Credit: Google Images/Ben Aaronovitch

Time to Slow Down

As we head into the coldest time of year, the desire for quiescence and going within begins to grow within each of us. Reduced activity or, at least, more indoor activities, like reading, yoga, and contemplation by the crackling fire will help preserve our energies through to spring. Reading, baking, cooking from scratch all come to mind in this the slowest (and most flavorful, in my opinion) of seasons. I can’t help but share a bit of sage advice (from my own nutrition book, of course) about the best foods for the coming season, as well as some personal reading favorites that perhaps you, too, will explore by a crackling fire or scenic picture window.

The following is excerpted from “The 5-Element Guide to Healing with Whole Foods” (Lulu Press, Inc., 2016):

“Water is the element of Winter, the most Yin of seasons. It represents the completion of a cycle and the cleansing of previous cycles. Energies are stored deep within, as in the roots of plants and trunks of trees, as well as within ourselves. It is the time of year to be more introspective and less physically active. At this time of the year, it is essential to keep one’s internal core warm for good health.”

Winter Foods

Functions: cooling, moisten dryness, soften and dissipate hard lumps/masses, improve digestion, purge bowels; detoxification.

Foods: celery, barley, millet, soy products (especially miso and soy sauce), seaweed (kombu, kelp, etc.), sea vegetables, sesame seeds (black & white), walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds; mushrooms.

Herbs/Spices: mineral salts (in their natural, unprocessed form), celery seed, nettles.

Good Seasonal Food Choices

“Winter is the season of the Kidney/ Urinary Bladder organ system, where our root energies lie. Bitter and salty foods are contracting and inward/downward moving, which help us store our energies and keep us centered. Salty foods strengthen Kidney but too much actual salt can weaken it.

Include miso, soy products, seaweed, seafood, millet, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, celery seeds, and barley in your diet. Bitter foods include parsnips, cauliflower, cabbage, turnips/rutabagas, celery, alfalfa, rye, quinoa, chicory root, and burdock root. Roasted chicory root blended with other roasted herbs makes a nice substitute for coffee, which depletes Kidney energies, especially Essence, with its caffeine content.

It is appropriate to add some Yang foods (warming, acrid/pungent) if you tend toward feeling cold during winter months. One-pot meals like slow-cooked soups and stews are your best choices, and you can add in both salty and bitter foods to create a healthy, nutrient-dense meal.”

Good Winter Reads

Reading tastes vary but I know I’ll be digging into some of my favorite authors once the cold weather settles in for its seasonal visit. During the winter months, I have a habit of going back and re-reading some of my personal favorites. This is just a short list of mystery/suspense favorites: Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson, anything by Michael Connelly and Daniel Silva or David Baldacci.

In historical fiction/WWII stories of resistance and spies (in France, UK, Italy), I’m loving Cara Black and her new Kate Rees novels: Three Hours in Paris (fictionalized account of a true situation dealing with Hitler) and her newest, Night Flight to Paris. She also has the delicious Aimee Leduc detective series in Paris that I’m slowly working my way through.

There’s also Kate Quinn (The Rose Code, The Alice Network), Madelaine Martin (The Librarian Spy, The Last Bookshop in London, The Keeper of Hidden Books) and a newly discovered (and absolutely addicting) series by Mark Pryor, whose protagonist, Hugo Marsten, is a Texan and former FBI agent, now head of security for the U.S. Embassy in Paris. He helps Paris police (Gendarme) solve homicides, occasionally with his on-and-off French girlfriend/journalist. Between Mark and Cara Black, I’ll never need a map to find my way around Paris!

Have a Wonderful Holiday Season – whatever you celebrate.

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Conscious Writing – the must-have recipe for success

On the (now defunct, thanks to Meta Zuckerberg) Fan page for my nutrition book, I posted a blog on conscious eating. In writing that blog, an idea formed in my mind that we, as writers, must also write consciously. Not that we’re sleeping while we write, mind you; it’s more about being present, relevant, and aware of our work in quality and quantity. We’re all so busy racing to Twitter, to post to Pinterest, Google+ and too many other online venues to get our work noticed that we each lose something along the way. Much of our vocabulary has changed to a texting-style spelling (you, too is now u2, and so on) to save time and in the process, some have lost the ability to express thoughts and ideas clearly. Hence the concept of ‘conscious writing.’

A food recipe lists the ingredients, the quantity of each ingredient, and how many people it will serve. Conscious writing is no different. Your main topic is the recipe and each point you make to support your topic is one of the ingredients. Once all the points are covered, you have a recipe for a complete article/book/blog. As for how many people it will serve, that will depend on your ability to market your writing – be it a blog, a book, etc. Also, the quality of the recipe/story needs to be relevant and interesting. Don’t forget about good grammar and spelling (as they too, have all but disappeared from many a blog/article) – use spell check and thesaurus religiously to weed out homonyms and incomplete or run-on sentences. (In other words, get out of the habit of writing as you speak.)

In a recent blog on Puttylike, a website for self-described “multipotentialites,” I read an article (several times already today) titled, “I saw it as the one defining principle of my life that kept me from achieving greatness.” It’s a must-read for anyone out there who’s not sure where they fit in the bigger scheme of things, especially in the world of writing.

That being said, I’d like to add my opinion (remember, I’m an expert on it) that the more varied a life we live, the more interesting our writing will be, since we have a wider range of subject matter from which to choose. Unlike all those so-called experts who spend their adult lives specializing in only ONE area of interest and are unable to see how their expertise is connected to many other areas, our recipes/stories are both unique and relevant.

And hopefully conscious.

Conscious Marketing

And it dawned on me that marketing, advertising and PR are a part of that recipe, the conscious writing process. How can I give my work to the world if I don’t know how to package it? What are the ingredients (a dash of marketing, a sprinkle of advertising, and two tablespoons of PR) that make up a good dish/story? It’s different for each of us. Every now and then, someone shares a few unique approaches/recipes for success. In her blog, Build Book Buzz, Sandra Beckwith shares with her readers a wonderful little success story about how one woman came up with some different ways to sell herself and her book. You can read about her unique approaches here.

I met with a friend on Tuesday to brainstorm and he told me about a friend of his who wanted to get her book into Barnes and Noble. So what did she do? Did she take the traditional route of hawking her wares to the book buyers? Not even close. She simply walked into a local B&N store and left a copy of her book on a shelf. Then, when someone went to buy the book, they couldn’t because it wasn’t in the system. The clerk had to add the book to the system and they had to buy copies, since there was a demand.

Talk about conscious marketing!

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