Dinner with friends

For years here at Summer Tomato I’ve been telling you that Real Food is the key to better health and weight control.

Week after week I’ve encouraged you to eat a diverse range of vegetables, legumes, fish, and minimally processed meats, oils and grains.

Mountains of evidence tell us that eating these foods, while avoiding processed industrial foods, can dramatically cut your risk of heart disease, cancer, hypertension, diabetes, dementia, depression, arthritis, and obesity.

Without a doubt, the nutritional advantage of Real Food is powerful enough to add decades to your life.

Still there is a health benefit of food that trumps all the polyphenols and omega-3s you can sink your teeth into.

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For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

This week eating with others transcends better health, the new tastebuds on the block, and why to avoid certain peaches.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).
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Photo by St0rmz

When I was a teenager Thanksgiving was my least favorite holiday. Not only did I hate that it was centered almost exclusively around food, it also signified the beginning of a holiday season filled with cookies, cakes, pies, pastries and all my other sworn enemies.

Thanksgiving meant needing to ramp up my willpower not just for a day, or a four-day weekend, but for the next six weeks. I was terrified.

For anyone who consistently worries about their weight, Thanksgiving can be scary. Fear of falling off the wagon, undoing all the work you put in over the summer, and ending the year worse off than you started is pretty close to your worst nightmare.

It’s daunting. But it doesn’t need to be.

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Photo by massdistraction

I was a bit surprised the first time someone told me she didn’t like cooking for just herself. I hadn’t learned to use a stove until I studied abroad in Italy (2000-2001), but from then until I met my husband 10 years later I had cooked for myself (alone) almost exclusively. It never seemed weird or lonely to me, it was just my life as a student.

It wasn’t until I launched Summer Tomato and started publicly writing about the importance of cooking Real Food at home that I started to get complaints from single people that they didn’t have the motivation to cook for themselves. They could see the value of cooking for a significant other or a family, but it seemed like too much hassle to dirty pans and plates for a solo dinner.

It made sense when I thought about it, but I couldn’t really relate to the problem since at the time I was still a student and virtually all of the advice on this site was based on my experiences cooking for myself. If anything I expected busy parents to complain, not single people.

Now that I’ve lived with my husband for over three years, I can certainly see the pleasure that comes from cooking for and nurturing another person you care about. My dinner experiences are far richer now that they are “our” dinner experiences, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

But I won’t lie, I do not prefer cooking for two over cooking for one. Not by a long shot.

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For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

This week dinner rituals are linked to body weight, deep frying gets a healthy makeover and the hidden value of peer pressure.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

Read the rest of this story »