Recommended Reading

Secrets of the Spas: Pamper and Vitalize Yourself at Home by Catherine Bardey & Zeva Oelbaum (Photographer) Hardcover - Special Value- Our Price: $11.98

Learn the secrets of the world's most luxurious spas, treat yourself right and revitalize your face, your body and your hair so you look your best and feel great. With this delightful book you'll learn techniques to revitalize skin, deep clean, moisturize and ultimately relax your mind and body. The book also tells you how to create a soothing atmosphere at home.

75 treatments include how to use invigorating and cleansing body scrubs; replenishing skin toners; comforting moisturizers; relaxing baths; luscious massage oils; rejuvenating facial masks; stress-relieving facial steams; and regenerative facial masks.

Includes listing of 100 spas around the world, 20 food and beverage recipes, and a shopping guide to spa products. Secrets of the Spas offers the best body nourishing treatments to be found anywhere. This book brings the best of the world's spas to your own home so you can look your best and treat yourself right at home without even leaving the house.

Aromatherapy Facial Massage: An Aromatherapy Massage Program for Healthy Skin and a Younger Face by Pierre Jean Cousin Paperback - List Price: $16.95 Our Price: $15.25

Using essential oils and fingertip massage, readers will learn techniques to help prevent and even reverse the effects of aging on the skin. Includes easy-to-follow exercises and directions for making therapeutic facial masks, tonics, and lotions using all-natural ingredients to protect and tone the skin and reduce wrinkles.

Synopsis: The Power to Reverse the Effects of Aging is at your Fingertips! For thousands of years, the healing practices of acupressure and aromatherapy have helped promote healthy, vibrant skin. Now, you too can benefit from their combined effects--Pierre Jean Cousin shows you how. Nourish your skin and add glow to your complexion at little cost with this complete, holistic approach to skin care. Requiring just a few minutes a day, this easy-to-follow massage sequence combines the benefits of acupressure with aromatherapy to help prevent the onset of aging.

Learn how to protect, nourish, hydrate, detoxify, and tone your particular skin type, and in time, even reduce wrinkles. Give yourself a home spa treatment with homemade recipes for facial masks, tonics, and creams using essential oils, clay, nuts, fruit, and honey.

Accreditation: Pierre Jean Cousin, M.B.Ac.C., is an acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist who specializes in skin and facial problems, which he treats with a combination of acupuncture, herbal medicine, and aromatherapy. He has practiced for 20 years.

The Canyon Ranch Guide to Living Younger Longer: A Complete Program for Optimal Health for Body, Mind, and Spirit Foreword by Andrew Weil, Canyon Ranch, With Len Sherman, Mel Zuckerman (Introduction) Hardcover - List Price: $30.00 Our Price: $24.00

It was something of a health epiphany that inspired Mel Zuckerman to found the Canyon Ranch Health Resort more than 20 years ago. After a lifetime of poor health, dangerous eating habits, avoidance of exercise, and failed attempts to reform himself at the "fat farms" that were in vogue at the time, Zuckerman was finally roused to action by his father's death from lung cancer.

It was then that he realized good health is more than the absence of illness; good health, as it is embraced at Canyon Ranch, is "that condition of the individual that makes possible the highest enjoyment of life."

This book attempts to transform the philosophy and life-changing practices taught at Canyon Ranch -- called by Dr. Andrew Weil "perhaps the first health resort in the world" -- into a readable format. And indeed, the main tenets of the Canyon Ranch program are here: diet, exercise, and stress management. Vigorous exercise recommendations (encompassing cardiovascular, strength training, and flexibility) and tasty, tantalizing recipes are coupled with stress-reducing techniques for a combination that can literally take years off the reader's biological age.

Canyon Ranch Cooking: Bringing the Spa Home by Jeanne Jones Hardcover - List Price: $42.00 Our Price: $33.60

"Cook It Light" syndicated columnist Jeanne Jones brings the low-calorie and low-fat recipes of the two Canyon Ranch spas to your kitchen in Canyon Ranch Cooking.

