Wednesday 7 March 2007

The Heart of the Matter-eating for life


I think it's fairly safe to say that we all know or know about someone with heart problems. After all the heart is what keeps us alive but we often forget that we are responsible for making its work easier within this body of ours. One year ago Michelle of the Accidental Scientist wrote this post about women and heart disease and that prompted us to start talking about making a monthly event about heart friendly food but there was always something getting in the way and it petered out into nothing. Michelle has taken a sabbatical from food blogging, she's busy finishing her PhD and getting married to this man (scroll down to see him, LB do you hate me now??) and moving so she can't participate now when I finally is moving in the right direction but I hope she will join later on. I have another partner though, Joanna from Joanna's Food who has experienced how it is living and cooking after a heart attack of her husband, her blog is full of recipes of heart friendly food. We plan to make this a monthly event with different themes each time and after the roundups on our blogs, these roundups are going to be posted on a special blog named after this event, The Heart of the Matter-eating for life, because this is an event with a difference, it's made with the hope of building up a recipe base that will be useful for all of us when we want to cook healthy meals so every time you participate you are not only presenting us with a nice recipe, you are also doing a good deed. And who can resist that? Well I can when I feel that it's too much of goody two shoes over something but I hope you don't feel like that about this, after all it's about your health as well as mine!
One of the main reasons that has driven us to start this event is to show that eating healthy isn't boring, nor is it difficult or time consuming. To prove this I can just say that since I moved to Italy and really began to eat the Mediterranean way, I not only eat healthier and better but I also eat tastier food! So you don't have to make it difficult for you if you want to participate, often a simpler recipe with the right ingredients is the healthiest one! And remember that we want all types of food here, 'normal', vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free -- whatever that qualifies as good for the heart food is welcome!
If you want to find out more about what healthy heart food is about, check out these links:
Joanna has made a very useful and easy to follow list here. And then we have this, this, this, this, this and this. Kalyn told me that the South Beach Diet actually started out as a diet for a healthier heart so you may find this post of hers useful. Please feel free to give me more useful links, this is just the beginning!

The first theme is going to be Finger Food, we thought that it would be perfect for the 'introduction party' of this event and then finger food recipes are always good to have at hand (sorry I just can't resist making these horribly bad puns sometimes), the last day to send me (i_beretta AT yahoo DOT it) your entry is the 22 of March, please remember to link here and that we want only one event entries.
Any thoughts?

4 comments:

barb said...

I love this idea, ESPECIALLY, since we are going to be traveling the next year and you know how easy it is to slip into the junk food eating while cruising down the highway of life.

janelle said...

Hello: Ilva/doodles?!? How do I reach you via email? I am hankering to launch a default dinner site, and want to be in touch with you re: some feedback:)...

...talkoftomatoes aka janelle

Christine said...

I just found you through Kalyn's finger food post today.
Brava! for starting this blog. I'll be checking back often and hope to participate once in a while.

Anonymous said...

hello i really do think this is good as im doing a project at school and i hope you to do more