a simple recipe to try this with.

CURRIED RED LENTIL SOUP

2 tablespoons organic butter or olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 small carrots, sliced
1 rib celery, sliced
1 quart water or stock
½ cup red lentils
½ teaspoon salt or to taste
Abundant loving intentions

1. In a 4-quart soup pot, heat the butter or olive oil and add the onions. Sauté for about 2 minutes, then add the curry powder, sauté another minute. Add the carrots and celery and stir around another minute. Add the stock, then the lentils. Bring to a boil, stir well, lower the heat, cover, and cook for about 30 minutes. Add salt and cook another 5 minutes; adjust taste if needed. Loving intentions should be added throughout the stirring. Serve hot. 

Makes 4 servings.
©2009 Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach
Author Bio
Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach, is a health educator and award-winning writer, consultant, and lecturer. She is the founder and CEO of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. She is author of several books including Food and Healing and writes a column, "Food and Your Health," for New York Spirit magazine.
For more information please visit www.FoodAndHealing.com.

Article and Giveaway: 12 Days and 12 Facts for This Holiday Season

12 Days and 12 Facts for This Holiday Season

By Caroline Taggart,
Author of I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School

Ever catch yourself saying I Used to Know That?

Each holiday season brings another round of cocktail parties, family get-togethers, and corporate gatherings -- and invariably, lots of small talk. It's easy to feel overwhelmed when discussing politics, literature, and other intellectual "stuff," especially when what is thought to be general knowledge is often long-forgotten. Enter I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School. From English and Literature to Math and Science, from History and Geography to Religion and Other-Worldly Topics, this book leaves you equipped to handle any topic of conversation.
Here we've cherry-picked twelve fun facts for the holiday season -- one for every day of Christmas (or whatever holiday you prefer!) Quiz yourself to see how much "stuff" you need to brush up on before hobnobbing with the boss or office crush.
1. On building sentences: Just what is a "clause"? (Not to be confused with Santa Claus.) 
Answer: A clause contains a subject and a verb and may stand alone as a sentence or as part of a sentence (when it is often called a subordinate clause): Santa Claus loves cookies but can't eat them without milk.
2. How many bones is the spine made up of? 
Answer: 26 small bones called vertebrae (Be careful lifting all those heavy holiday boxes.)
3. Acclaimed author Charles Dickens (1812-70) wrote which Christmas classic?
Answer: A Christmas Carol. The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge tries to ignore Christmas and is haunted by the ghost of his former partner, Marley, and by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, who show him the error of his ways.
4. The first chapter of this famous book opens with "Call me Ishmael." Name the book and author. (Hint: it makes a whale of a gift!)
Answer: Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Melville is also the author of Pierre and the unfinished Billy Budd.

5. There's a name for the process of watering your Christmas tree? Who knew?

Answer: Grab the kids and give them this science factoid as they nurture the family tree: Osmosis is a form of diffusion that is specific to the movement of water. Water moves through a selectively permeable membrane (that is, one that lets some types of molecules through but not others) from a place where there is a higher concentration of water to one where it is lower.
6. Can you name all 6 wives of Henry VIII, father of the Church of England?
Answer: (Listed in order) Catherine, Anne, Jane, Anne, Catherine, Catherine. They are often remembered as divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Sure makes you think twice when complaining about bad relatives.
7. Who was the 16th President of the United States?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln (R, 1861-65) and yes -- he really was born in a log cabin on a winter's day. Notably famous for many reasons including his Gettysburg Address: "Four Score and Seven Years ago our fathers brought fourth upon this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty . . . "
8. 'Tis the season to be jolly giving! Don’t forget to tip well this season -- etiquette coaches will tell you that means no less than 18%. So just how much should you tip on a bill of $50? 

Answer: Percent means by a hundred, so anything expressed as a percentage is a fraction (or part, if you prefer) of 100. So 18% is 18 parts of 100, or 18/100 or .18. If your bill is $50, multiply 50 by .18 to get your tip total of $9. If you're feeling generous, a 20% tip would require you to multiply 50 by .20, for a total of $10.00
50.00 x .18 = 9.00
50.00 x .20 = 10.00
Percentages can also be holiday-relevant when it comes to figuring out in-store sales. In this case, you want to multiply by the inverse of the percentage listed. So if you have a $50 sweater that's on sale for 25% off, multiply 50 by .75 for your total of $37.50. That same $50 sweater on sale for 40% off would equate to $30, or $50 multiplied by .60.
50.00 x .75 = 37.50
50.00 x .60 = 30.00

9. Brr, it's cold outside. But just how cold does it have to be to get some snow around here? 

Answer: Did you know that the freezing point of water is 32 degrees Fahrenheit? Keep an eye on the temperature and watch your footing for ice on the ground. (See previous fact about those treasured vertebrae!)
10. Everyone knows Santa and his elves live in the North Pole. But what about the South Pole (aka Antarctica)?
Answer: The South Pole was discovered by Roald Amundsen (1872-1928, Norwegian), who was also the first to sail though the Northwest passage, the sea route from Pacific to Atlantic along the north coast of North America. Antarctica is the only continent that contains no countries -- instead, it is a stateless territory protected from exploitation by an international treaty. A good place for the elves to protest low wages?

