Our Saturday Lunch

~Veggie Sandwich~ Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

Lunch yesterday was a veggie sandwich consisting of healthy-sauteéd' (in vegetable broth) Portobello Mushrooms with Japanese Eggplant & onions, on a bed of Romaine Lettuce & fresh cucumber slabs, under sliced tomato & Mung Bean sprouts, all stacked between two slices of Food For Life 100% Whole Grain Ezekiel 4:9 Flourless Bread, lathered on one side with home-made hummus, and on the other, with Follow Your Heart Grapeseed Oil Vegenaise.

We create variations on this theme several days a week, sometimes with avocado and a slice of cheddar, but always making a superb tasting sandwich!

By my best reckoning, this absolutely cholesterol free sandwich, including the hummus and Vegenaise, provides about 290 calories, maybe 75 of them from fat (derived mostly from healthful essential fatty acids). But that's not the reason to eat this thing, the reason is because it tastes so danged good!!!

While I'm on the subject of food, I should, once again, recommend our bible on healthy eating, 'The World's Healthiest Foods', by George Mateljan.

880 pages of comprehensive and invaluable information on the world's hundred most healthful (commonly available) foods, including nutrient richness charts (based on nutrient density per calorie), exhaustive nutritional analysis charts, detailed explanations of why each of the foods is good for you, and, the most healthful ways to store, prepare, and cook them.

~Includes 500 delicious recipes~

(Incidently, the sandwich above is not one of the recipes, but the ingredients are among the Hundred Healthiest Foods, and the method of healthy sauteéing the eggplant, mushrooms, and onions is right out of the book.)

This huge book is the product of 10 years of research by Mateljan and a team of nutritional scientists, and it's a virtual steal at around $25.

If you're interested in this book you can order it directly from http://www.whfoods.com/ or buy new & used copies through our Amazon.com book link in the sidebar to the right.

JOE BAGEANT TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!

EARTH HOME GARDEN'S

'BOOK OF THE YEAR'

Click on covers to enlarge - © 2007 Joseph L. Bageant/Crown Publishers

I know, the year isn't over yet, and we've read a bunch of good books at Earth Home Garden in the past 7+ months, including Jared Diamond's Collapse, The Humboldt Current by Aaron Sachs, and Limits to Growth, The 30‑Year Update by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows. But I'm willing to claim that no other book I read during the remainder of the year will resonate with me like Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus.

Articulately profane, gut-wrenchingly honest, and frighteningly well-informed, Deer Hunting With Jesus paints a profoundly vivid portrait of what's become of America and the promise of Democracy, revealing in great detail the tragic consequences of blind faith, of a mis-informed semi-literate right-wing conservative working class, and the arrogant self-defeating intellectual elitism of the so-called liberal left. Joe tells his potentially depressing story with deep affection and generous humor.

If Deer Hunting With Jesus doesn't hit home with you, you're living in a different America than I am.