I want to return to talking about nutrition. I recommend buying or installing on your device The Mediterranean Table cookbook-and-nutrition guide.

Right now I consider it the best book of its kind ruling over any of the others I’ve reviewed. Angelo Acquista, M.D. shares detailed info about themost healthful foods in an engaging, simple, easy-to-read fashion.

Read only this Mediterranean Diet book if you read no other–it’s that good. I can’t help be proud–after all, I’m Italian.

Circa 1993 I bought and read the original Mediterranean Diet book. This so-called “diet”–actually a sane eating plan–has been around forever.

With this time-tested way of eating I ask you: why do most people go on any of the fad or extreme diets outlined in the endless glut of diet books at the library?

Have some filet of sole oreganata with a side of broccoli rabe. Keep the portions slim.

That’s the secret right there: you don’t need to eat meat and [white] potatoes.

You want to impress an Italian [or other] woman on a date: cook a simple meal of pasta with tomato-basil sauce and a salad of kale and cherry tomatoes with a squirt of olive oil and vinegar or olive oil and lemon.

Perfetto.

Other things you can add to a salad are walnuts or almonds. I used to use chick peas in a salad too. You can used blue cheese like in a Cobb salad. Olives of course can go into a salad. Onions too.

We need to eat well to keep our energy up when we’re going through a hard time.  We need to continue a bare-bones yet consistent and regular fitness routine when we’re going through a hard time.

Life can be hard and present us with challenges. We can return to our full-steam activities when we’re able.

It can be hard most of all when our loved ones have a hardship or an illness that we have to cope with.

It is most of all the hardest when a loved one is at the end of their lives.

I’ve written in the blog and elsewhere that mental health agencies universally fail their older constituents who are now living alone after their parents / caregivers have died.

I wrote at HealthCentral for our family members about doing succession planning and creating a Special Needs Trust instead of a will for a loved one who collects SSI for the rest of their life.

Not ordinarily do I like to give details in the blog about my own life. I will though say this: no one should be faced with terminal cancer at the end of their life like one of my family members is now.

I will write in the future about grief and bereavement from information in the pamphlets I picked up at the 2014 APA convention.

For now I will end here with this thought: we could benefit each of us from reaching out for support when our family members are in their seventies and eighties and won’t be around for a lot longer.

I will do my tiny humble part by writing about grief and bereavement in the blog. Mental health agencies should no longer avoid talking about this. I’ll talk about this since they’re not.

Greenmarket Loot:

broccoli, carrots, and Brussels sprouts

fresh mozzarella and Jersey beefsteak tomatoes

zucchini

organic whole wheat bread and a chocolate croissant.

tomato sauce

Total cost: $36. What it covers: two lunches and two dinners and sauce for a third pasta dinner. This seems to be a viable expense and saner than buying $36 worth of meat.

If you’re eating mostly a vegetarian diet you can afford to buy organic food simply because you’re not spending money on meat and potatoes.

I remember months ago Gwyneth Paltrow was given $200/for two weeks and asked to buy what an ordinary person collecting food stamps would buy to cook with.

You could get only two or three meals for only one or two people for $200.

It is unconscionable that the SNAP–food stamps program–benefits are being cut down drastically.

I see a person begging for change on October 30 and think: “It’s the end of the month. They must be waiting on a November SSI check.”

No one in America should have to go to bed hungry. No one in America should be discarded and left to fend for themselves.

In New York you can use food stamps to buy food at a Greenmarket. A significant number of food stamp dollars are spent at our Greenmarkets. If I remember upwards of over $500,000 is spent at Greenmarkets with food stamps in New York. I heartily endorse doing this along with using a food pantry if you have to.

No one wants to beg for change. No one wants to be poor. No one wants others to judge them because of this.

Who gives a shit if a poor person buys food at a Greenmarket. They deserve to be healthy too.

I’m a big fan of frequenting a Greenmarket. This is because I don’t take this for granted.

I remember living in a residence and having only $70 to spend for one week in 1989 to buy groceries for two people. No wonder some of us existed on hot dogs and Velveeta shells-and-cheese.

My contention is that there’s no shame if you have to use the service of a food pantry to obtain food.