11. Which Ocean is bigger: the Pacific or the Atlantic?
Answer: The Pacific Ocean is larger at 69,374 square miles -- that's almost double the Atlantic, which comes in at 35,665 square miles. Making it evenmore astonishing that St. Nick can cross the globe in just one night.
12. Remember the reason for the Season! Can you name a few things that both Judaism and Christianity have in common? 
Answer: Both are monotheistic religions that share the first five books of the Christian Old Testament. Both religions view Jerusalem as a sacred site, the former for the Wailing Wall (contains the remains of the temple that was thought to be the place where God resides on earth) and the latter for Christ's burial and resurrection site.
Happy Holidays to all!
©2009 Caroline Taggart, author of I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School


Author Bio
Caroline Taggart, author of I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From School, has been an editor of non-fiction books for nearly 30 years and has covered nearly every subject from natural history and business to gardening and astronomy. She has written several books and was the editor of Writer's Market UK 2009. For more information please visit www.amazon.com.

GIVEAWAY:

Thanks to Caitlin Price at FSB Associates I have one copy of I Used to Know That: Stuff You Forgot From  School by Caroline Taggart to give away.  Simply leave your email address in the comment to be entered.  Additional entries for being a follower of the blog or me on twitter, for tweeting or for mentioning on your blog.  Contest for the US and Canada only and will run until 12/14.

Article: 10 Days Worth of Mood-Boosting, Waist-Shrinking Lunch Ideas by Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D.

Here's a great article by the author of Eat Your Way to Happiness which is on my review pile and I'm looking forward to reading it.   Thank you Julie Harabedian of FSB Assoicates for forwarding me this article to use.

10 Day's Worth of Mood-Boosting, Waist-Shrinking Lunch Ideas
by Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D.,
Author of Eat Your Way to Happiness

1. Wrap It: Fill a Mission Life Balance flour tortilla with 2 ounces of turkey breast meat, 1/2 cup shredded romaine lettuce, 2 tablespoons grated carrot and 1 tablespoon low-fat Caesar salad dressing. Serve with a glass of 1% milk and a piece of fruit.

2. Salad Fixings: Top 3 cups of baby spinach and/or romaine lettuce with 1/2 cup berries, 1 tablespoon pecans, 1/2 cup broccoli florets, 1/3 cup kidney or black beans and 2 tablespoons low-fat dressing. Serve with 100% whole-grain bread and a slice of low-fat cheese.

3. Pocket It: Fill a 100% whole-wheat pita with 1/2 cup black beans, 1/4 cup grated carrot, 1/4 cup chopped cucumber, 1/4 cup diced red peppers and 2 tablespoons light Italian salad dressing. Serve with Rachel's yogurt and a glass of 100% juice.

4. Burgerville: Top a 100% whole-wheat burger bun with a vegetarian burger, 2 tablespoons low-fat crumbled feta cheese, 1/3 cup baby spinach leaves, and 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard. Serve with a piece of fruit and a glass of 1% milk.

5. Chicken of the Sea Sandwich: Top 2 slices of 100% whole-grain bread with 2 large romaine lettuce leaves and a mixture of 2 ounces drained, water-packed tuna, 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, 1 tablespoon fat-free mayo and 1/4 cup diced celery. Serve with a side salad or piece of fruit and a glass of soy milk.

6. Take-out Desperado: If you must go, then order a kid's cheeseburger, a side salad with fat-free dressing and apple dippers, or Wendy's Ultimate Chicken Grill Sandwich (hold the mayo), a carton of low-fat milk and a Mandarin Orange cup.

7. Soup-n-Sandwich: Have a bowl of Campbell's Healthy Request Savory Chicken and Long Grain Rice soup and add extra frozen vegetables. Serve with fresh fruit and a grilled cheese sandwich made with 2 slices of 100% whole-grain bread, low-fat cheese and cooking spray instead of butter or oil.

