The strict diet portion of this book aimed at weight loss is meant for 28 days.  After that it moves into maintenance and I haven’t looked that far, although I do know it’s Mediterranean based. I took off three days this past week for Thanksgiving festivities, so I’m only on day 18.  I’m trying to get back on track (except last night when I was organizing my Christmas gift giving I might have, maybe, eaten 4 Godiva salted toffee caramels).  On Thanksgiving Day I ate everything I hadn’t had in a few weeks, noodles, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls and butter and I even skipped that low-fat bird and went straight for the ham.  Ah, Thanksgiving.

Here I am enjoying the day with family (I think there were about 40 of us this year and somehow this is the only picture I have with me in it!)

Ok, the diet, it’s going well even with all my cheating this past week.  My goal at the start of the diet was to lose 10 in 28 and I’m almost there!

Week 1 – lost 6 pounds

Week 2 update – lost 0 😦 gained 0 🙂

Week 3 – lost 3 pounds

total loss so far – 9 pounds!

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

I received 3 books in the mail and picked up the older Kingsolver book at Half-Priced Books for $2. Score!

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz (received from Goodreads 1st Reader)

Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself, devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son, Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice. Grace is also the author of the forthcoming You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to pay attention to their first impressions of men.

But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (purchased)

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

“As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

“Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . .”

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that’s better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

“This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.”

If You Were Me and Lived in Greece and If You Were Me and Lived in Peru by Carole P Roman (received from Red Feather Productions)

It’s never too early to start teaching children about the world around them. In If You Were Me and Lived in…Greece , early learners get a taste of what their life would be like if they lived in Greece while being introduced to the birthplace of democracy. This book is the latest installment of the educational series about the cultures of the world that speaks to young children about the topics that interest them, such as the foods people eat, the names of boys and girls, and the activities that children their age living in a foreign land are likely to engage in. This exciting visit to Greece also introduces the important concept of democracy to children and highlights some of the other cultural contributions that Greece has made to Western civilization. Basic information is offered in a playful way that won’t overwhelm children.

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You’ll never guess what crazy dish the ancient Incan kings ate. But you can read all about it, and more, in If You Were Me and Lived in…Peru, the latest book in Carole P. Roman’s fun travel series for kids.

An exciting introduction to world cultures written for young readers ages three through eight, this new expedition takes kids to South America and gives them a colorful glimpse into what living in Peru is like. Highlighting a myriad of topics, including language, cuisine, climate, and history, this book teaches kids about diversity while also revealing to them the important truth that we are all connected.

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Did anything arrive in  your mailbox this week?