These are the ingredients for my healthy snack…My healthy snack is cashew butter on gluten-free whole grain bread, with banana slices on top and a little bit of dark chocolate and a good cup of herbal tea…Oh, and a good book…

Cashews are healthy for brainpower and our immune system, being rich in iron, zinc and magnesium, which acts as a memory booster. So I make cashew butter because it’s expensive to buy, I prefer it to peanut butter and it’s so easy to make…

Easy Cashew Butter

2 cups of roasted lightly salted cashews  (I use Trader Joe’s)

Add the cashews to a food processor, and blend on low for 8-10 minutes or until creamy, scraping down the sides with a spatula as necessary.  Transfer to a jar or airtight container, and store in the refrigerator, it will keep for up to 3 months.  Yields 1 cup.

-🔆-

 I  try to eat gluten-free…it helps control inflammation in your body and that’s always a good thing, right??  So for this snack, I use Trader Joe’s whole grain gluten-free bread, which I use for toast and sandwiches too…   Most of my snacks include dark chocolate because it’s so very good, for our body…it’s an antioxidant-rich superfood…a little bit each day can help your immune system during this flu season…so add it to any snack, it goes with everything😉

Now for the tea…This beautiful box of tea was given to me for a hostess gift…when I opened it I was so pleasantly surprised to see this lovely packaging, with these cute pyramid shape individual boxes for the same shape mesh teas bags, with a little silk leaf wired to the top!!!  The back of the box reads…

“HERBAL RETREAT

Retreat to a place where restorative calm and peace are found.  A rejuvenating naturally caffeine-free herbal infusion to relax the mind and soothe the spirit.”  

Now, who wouldn’t want to experience that!!!   And the tea is so very delicious…I had Apricot Amaretto, “The taste of juicy apricot and almond pair for a refreshing infusion.”  The company is called “Tea Forte,” this box is the “Petite Presentation Box” and you will be very surprised by the price, it was a generous hostess gift, you can go to the website by clicking here.  If you love teas, it’s worth it and it would make a great gift…  

Now the author…  I’ve read many of Roland Merullo’s books…The ones I’ve enjoyed the most are the Trilogy of Breakfast with Buddha, Lunch with Buddha and Dinner with Buddha…they are fiction and non-fiction and very humorous.  In these books, Otto Ringing, an editor of food books who lives in New York and a skeptic, reluctantly goes on a road trip with Volya Rinpoche a Siberian monk. The stories, narrated in the first person by Otto, describes Otto’s thoughts and beliefs, his conversations with the Rinpoche, and how he gains new perspectives on the world as well as his life, as a result of Volya Rinpoche’s company.  The non-fiction parts of the books are taken from the actual road trips from Roland’s family vacations, in which he has taken notes about landmarks, restaurants and vacation spots and cleverly intertwined them into these masterful books. The fiction is, of course, the stories which are charming and funny…I’m sure you will enjoy these books…  I have just started his new book, that my good friend Claire gave to me, The Delight of Being Ordinary which is about a road trip with the Pope and the Dalai Lama…It promises to be a warm adventure of laughter and spiritual enlightenment in a backdrop of Italy’s landscape and knowing Roland’s love of food, I’m sure wonderful descriptions of Italian cuisine…   Roland Merullo grew up in Revere, Massachusetts, he wrote a Revere Beach Trilogy (3 books) on his life in Revere, which are very entertaining.  On his website, there is an interesting lecture by him, talking about Breakfast with Buddha and insight into his life…click here for the link.

Oh, and I couldn’t wait for my photo shoot to be over…I ate the props…