Author: JF.com
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Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Vegetables By MARK BITTMAN WHAT will it take to get Americans to change our eating habits? The need is indisputable, since heart disease, diabetes and cancer are all in large part caused by the Standard American Diet. (Yes, it’s SAD.) Though experts increasingly recommend a diet high in plants and low in animal products and processed foods, ours is quite the opposite, and there’s little disagreement that changing it could improve our health and save tens of millions of lives. And — not inconsequential during the current struggle over deficits and spending — a sane diet could save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars in health care costs. Yet the food industry appears incapable of marketing healthier foods. And whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn’t matter, because the fixes are not really their problem. Their mission is not public health but profit, so they’ll continue to sell the health-damaging food that’s most profitable, until the market or another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” should be the federal government, fulfilling its role as an agent of the public good and establishing a bold national fix. Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available. click here to read the rest >>
Salmon with Corn Sauce
Salmon with Corn Sauce #ratingval# from #reviews# reviews Print Recipe Type: entree Author: Jane Fonda Prep time: 40 mins Cook time: 20 mins Total time: 1 hour Serves: 4 When weather permits, cook the salmon on an outdoor charcoal grill for a great summer dinner party. Although relatively high in fat as seafood goes, salmon is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, which benefit the heart and circulatory system. Ingredients 2 tablespoons reduced sodium soy sauce 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon sugar 4 center-cut salmon fillets, about 4 oz each (skinned and trimmed, and pin bones removed) 2 cups corn kernels 1/3 cup choppied sun-dried tomatoes, packed without oil 1/2 cup water 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 1/4 cup chopped green onions, green and white parts 1/4 cup choped fresh cilantro (fresh coriander) 1 teaspoon ground black pepper Instructions To make marinade, in a shallow glass baking dish, combine the soy sauce, garlic, lemon juice and sugar. Add the salmon fillets, turn to coat both sides, cover, refrigerate and marinate for 15 minutes to 8 hours. (I usually do this in a ziploc bag.) To make the corn sauce, in a small saucepan over medium-high het, combine the corn, tomatoes, water and cumin. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the tomtoes are soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the green onions and cilantro and stir to mix well. Cover to keep warm. In a large nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat, heat 1 tablespoon of the marinade. Transfer the salmon to a work surface and coat with the pepper. Discard the remaining marinade. Add the salmon to the hot pan and saute for 4 minutes. Turn and saute the fish until it just separates when pressed with a fork, about 4 minutes more. To serve, divide the fillets among 4 individual plates. Top each with an equal amount of the sauce. Garnish with cilantro sprig. Notes The corn sauce, which is also good on chicken breasts or halibut, can be made ahead, refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 2 days and reheated in a small saucepan over low heat while the fish cooks. Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe 1.2.4
FORGIVENESS
I have no words for what I have felt these past days reading many of your blog comments. It is clear to me that even after all this time, there is so much healing to be done around the Vietnam War. I know from my own life that essential to healing is forgiveness. The most moving comments to me were those from veterans who said they have disliked me for years and now, having read my post about my trip to Hanoi, they understand better and can forgive me. This tells me two things: that these men are brave –because it takes much courage to give up preconceptions. It also shows me and that these men are on a path of healing and for that I am grateful. Ironic that the QVC incident became an opportunity for healing and forgiveness. I recall reading Secretary of State Robert McNamara’s book, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” in which he took a stand against the war he had orchestrated, saying that it was “wrong, terribly wrong.” In an amazing documentary, “Fog of War,” he said the greatest lesson for him was the need to know one’s enemy — and to “empathize with him.” “We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes.” I had harbored such anger against McNamara, but when I read his book and saw the documentary I hoped I would one day have a chance to thank him for his courage. I knew from friends of his how he had long suffered because of what he had done. In 2005, I met him at a book fair in Wales and went up to him and told him how grateful I was that he had the courage to say what he said, admit what he did was wrong. That was a healing moment for me. Poet and teacher Stephen Levine in his book, A Year to Live, wrote, “Even an unsuccessful attempt at forgiveness has the considerable power of its intention. We cannot force forgiveness because force closes the heart, but we can explore its possibilities, its capacity to heal the forgiver, and sometimes the forgiven.” Levine also said that forgiveness “is mercy in action in the same way that compassion is wisdom in action.” In my new book I write about forgiveness and I quote Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi who describes what it does to us when we are unable or unwilling to forgive: “… when I refuse to forgive someone who has wronged me, I mobilize my own inner criminal justice system to punish the offender. As judge and jury, I sentence the person to a long prison term without pardon and incarcerate him in a prison that I construct from the bricks and mortar of a hardened heart. Now as jailor and warden, I must spend as much time in prison as the prisoner I am guarding. All the energy that I put into maintaining the prison system comes out of my “energy budget.” From this point of view, bearing a grudge is very “costly,” because long-held feelings of anger, resentment, and fear drain my energy and imprison my vitality and creativity. So, thanks to all and may we all experience the healing power of forgiveness.