The U.S. government is doing absolutely nothing to help average Americans exist on wages that have been stagnant for decades and haven’t kept up with the cost of living. No kidding.

As this is true I make the case for eating mostly vegetarian food.

Shopping at a Greenmarket and obtaining staples from a food pantry?

Yes. Yes. And Yes.

Layne Lieberman’s Beyond the Mediterranean Diet is my new number-one favorite nutrition book. Buy it or check it out of the library to see the changes you can make in how and what you eat to promote optimal mental and physical health.

The author is an international expert on nutrition who deserves to be viewed as an international expert. She is one expert whose wisdom I can totally parrot unlike that of other alleged “experts” who hang out a shingle and are taken seriously because of their toxic mouthfeel they spew out that doesn’t help anyone at all.

As an Italian I liked the section on Italy and the Slow Food Movement founded there the best of all the chapters. The book also details the secrets of the Super-Healthy citizens of France and Greece too.

I recommend you buy this book to have on hand to refer to often. It’s a short book and the writing is not dense it’s light and practical.

I’m gathering product boxes up to examine so that I can write about the products I think are good and healthful to consider buying and using.

My contention is that everyone should be cooking most of their own meals. And when you’re too tired to cook you should buy healthier prepared frozen meals instead of Lean Cuisine type meals.

Amy’s Organic company offers low-calorie healthful frozen dinners that weigh in under 650 calories–the average number of calories thought to be acceptable for a meal is 650.

I buy the Amy’s Organic Light-n-Lean black beans-and-quinoa salad; the Amy’s Organic vegetable lasagna; and the Amy’s Organic tofu scramble. One or two nights a week I cook a pasta recipe. Two nights I have fish.

These are the products I wanted to talk about. It appears there are no “natural flavors” in Amy’s Organic. I also cook the Amy’s organic low-sodium lentil soup for lunch once a week.

Progresso Soups and Campbell’s soups have natural flavors so there you go not a healthful option.

I will report back in here next week on two recipes I’m going to create: cream of tomato soup and gnocchi (pasta version not potato).

Buying a Kind bar is not an act of kindness when you read the ingredient label. Using your intelligence to make better decisions about what to eat is the true act of kindness.

I’ll end here by saying that I might be Italian however everyone should cook for themselves not just Italians. You can become a good cook even though you’re not Italian.

The last time I had a hot dog was in 1992.

As soon as I read the label and saw a hot dog was 100 calories and 90 calories were fat I thought: this can’t be good.

I used to exist on real poverty food when I lived in the residence: I’d buy Velveeta shells-and-cheese that I marginally improved by mixing broccoli into it.

I rarely eat bagels anymore because I don’t want my belly to resemble a bagel.

The change-over started right when I was about to turn 50. I consciously choose not to drink Snapple and other sugary drinks. Not only not every week: I chose not to drink them at all. I drink only water now and occasionally a 4 oz glass of organic orange juice when the market is out of oranges.

One way to combat the insidious positioning of products in a supermarket is to buy groceries online from FreshDirect in New York City and Philadelphia or from PeaPod elsewhere if it’s available where you live.

The benefit with FreshDirect is that you can simply order on autopilot by logging into your account choosing to submit a new order using a previous order.

You don’t even have to think about it and you can add new items to the order as well. This is great when you don’t have the energy or think you don’t have the time to create a brand new order.

Not needing a car to travel to buy groceries also cuts down on your dependence on foreign oil. It also saves time and saves your sanity.

One woman I met told me about going to a local food market that she “goes in like a lady and comes out like a bull.” Dealing with crowds and waiting on long lines isn’t the way to spend two hours every week.

Years ago too I stopped eating a lot of dairy except for string cheese and drinking the skim milk I use in my cereal. I do eat cheese every so often though only every two or three months or so.

The benefit of watching what you eat is that you’re then free every so often to indulge guilt-free in a chocolate croissant or whatever is heaven to you.

I’m fond of the macarons at a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop that opened up. The owner is a young guy and I’d rather give him the money than Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks.

I’m going to try to scoop products in here in the coming months that I think are better alternatives to the ubiquitous garbage attractively packaged to seduce our eyes and mouths.