Cooking in the Heat

No one enjoys cooking in the heat! Summer is officially here, at least for those of you who don’t live in the Pacific Northwest! Up here we are slowly warming up! As the heat soars, your desire to cook a hot healthy meal dissolves, but it’s not healthy diet habit to live on restaurant food for long. Some lifestyle solutions for cooking in the heat are:

·        Fix simple meals: Meals do not need to be complex to be healthy! Simple meals full of cut up fruits, veggie salads with a meat and grain included, wraps full of meat and veggies, tacos or burritos, quick stir fries full of summer veggies, cold soups, or fresh sandwiches full of nitrate free meats and organic cheeses and lots of chopped veggies, are great choices! Check out the super salad meal chart! Visit your local farmers market for the freshest, tastiest choices!

·        Grill out: My favorite summer meals are grilled. You are all familiar with grilled meats and maybe corn on the cob, but all fruits and veggies can be grilled! They can be placed on the grill if they are cut in large slices, in a grill basket, or placed in a foil packet with seasonings and steamed on the grill. Your grill should be your best friend for summer meals!

·        Use your crock pot: Some of your favorite winter meals can be fixed in your crock pot, which does not heat up your kitchen. There are so many delicious crock pot meals to choose from. Plan ahead, add your veggies and meat to the pot, and a meal is made! Add a chopped salad and cut up fruit for dessert! A great crock pot cookbook is worth the expense! My kids actually beg for crock pot food!

·        Fix light meals: Summer meals should be light and not overly heavy meals. No one wants that stuffed, bloated feeling in the heat! Smaller healthier meals will satisfy and keep you more comfortable. Summer is a great time to take off those extra pounds that you added during the dark winter months when food offered comfort! You just do not need the comfort of heavy foods in the summer!

·        Experiment with some unknown veggies and fruits: There are many fruits and veggies at farmers markets that I have not seen or tasted. Ask venders how they are best fixed and be adventuresome and develop some new favorite recipes. I just learned about avocado squash today and can’t wait to try them out!

Summer is my favorite season for adding lifestyle solutions that make weight control easy! Whatever your cooking method, filling your plate full of veggies and fruits seems like summer. No diet, but just healthy eating! Everywhere you go, fresh produce abounds and should be tasted and enjoyed. Meals that are simple and do not require a lot of time, allow you to get out there and enjoy the great days and long evenings of summer!

Healthy Vacation Foods for Weight Control!

If you are like me, you tire easily of fast food, and plan ways to encourage healthy vacation foods for your family while traveling! This is a healthy diet habit! Summer is almost here, and most of you are finalizing plans for your vacations. Road trips to distant states, trips to lake houses, or a nice visit to your relatives! Here are some tips that will allow you to travel and keep your weight under control!

1.      Travel with snacks always! Kids equate vacations with snacks and mostly unhealthy ones. Win the whining wars early, by providing great snacks. Take a cooler in your car and fill it with cut up veggies, frozen fruit, low-fat cheese sticks and whole wheat crackers, home-made granola, popcorn, soy crisps which are yummy and contain protein, trail mix with nuts and dried fruits, and hummus or peanut butter with pitas. I always try to find a few new ideas that my family will love. We refill our cooler with great snack foods along the way! Make sure that you pack your cooler and snack food bags where they are easily reachable. We have learned this the hard way! Coolers facing the wrong way and snacks buried in the way back under everything!

2.      Take along a picnic lunch. Plan on stopping at a great park or vista along your trip path. My family is always excited about finding a new picnic spot. We have some very fun memories of these travel picnics!

3.      Be prepared for the unavoidable fast food stops. Know what you will eat before you enter fast food restaurants. I guarantee that if you do not do this, you will end up with a meal special, loaded with unwanted calories. Spend a few minutes on-line, before your trip, choosing healthy alternatives at your kid’s favorite spots. If you can’t always provide healthy foods, you can offer some healthy choice advice!

4.      Eat at grocery stores. We do this often because they offer healthier choices. You can find a variety of veggie and fruit salads, soups and chilies, freshly made sandwiches, and fresh juice drinks. This beats fried fast food and sodas any day! There is usually a small area set up for in store eaters too.

5.      Keep your home rules on the road most of the time. We do not drink calories at home and we do not drink calories on the road. All grocery stores have flavored waters or we stick with water. This saves many calories per day. We would rather have a food treat!

6.      Practice portion control on your vacation some of the time. Vacations are a time of fun and fun does not mean that you have to splurge at every meal and overeat. That is a vacation habit that you want to avoid unless you want to return home in the next size clothes.

7.      Practice healthy diet habits on the road. We always delete all sauces, mayo and extra calories from our restaurant meals. Ask for calorie counts on foods before you order and make sure that they fit into your meal plan. If you normally plan for 600 lunch calories, stick close to that number when you eat out. Split portions with your family or order kid size meals for adults which is the correct serving size. If you have a cooler, you can save half of your meal for later.