ACTING
Excerpted from Jane Fonda’s NYTimes #1 Bestseller “My Life So Far” As I write this I realize that I’ve done a good deal of thinking about acting in the fifteen-year hiatus I have taken, and I’d like to try to give you a sense of what it’s like, at least for me. In most films there is a scene when the main character is going through a critical transition or defining event. Whether or not the story works often depends on the success of that scene. Sometimes the director will want to shoot it in one long take, with the camera following you as you move from place to place, hitting your marks, all the while making the emotional transitions. This delicate balance between technical and emotional demands is the hallmark of movie acting. I would usually wake up the morning of the critical scene feeling quesy, with a knot in my belly. I’d arrive at the studio for makeup and hair, and at some point I’d be asked to stop what I was doing and come to the set for rehearsal. Should I give it my all? There is the risk that if I do, I won’t have anything left when the real time comes (as was the case in my big scene in On Golden Pond). On the other hand, the purpose of rehearsal is to discover what my moves will be so that the lights can be set and the camera will know where to follow me; and if I don’t dip fairly deep into the emotional waters during rehearsal, how will I know where I’m apt to go? So I rehearse and pray that I’ve given just enough, but not too much. Rehearsal now over, I go back to my trailer to finish hair and makeup and then wait while the crew lights the set and practices camera moves with my stand-in. It can be a thirty-minute wait or an hour or, if it’s a complicated setup, three hours. What do do? Do I read a book or get into a conversation that might risk taking me too far away from where my emotions are meant to be? Do I just sit here and think about the scene and risk getting too much into my head? The challenge is knowing myself well enough to calibrate correctly the balance between physical relaxation and emotional alertness that will most benefit me during the one- to three-hour wait. But it’s hard not to feel like a balloon from which air is slowly leaking. Then the moment comes. The knock on the door: “We’re ready, Miss Fonda.” Truthfully some small part of me (which I would try to ignore) has hoped that the sound stage would catch fire or the director would have a breakdown so that this moment could be postponed—for a year, maybe. But, no, there’s the knock. No going back now. So I step out of my trailer and begin the endless walk to where everyone is waiting, all one hundred people who work on a film on any given day. As I run the gauntlet, the issue of my salary comes to mind. Why didn’t I agree to do the damn thing for free? I know there are people on the set who are just waiting to see if I’m worth all that dough, like that guy over there on the ladder reading the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I remember being told that shooting on an average Hollywood film costs in the neighborhood of $100,000 a day. If this goes badly, maybe I can offer to deduct it from my salary; otherwise I may never get hired again. Please let me stay relaxed, help me stay in my truth, tell my muse to be with me now. I arrive on the set that just a short while ago during rehearsal was a place of forgiving shadows. Now it’s a pitiless glare of light under which my possible disintegration will be exposed for all to see. Breathe deeply, Jane. Get out of your head and into your body . . . quiet the demon voice that is trying to tell you that today is the day you’ll be exposed as an overpaid fraud. This is the part of film acting that I was only too happy to leave behind, the part that became more agonizing as time went on. Yet you have to go through those terrifying times if you are ever to have the magic ones, the times when it all works—and to be truthful, those I have missed. There were perhaps only eight or nine of them out of forty-five films, but they were the times when I stepped into my light and my muse was with me, all my channels were open, the creative flow coursed through my body, and I became. Whether the scene was sad or funny, tragic or triumphant, never mattered. When it worked it was like being enveloped in love and light, as I danced the intricate dance between technique and emotion, fully inside the scene while simultaneously a separate part of me observed and enjoyed the unfolding. Ah. but just because it has happened once doesn’t mean it will again! Each time is starting new, raw; its a crapshoot—you just never know. Which is why this profession is so great for the heart—and so hard on the nerves. I always assumed that the more you did something the easier it would get, but in the case of my career I found the opposite to be true. Every year the work seemed to get harder and my fear more paralyzing. Once, on the set of Old Gringo, I watched Gregory Peck late in his career doing a long, very difficult scene over and over again all day long. I saw that he too was scared. I went up to him afterward and hugged him and told him how beautiful and transparent he had been. “But, Greg,” I asked, “why do we do this to ourselves? Especially you. You’ve had a long and incredible career. You could easily retire. Why are you still willing to be scared?” Greg sat for a moment, rubbing his chin. Then he said, “Well, Jane, maybe it’s like my friend Walter Matthau says. His biggest thrill in life is to be gambling and losing a bit more than he can afford and then have one chance to win it all back. That’s what you life for—that moment. The crapshoot. If it’s easy, what’s the point?
Chair Squat
This is one of my favorites, and can be done almost anywhere. It will strengthen your core, tone the legs, and firm the buttocks. Try to hold it for 60 seconds and if that becomes to easy (good for you!!!). Repeat it after a short break.
