I don’t know about you, but I’m about done with winter – for some reason this one seems endlessly gray, cold and dreary. But change is in sight, I think; this week I noticed that the days are a bit longer, with the daylight fading into darkness just a few minutes later than last week.

I found myself looking through my stack of cookbooks looking for some inspiration, and lingered over one with a beautiful image of a sun-soaked bowl of golden cherries on the cover: a collection of recipes from Gangivecchio, a restaurant in Sicily that dates back to Roman times. I’m not sure what the weather is like in Sicily at this time of year, but somehow I feel warm imagining myself walking around the winding streets of Palermo, shopping the outdoor markets.

Lidia Bastianach, the Italian chef and cooking teacher, describes in her book Lidia’s Italy how the North African summer sun gives food produced there here an intensity not found anywhere else in Italy

“…the tomatoes are sweeter, the oil is more deeply flavored, the fennel has more licorice, capers are nuttier, and the anchovies and sea urchins taste more of the sea”.

Sounds good to me. In the spirit of hot summers to come, I roasted a batch of cashews and seasoned them with some of the intense tastes of Sicily: fennel, cumin, anise, hot pepper and orange.

Everyone needs at least one go-to chocolate recipe, like stashing a little black dress in the recipe file.

This chocolate soufflè cake is like that perfect dress – deceptively basic but oh-so delicious in action. I pull this recipe out of my hat for last minute desserts as well as a last course for my clients requesting a chocolate ending for dinner parties.

I very slightly adapted this recipe from Alice Medrich’s book Chocolate and The Art of Low Fat Desserts. Yes, the cake is not only simple to make but not full of calories – that isn’t the reason I like it so much, but still good to know. Despite having little fat, the cake turns out with a soft, pudding-like texture and rich choocolate flavor.

I was at the Y today and ran into a fitness instructor I haven’t seen since sometime last summer; I almost didn’t recognize her. She’s always looked very strong and fit, but now her form seems smaller and more defined, and her face has a glow I never noticed before. I had to ask her what was different, and told me she’s lost 20-something pounds by modifying what she eats – not exactly dieting, but simply switching to real “clean” food.

Tosca Reno is a bodybuilding “fitness model” who popularized the Eat Clean diet on a mass market scale; she seems to churn out books faster than Rachael Ray. I’m not bowled over by the recipes and production quality of these books – they have a kind of generic, over-simplified feel that remind me of marketing brochures.

But I do like the message she sends – that choosing to eat food as close to the source as possible– like fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, and lean protein and avoiding anything processed helps people maintain weight loss, which can lead to life-changing habits and great health, almost like magic.

Seems like a no-brainer, but it always amazes me how hard it can be for people to stick to making the best food choices. So many of our food cravings have been crafted and catered to by those in the business of manufacturing and selling food that it can be hard to know what real food actually tastes like.

I see this in my own kids when they devour the occasional fast-food meal or sweet-salty junk food snack but shun my made-from-scratch soup — there’s nothing that frustrates me more than feeling like giant food companies have hijacked my childrens’ tastebuds.

Cooking and eating pure, real food is a way of life for me, but seeing the dramatic changes that can happen when people become aware of what they eat inspires me to keep cooking, creating and spreading the word.