8. Veggie Broil: Cut in half and toast a 100% whole-grain English muffin. On one side, put 2 tablespoons mashed avocado, 1/4 cup alfalfa sprouts, 1 thin slice red onion, 1 teaspoon sesame seeds and 2 teaspoons low-fat ranch dressing, and top with 1 ounce grated, low-fat cheddar cheese. Place under broiler and heat until cheese bubbles. Remove and add other side of muffin to form a sandwich. Serve with tomato juice and a side salad or fruit.

9. Campfire Crunch Sandwich: Mix 2 tablespoons fat-free cream cheese with a dash of lemon juice, lemon peel, 2 tablespoons dried tart cherries, 1/4 cup grated carrot and 3 tablespoons trail mix. Pile onto a slice of 100% whole-grain bread, spread evenly and top with second piece of bread to form a sandwich. Serve with 1% milk and a piece of fruit or a salad.

10. Bagel Sandwich and Slaw: Spread 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard on half a 100% whole-wheat bagel; layer red onion, cucumber, red pepper slices, spinach leaves and low-fat cheese; and top with the other half of the bagel. Serve with broccoli slaw made with broccoli-coleslaw mix, low-fat coleslaw dressing and dried cranberries.


The above is an excerpt from the book Eat Your Way to Happiness by Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D.. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright © 2009 Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D., author of Eat Your Way to Happiness

Author Bio
Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D., author of Eat Your Way to Happiness, is a registered dietitian and author of several books, including 10 Habits That Mess Up a Woman's Diet, Food & Mood and Age-Proof Your Body. She is a member of the editorial advisory board of Shape magazine and editor in chief of Nutrition Alert, a newsletter that summarizes the current research from more than 6,000 journals. She appears frequently on NBC's Today and other national television shows.

For more information please visit www.EatYourWayToHappiness.com.

Article: The Best Foods for Strong Bones

Julie Harabedian from FSB Associates passed this interesting article on to me to post.  I have The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D. in my to be reviewed pile and plan on reading and reviewing it soon.  But for now enjoy this article by the author.

The Best Foods for Strong Bones
by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D.,
Author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach

Let me make very clear what the best foods are for the bones -- in this order:

1. Vegetables, especially leafy greens, and also roots and stalks (for the iron and calcium, and for vitamins K and C, which, together with protein, help deposit the collagen matrix)

2. Protein, such as animal foods, beans, and soy foods (for the collagen matrix)

3. Stock (for the minerals)

4. Whole grains (for the magnesium)

5. Foods rich in trace minerals, such as seaweeds, nuts, and seeds

6. Edible bones (for the calcium and other minerals)

7. Healthy fats (for the fat-soluble vitamins needed for the bones, such as vitamins K and D)

To underscore the approach of eating for bone health, the recipes in part 3 are generally arranged in the above order, although in most cases the fats are included in the recipes, not featured as a separate food. Every section, then, relates to bone health in a specific way. Let's take a closer look at these categories and review how each relates to bone health.

Vegetables

Calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and other minerals are found abundantly in the vegetable kingdom, especially in produce that's organically grown. Of particular value for bone health are all the leafy green vegetables, such as kale, collard greens, mustard greens, arugula, bok choy, parsley, watercress, and mesclun, the only exceptions being spinach and Swiss chard, as explained below. Other vegetables especially helpful to the bones include broccoli, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, and acorn or butternut squash. In fact, the food that provides the most calcium per calorie is bok choy, at 790 mg per 100 calories when cooked. Other vegetables with a high calcium content include cooked mustard greens, with 495 mg calcium per 100 calories; raw celery, with 250 mg calcium per 100 calories; and steamed broccoli, with 164 mg calcium per 100 calories. For comparison, skim milk provides 351 mg of calcium per 100 calories, so the veggies are quite within the ballpark.

Some vegetables, most notably spinach and Swiss chard, contain a relative abundance of calcium but also contain oxalates, substances that may interfere with calcium absorption in some cases. However, people on low calcium diets (300 to 400 mg per day) are more efficient at overriding the effect of oxalates and absorbing calcium than people on diets high in calcium-rich dairy products.

Protein Foods

As explained earlier, protein is essential for giving bones the flexibility that helps prevent fractures. There is controversy as to whether protein from animal or vegetable sources is better. For quite some time, the popular assumption was that a diet high in animal protein could contribute to osteoporosis. This assumption has been shown to be incorrect. Some people object to the consumption of animal foods for a variety of reasons. My viewpoint has always been that the choice to be vegetarian or not is a very personal one, and that either can be very healthful as long as the diet is balanced and the foods consumed are fresh, natural, and unrefined -- and hopefully organic.