Jane Fonda’s Adopted Daughter Reconnects with Her Birth Family
At 14, Mary Williams moved from the poverty-scathed streets of East Oakland to Jane Fonda’s hacienda in Santa Monica. Decades later, Williams returns home to find out if blood really is thicker than water. I am about to attempt time travel. Once I pass through airport security and board US Airways flight 2748 to Oakland, California, I will be transported to a place I fled nearly 30 years ago. Although I have taken on physical challenges, like a cross-country bicycle ride and a five-month stint on a research base in Antarctica, I have generally shied away from emotional ones. Six years ago I quit my well-paying job, left my fiancé, and sold my three-bedroom home in Atlanta, abandoning a life of materialism and attachment to pursue one that included solitude, travel, and adventure. Now 43, I spend half the year working all over the country for federal parks and nonprofits, doing odd jobs like manning a visitor center, clearing trails, or assisting researchers. So I often live in constrained quarters with an assorted lot of scientists, dreamers, and vagabonds. The rest of the time I enjoy self-imposed exile in my tiny Arizona condo, happiest when left alone to hike, read, or watch YouTube: I’m especially drawn to makeup application and hairstyling videos, even though I seldom wear cosmetics and my hair is two inches long; I like the girl talk without the hassle of actual girlfriends. Although the Internet connects me to the outside world, I was hesitant to try Facebook. But after a colleague at an Alaskan wildlife refuge introduced me to the site, insisting that with my reclusive lifestyle it would be the ideal way to stay in touch, I decided to give it a shot. That’s how I found Neome Banks, someone I haven’t seen since childhood. And that’s why I’m headed back to Oakland. I want to see the place that formed me, find the people I left behind. Neome and I grew up in the heart of the violent and frenzied Black Power movement. As members of the Black Panther Party-an organization founded in Oakland during the mid-1960s to stop police brutality toward African-Americans-our parents tried to help those who lacked employment, education, and healthcare. Revolution was a day-to-day reality resulting in bloody shoot-outs between the police and, well, us. Neome and I shared this reality, but at the same time we were just kids. Like me, Neome was the baby girl of her family, raised by a single mother. We became friends. At 5 years old, we spent most of our time at the Panther-run community school, starting each day with a hot breakfast followed by calisthenics, classes, and after-school activities like art and music lessons (I played clarinet), sports, and readings from Chairman Mao Zedong’s manifesto The Little Red Book. Although not formally members of the Communist Party, Panthers were socialists, and we were taught to sympathize with revolutionaries like Mao and Che Guevara. At night I often drifted to the homes of other Panther members, whom I thought of as family. My mother was a cook. She also sold our official newspaper, The Black Panther. My father was a captain in the Panthers’ militaristic hierarchy. He participated in one of the most controversial programs, the armed citizens’ patrol, wherein he and other men with guns followed police cars, ready to defend any blacks threatened by police. I was a toddler when my father was sent to San Quentin prison after he led the cops on a high-speed chase while hurling Molotov cocktails. At first, my mother took me and my five siblings on long bus rides to visit him. But after a few months the trips ended, as did our relationship with our father. My mother quit the Panthers when I was 6. I learned about this at the community school when one of the administrators called me out of class and informed me I wouldn’t be coming back. Ever. She handed me a sack lunch and sent me on my way. Stunned and confused, I walked through the gate to the sidewalk. Then I turned back toward my school, opened the brown paper sack, and threw the peanut butter and jelly sandwich over the gate, followed by a boiled egg, an apple, and carrot sticks. Then I ran home. CLICK HERE MORE MORE
Spaghetti in Spicy Peanut Sauce
Spaghetti in Spicy Peanut Sauce #ratingval# from #reviews# reviews Print Recipe Type: Main Author: Jane Fonda Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 10 mins Total time: 25 mins Serves: 4 Although peanut butter is high in fat, a little goes a long way in providing protein, fiber, B vitamins, minerals and an interesting taste to this vegetarian dish. For the best flavor and texture, purchase pasta made from semolina (durum wheat flour). Other pasta may be substituted for the classic round strands of spaghetti. If you choose to use fresh rather than dried pasta, cook it for about 3 minutes. Ingredients 1/2 cup (4 fl oz/125 ml) vegetable stock or vegetable broth 3 tablespoons reduced fat chunky peanut butter 1 tablespoon reduced sodium soy sauce 1 garlic clove, peeled and minced 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 6 qt (6 l) water 12 oz dried spaghetti 1 green bell pepper (capsicum), seeded, deribbed and chopped 1 red bell pepper (capsicum) seeded, deribbed and chopped 1/2 cup chopped green (spring) onions, green and white parts 1/4 cup (1/3oz/10g) chopped fresh cilantro (fresh coriander) Instructions n small saucepan,over med. high heat, heat the stock until hot. To make the sauce,in med. bowl, combine the hot broth, garlic, peanut butter, soy sauce, and red pepper flakes. Cook spaghetti according to directions on box until al dente.During the last minute of cooking add bell peppers and blanch for 1 minute. In a large bowl combine pasta ,peppers and sauce to coat well. Serve and ENJOY!!! Calories: 409 Fat: 6g Saturated fat: 1g Carbohydrates: 74g Fiber: 3g Protein: 15g Cholestrol: 0mg Notes To test that pasta is done al dente, use a long fork to remove a piece about 1 minute before the allotted cooking time. Let it cool briefly, then taste. When al dente it should be tender and cooked through but still chewy. Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe 1.2.4