One of the many lovely bouquets available at Pike Place Market in Seattle, WA, which we visited at the start of our vacation in June.

Summer is coming to a close, but like the bouquet above  of different colored flowers, the change from summer to fall is “multi-colored.”  First, there are still plenty of warm and even hot days. This week we have a heat wave that will spill over into September, so there is still time for outdoor activities.

Second, September is the start of school, so there is a shift from “fooling around” on vacation to returning to school and “getting down to business.” And because September is also Jewish holidays, for me September is the start of a new year, which it actually is on the Jewish calendar.

Best of all, my grandson just started Temple University this week and I hope to be able to see him more often than when he lived in State College. So I have “school issues” in my head to share which may be useful, whether you have babies, grammar schools kids, or grandchildren going to high school or college. The book below, which I plan to review, is for the younger set, so if you have a young grandchild, this one might be appropriate.

Because I love Fall, I look forward to the change in seasons, the shift from swimming to returning to substitute teaching, and hopefully this year, also  teaching some cooking classes. I miss “playing with food” and sharing the joy of wholesome cooking and eating with others seeking a healthier lifestyle. Apropos to this comment, I plan to feature first this month a chilled soup, since the weather is still warm, and the joy of NOT cooking and eating raw is still important to my diet.  Below is a only a photo of my Chilled Mango Soup. I will post the recipe later this week or over the week-end.

Square One Publishing, whose raw food books I reviewed during the summer, sent me a lovely one entitled Embracing Menopause Naturally by Gabriele Kushi, whose mother-in-law is Aveline Kushi, one of the key people, who with her husband Michio, brought Macrobiotics to the states.  This book not only has recipes and information on menopause, but also profiles and portraits of midlife women from all walks of life and all nationalities. I love this book and would recommend it to any of you looking for a good place to start reading about menopause or want a gift for a female who is “changing.” Even the cover is inviting!

Since I will be reviewing this book, I think I will use Health Flashes to post health nuggets about menopause. I have not done that for awhile, and as the seasons are changing, this is a good time to talk about changes we all go through as midlife women.

I hope to profile fitness expert Fiona this month, since I missed it last month.

Last month I had planned to profile a young woman I met on our vacation, Fiona, whose exercise classes I took while on vacation. Instead, I inserted a posting on friendship, so I will hopefully post Fiona’s profile in September.  I did not realize August 1st was Friendship Day until after I wrote the Home Page for July-August, and I decided the friendship topic was too important not to pass up. And from the positive responses I have received, I made the right decision. There are some “Leftovers” on friendship as more responses come in, and I plan to post some of those, starting with this response from another long-time friend Jo, who helped me through my divorce and beyond.  She sent me this wonderful e-mail that I want to share:

A friend of mine just finished taking an evening class at Stanford. The last  lecture was on the mind-body connection–the relationship between stress and disease.  The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) said, among other things, that one of the best things that a man could do for his health is to be married to a woman whereas for a woman, one of the best things she could do for her health was to nurture her relationships with her girlfriends.  At first everyone laughed, but he was serious.

Women connect with each other differently and provide support systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life experiences. Physically this quality  “girlfriend time” helps us to create more seratonin–a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can create a general feeling of well being.  Women share feelings whereas men often form relationships around  activities. They rarely sit down with a buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their personal lives are going.  Jobs? Yes.  Sports? Yes.  Cars? Yes. Fishing, hunting, golf?  Yes.  But their feelings?–rarely.  Women do it all of the time. We share from our souls with our sisters, and evidently that is very good for our health.  He said that spending time with a friend is just as important to our general health as jogging or working out at a gym.

There’s a tendency to think that when we are “exercising” we are doing something good for our bodies, but when we are hanging out with friends, we are wasting our time and should be more productively engaged–not true.  In fact, he said that failure to create and maintain quality personal relationships with other humans is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking!  So every time you hang out to schmooze with a gal pal, just pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for doing something good for your health!  We are indeed very very lucky.  Sooooo let’s toast to our friendship with our girlfriends. Evidently it’s very good for our health.

So, as we shift from summer to fall, from trips to the shore to trips to the store, from lounging by the pool to getting kids ready for school, take time to enjoy each day of every season. Wishing summer was still around means you will miss the crisp smell of fall. Instead of being sad that the trees seems to be dying because they are losing their leaves, think instead that fall brings gorgeous colors and Indian summer.