Cooking with Stock

Cooking with stock is a very traditional way of increasing the nutritional value of dishes made with added liquid, such as soups, stews, grains, beans, and sauces. By cooking bones and vegetables for a long time over low heat, many of the minerals are leached out into the cooking water, making the stock highly nutritious and also alkalizing, especially if something sour has been added such as vinegar or wine.

Whole Grains

In modern times, the primary grains that most cultures rely on for sustenance -- rice and wheat -- are usually stripped of their bran and germ and thereby made deficient in nutrients. Whole grains, such as brown rice, whole wheat, barley, oats, rye, millet, cornmeal, amaranth, quinoa, teff, and buckwheat, are excellent sources of complex carbohydrates, fiber, and B vitamins, and they're very satisfying to boot. Consuming sufficient amounts of whole grains (about a handful of cooked whole grain per meal) also means you need to consume less animal protein due to a concept known as protein sparing. When grains (or fats) provide more calories, this diminishes the body's need to metabolize proteins for energy. This conserves muscle tissue, and whatever is good for the muscles is good for the bones. In addition, whole grains are a good source of magnesium, which helps increase absorption of calcium from the blood into the bones.

Foods Rich in Trace Minerals

Seaweeds, nuts, and seeds are some of the foods richest in trace minerals. As mentioned in chapter 3, trace minerals play an important role in bone health. Remember, less important than how much calcium you eat is the balance of minerals (and other nutrients). Eating food rich in trace minerals will go a long way toward providing mineral balance.

Seaweeds, which are most commonly used in Japanese cuisine are rich in minerals, making them an excellent addition to healthful cooking. In fact, a study of osteoporosis in Taiwan found that those who include seaweed in their diet two or more times per week showed a slightly higher protection against osteoporosis (Shaw 1993). Seaweeds are also valuable for being especially high in iodine, which is necessary for good thyroid function. As discussed in chapter 3, the thyroid and parathyroid glands play an important role in bone health.

Nuts and seeds have the advantage of also being a great source of bone-healthy essential fatty acids, as well as plant protein. A handful of nuts or seeds a day is a good source of trace minerals, such as iron, boron, selenium, phosphorus, and magnesium.

Edible Bones

Perhaps your initial response to the idea of eating bones is "what?!" But bones can be eaten when prepared in certain ways, and if you think about it, what better source of natural minerals for our bones than bones themselves? See the recipes in part 3.

Healthy Fats

Good-quality fats are essential for bone health. As we apply the "three-bears-rule" again, too much is no good, but too little is no good, as well. You need to eat enough of these important nutrients, even if that means unlearning a fat phobia. The average postmenopausal woman needs about 65 grams of fat daily. That means you need approximately 2 or 3 tablespoons of good-quality fat per day in an eating regime based on vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds, or about 1 or 2 tablespoons if your diet also includes animal products. Nutritionist Udo Erasmus cautions against using any one type of fat exclusively because it won't contain a full profile of fatty acids and therefore might create an imbalance (Erasmus 1993). We need both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. However, a diet high in polyunsaturated vegetable oils is skewed too much in favor of the latter.

REFERENCES:
Shaw, C.  K. 1993. An epidemilogic study of osteoporosis in Taiwan. Annals of Epidemiology 3 (3):264-271.

Erasmus, U. 1993. Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill: The Complete Guide to Fats, Oils, Cholesterol, and Human Health. Burnaby, BC: Alive Books.

Reprinted with permission by New Harbinger Publications, Inc. The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D. www.newharbinger.com.
The above is an excerpt from the book The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach by Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.
Copyright © 2009 Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach

Author Bio
Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D., author of The Whole-Food Guide to Strong Bones: A Holistic Approach, is a health educator and award-winning writer, consultant, and lecturer. She is the founder and CEO of the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. She is author of several books including Food and Healing and writes a column, "Food and Your Health," for New York Spirit magazine.
For more information please visit www.FoodAndHealing.com.

Article: Jane is my Co-Pilot: The Fine Art of Making Sense and Sensibility Totally Ridiculous by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

Jane is my Co-Pilot: The Fine Art of Making Sense and Sensibility Totally Ridiculous
By Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters,
Authors of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Since writing Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, I've gotten a ton of feedback about how nice it is that I've made Jane Austen appealing to certain readers -- meaning readers who previously suffered a persistent allergy to The Classics. I am complimented for taking the prim and decorous Jane Austen and making her, A) really violent, and B) really funny.

The first compliment I will gladly accept. Over the decades since Sense and Sensibility first appeared, it has been noted by scholars and casual readers alike that the book is sorely lacking in shipwrecks, shark attacks, and vividly described decapitations. I believe it was the poet and critic Thomas Chatterton who admired the novel's careful plotting and social critique, but lamented the total absence of vengeful ghost pirates.

