I'm really struggling with my weight these days. A doctor friend told me it's my body's stubborn attempt to hold onto whatever little estrogen is left. My diet is ultra clean. Dessert is a rare treat and, despite my love of cocktails, I'm limiting myself to just one a week. I don't get as much exercise as I should—no snow has meant no snowshoeing, for one thing—but I'm hoping that warmer weather will make it easier to get outside and to use our makeshift gym in the (unheated) barn. My biggest challenge is to not loathe my body, which has outgrown much of my cherished wardrobe, but I am trying to practice compassion. I often consult Christiane Northrup's invaluable book, The Widsom of Menopause, so I know many women go through similar changes, and that they are not irreversible. On the plus side, I now have cleavage. Unfortunately, it's often in places it shouldn't be.
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Fruit leather! You can make it with practically any fruit you have on hand. Chewy, lightly sweet and loaded with delicious fruit flavor, it's ideal to stash at the office, pack in lunch boxes or take along on a hike. Better than what you can buy—because you've made it yourself with organic fruit, honey and spices—it virtually makes itself. You just cut up fruit, cook it down to a puree, pass it through a sieve, sweeten it a little and spread it out on baking sheets to dry in a very low oven. I made the mistake of leaving mine in overnight, so I couldn't monitor its progress and the edges got a little too dry, but even so they are like wonderful shards of stained glass that crunch and dissolve in the mouth.
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Growing up in Santa Cruz, still a hippie mecca to this day, I was exposed early on to all manner of what used to be known as "health foods"—sprouts, carob, smoothies, kefir, whole grain sourdough bread. Maybe that's why I still enjoy trawling about crunchy food co-ops, peering at bags of sesame sticks, bins of millet and containers of powdered spirulina. There is almost always an assortment of carob-covered items (raisins, almonds, ginger) and sometimes these little nuggets, studded with lots of goodies. I love carob's dark, earthy richness; its mild bitterness and distinct winey taste hold up to chocolate's complexity. Carob is a species of flowering evergreen tree in the pea family that is cultivated for its edible seed pods, which are also known as "St. John's bread" because John the Baptist was said to have subsisted on them in the wilderness. Supposedly they also fed Mohammed's armies. The pod can be elongated, compressed, straight or curved and takes a full year to develop and ripen. It is the dried and sometimes roasted pod that we eat, and not the peas or seeds inside. These are called locust beans and are used for animal feed or as the source of locust bean gum, a thickening agent that is an ingredient in many  processed foods.
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