If we can also learn to take care of ourselves and the planet, we will be able to pass the changing seasons onto our children and grandchildren, knowing we have done our best to keep Mother Nature happy and healthy! Think about the bouquet at the top and color yourself healthy!!!

Today is July 4th, 2010 and I am back from two weeks in the Northwest and California….a memorable vacation on many levels. Because we went to Alaska, which became the 49th state on January 3, 1959, I feel somewhat patriotic today, having been to this far away state.

I decided to combine July & August into one Home Page, thus the title above.  These are the vacation months when weather here is hot and menus are light and everything slows down a bit. So….to kick off July & August I have decided to commit to a more raw food regimen. I will be teaching a class with MANNA’s dietitian Cyndi Dinger at The Wellness Community again as I did last summer, in conjunction with MANNA, the non-profit organization where I volunteer to prepare and pack meals for critically ill people in the greater Philadelphia area. The topic is Awesome Rawsome, with the emphasis on adding more raw foods to one’s meals.

The recipes at the workshop will include smoothies, salads, and steamed veggies with the idea of not eating 100% raw, but rather adding more uncooked foods (with their enzymes intact) to the diet for improved nutrition. Above are photos of a smoothie, a salad, and steamed veggies from my photo archives. These may not be the exact recipes I choose, but they will be raw or lightly steamed, as these photos show.

As part of this “push” for more unfired fare in my diet, I started a diary called “Diary of a Raw Food Wannabe.” I will keep track of the foods I eat and see how close to raw I can get, as an experiment. Since hot weather predisposes me to cooking less and eating more uncooked meals anyway, the timing is perfect! I started today and will continue at least until I do the MANNA class on July 13th.

This is a photo of the front of The Wellness Community in Philadelphia, It’s nestled in the trees of Fairmount Park and has a lovely backyard with a covered area where we do the workshops.

I also plan to review more raw or nearly raw cookbooks such as the one below. I am waiting for another one in the mail, and then I will post a photo of all of them and give a mini-review of each:

While on vacation, I met two interesting people who worked on the Alaskan cruise ship. I plan to profile both. One is Feona Morrison, whose exercise classes and workshops were inspiring. Below is a photo of Fiona, who is a fireball of fitness:

Fiona Morrison, personal trainer and fitness instructor

The other person I plan to profile is David Naster, who was the comedian on board our ship. My husband and I saw him on two different nights, and then I attended his writing workshop the day before the end of our cruise. He has written three books on the power of humor and I was very much moved by his attitude toward life and laughter and how laughter can ease pain and suffering. Here’s David, a very funny comedian, yet serious about comedy:

David Naster, a serious comedian

Finally, while on vacation, we took many photos, both on the cruise and also in Los Angeles, when we visited my son by marriage and his partner, Ignacio, who works at Sony Columbia. Below is a photo of Julia Roberts with other cast members, who stars in the movie, Eat Pray Love, which I plan to see and review. (I believe Ignacio took the photo.) I also hope to review a movie we saw while in L.A. called Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. At 76 she is still hard at work doing what she does best—make us laugh! Since I am only a few years younger than Ms Rivers, I marveled at the pace she kept up in the documentary. She is a good example of a person with PMZ (post-menopausal zest).

The cast of EAT PRAY LOVE. Note: curtain in the background has the title of the film imprinted on the fabric.

Most of the photos I took were in the northwest, from Seattle to Ketchikan and then back to Victoria, British Columbia. In this Canadian city we visited Butchart Gardens, where this photo was taking. The gardens were breathtaking and I plan to feature the flowers throughout the summer. I also have some flower photos of Venice, California which I plan to share.

Butchart Gardens, Victoria, B.C. taken in the evening. The days were so long that we strolled the gardens from 7 to 9 pm and everything was still light and bright!

I hope your summer will be joyful, restful, and exciting. Take advantage of the weather and garden, walk, swim, paint, or do whatever you can to bring peace and JOY into your life! When I arrived back in Philadelphia, I was wearing my red patent flats, and when I reached the front of our condo building safe and sound, I clicked my heels together like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, and repeated three times, “There’s no place like home.” I am overJOYed to be home.

P.S. After rereading this I am overwhelmed by what I need to do this summer to put all this in the computer, as well as rearrange the books and files in my workspace, so if I do not get to do all of these, just know that today, the 4th of July, I am declaring my independence to do what feels right during (the supposedly) slower summer months!

P.P.S. Just realized that I forgot to mention that July in National Blueberry Month, so there will be blueberry recipes soon.