But I can't take credit for making Jane Austen funny. As is well known by passionate fans of Austen -- I have yet to meet any other kind -- the old girl has always been funny. Take for example Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, a set of secondary characters in Sense and Sensibility. The periodic appearances of the Palmers comprise what any comedy writer will recognize as a running gag. Mrs. Palmer is chatty and trivial, while Mr. Palmer (a delightful Hugh Laurie in the Ang Lee version) is gruff and unaffectionate. What Mrs. Palmer labels "droll," the reader -- along with Elinor, our sensible heroine -- recognizes as plain distaste for his wife, her friends, and everybody else in the universe. Every time those Palmers show up, we know we're in for the next variation on the same great gag.

Note that Austen doesn't do to the Palmers what Charles Dickens would: Exaggerate their core traits to the point of absurdity. (Also, she doesn't name them something like Mr. and Mrs. Featherwit). The Palmers are funny, but they're plausible, and their primary function in the book is to provide not laughs, but a corrective to Marianne's rosy ideal of married life. So Austen makes them funny, but not ridiculous.

Making them ridiculous was my job. When the Palmers appear in my monsterfied Sensibility, I give Mr. Palmer's drollery a murky, weird-tales back story, part of the preposterously elaborate foreshadowing of my H.P. Lovecraft-inspired denouement.

I play the same game, of comically amplifying what's already there, in varying ways throughout the book. Colonel Brandon, stiff and formal and middle-aged, becomes a stiff and formal and middle-aged man-monster. Genial Sir John becomes genial adventurer/explorer Sir John. Had Austen made all her characters ridiculous in that Dickensian way, if she had been the kind of writer who is forever winking at her readers, my book would be (as they say in improv comedy) a hat on a hat. But because Sense and Sensibility is so eloquent and restrained, Sea Monsters gets to go way over the top.

This is true even on the simple level of vocabulary. Austen's precise early-19th century diction is the textual equivalent of Eustace Tilly, the top-hatted, monocled figure from the cover of the New Yorker: Her writing simply oozes good taste. The trick was to appropriate that ever-so-tasteful and old-timey Austenian style to describe things she never would have:

In the profound silence that followed, their ears were filled with a low thrashing sound, as the corpse of the bosun's mate was noisily consumed by devil fish. At length the captain drew upon his pipe, and spoke again. "Let us only pray that this is the worst such abomination you encounter in this benighted land; for such is but a minnow, when compared to the Devonshire Fang-Beast."

"The . . . what?"

Even more fun to play with than Austen's eloquent vocabulary is her universe of enforced emotional rectitude. The Dashwood sisters live in a world where one's feelings are not blurted out -- or, at least, they're not meant to be, as sensible Elinor is continually reminding sensitive Marianne. It's a constant struggle to keep one's emotions hidden beneath the surface; all I did was literalize that metaphor in the most preposterous way, by adding deadly and dangerous monsters which appear literally from beneath the surface.

There was one factor above all that made Sense and Sensibility such a fun comic foil, and that is the place the book holds in the cultural firmament. One question I've heard a lot (or read a lot, as it's the sort of thing that comes up on blog comment-threads), is "Why didn't you do Persuasion? That's the Austen book that actually takes place on the water!"

The answer is simply that Persuasion, unlike Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, may be a great book, but it is not a Great Book. It has not gathered around itself the unmistakable stink of importance.

Sense and Sensibility, on the other hand, stands in the literary tradition as Margaret Dumont stands before Groucho Marx, as the Chairman of the Reception Committee in Duck Soup: Prim and proper and radiating worthiness -- just waiting, in other words, for someone to hit it with a pie.

©2009 Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters, authors of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Author Bios 
Jane Austen, coauthor of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, is coauthor of the New York Times best seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which has been translated into 17 languages and optioned to become a major motion picture. She died in 1817. 

Ben H. Winters, coauthor of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, is a writer based in Brooklyn.

For more information please visit www.benhwinters.com and www.quirkclassics.com

Article: Sacagawea: The Seduction of Mythology, The Paucity of Facts by Thad Carhart

Here's an article by the Author of Across the Endless River, Thad Carhart, sent to me to post by Anna Suknov of FSB Media.  I'm in the middle of reading this book and enjoying it.  Look for my review at the end of the week along with a giveaway.

