Maria Theresa Maggi

The Spirit of Thanksgiving Past

November 15, 2012

This Wednesday evening my loved ones will pull into my driveway for the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of the long day trip from Portland. The dog will run to the back door with his ears at attention, and I will wipe my hands on my apron or jump up from the computer screen and […]

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Life Beyond Chocolate

November 13, 2012

Most people following or learning to follow a healthy vegan or plant-based diet are relieved to discover that a little cocoa powder here and there is allowed, and can add depth and richness to healthy foods.  The recent surge of enthusiastic and joyful comments on Susan’s post, Pumpkin Spiced Hot Chocolate is compelling evidence for this […]

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The Power of the Plateau

November 11, 2012

When I was in the fourth grade, the orthopedist I saw for the cerebral palsy put me on a diet.  It was 1965, and I was 9 years old. The goal was for me to lose 25 pounds. His reasoning was that with the balance and coordination problems I experience with the mild CP, it […]

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The Reincarnation of My Jack-o-Lantern

November 10, 2012

“In this room with two navels, Somebody wants to be born again.” –from “Saint Pumpkin” by Nancy Willard           Thank you, Saint Pumpkin, for lighting the way, and being so delicious.   Maria    

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The Toaster Oven

November 8, 2012

How  a  Beautiful Exception Can Prove the Rule Two years ago, in the summer of 2010, I wrote this: “Note: Don’t internalize the theories of others about how well you’re doing. They will always miss the mark in some essential way, especially if they are not in any way informed or involved in a plant […]

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Interlude: Pears

November 7, 2012

By request, I take a brief pause in drafting other posts I’m planning to share a simple dessert I mentioned and pictured in my last  post: pear sorbet. During the summer I enjoyed introducing a few of my friends on the McDougall board to the joys of banana “ice cream.” Now I love banana ice […]

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In Praise of Buckwheat Groats

November 5, 2012

This was my lunch or dinner a couple of months ago on a regular basis. It was divine. Luckily, I remembered to take at least this picture before I ate the whole thing on that particular day. It’s already about half gone. I love to eat things in bowls. The wonderful woman who has been […]

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The Blue Cornflower Effect

November 3, 2012

The restoration of the flower beds shown in my previous post yielded this surprising beauty a couple of months after, in late October, a time long past when this sort of thing is what’s happening in that particular flower bed: I have not seen cornflowers in this bed since it was full of them the […]

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Softer Light on the Path

November 1, 2012

Last August I sat on a yellow jacket. Apparently, anyway. I never saw it. It was very warm out, around noon. (The fact that I was outside and not weak and shaky because of the heat is a little victory in itself.) The friend who has been helping me with landscape restoration in my garden, […]

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Reading My Way to Straight Up Food

October 30, 2012

When I was growing up, my mother used to say, “If you can read, you can cook.” So from the very start of my cooking career, I carefully poured over the instructions in the Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls, certain if I followed the instructions faithfully, my creations would turn out. This was reinforced […]

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