Aaaaaand… we’re back!

After a three-year hiatus, we’re back!

I’m sure all of you, gentle readers, have been around the block many times since our last post about compote in 2008. So have we! We now live and cook in San Francisco. Here we have access to wonderful farmers markets and grocery stores, and also to many new friends with many new recipes.

In this post, I’ll just quickly review some of the nutritional changes we’ve gone through here, and offer a glance at two inspirational food-related books I’ve very much enjoyed recently.

Back in 2003, I was diagnosed as wheat-intolerant after going through an elimination diet. I then figured out that dairy in large amounts, particularly cow milk, made me ill as well. So, no wheat and very little dairy. I do eat eggs, and in the years since Israel have gradually introduced some fish into my diet. I particularly enjoy cured salmon and sardines, but many other fish as well. Having been vegetarian for a long time, it was a difficult adjustment; but it was very much worth it in terms of my health and well-being. I have much respect for sustainable fishing practices and try to shop and eat accordingly; my relationship with water has become very intimate since I started swimming competitively, in the pool but mostly in open water. So, you’ll see the occasional fish on this blog, but for the most part, it’s all about vegetables and fruit, as it always was.

Also, I had the privilege to read Joel Fuhrman‘s Eat to Live.
I absolutely love this book. Usually, diet books aimed at providing “miracle cures” to average Americans exasperate me with their conciliatory tone; God forbid you tell Americans to eat vegetables and stop eating much of the mass-produced industrial crap they consume on a daily basis. Fuhrman makes no apologies in Eat to Live. Basically, he advocates eating vegetables and fruit – lots and lots of them – and add to that beans, and, in lesser amounts, whole grains. Eggs, fish, meat, dairy and the like are to be eaten in rather small amounts. This makes so much sense, not only from a weight loss perspective, but also from a health perspective. Basically, what it requires is something we’d done on this blog for a long time; regarded vegetables as the main course and protein/starch as the side dishes. Brilliant.

The other excellent book I’ve read recently is Phyllis Glazer’s new cookbook in Hebrew, which offers a myriad of ideas for salads, soups and the like, as well as excellent soups and incredible and healthy desserts. Many of the recipes are flagged as gluten and dairy free. And, she has a recipe for a chocolate cake made of chickpeas, which we’ve made once and was a phenomenal success.

I know that some of this blog’s followers in the past followed it because we were based in Israel. There is no shortage of excellent Bay Area-based food bloggers. We might do a similar thing to what we did in Israel, join a CSA and blog about what we cook, but we’ve both become much busier than we were in Israel and therefore posting might be sporadic. In any case, good food experiences should be shared, and should you choose to share ours, it’ll be a treat to have you in our virtual kitchen.