How this Fast Diet Lifestyle works: Eat these meals tomorrow, for a calorie total of less than 600. On another day this week, eat the meals from a different post, another day of eating 600 calories or less. Eat sensibly the other days of the week. That’s it: a simple way to lose weight and be healthier.

Chloe Wofford was born in 1931 in Ohio. Her neighborhood and schools were not segregated, yet racism was all around. At age 12, Chloe became a Catholic and took Anthony of Padua as her baptismal name. From then on, she was called “Toni”. She loved to read and at high school she participated in drama and the yearbook staff. Undergraduate studies at Howard University showed her other types of segregation, both on campus and in Washington, DC. Next came a Masters Degree, then teaching in Texas and at Howard where Toni met her hus-band. Despite divorcing after six years, she kept his last name, becoming Toni Morrison. While working as a fiction editor, Morrison wrote and published her first novel, the Bluest Eye, in 1970. By her third work in 1981, Toni was acclaimed as a writer of note and could quit her day job. Her most famous novel Beloved was made into a film and was the basis of an opera. Over her career, Chloe had many firsts: 1st member of her family to attend college; 1st Black woman to win Nobel Prize in literature; 1st Black person to earn a chair at an Ivy League university. Morrison often said that her real self was Chloe Wofford — that Toni Morrison was her writer’s name, not who she really was. Whatever her name was, Chloe/ Toni Wofford/ Morrison was a force in American Literature up until her death on August 5, 2019.

Morrison wrote about food a lot. It was a metaphor for love and life and the Black experience. Our breakfast is an old staple of Black Southern cuisine, and the dinner is for the author’s enjoyment of fish and fresh vegetables throughout her lifetime.

Hoe Cakes with Fruit & Egg: 183 calories… 5.6 g fat… 5.4 g fiber… 9.5 g protein… 23 g carbs… 44 mg Calcium…  NB: Food values given are for the main meal only, and do not include the optional beverage. PB GF This recipe harks back to Colonial Days in the American South. Everyone from enslaved people to President George Washington ate hoe cakes.  HINT: This recipe makes 6 hoecakes – enough for 2 servings of 3 each. Originally this would be made with white cornmeal, but the yellow has more nutrition.  NB: Hoe cakes were never ‘cooked on a hoe’ by farm workers, as some claim. Silly notion.

3 Tbsp yellow cornmeal – even polenta meal would do +++++  2.5 Tbsp hot water	Combine by stirring well to make a mush.Let sit for 15 minutes
1 oz egg white ++++++ ¼ tsp yeast	Stir into the warm cornmeal mush and let sit for 1 – 12 hours.This was 125 ml in volume
2 Tbsp cornmeal +++++ 2 Tbsp water +++++ ¼ tsp salt	Mix into the cornmeal mush. If you take some up on a fork, it will sit on top with a little batter dribbling through. If it is not like this, add more cornmeal or more water. This was ½ cup in volume.
	Using 2 tbsp of batter per cake, drop onto a hot griddle sprayed with non-stick spray. This should make 6 cakes. Cook on both sides. Best if eaten while fresh.
¼ cup raspberries ++++ 1 tsp honey ++++ one 2-oz egg	Put the fruit and honey in a small dish and microwave for 30 seconds.Fry the egg.
Optional: blackish coffee [53 calories] or blackish tea or mocha cafe au lait [65 calories]	Plate 2 of the Hoecakes with the egg and the other with the berry syrup.Pour with your beverage of choice.

Dear Husband enjoyed this very much and so will you.

Fish Roasted with Summer Vegetables: 288 calories… 5.6 g fat… 8 g fiber… 30 g protein… 18 g carbs… 186 mg Calcium…  PB GF Delicious one-pan meal. AND it is low in calories and fat. Can you believe that a women’s magazine had a similar recipe for 425 calories!!

4 oz pollock or other white fish ++++ ½ slice [0.2 oz] American/streaky bacon ++++ 3 oz zucchini in ½” chunks ++++ 3 oz string beans, cut in half ++++ 3 oz eggplant, cut in cubes ++++ 3 oz cherry tomatoes, cut in half ++++ 1 Tbsp Parmesan cheese ++++ 

Set the oven at 450 F. Cook the bacon in an 8” oven-proof pan, such as cast iron. Remove bacon, chop it and set aside. Put the prepared vegetables in the pan and toss to coat with the bacon fat. Salt and pepper to taste. Roast for 10 minutes. Remove the pan of vegetables from the oven. If you think they will need more cooking, put them back in for 2-3 minutes. They will not be cooked through at this point. Turn oven down to 400 degrees F. Move the vegetables aside so the fish will sit on the hot pan, with the vegetables next to it. Salt and pepper the fish. Return the pan to the oven and bake 5-10 minutes more, depending on the thickness of the fish. Sprinkle the entire contents of the pan with Parmesan cheese and bacon. You could eat it right from the pan.