High-Octane Fuel Helps Body Hum, New Author Says

The saying, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself,” certainly doesn’t apply to June Hunter, who has been taking care of herself and shows it.

The outspoken, 66-year-old Fullerton housewife credits most of her good health to good nutrition, so she has put together a cookbook of the recipes that have kept her healthy. “I wrote it because I had something to say,” said Hunter, who formerly owned a health food restaurant where no meat, salt or sugar were served and smoking was prohibited.

Instead of soda pop, she served “smoothies,” which consisted of fruit juices with frozen yogurt and a whole banana. “It was a meal in itself,” she says. Her other popular creation was an “unburger” made from vegetables.

“The book took me 3 years to write,” said Hunter, a not-so-strict vegetarian who eats broccoli for breakfast and sometimes chicken and fish at other meals. “I want people to know that if you eat right, you’ll feel good and everything else will be better.”

She said the book, named “Cooking Pure & Simple,” is a compilation of recipes from 30 years of cooking for her husband of 45 years and five children--none of whom are vegetarians. “They are my biggest critics,” she said, “but they’re all healthy.”

Hunter follows a health-food regimen herself, but when it comes to others, “I try to be forceful about nutrition, but in a friendly way.”

It cost her $10,000 to publish the recipe book herself, said Hunter, who has attended a couple of autograph parties and is optimistic about its success.

“I took 100 books to a health-food store and (they) sold out,” she said. Her daughter, Paula, who owns an ad agency in Newport Beach, edited the book.

“I expect to make a few bucks from it,” Hunter said. “I’ve seen some lousy cookbooks that sold 50,000 copies.”

In the meantime, Hunter has other irons in the fire, including concocting a no-stick pan coating for baked goods, an herbal seasoning formula and a new type of apron.

After selling the restaurant, she took jobs in food-service businesses, including health-food stores.

“Eating fresh fruits and vegetables is good,” Hunter said. “If you put good fuel in your body, you’ll run better.”

Bennett Looney, 55, a teacher and administrator in Anaheim schools for 30 years and principal of Dale Junior High School for the last 5, will retire Dec. 28.

Looney, who liked to refer to his students as “my kids,” has apparently made some good plans. His wife, Sandra Kay-Looney, a school resource officer for the Anaheim Police Department, is going to retire the same day.

The Garden Grove couple plan to spend the winter skiing.

Adults usually adopt children, but this time third-graders at Red Hill Lutheran School in Tustin did the adopting--of sailors on the U.S. guided-missile cruiser Leahy.

The students are writing to them as pen pals and charting the ship’s course, according to their teacher, Brenda Otte, who said, “We pray for the sailors and the ship by name.”

The ship’s chaplain, Ken Puccio, father of third-grader Anthony Puccio, helped the adoption procedure.

When the ship returns to Long Beach in February, the third-grade class will be guests of the ship’s captain.

Acknowledgments: Carol Ranger of Dana Point has been named Volunteer of the Year by the South Coast YMCA.

She regularly volunteers to teach fitness programs, often holding classes at 7:30 a.m.