This post marks the launch of my new blog, and also of a new phase in my life. This phase wasn't planned, but brought about due to health reasons. My first response to this health news was to crave every bad food I could imagine and to eat many of them. But I've finally decided that I might as well try make the best of it.

So I just got a copy of The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman. He's the food writer for the NY Times, who apparently changed his own eating habits due to health reasons a number of years ago. He describesThe Food Matters Cookbook as "500 reviolutionary recipes for better living," based on eating "more plants and fewer animal products and processed foods." He's not a food-police type at all, but has a relaxed approach and seems to offer recipes that look appealing. I'll also be referring to another very old cookbook, A World of Vegetable Cookery, written in the 1960s, described as "an encyclopedic treasury of recipes, botany and lore of the vegetable kingdom." This older cookbook will probably have some recipes that aren't considered healthy by modern standards, but I can either just skip over those or try to modify them.

The plan here, then, is to try lots of healthy vegetable recipes, and one new vegetable each week - proceeding alphabetically and by season - from the older cookbook. I'll post the recipes and talk about how they tasted and other details. There, I've said it. I'm committed now!

And maybe I'll throw in a veggie oil painting now and then. So far, I've seemed to do better at growing and painting them than actually eating them!