Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Delicious Dragon Bowl and The Thrive Diet

Things get pretty exciting around here when new cookbooks arrive in the mail. I recently received Ripe From Around Here, and couldn't wait to scour over Jae Steele's new recipes. She totally outdid herself in her new book. I absolutely love it! It blends local ingredients with tidbits of nutritional information. I really like that she details how certain items benefit the body systems, such as cloves, cardamom, and dandelion root. We tried the Dragon Bowl and swooned. The flavors and textures were a party in my mouth - crunchy cabbage, chewy rice and tangy tahini sauce.


My other new favorite book is The Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier. We all know about factory farming and the benefits of veggies, etc. It was a nice change to read about veganism in a new light for me: athletics. One thing I learned from this book was that when you are eating whole foods, your body will require less food because it is being nourished more efficiently. The body has to break down that white bread (which has pretty much no nutritional value to it), whereas with whole spelt or fruits and veggies, the energy and goodness is available to your body right away. That frees up energy for repairing tissues and dealing with other things besides breaking down food all night.

The other really enlightening thing I learned from the Thrive Diet was that Brendan focused mainly on recovery time during his marathon training. He wanted to maxamize his recovery time so that he could train more frequently. This was achieved through a whole foods diet - lots of veggies, fruit, nuts and legumes. There are some recipes in his book that are quite delicious and very satisfying. Oh, and he's local!! Such an awesome book.

1 comments:

Kristen June 14, 2010 at 8:40 PM  

I have this book and have been meaning to read it forever. Thanks for the motivation to get to it!

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