Two new cookbooks aim to help moms feed their kids square meals... in roundabout ways.

Can a workout get any better than yoga in bed?

And I mean a real yoga session with your PJs on -- for those of you whose thoughts just turned tantric.

Since 1950, there has been a steady decrease in the size of U.S. and Canadian families, and in the amount of time those families spend at home. So why have home sizes doubled? In her book Little House on a Small Planet (Lyons Press, September 2006), green building consultant, supervisor and teacher Shay Salomon posits that against this unsustainable trend stands a growing movement of small house people who live their values by putting their family, community and environmentalism above space, status and granite countertops.

Before the likes of Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw there was Karen Salmansohn. As a successful author, motivational coach, and LIME radio personality, Salmansohn has taught women "How to Succeed In Business Without a Penis" and "How to Make Your Man Behave in 21 Days or Less Using the Secrets of Professional Dog Trainers." Self-described as a creator of "self-help books for lazy people and those who wouldn't be caught dead with a self-help book," Salmansohn's latest venture is "Gut: How to Think From Your Middle to Get to the Top," (September 2006, HOW Publishing). What, you ask, makes Salmansohn so qualified to teach you to trust your intuition?

Here’s a tip for the week ahead: Take a kid for a walk in the woods, and explain to her why forests are so important. They absorb CO2 and release oxygen. They guard against erosion. They provide food and shelter to zillions of the planet’s creatures. Teach a child about forests, and encourage her to help these ecosystems thrive.

So suggests 365 Ways to Save the Earth (Abrams, 2005), for the day of August 16. This relatively compact coffee-table book, with an introduction by Elizabeth Kolbert, features stunning photos of nature around the world – from Greenland’s glaciers to Kenya’s flamingos to Uganda’s mountains to the deserts of Egypt and the treasures of Australia’s oceans. But the tantalizing pictures, from French photographer Philippe Bourseiller, are just one half of the book – the motivation for the accompanying messages. 365 Ways is a how-to guide, a daily manual for living a more Earth-friendly existence.

So you have a regular spiritual practice—you go to yoga three times a week, let's say, or you meditate every day. Yet the practice feels less fulfilling than it used to: You've somehow lost touch with the core teachings that define the purpose of your spiritual struggles. This is no doubt one of the reasons that svadhyaya, scriptural study, is one of yoga's main ethical precepts. The natural tendency of the human mind is to forget, and it's necessary to be reminded of where we are and where we're going.

When John Muir, a wilderness mystic and founder of the Sierra Club, wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe,” he was reflecting on his profound relationship with California’s pristine alpine wilderness. But Erik Davis posits something further. In his kaleidoscopic history of spiritual California, The Visionary State, Davis proposes that Muir was also making room for an innovative, new “rootless tradition.” California dreaming, it seems, has it own dream logic.

I wasn’t expecting to learn much about fitness from a woman who’s nearly 50, even if that woman is tennis champ Martina Navratilova. And as a relatively young male (37), the last thing I anticipated was feeling jealous, but that’s what happened.

After six years of aches and pains every morning, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to wake up feeling refreshed. Until I stretch and have a hot, muscle-relaxing shower, I’m useless and grumpy. In my daily life, I walk a lot, practice yoga, and eat very few processed foods, but I do it all with rickety bones and somehow still have a chronic energy deficit.

I’m wary of anything that promises to change my life, especially if it has a quick-fix whiff about it. In my experience, profound change has always required patience, commitment, and most noticeably, my precious time. But what if that last ingredient wasn’t necessary?