This guy can write. I'm going to put him in my blog-roll. Oh, the post is about how you enable others to convince themselves that it might not be a bad idea to consider changing their eating habits. Told from the point of view of the "The willfully ignorant dude"--him, a while back.

One thing Dr. Lisle talked about that I really liked was this idea that you shouldn't compare yourself to others, but just try to live up to your own potential. This is in any area of your life. Now this I understand and really like. I'm going to try this out at work.

I was thinking more about the first talk on the Douglas Lisle DVD called "The Continuum of Evil." (see yesterday's post for a recap). So the first talk was about not trying to be perfect, but aiming for eating A+ foods most of the time and letting yourself have some A, B, and C foods here and there, and averaging an A overall. This is a lot like Dr. Fuhrman's 10% plan. Dr. Lisle emphasized that the most important thing is getting right back on track when you eat the C (sugar,oil), D (dairy), and F (meat) foods. He follows the McDougall program which is a little more relaxed about salt and sugar than Dr. Fuhrman's program. Having followed Dr. Fuhrman's program for a while, I do prefer going without salt and sugar because the salt makes my fingers swell up, and it's even worse after breaking my elbow; and your taste buds get much more sensitive without salt and sugar, and then fruit and vegetables taste really good.

I just watched a very good DVD by Douglas Lisle. He wrote the Pleasure Trap. He applies psychology to eating healthy. The first lecture was about the continuum of evil. He's referring to good foods and bad foods here. Grading food, he gives meat an F, dairy a D, processed grains and sugar C, tofu, whole-wheat bread, veggie burgers a B, and whole unprocessed produce an A+. He then says, we're not perfect, but it's good to eat as many of the A foods as you can and only occasionally eating the B and C foods. He spent much of his career counseling on addiction. He says failure is fine, it's part of the process. Don't aim for perfection 100% of the time. If you aim for perfection and then you fail, that sets up weird behaviors, like going on a binge and promising you'll be perfect tomorrow or next week. You want to average a very good score (A on the grading scale) but know that it is a process getting there and that you will dip and know to get back on track when you do--that is the most important part, not aiming for perfection. I'm paraphrasing and surely not distilling this as accurately as he presented.

I've been doing something very weird lately. I've been watching the Food Network. I think I will stop now as it's probably a dangerous thing to do, but it was kind of fascinating, and I think it says a lot about the culture we live in. I was expecting more cooking shows but it's mostly about restaurant food--at least when I've watched, which is around prime time. There are shows about "diners, dives, and drive-ins" (my favorite), and your favorite foods (at so-and-so restaurant), and how various convenience foods are made. And then of course, there are the chef competitions. In all of them, you get to see what goes into the meals, and that is shocking to someone who tries to avoid oil, salt and processed foods.

I ended up cooking more this weekend than I thought it would. It was fun. Today's breakfast was ice cream. Lunch was steamed greens, Mexican hummus, and steamed veggies for dipping in the hummus. That will be dinner too.

I wanted some hummus but didn't have any of the usual ingredients except sesame seeds but I wasn't in the mood for those either, so I came up with this. I call it Mexican hummus because of the southwest flavors (cilantro, lime, cumin). It is very creamy and yummy. Note that my ingredients are just what I had on hand--you can do the same. The basic idea is to use a bean of some kind, spice--usually cumin (but in searching for the cumin I saw pumpkin pie spice and did wonder what that would be like), some kind of nuts or seeds, and citrus or vinegar flavoring.

Today I decided to see if I could make a sweet nut butter. The answer is yes, but watch out--it tastes great and is really rich. It is not so easy to make though. I made it in a blender and you need to add a lot of nuts to make it work in the blender, 2 cups works.

I forgot to say in my last post that I am planning to cook more on weekends even though I won't this weekend. I think I have gotten boring in my weekday eating, and that helped me to stray last week in my eating. I'm going to expand my weekly pot of beans to a pot of soup full of beans, veggies, and maybe some wild rice or barley. These are really good, especially with carrot juice as a broth. That will give me more cooked veggies during the week. Then I also hope to make something nice for a Sat. or Sun. dinner. It doesn't have to be complicated, just enjoyable to eat, which many of Dr. Fuhrman's recipes are!