Vacations are a fun lifestyle solution. We enjoy eating, that adds to our fun. We love to locate quaint little shops to eat in our travel destinations. Some of them are not so healthy, but that is okay. We still talk about the giant feet donuts we got in British Columbia, more than once I might add, but splurges are what memories are made of!

RANT AND TEARS

I am so sorry you guys, I always promise that I will not rant, but I have a personality that stuff bugs me! The good thing is that I am not mean, but rant I must!

Last night after everyone went to bed, I finally had some alone time! Sat down at my computer to write an article for my website. Got distracted by other articles on my facebook page and ended up in tears! Seriously! Head on my keyboard and in tears! Sad because we are all being taken for a ride by big business who knowingly sell us products full of chemicals. Started by reading an article about the new dirty dozen worst produce. Celery is no longer tops, but apples are! Do not eat apples that aren't organic. They are full of chemicals that can't be stripped away with peeling! Read lots of funny comments like "An apple a day keeps the doctor in pay" or something like that! We laugh, but this is a serious problem! Choose organic produce at least for the top offensive produce!

Read another article about the MRSA epidemic in this country and MRSA in meat production. This was the scariest article I read. Much of our meat is tainted with MRSA. Factory workers are greatly infected! Note to self and others. Please purchase rubber gloves while handling meat products, because some meat is infected, and if you have a cut on your hand and handle raw meat, you could be too. Yes, MRSA is destroyed in cooking, but what about all of us who cook and touch raw meat! SCARY! Sent a note to my local "Bill the Butcher" thanking him for bringing organic, chemical, pesticide, steroid, antibiotic free meat to our local community in Woodinville! See, I told you I was nice! He answered with thanks this morning! He is nice too! Check out their stores!

The MRSA article was the one that brought on the tears. I love vegetarian and vegan food, so I started checking out those sites, wondering if I could actually pull off the switch in a family full of guys! They happily eat anything I produce, but enjoy meat. Not going to happen full time. So rubber gloves it is and organic meat for sure! I am a cheapskate at heart and love deals, but I truly believe keeping my family healthy is a good deal. There are other areas that I can save in! Organic meat is not that much more expensive. I am cooking meals with meat as a side, and not the main attraction anyway. I would encourage all of you to do the same! Great healthy diet habit!

I've also been reading about genetically modified products. How they are taking over regular crops and could in the long term wipe out organic farms. Their seeds blow onto organic farms and take over. Organic farmers are put out of business. Many people do not even know what genetically modified products are. People think as long as they are buying their foods from Whole foods and Trader Joe's, that they are safe. Not so! Both of those stores carry GMO products! What is going on with genetic engineering is frightening. Other countries ban this practice or label GMO foods. America does neither! We all eat GMO foods because they are not labeled. Argentina recently cloned a cow that was given human genes, so it could produce milk more similar to humans! Do other people just not know about this or not care? These frankenfoods sure seem wrong to me. The companies say these products are the same and could not possibly harm us! No proof just words! What will they say in 20 years when it is too late?

So the reason for the tears is that so many people still do not know about all of this! They think people that are against all of this stuff are just nuts. I promise you that I am not a nut. I have a science degree in Dietetics, read scientific articles, and and scared to death for my kids, one of whom has autism! Did it come from something that I unknowing ate, breathed, or drank? Tears!

Stir-Fry Away!

Greetings everyone! In honor of half of the United States frying with heat, I thought I would write about stir-fries today. They are a healthy treat on hot days because they are light when veggie filled. I cook mine in a giant 16" stainless steel electric skillet which does not heat up my kitchen! I have never made a stir-fry the same so this will be a generic recipe that you can modify to your hearts content!

Generic Stir Fry


Choose meat of choice: Chicken, Beef, Pork, Vegan chicken choice or tofu, Bratwursts or your choice. Add the amount of meat you like. I use 1/2 pound to 1 pound for 3-4 people. Season meat with pepper, ginger or any spice you love. I like to add more spices than recipes call for. I would add 2 t. of ginger or grate fresh ginger in with your meat. Add 1/4 cup of garlic. I use the chopped jarred garlic because I am lazy. Add a small amount of sesame (best) or olive oil (2T) and stir fry the meat for a few minutes until it is done. Remove from pan.

Choose veggies: Great choices are onions, peppers, celery, cabbage, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, broccoli slaw, really any veggie you love will do! I was teaching my son last week and he chose them all! Wild and great! Chop all veggies separately into bite size pieces. Your choice of chop. My son chopped large and it was awesome. I always stir fry each veggie separately and then remove. I add the veggie and a small amount of water (1/4 to 1/2 cup) to avoid calories and stir fry it around until it is still very crispy, then remove to a bowl. Next, next, next, till you are done with all of your veggie choices. This takes a bit longer but I hate mushy veggies and none cook exactly the same!