Sacagawea: The Seduction of Mythology, the Paucity of Facts

By Thad Carhart,

Author of Across the Endless River

How much do we know for certain about the life of Sacagawea? The answer is: almost nothing. She was born "around 1788." She was abducted by the Hidatsa "when she was about 12." The date of her death is similarly uncertain: the prevailing view is that she died in 1812 at Fort Manuel Lisa on the Missouri, but others contend that she lived well into her 90s and died at the Wind River Reservation in 1884. Even the pronunciation and meaning of her name are still disputed, a reflection of the unknowable transliteration that both Clark and Lewis tried to capture in written syllables.

Lewis & Clark -- The Written Record Shapes All
The most reliable primary documents that have come down to us concerning Sacagawea are, of course, the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, through which she has entered the public imagination as an improbable but key player on the stage of American history. But even the journals, famed as they are, give us only fleeting glimpses of this young woman. She was one of Toussaint Charbonneau's several "squaws", a usage that covered everything from absolute servitude to common law marriage. In historical accounts, she is most frequently described as his "wife", but the fact remains that we have no way of knowing the human contours of their relationship.

The instances of her mentions in the journals are themselves full of dramatic details: a difficult labor for her first child, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, born on February 11, 1805 in the bitter cold far-northern reaches of the Upper Missouri; her dire illness and near death in June of that year, when Lewis dosed her attentively from his meager medicine kit; her vote as an equal member of the expedition about the location of their winter camp once they reached the Pacific; her insistence at being allowed to accompany the party dispatched by Clark to the shore of the Pacific to investigate what meat might be recovered from a beached whale.

All of these scenes have survived in the clear and dispassionate prose of the two captains, and while they offer tantalizing glimpses of how Sacagawea reacted under pressure, they of course come from the pens of those whose business it was to give the expedition shape in daily journals. While history is indeed written by the conquerors, perhaps here it would be more apt to say that history is first written by those who can write. How would she have described the captains? Nothing certain remains from Sacagawea's oral tradition, so the accounts of those whose language included an alphabet were bound to prevail.


Sacagawea, Repository of Legends
Even so, the degree to which the slender and infrequent mentions of Sacagawea in the Lewis & Clark journals have subsequently been weighed down with meaning is astounding. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, and gathering steam well into the twentieth, there developed an elaborate literature of wonder, almost of awe, around her being. She has come to represent resilience, courage, patience, loving motherhood, feminine independence . . . the list is virtually endless. It has been said that more images of her adorn public places than that of any other American woman. The latest iteration of her imagined likeness, the young mother bearing her papoose who graces the U.S. dollar coin, is as close as American culture is ever likely to come to an indigenous Madonna and Child.

And yet most of this is pure fabrication, a projection of our own changing needs and perceptions of the past. I am reminded of the elaborate hagiography that has built up in France around Joan of Arc, just enough of it based on the startling and dramatic facts of her life to lay the groundwork for a complete mythology. In that sense, Lewis & Clark is our own founding myth, and the individual actors in its story assume the proportions of legend as we embroider the fragile facts we have with our own imaginings. Sacagawea dances around the edges of the narrative: innocent, strong, pure of heart, and ultimately unknowable, an undying receptacle for our dreams about both past and future. The beaten and abducted young squaw stands alongside the mother of a mixed-race son, the determined woman who saved Lewis & Clark from failure by bargaining for horses with the tribe from which she had been torn. Could any refracted image we fashion to express our hopes be more ambiguous, or more captivating?

©2009 Thad Carhart, author of Across the Endless River

Author Bio
Thad Carhart, author of Across the Endless River, is a dual citizen of of the United States and Ireland. He lives in Paris with his wife, the photographer Simo Neri, and their two children.

For more information please visit www.thadcarhart.com

Tales of Thanksgiving Food and Friendship By Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel

Tales of Thanksgiving Food and Friendship
By Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel,
Authors of The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship

For some people, Thanksgiving evokes warm feelings triggered by 
memories of a close-knit family gathering, where relatives share 
traditions and a home-cooked meal.

For others . . . it's the beginning of a holiday season stuffed with 
lunatic relatives, family dysfunction, bitter recriminations, and 
heartburn.

We heard a wide range of Thanksgiving Tales this year while traveling 
around the country for our Recipe Clubs. Inspired by the plot and 
structure of our book, Recipe Clubs are storytelling and friendship 
circles in which women gather to share true-life food-related stories 
along with recipes. Recipe Clubs are not about cooking; they're about 
creating community and fostering friendship . . . they're about 
laughing and crying . . . they're about honoring our own lives and the 
lives of others. They show us how the simplest, sweetest, or funniest 
tales about food can turn into deep revelations about our lives.

Just about everybody has at least one quintessential Thanksgiving food 
memory that perfectly captures the complicated feelings surrounding 
the holiday. Here are some of our favorites:

GIVING THANKS
One Recipe Club friend recalls the first time she ever cooked a 
Thanksgiving meal on her own. Her mother, who traditionally did the 
meal, was recovering from surgery. Her father was working. And her 
sister was flying in just in time for the meal, but not early enough 
to help cook.

