Getting fresh

The Fu Man Dumpling House on Greenwood Avenue in Shoreline makes absolutely exquisite food. The fresh-made meat-filled dumplings, served with a fresh garlic-ginger dipping sauce, are legendary. But just about everything else on the menu is exceptional, too. A complex hot-and-sour soup. A won ton soup with a peppery chicken broth base. A complex fried rice done with a light, almost buttery, oil, with fresh peas and some of the tastiest shrimp I've had in a long time. And I didn't go wrong tonight by ordering a little seaweed-in-garlic-sauce side dish, which combined the cold seaweed with cilantro in a slightly sweet dressing.

The distinctive element at Fu Man Dumpling is the quality and freshness of the ingredients they use. Realizing this is making me a bit less grumpy about paying top dollar for organic, heirloom, and local produce for my own cooking. It makes such a difference.

Ouch! My toe

Grrr! I stubbed my second toe yesterday, and this is going to keep me out of fast-moving exercise classes — though only for a few days, I hope.

It's down on the yoga mat today, doing Susan Powter's Trailer Park yoga. I purchased Susan's new yoga video, and was impressed with the quality of the workout. However, it covers only about 20% of the moves we were doing in her Seattle class. I'll have to keep doing those on my own until she does an advanced yoga video.

Diet or exercise?

Ten years ago, while editing a magazine for a major healthcare system, I asked several doctors which they would prefer their patients do, watch their diets or focus on exercise.

The doctors all said "exercise."

Mike Howard at the excellent Diet Blog reports on a study that compared people on diets with people on exercise programs, measuring not just weight loss but body fat percentage.

I was betting that exercise returned the best results, but what the study found was far more complex.

Unfortunately, the criteria I was most interested in were apparently not part of the study -- measurements of hips, waist, chest, upper arms, and thighs.

Out of the fashion loop

Am I missing something, or has fashion sort of flopped recently?

All the clothes I see this summer look pretty much like the clothes I saw last summer. So, while last year I was excited about all sorts of trends, this year about all I have to say is that The Gap's curvy dress pants (they sit just below the waist, not too low) are fabulous. And they must be good sellers, because they never go on sale.

If there's some hot casual or officewear trend this season, would someone please tell me about it?