Reading the Fuhrman forums this morning, I was reminded of this great post by Darryl. This pretty much says it all. No need to read anything else! I'm going to link to it on my recommended websites links at the right side of the page here. I looked over my links to see if they needed updating and so I visited fatfreevegan's blog. I discovered Susan's blog pretty early on when I became a vegan (5 years ago now!) and found her recipes creative and delicious. As I got more "strict" in my diet, I used her recipes less and less since many use refined grains, sugar, and salt. But I see from her recent posts that she is following Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live program now! That is cool. I hope to see some creative "nutritarian" recipes from her blog. I am a big fan of hers.

This is a great post from a fairly recent "nutritarian" (not sure he calls himself that):

I feel I should 'fess up when I go offplan. It may not be as inspiring as if I stay on plan all the time, where you can think, if she can do it, so can I. Instead, now you think, she failed, so will I. But I want to be honest and share my mistakes--maybe there is something to learn from them without repeating them yourself. So last week, I deviated for a couple of days. The last time I did this was in early December when I was in France. So I guess I made it about 10 weeks; the previous stretch was 10 months, so this is a bit disappointing. Oh well, try try again. What were my reasons? Well, the brain can manufacture good reasons any time, any day, so I don't think that matters. I can tell you that being tired is a big warning flag so watch out for the rationalizations when you are tired--you are much weaker. And it also started out by eating too much rich healthy food, so that's another warning flag. For me, being tired and/or overeating healthy food are both danger zones where vigilance against excuses should be exercised. Your brain is always ready with millions of excuses and they are just that, excuses, so you have to learn to ignore them.

• ParentHelp123 helps connect Washington families to food and health resources: 1.800.322.2588
• Washington Information Network 2-1-1 helps residents obtain information on health and human services: 2-1-1 or toll-free 1.877.211.WASH (9274)

This is tasty and simple.

I don't have much to report that would excite a reader. I've been enjoying my food but you might find it boring. I still only have about 1.5 arms to work with, so have been eating the usual: salads and soups. Actually it's pretty much what's described in this post. Some of my salads were fruity, some savory. All have a base of lettuce, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, seed mixture. Then add apple, orange, frozen berries, and sweet vinegars to some, add sweet corn, peas or edamame, onion, vinegars to others. Actually onions taste good on the fruity salads too, and apples taste good on the savory salads. I bought a sample pack of Dr. Fuhrman's vinegars and have been having fun trying a different one out every meal. I'm still rating them so might make a report at some point even though I don't think it's helpful to others because it's completely a personal taste preference thing.

Sometimes I am really lazy:

Yesterday, DEL Director Bette Hyde, OSPI Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Jessica Vavrus and others talked about the WaKIDS pilot to a joint work session of the House Education and Early Learning & Human Services. WaKIDS is the pilot kindergarten readiness process going on now in 115 school districts. Superintendent Randy Dorn submitted audio testimony in support of the project.

Check out the video from TVW.

• Family connection — Time for the kindergarten teacher and family to meet and share information about the child entering kindergarten.
• An assessment of where children are in four domains of child development (social/emotional; literacy; cognitive; physical). Three different “bundles” of assessment tools are being tested by different communities during the pilot.
• Early learning collaboration—Time for early learning providers and kindergarten teachers to meet and share information about children entering kindergarten.

Hi everyone,

Eligibility changes for the Working Connections Child Care (WCCC) program will not go into effect today, but instead, families will see higher copayments and potential waiting lists.

• Families with incomes above 82 percent of the FPG to 137.5 percent will have copayments increase from $50 to $60 per month.
• Families with incomes above 137.5 percent of the FPG through 175 percent will have monthly copayments increase using a sliding scale.

• Families with incomes above 82 percent of the FPG to 137.5 percent will have copayments increase to $65 per month.
• Families with incomes above 137.5 percent of the FPG through 175 percent will have monthly copayments increase using a sliding scale.