So our friend rose to the challenge, proclaiming that she would do the 
entire meal, on her own. No problem -- until reality set in. She woke 
at dawn, shopped, chopped, and soon realized her oven was half the 
size it needed to be. By the time the turkey wanted basting the 
chestnut stuffing required baking -- and the brussel sprouts were 
definitely not cleaning themselves!

But things really went south when it came time prepare her 
grandmother's famous pumpkin pie. This was the pie recipe that had 
been handed down through generations. If it didn't come out perfectly, 
our friend knew she'd feel like a failure.

Of course, nothing went right. The pie crust was too wet, then too 
dry. There was too much nutmeg, not enough ginger. With every crimp of 
the dough her head swam with the imagined voice of her southern 
grandmother: "A woman is judged not just by who she is, but by what 
she can bring to the table."

When the pie came out of the oven, the crust was too brown, and there 
was a giant crack running down the middle of the filling. Our friend 
fought back tears, took a deep breath, and set the pie out to cool, 
knowing more clearly than ever that neither it -- nor she -- was, or 
would ever be, perfect.

But when it came time for everyone to gather at the table, something 
shifted. Her parents and sister praised her hard work and loved the 
meal. And our friend realized she had somehow been carried on the 
wings of the generations of women who had cooked before her, without 
complaining, to serve a Thanksgiving meal to their family. She felt 
truly thankful for all the work that her mother, grandmother, aunts -- 
indeed all the women she'd known through her life -- had accomplished 
each holiday. Triumphant, connected, and happy, she understood that 
food cooked with love is its own kind of perfection.

FINALIZING THE DIVORCE
One Recipe Club friend recalled her first Thanksgiving after her 
divorce.

Since carving the bird had always been her ex-husband's job, she 
delighted in finding a new, turkey-free recipe. She settled on an 
apricot-glazed ham, and went to work cooking a glaze of brown sugar, 
cloves, and apricot nectar (an ingredient that gave her extra pleasure 
knowing her ex-husband detested it.)

When her grown children came for dinner, they were childishly upset 
not to have their usual 12-pound bird. But it was delicious, and in 
the end each one complimented the chef. On her way out, the youngest 
daughter told her mother, "maybe we all need to learn how to 
gracefully accept change."

For this new divorcee, serving ham became a way of asserting her 
independence, showing her children there was life after marriage, and 
teaching the whole family to find new ways to be together.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE
The truth is, we don't pick our relatives. So if the Thanksgiving 
gathering of the clan is an annual emotional challenge, you aren't 
alone.

In a recent Recipe Club circle of old friends and new acquaintances, 
we met a woman who admitted that for most of her life she dreaded 
Thanksgiving; all it evoked for her were memories of family fights. 
The contrast of what she knew Thanksgiving was "supposed" to be, 
versus what it was in her home, always made her feel ashamed and 
disappointed. And yet every November she felt compelled go home for a 
family Thanksgiving meal.

But one year, that changed, when her parents and brother decided to 
have Thanksgiving away from home. They journeyed together to 
Nantucket, where they ate dinner at a seaside inn. The inn served a 
New England clam chowder, rich with cream and warm on a cold autumn 
night. And they discovered that a new location, with new foods, away 
from the house where memories were often more fiery than the jalepeno 
cornbread, turned out to be just what the family needed.

Now, every year, back at home, they have a new tradition: serving New 
England Clam Chowder at their Thanksgiving feasts, each spoonful 
bringing back fond memories of a peaceful and loving family holiday.

A FAMILY OF FRIENDS
Finally, a little tale of food and friendship.

A reader of our book told us that she had a choice this year. She 
could invite Uncle Tim and Aunt Zoe, the way she does every year, and 
spend the entire holiday worrying about whether or not the perpetually 
complaining couple were happy. She could include cousins Beth and 
Sean, knowing they would be competitive, putting down her choice of 
food, her way of cooking, her table setting. She could extend an 
invitation to her brother and dreaded sister-in-law, who would sit in 
silence the entire meal and pick at the food.

Or . . . she could shake things up and do something entirely 
different: invite only friends. True friends. People she enjoyed being 
with. Who made her laugh. Who spoke truthfully. Who shared her 
passions for good books, good wine, and good music.

She took the leap. She dumped the whiners, broke with tradition, 
irritated several family members -- and never looked back. The moral: 
good food and good friends are the perfect combination. Sometimes it's 
a good idea to trim the guest list before you serve the bird with all 
its trimmings.

