This recipe has been filtered, distilled, and adapted. It began its life (perhaps) in Jane Brody's Good Food Book, before being nudged toward nirvana by my dear friend Adrian, who passed it to me. This adaptation tweaks it still further -- hopefully for the better, you'll have to be the judge.

You’ll Need:

1 cup unbleached flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
4 Tbsp butter, melted
2 cups of the ripest blueberries

To Start

Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

Stir in milk and mix until smooth.

Next

Pour the melted butter into a 1-quart casserole dish. Following the untimely demise of our ONLY casserole dish in the first attempt at this blueberry cobbler, we've been making it in a simple pie plate. It works wonderfully.

Pour the batter right onto the butter, and then put the berries on top of the batter. You'll need to press them down a bit, and the batter should rise around them en route to cobbler heaven.

Finally

Bake at 350 for 40 - 45 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the crust begins to golden and delicious smells flood into your home.

With heroic restraint, let it cool until the crust edges away from the sides of the dish. At that point I think Adrian said it best, "Spoon into dishes, serve with cream, ice cream, or it’s fantastic just by itself."

The Easiest Side In The World

We tried this recipe the other day with the simple goal to get more fungus (mushrooms actually) into our lives. With the philosophy of starting simple, Dottie just threw in the most basic pair and let it go at that. It was wonderful, wonderfully simple, and so we wanted to share it with you here. It's not only easy because it has only two main ingredients, but also because most grocery stores slice the mushrooms for you!

You’ll Need:

1/3 cup mushrooms per person, sliced
1/3 cup sweet onions per person, sliced
1 Tbsp butter per person
1 Tbsp olive oil per person
Salt and pepper to taste

To Start and Finish

Simply warm butter and olive oil over a medium flame. Saute mushrooms and onions together until the mushrooms begin giving off their liquid and the onions have mellowed to a nice translucent. Salt and pepper to taste.

Variations on a theme

This was so successful that we (read, I) couldn't leave well enough alone and had to tinker with the flavors. Into the saute you can add 1 clove minced garlic. And other veggies that work in combination include thinly sliced red bell peppers.

The key is to play. Have fun. Experiment. What's the worst that could happen?

The Easiest Dessert In The World

I love this dessert. And it is truly the easiest one OTP (on the planet), and balanced. By balanced, I mean that it works. Peanut butter and jelly is a sugar and a fat. Macaroni and Cheese? Starch and fat. Bread and Butter? You get the picture. The easiest dessert in the world is some variation of Peaches and Cream! The best part is that it works just as well for blueberries, strawberries, or any fresh cut fruit.

You’ll Need:

1/2 cup fresh cut fruit per person
3 Tbsp cream

1 sprinkle of brown sugar (optional to taste)

To Start and Finish

Fruit in bowl. Cream on Fruit. Dredge it all around and enjoy.

Variations on a theme

One friend reported the addition of some Chambord. Hard to argue with that!

Exercise Your Exercise Options

Time for another exercise revolution? I think so. We've been conditioned to believe that exercise, like medicine, must taste terrible or it isn't doing any good.

No pain, no gain.

And traditional thinking has informed us that it doesn't even count as exercise, unless it's aerobic. In other words, you have to maintain an elevated heart rate of X percent of baseline for Y minutes. So not only does it have to hurt, but you also have to be something of a sports physiologist to do it right.

Unfortunately, this leads people to try ballistic sports, buy expensive machines, and cry when they just can't maintain the bottom-busters routine any more.

Of course, some people really can keep up this kind of pace: gifted athletes, and those with a Spartan work ethic. These anomalies easily pound the treadmill, pump the iron, or blast through their aerobic tapes, day in and day out.

But lets face it. These cardiovascular curve-busters are the exception, not the rule. So, the advice to exercise like they exercise should be just as "exceptional."

The alternatives may surprise you, because they're activities you might not think of as exercise, per se. A recent UK study assessed how much people moved in daily life activities, and estimated the number of calories consumed.

Housework, though not nearly as sexy as Tae Bo or Jane Fonda, nevertheless burns up to 144 calories per hour. And you don't have to buy a tape series to get those benefits! Dig in the dirt – i.e., garden – to burn up to 350 calories in an hour, and you get to eat the proceeds.

Other non-exercise exercises? Stretch. Play softball. One recommendation is to simply walk while you're talking on the phone. You don't need to wag weights around, just move whenever you can. Stroll after your meals. Stroll during your breaks. Get a buddy and walk.

Unless you work on the 300th floor, take the stairs instead of the elevator. Put on some music at home, close the curtains if you have to, and dance to the beat.