Glossy color photographs vividly depict dishes like Canyon Ranch Guacamole, Curried Shrimp Salad in Pineapple Boats, and Blackberry-Orange Cobbler.

The book also assists in healthier everyday living with the spa's nutrition tips, including the importance of fat, the need for fiber, and the healing powers of water.

Even novice chefs will enjoy the book, as the mouthwatering recipes are easy to follow.

The recipes all have detailed nutritional breakdowns to help you plan a healthy meal with a lot of variety. Perhaps best of all are the tips and techniques to help enhance flavor without adding calories.

Why does spa food taste so good when nearly all the fat has been removed? Jones reveals all the secrets - such as adding citrus or vinegar to lift "flat" flavors; grilling over aromatic wood; marinating meat and vegetables; cooking at low temperatures for long periods to "marry" flavors; roasting rapidly for crispy crusts and tender interiors; using dried fruit for rich and creamy fat-free sauces; and much, much more.

Try the Canyon Ranch Guacamole, Osso Bucco and Cheese Enchiladas; enjoy Chocolate Mint Cake and Cherry Streusel Pie.

This is not a cuisine of deprivation - the food is wonderful, and the recipes for making it easy and sensible.

This book can't give you a workout or a hike, but it does tell you how to plan your own spa weekend at home, with suggestions for exercise, relaxation, even theme parties for special Saturday night dining. The wonderful recipes and the luscious photographs are here to delight and inspire.

With Canyon Ranch Cooking, the spa comes to you.

Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen: 200 Easy Recipes for Healthy Weight Loss by Kathleen Daelemans Hardcover, List Price: $27.00 Our Price: $18.90

You have to respect a chef who's gone from a size 22 to a size 8 on her own spa cuisine. Kathleen Daelemans, whose Cooking Thin show appears on the Food Network, did just that at her luxury spa restaurant in Maui, Hawaii, and got critical raves in the process.

Whether you want to lose weight or just add some healthy recipes to your repertoire, you'll enjoy the 200 delicious-looking recipes in her book.

At the spa, Chef Kathleen's rules were simple: No one had to weigh or measure food; the "d" word -- diet -- was never mentioned; and every meal or snack time was an opportunity to get in good calories. She uses the same approach in her book.

Chef Kathleen starts off by giving the reader a big motivational talk, delivered in a casual, sassy tone. She encourages the basics of weight loss: exercise, caution with portion sizes, and proper organization, from having the right foods in the freezer to appealingly cut and washed fresh vegetables at eye level in the refrigerator.

"Start with foods you like and weave in foods you know you should be eating," she advises. "Dump anything from your diet you're not passionate about."

Now on to the recipes: Chef Kathleen has a lot of good low-fat tricks to teach. There's a Roasted Vegetable Soup that gets deglazed right from the cookie sheet; a Spaghetti and Meatballs dish that the whole family can enjoy; lots of good vegetable and salad dishes, and an Instant Chocolate Banana Ice Cream made with frozen bananas, milk, and cocoa.

She's figured out beet chips, parsnip chips, and Quick-Chocolate-Fix Candies made with chocolate chips, toasted almonds, and dried cherries or raisins. Most recipes also offer shortcuts for preparation or advice on how to extend the leftovers into another dish.

 

 

Fodor's Healthy Escapes: 284 Resorts and Retreats Where You Can Get Fit, Feel Good, Find Yoursel fand Get Away from It All by Fodors Paperback - Bargain - List Price: $20.00 Our Price: $4.98!!

Want to feel your best? Need to jump-start your fitness program? Interested in relaxing and being pampered? Then check Healthy Escapes and check into one of the 248 spas and fitness resorts in this guide.

You'll find the very best selection in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, with critical information on accommodations, dining, costs, and facilities.

Today's spas all aim to help you reach your potential and take control of you health. But each has a unique approach - Healthy Escapes tells you just what to expect: * nutrition and diet * medical wellness * holistic health * sports conditioning * luxury pampering * mineral springs.

In addition, the guide tells you which resorts have top spa facilities, which ones will coach you toward vibrant maturity - and which ones have fitness programs for kids. Plus a special chapter on cruise-ship spas.