Food Philosophy: Recipes and ramblings from a gluten-free naturopath

Today I've got 3 super summer salads for you!!   Too many times we think of fruit salads as just a bunch of fruits thrown together and used as a light dessert...nothing wrong with that at all!!  In fact, I love that kind of dessert, especially in the summer time when there are so many types of fruits to choose from. But, in doing that, we don't fully utilize fruits!  They make a wonderful counterpoint to a savory salad and I've got 3 recipes for you today that do just that... This first recipe I actually posted last summer, but thought I'd repeat it since it's just SOOO good! Watermelon-cucumber salad 3 cups cubed, seeded watermelon 1/2 of a large English cucumber, diced with the skin on 1 handful cilantro, chopped 1 jalapeno pepper, diced 4 oz. crumbled feta cheese Place all the above ingredients in a large bowl and stir.  Then, in a separate container, make a dressing from: the juice of 2 limes about 1/3-1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil Salt and pepper, ...

I feel the need to ramble today, so please read on and bear with me! You would think in today's society where it seems that NOTHING is off-limits for discussion or in movies or on TV or the internet that we'd be able to talk openly and honestly about female sexuality, but we don't.  It's like we're back in Victorian England, where sex was a woman's marital duty and it was never even admitted to, much less discussed!  And heaven forbid that a woman might actually enjoy it---that was the sole duty for prostitutes. We need to open a dialogue regarding female sexuality!  I've been an advocate of this for a long time and, in most cases, people look at me like I have 6 heads if I bring it up, but since this is my blog, I plan to talk about it...and I hope you will, too.  If nothing else, I hope you'll be educated by this information and have a desire to share it. Let's talk anatomy first.  When I was growing up, I never received any worthwhile inform...

Yes, I said it....foodgasm!!  There are just some foods that create such a rush of pleasure when you eat them that there's no other word to describe the incredible feeling!!  Today's recipe is just one such fabulous food :) There have been innumerable studies done on the pleasure centers in our brains.  What's so interesting is that there's basically one targeted area that is stimulated by pleasurable things....so, making love, eating great food, seeing a super-good movie, running or exercising, being out in nature....the list goes on and on....all these things send signals to the pleasure centers in our brains and our bodies respond appropriately.  Now, personally, I don't get the same rush from running as I do from eating great food or making love, but some people really love it!!   Other studies have proven that women who starve themselves or deny themselves on a regular basis of "pleasurable-type" foods, such as sugar, chocolate, fats, etc...decrea...

When my youngest daughter was a senior in high school, we lived in Pebble Beach, CA.  There was a Jack-in-the-box fast food restaurant near our home there and, every Tuesday, they had a 2 tacos for 99 cents special that she just adored!!  I could never understand how she could enjoy those tacos, which were basically a hard corn shell filled with drippy grease, but she loved them! However, she usually only went there if she was working on Tuesdays.  Thus was born the family Taco Tuesday tradition....if she was going to be home, I always made sure to have some kind of taco and my husband and I have continued that ever since (although, it's not EVERY Tuesday anymore....:) I absolutely love the traditional taco with spiced hamburger meat, lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream and guacamole and I would never dis that!  But, sometimes you just need something different.  So, after a lot of research and experimentation, I've come up with some different types of taco...

I have SOOOO much fun creating new foods for holidays!!  Now, I know a lot of people don't consider Valentine's Day a holiday, or at best, they consider it a "made-up" Hallmark, commercialized excuse to make people feel bad about their relationships!  Well, I just don't agree!  I love any chance to show the people I care about how much they mean to me...and Valentine's in no exception. One of my favorite things to do is to dip strawberries (or anything, for that matter!) in chocolate!!  This is super-easy and seems so decadent!  Just melt whatever flavor or color of Wilton's candy coat that you want and quickly dip, place on parchment paper and let sit.  As soon as I dipped these strawberries, I sprinkled them with a pink sugar, just to give them a little bling :) An obvious choice for Valentine's Day is anything heart-shaped!  And these Cherry-Chocolate Scones are a huge hit!!  I made them yesterday morning for a meeting that I was hostin...

I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE (are you getting the picture?) ZOOS!!  My husband takes me to the zoo whenever we move to a new place.  Every time I think I've surely seen all the animals out there, I go to a zoo and see, at least, a dozen new ones that I had no idea about or ever even heard of!  Last week, Kevin took me to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC, which is only about 40 minutes from our house.  It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning with temps hovering around 55 degrees...perfect for walking around and admiring all of the amazing plants, animals, reptiles, fishes, and more.... I know you're thinking that it's very strange that I'm talking about zoos on a gluten-free website, but there's a point, I promise! Animals, by instinct and for self-preservation, have very limited diets, unless they're introduced to new foods by humans.  Think about, for example, the panda bear...their diet, in the wild,  consists of 99% bamboo, with ju...

There's a new show on the Cooking Channel called, "The Food Hospital."  A British physician, surgeon, and nutritionist have teamed up together in a medical practice that focuses on changing diets in order to treat medical conditions; avoiding the use of western medicines.  What's interesting to me is that they're acting like this is a brand-new idea!  This idea of using food as a medicine was first "published" by Hippocrates in the 4th century BC and has been the basis of Naturopathy for centuries!!! Those of us who suffer from celiac disease understand very well the need to control our diets as the only medicine available to us.  There is no magic pill to take that will prevent the damage to our small intestines, and our whole bodies, every time we ingest gluten.  We must be ever vigilant in our dietary intake. What most people don't know about celiac disease (including an awful lot of doctors that I've dealt with!) is that the symptoms a...