All this may seem way too trivial to REALLY do any good -- after all, none of that hurts, burns, or will kill your back for the next two days. However, accumulating evidence indicates that even brief episodes of casual walking or moving around (10 - 15 minutes) can make a big difference in your cardiovascular capacity and even your weight.

In the long-term, the more you move the easier it is to move. The key is to enjoy what you are doing. Success is about loving your life, including your exercise. If you don't love it, or at least enjoy it, you won’t be doing it for long, so why start at all? Choose activities that you love and WANT to do. This way it is an expression of who you are, not some externally imposed strictures. These are no more than recipes for frustration.

Fat Fallacy-Compatible Exercise:

I found my thrill ...

July is blueberry month. I know we're almost to the end of the month, but those blueberries are peaking right now! They’re primed to be plucked, as we speak.

There is a blueberry farm about an hour from our house. It's just a patch of land with a family that leaves money out in the change bucket, so you can pick and pay yourself in case they are not home.

We've been twice so far, and the blueberries were fabulous. Fabulous! Better off the stem than anything you could possibly get from the store. And do you know what we paid for them? One dollar and fifty cents, for a quart! You can pay three dollars for a pint at standard grocery stores.

And picking fruit is a perfect exercise. Find a place near you, even if you have to drive an hour out, to pick berries of some sort. Think about the process of blueberry exercise (do I sense a workout video coming on?), which requires walking and standing. It demands postural stabilization as you reach and pluck, reach and pluck. This is an exercise Pilates would be proud of!

There is something peaceful, too, almost Tai Chi-esque, about the primal instinct of picking little ripe fruits off the bushes. It's a very grounding, simian kind of pleasure to step into the middle of an old clump, squat on your haunches beneath the twigs heavy with those sweet cyan clusters.

All around you they drip, the tasty objects of my eye-hand coordination. Into my bucket they go, a little at a time, although "quality control" demands that some be tested randomly as one goes along.

The steady picking, standing, walking, squatting, and reaching make blueberry picking a perfect exercise. Even with all that, you still don’t have to take your heart rate, sweat, or wear a headband. That being said, as in all training activities, one must have a “cool down” set of activities following the main one. In this case, I would recommend the routine known as Blueberry Cobbler (see above)!

The Puzzler

The New Miracle Drug ...

An incredible new drug has burst onto the market, representing a true
miracle of modern nutrition science. Reports across a broad array of research journals confirm this wonder pill's absolutely stunning health benefits with only minimal, quite acceptable, side effects.

Among its lengthy list of benefits, it slows aging. Experiments reported in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience have shown decreases in the common age-related declines in cognitive function. This is thought to occur because the incredible molecules packed into this single capsule defeat the cell damaging, DNA blasting "free radicals," by providing the richest source of anti-oxidants known.

In fact, this chemical cocktail scored better than 40 fruits and
vegetables in a recent study in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry,
which measured the ability of molecules to absorb these dangerous oxygen
radicals.

As if feeling younger weren't enough, biochemistry studies by the
Agricultural Research Service revealed that this single pill
actually decreases the growth of cervical and breast cancer cells!
Bolstering its dramatic health qualities is resveratrol, a potent anti-cancer
agent. Epidemiologic and clinical studies consistently show that resveratrol
may reduced cardiovascular disease, lower total cholesterol, and LDL
cholesterol.

This one incredible drug is also an anti-platelet and anti-ischemic
that improves the blood flow. Researchers speculate that this may occur in
part through its unique ability, recently reported in the Journal of
Nutrition, to increase the flexibility of your arteries.

Moreover, European research teams have shown how it improves
night vision, and the New England Journal of Medicine reported that it even
inhibits the bacteria that cause bladder infections! In addition to its
impressively packed cache of antioxidants, anthocyanosides, bacterial
inhibitors, vitamins A and C, carotenoids, and folic acid, there's even
dietary fiber added.

With such a stockpile of chemicals loaded into a single pill, one might
raise concerns of unwanted chemical cross-reactivity. But no evidence has
been produced to suggest that this is the case. The consumer has even more reason to cheer at its extraordinarily low price -- a single dose costing
mere pennies. And, in a truly novel innovation in drug delivery technology,
the entire package comes with a pleasant sweetened taste, amply moistened and chewable to be safe for children.

Given these astounding results, the FDA has no hesitations in allowing this
wonder drug access to mass consumption, and it's now available over the
counter, without a prescription, in the US and Canada. You may even
recognize its generic brand name: The Blueberry. Ask your doctor for
details.

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