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Learn to Love: Persimmons
Now that berry season is long gone, I'm expanding my breakfast fruit horizons. Celebrate the cold weather with pomegranate seeds in your oatmeal, or slice pears or persimmons and serve them with nut butter on toast or whole-grain waffles.
You probably know how to pick and slice a pear, but persimmons have a steeper learning curve.
Learn to Love: Spinach
When it comes to stereotypical foods that kids hate, spinach tops the list, along with brussels sprouts and broccoli, all of which I've learned to love. Seriously, when it comes to bang for your buck nutrition-wise, it's hard to beat spinach.
Spinach is an awesome vegetarian source of iron.
Learn to Love: Backstroke
As a child who refused to swim because of a strong fear that sharks might live in my swimming pool, my relationship with swimming has come a long way. I now consider it one of my favorite ways to get my heart rate up. One lasting emotional holdout was the backstroke; I just didn't like it.
Learn to Love: Adzuki Beans
I know beans are the magical fruit, but if you can ease your body into eating beans more often, you can avoid the gassy side effects and reap the amazing health benefits. Compared to meat, beans are inexpensive, low in calories and fat, and high in fiber. They're also fairly high in protein as well.
Learn to Love: Clipless Pedals
I had been cycling for years before I learned to love riding with my feet clipped onto my pedals. It seemed too scary, I thought I would fall over at every stoplight. I have turned the corner though and have learned to love being "clipped in" and it looks like Orlando Bloom, aka Mr. Mountain Bike Man, does too.
Learn to Love: Running Downhill
It has taken me considerably longer to reconcile my negative feelings of running downhill with the power I feel running up the other side. Unlike biking down a descent where gravity pulls you along, running downhill is work and it's hard on your quads and knees. In my neck of the woods though, it's difficult to find a flat run so I've had to cultivate a love of running downhill.
Learn to Love: Lunges
Lunges are one of those exercises people either love or hate. There is however one powerful reason to love them: they sculpt a lovely tush. They also make your legs incredibly strong, which is a bonus as well.
Learn to Love: Garlic Scapes
If you're a big garlic fan, then you're going to love cooking with garlic scapes. They're the long, thin, loopy green stems of the plant that shoot up above the garlic bulb.
If left to grow, bulbils — which kind of look like flowers — will form, which can be planted to grow more garlic.
Learn to Love: Watermelon
I was accused of being unpatriotic when I expressed a distaste for watermelon at an Independence Day barbecue a few years ago. My hostess forced a piece upon me, and I have been eating the melon ever since. Which is a boon to my diet, since there are so many healthful reasons to love this melon.
Learn to Love: Summer Squash
I have always held Winter squash in greater esteem than the Summer variety, since zucchini and crook neck squash seem to pale in comparison nutritionally. But it looks like I was wrong, because Summer squash has a lot to offer.
One cup of zucchini provides about 15 percent of the recommended daily intake for vitamin C and 10 percent of vitamin A.
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