I don’t know if you remember me telling you about Bethenny Frankel before, but I first met her at ChefDance in Park City in January. Her new book, Naturally Thin, is fresh off the press and I wanted to tell you more about it.

First, let me start by saying that I hate diets. Who doesn’t? But as a food writer and founder of a company that is all about food you could say I’m a bit obsessed with eating, and as such, would like to shed a few pounds before summer. Naturally Thin is a book about how to free ourselves from dieting, so Naturally Thin isn’t a diet, it’s a way of life. Better yet, Bethenny tells us that we don’t have to give up the foods we love. We simply need to moderate our intake.

As a natural foods chef (among many other things) her goal is to “democratize” health. That is, she wants health to be accessible to everyone, not just stars on the red carpet who can afford personal chefs and trainers to keep their bellies flat. Everyone deserves to eat well, be healthy and feel good. Amen.

She bases her no-diet tricks on 10 easy, no brainer rules. I’ll share some of my favorites with you:

1. Your diet is your bank account

Just like a bank account you need to manage how much you spend and save. It’s simply being aware of what you’re putting in your body; balancing not only the amount you eat, but also food “categories” (carbs, proteins, dairy, veggies, etc..) If you eat a hamburger for lunch, then it’s salad for dinner. Easy. No counting calories or points or any of that; just being cognizant of what you eat.

2. Get Real

This is one of my favorites because I grew up eating what I like to call “hippie food.” My mom always piled our plates high with whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and her own soups. We all get busy, but I will fall off the wagon if a diet tells me I can’t have something. Bethenny doesn’t say no to processed foods, but says to limit them and choose foods as close to their natural state as possible. And, as most of us know, raw foods are high in fiber so they fill us up more.

3. Taste everything, eat nothing

I know that sounds strange, but how many times have you been to a cocktail party with a lovely spread of food and you chow down a bit too much on the pâté and brie? Both Bethenny and I have spent a significant amount of time in Italy where we learned the expression mangia poco ma bene. Meaning “Eat little, but well.”  Bethenny says we don’t have to avoid the food table, in fact have it all, but only a taste of each. I like that, because again, if I know I can’t have it I’ll eat the whole darn thing. One of her other rules, which helps to moderate us in the “taste everything, eat nothing” rule, is to spoil our appetite with something healthy before we go to a party, that way we aren’t pigging out.

What happens when we overdo it? Bethenny says, “Don’t focus on your guilt – focus on healing.”  She has recovery recipes – light and easily digestible foods – to naturally flush our system and get us back on track. We just returned from Mexico (lots of chips and guacamole, beans, pork – you get the picture) and my jeans were a bit tighter than they were when I left. I’ve been eating her Pureed Zucchini Soup and I already feel better (and can zip up my jeans!). It’s darn good too, even if you don’t need the recovery!

Pureed Zucchini Soup

1 medium red onion, evenly chopped
6 cups chicken stock or broth
6 medium sized zucchini, evenly chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
12 oz. frozen butternut squash, defrosted
1 cup plain soy milk
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Sauté the onions in a large pot using nonstick pray, until lightly soft. Add the chicken stock, zucchini, salt, and pepper. Cook until zucchini are soft.

Using a hand immersion blender, puree the mixture until smooth. Add the defrosted butternut squash. Turn off the heat and add the soy milk and lemon juice. Season with more salt and pepper, to taste.

At the end of the day I like to relax with a little glass of wine or a cocktail – who doesn’t! Bethenny has a line of cocktails coming soon called SkinnyGirl. Her SkinnyGirl Margarita, in stores in May, is a low-sugar, low-cal version that she says is “the one to trust” since it’s free of all that heavy syrup you get in restaurant margaritas. She even asks bartenders to make it for her, which I now do too!

SkinnyGirl Margarita

2 ounces clear tequila (100% pure agave)
Large splash of lime juice, or 4 lime wedges
Tiny splash of orange or citrus liqueur
Optional: a splash of club soda to lighten it up.

If you’re tired of dieting, but want to look and feel good by summer, then I recommend this as a read (and no, I wasn’t paid to tell you that). Bethenny also has a cookbook coming out next year, but check out her website for more about her and other delicious recipes.

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In 1973, at the age of 5, my family moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Sunriver, a little resort town in Central Oregon just south of Bend. Sunriver is nestled at the feet of the beautiful Cascade mountains and hugged by both the Big and Little Deschutes rivers. My parents, who had visited Sunriver numerous times before, finally decided to move their kids from the cement jungle to the more wholesome forested resort.

And wholesome it was! Miles of bicycle paths, rivers and lakes to swim in, tennis in summer, cross-country and downhill ski teams in winter; we were healthy and active. Fueling our active bodies was mom’s healthy hippie cooking. She was much more athletic than hippie, but her food was total granola. It was delicious, but as a kid it was just too healthy for my junk food craving taste buds. I wanted Cap’n Crunch and Wonder Bread. We got All-Bran and homemade bread. I did love the smell of her homemade bread, but it was so whole grain and hearty that it had to be sliced in massive thick slices or it would fall apart. My brother and I called it Birdseed Bread because she used millet and sunflower seeds (I would kill for that bread today). My sandwiches were about 4 inches thick! Bless my friend, Donna, who would always trade me half of her American cheese on white bread sandwich and one of her Suzy-Qs.

Mom also made soup. My favorite: cream of broccoli. I just didn’t want it for breakfast. I tease my mom today, “who gives their kid broccoli soup for breakfast!?” She replies, “Well, it was always so cold, I had to warm you kids up somehow.” Yes, folks, that was because we would cross-country ski 2.5 miles to the bus stop ( I swear it was uphill both ways). But only when our diesel was frozen and wouldn’t start (which was often). Or maybe that’s just what she told us…

Another “favorite” breakfast was a slice of her uber-grainy bread topped with cheddar cheese and a bit of garlic salt which she’d then throw under the broiler. Yummy after a long day of playing in the snow, not so much first thing in the morning.

We never had sugar, white flour or chocolate in our house. When we semi-jokingly cried child abuse for never having any chocolate chip cookies she would whip up a batch of, brace yourself: whole wheat, honey, carob chip cookies. I still cannot stomach carob.

What I did love were her fresh juices. She bought a juicer and, to our glee, went nuts in the juice test kitchen. You name it, she juiced it (fyi, lettuce doesn’t work). Our favorite was carrot juice. My brother and I drank so much of it that we started to turn orange (seriously) and our pediatrician said we needed to chill out. What a buzz kill.

My mom is still an exceptional cook, much more gourmet than hippie, but still healthy and wholesome. Even though I tease her about the meals of our past I am thankful for the hearty, organic foods she prepared for us, which helped me develop the appreciative palate I have today.

Here are a few things I have learned from mom’s hippie cooking:

1) I prefer saltier things over sweet for breakfast (although I’m sure I could eat an entire box of Cap’n Crunch at one sitting).
2) I can drink carrot juice until I turn orange again.
3) I would take a grainy thick sandwich over a wimpy white one hands down.
4) My mom’s homemade soups are better than your mom’s (wink).

Picture note: This is mom on the front page of our local newspaper, the Sunriver Sun.

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