Oh, how I love a virgin piña colada on a beach. I always order one (usually just one a year) on my first day of vacation in a warm place. It’s a delicious confirmation that yes, I really am on vacation in a warm place. Well, I am determined to recreate that happy feeling at […]
By Maria
A Visit to My Kitchen: Michele Owens, author of Grow the Good Life
Michele Owens is in my kitchen today, talking about her love for the all-natural, and her guilty pleasures, gardening catalogs and fashion blogs. Michele is a gardener, business writer, former political speechwriter, and author of Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Healthy, Wealthy and Wise (2011). She’s a […]
How to Start a Fire (Fast and Furious, and without Fuss)
We’ve all been there—either as individuals trying to start a fire, or worse, watching someone else trying to start a fire and not succeeding. There is the fussing, the prodding and poking, the elaborately shaped structures, and blowing and huffing and puffing. I could go on and on, but that’s the point of this blog […]
Living (Briefly) without Electricity
It’s not a real winter in these parts without one good ice storm—the kind that covers all the trees with a clear-crystal-candy coating, stops all the traffic, and invariably, knocks out the power for a while. Which is an important reminder of just how close to primitive chaos we would be without a steady supply […]
Curry Chicken from Scratch
We never ate Indian food when I was a kid, except for this recipe. I am pretty sure my mother got it out of The Joy of Cooking. I’ve altered it a tiny bit (for instance, the book calls for raisins or currants and I don’t really care for that.) And of course I made […]
10 Secrets for Happy Winter Running
I’m still a new runner—and I use the word runner loosely, since I still can’t run up all the hills around my house. But if I don’t get at least a weekly run, I feel myself start to get crusty and cranky, and return to a state of being where I was not happy one […]
Why Women Love Cats
This morning, I was sitting on my couch drinking my coffee (happiness!), and my cat Pumkin came over for her morning love. We have a thing in our house where I sit in Baddha Konasana (cobbler’s pose) on the couch—completely slouched, mind you, and covered in soft cashmere blankets—and make a “nest” for kids or […]
How to Make a Hoagie (Healthy!)
Recently, I had the pleasure and honor of having Dr. Andrew Weil “stop by my kitchen” for a chat. He mentioned one of his favorite foods growing up in Philadelphia was a hoagie. A HOAGIE! I love hoagies! I think it’s a Pennsylvania thing. Sure, around the country they are now called “Subs,” or submarine […]
Scratch
Raised on America’s first organic farm, Scratch author Maria Rodale learned how to make everyday favorites from, yes, scratch — the way you remember them; the way they turn out best.
Order NowOrganic Manifesto
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment.
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