©2009 Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel, authors of The Recipe Club: A 
Tale of Food and Friendship

Author Bios for The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship
Andrea Israel is a producer/writer for ABC's Focus Earth. She was a 
producer/writer on Anderson Cooper 360, Dateline, and Good Morning 
America (which garnered her an Emmy Award). Her story In Donald's Eyes 
was recently optioned for a film. Ms. Israel is the author of Taking 
Tea. Her writing has appeared in many publications.

Nancy Garfinkel is co-author of The Wine Lover's Guide to the Wine 
Country: The Best of Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino(Chronicle Books, 
2005). A creative strategist, design consultant, writer, and editor 
for magazine, corporate, and non-profit clients, she has won a host of 
graphic arts and editorial merit awards. She has written extensively 
about food and graphic arts.

For more information please visit www.therecipeclubbook.com

Article: Remedy SuperStress with Chocolate by Roberta Lee M.D.

Remedy SuperStress with Chocolate
By Roberta Lee M.D.,
Author of The SuperStress Solution

If you love chocolate, you're not alone. It turns out that the average person in the United States consumes approximately 12 pounds of chocolate a year. That might sound like a lot of chocolate, but I actually recommend that my patients -- especially those who are chronically stressed or what I would describe as SuperStressed -- indulge in 1 ounce of high quality and high cocoa mass chocolate a day, and that actually adds up to well more than 12 pounds over the course of the year. Sure, chocolate is a calorie laden food (with most of the calories coming from the cocoa butter), but in my opinion, the benefits of this treat outweigh the caloric load as long as you keep the portions small. Here are the benefits:

• On a gram for gram basis, chocolate has a terrifically high concentration of antioxidants known as flavonoids. More than berries and spinach, even. Flavonoids have been shown to lower high blood pressure and reduce the risk of heart disease and strokes.

• Chocolate is rich in magnesium and potassium, two minerals that help promote the "relaxation response," as well as iron and zinc, which are minerals that many people don't often get enough of during the course of the day. Chocolate also contains a good amount of selenium, which enhances immune health.

• Chocolate contains several psychoactive compounds being studied and debated as responsible for the mood lift many of us experience when eating it. First, there's phenylethylamine (PEA), a natural trace amine that is a stimulant that is elevated in the brain when we are in love and is low when we are depressed. Secondly, there's theobromine, a compound that imparts energy and a sense of alertness. Finally, chocolate contains a small amount of a chemical known as N-arachidonoylethanolamine, a substance that keeps our endogenous happiness molecules -- or endorphins -- from breaking down. In other words, if we are happy, we just might stay happier longer with a little chocolate.

Of course, there's also ample consumer-proven evidence that chocolate tastes good, and that eating it can provide a little respite -- an oasis of pleasure and calm -- from our otherwise hectic days! And to me, that's what's so special about this sweet treat. I find chocolate has the ability to enhance sensory recruitment in every way. It's so inexpensive to have a piece of chocolate and it's so pleasurable, that if that's something you like and that's part of what living well is about, I say: go for it. The ideal cocoa mass is 75% or more -- this will be clear on the label and is most often found in dark chocolate -- and the ideal portion is 1 ounce (about 1/3 of an average bar or roughly the size of the palm of a woman's hand). Doctor's orders!

To reduce stress, and avoid SuperStress, try this today: Simple as it sounds; focused breathing -- during which you think about your breath as you inhale and exhale -- is a very effective stress-management technique. A slow, full breath triggers physical and cognitive changes that promote relaxation. Deep breathing helps release tension and anxiety and is a great energizer because the deeper the breath, the more your body is flooded with life-fueling oxygen. A full breath begins with the diaphragm pushing downward so that the stomach extends out. As your lungs fill with air, your chest expands. When you exhale, the reverse occurs -- your chest settles first and then your stomach. When anxiety strikes or you find yourself focusing on negative thoughts, immediately exhale through your mouth. Now, open your lungs, and breathe in through your nose, drawing in a fresh, cleansing air to the count of four. Exhale again slowly to the count of five. Repeat four times.

Copyright © 2009 Roberta Lee M.D., author of The SuperStress Solution

Author Bio
Roberta Lee, M.D., author of The SuperStress Solution, is vice chair of the Department of Integrative Medicine, director of Continuing Medical Education, and co-director of the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel's Continuum Center for Health and Healing at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Dr. Lee attended George Washington University Medical School and is one of the four graduates in the first class from the Program of Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona conducted by Andrew Weil, M.D.

For more information please visit www.superstresssolution.com

I'll be getting a review copy of this book and really look forward to reading it.