Food tips

The beginning of this year I went on a diet. I know! A food writer on a diet, it sounds crazy. But I had gained a lot of weight and it had to be done. My diet is really simple and I’ve lost almost 20 pounds. A number of people have asked me how I did it, so I shared the story on my friend Dianne's blog .  When I'm dining at home, I generally follow The Day Off Diet from Dr. Oz. I do take a day off. Sometimes two days! It just depends on the week and my schedule. If I can order something on my diet at a restaurant I do, if not, I don’t sweat it.  Here’s the diet in a nutshell—Every day I try to eat two servings of complex carbohydrates, two servings of foods high in monounsaturated fatty acids (olives, avocados, nuts or seeds) and six ounces of lean protein a day. I eat all the non-starchy vegetables I want and just a little bit of olive oil.  It’s a fairly low carbohydrate diet, so I eat much smaller portions of pasta but I mix in a ton of vegetables, I eat pureed cauliflower

Remember the Campbell’s soup jingle, Mm Mm good? That’s kind of how I feel about Merlot. It’s velvety tannins, plum and blackberry flavor and soft character make it easy to enjoy and very popular. It’s one of the “noble grapes” of France or cépage noble and is used as a blending grape but also as a single varietal. It's planted all over the world and of course its character varies depending on the region. In France where it's a primary grape in Bordeaux Merlot tends to have more acidity, in Italy it can be lighter and more herbal, in the US it was so lush and delicious it led to a craze in the 90’s and the quality dropped as winemakers scrambled to plant it everywhere. It's still the second leading variety planted in California, just behind Cabernet Sauvignon. Fortunately today it's better than ever. I particularly like Merlot from California and Washington where the best examples combine the fruitiness you expect from a New World wine and yet the structure of an Old Wo