Add Sauce and Herbs: When it is all done, add everything back in and mix. Add either a predone sauce (Yoshidas) or add a bit of low salt soy sauce and water. I actually just love the taste of the veggies with no sauce. Add in chopped herbs at this point. Love chopped cilantro in everything. Basil works too. Try them all and pick your favorite! Mix it up and heat through.

You can serve this over any whole cooked whole grain, brown rice, whole wheat noodles, or eat it plain. Some times we add a small amount of Yakisoba noodles to our actual stir fry.

Stir fries are very filling great dude food. You can cook huge quantities so it is a great choice for those of you who love to eat large quantities. Fry away in these frying days of summer!

Applying the half plate rule at a party

Last night I went to a Young Life Leaders end of year party with some of my favorite people! Yeah, Young Life Capernaum! Young Life for High school and College kids that are differently-abled! The first thing I did when I arrived, was to check out the meal plan. Chicken and white rice casserole, fresh green beans, fresh fruit salad of mixed melons, Costco white rolls, and s'mores for dessert. I am so not into deprivation, but I also like to practice the half plate rule, so I plan! The half plate rule is to fill your plate half full of fruits and veggies, 1/4 full of your protein source, and 1/4 full of your carbohydrate source.

My plan:

• I know for sure I can make the fruit and green beans fill half of my plate. Great! Half way there! 
• There is dessert on the horizon, which I do want. It is not a great choice, but one I want to indulge in. I know that we will be having a fire, roasting marshmallows, making s'mores, laughing, and having fun! I would feel deprived if I did not make a s'more and eat it! (Not good)
• I will serve myself a small serving of the casserole that would count as my 1/4 plate protein serving.
•  I will opt out on the Costco white roll. If I am going to eat processed food for my grain serving, I would prefer the s'more! 
• I will fill my plate only 3/4 full because I know the s'more will be my carbohydrate 1/4 section of my plate. Remember to do this because dessert counts in your plate!

My plan worked. I filled up on fresh crispy green beans, a large serving of fruit, modest serving of casserole and a s'more. I was satisfied, not deprived, and highly enjoyed the entire meal and evening!

Using the half plate rule is easy to visualize. You know immediately if your choices are off and no one is ever asking you to deprive yourself!

Losing weight

If you are trying to lose weight, you have three choices; go on the latest greatest diet, exercise more, or make longterm lifestyle solutions! Conventional wisdom says that it is all about calories in and calories out. Get them under control and weight control will result. That is what the USDA suggests in their new dietary guidelines. Research is showing there may be more involved. Chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and other additives might be interfering with your endrocrine system and actually changing how your body deals with calories, as well as your metabolism, and possibly your fat cell number. Scientists still do not have all of the answers!

What can you do if this is true? My recommendations would be to implement lifestyle solutions like:

• Adopt the half plate rule but use smaller plates. Mounding a large plate, even following the half plate rule, will probably add weight. Remember half of your plate should be fruits and veggies. Aim for more veggies than fruits because they are less caloric.
• Adopt light recipes for your favorites. Most recipes can be just as delicious with reduced calories.
• Adopt the Meatless Monday idea. Have a meatless meal at least one day of the week.
• Make sure you are keeping your starches under control. Remember they are to fill only 1/4 of your plate. One serving of a grain is only 1/2 a cup, which is quite small.
• Eliminate processed foods from your diet as much as possible. Eat real foods. If it comes in a box, bag, or package, it is not real food. If it needs an ingredient list, it is not real food.
• Buy organic meats without antibiotics, or hormones and grass fed or free range. If cattle are given hormones to increase their growth, you are eating the very same hormones. Could these hormones be increasing your weight also? Find a great source of organic meat.
• Buy organic fruits and veggies at least for the most contaminated produce called the dirty dozen. Once again, eating pesticides could be interfering with your endocrine system and causing weight gain.
• Learn correct portions of meat, starches, and fruits, but eat unlimited veggies!
• Limit chemicals in your home. Use green products whenever possible.
• Exercise daily even if it is just brisk walking. Add more steps daily!
• Eat set meals and snacks (mini meals) and end mindless eating.

These are just a few things to think about when you are making lifestyle solutions. The way to personalize your plan is to keep a food journal for a couple of weeks. Evaluate your journal and clean up your problem areas. It is difficult but doable. Unless you want to fight this battle for the rest of your life, it is easier to make a few permanent lifestyle solutions that promote healthy eating and keep your weight under control!

The New My Plate by the Gov!

Well here it is everyone,
The new guidelines for your eating. No more food pyramid, hopefully ever again. It was very confusing. The half plate rule is simple to understand. Learn to rate your plate. Does my plate really look like this. I think you will quickly see that you do not fill half of your plate with fruits and veggies and grains, they are are on the overdone. I quickly see a couple of things that I would add.

1. Be careful with fruits. They are more caloric than veggies. Eating fruits at each meal and also at your snacks will put you fruit heavy. Might be great to make dinner, half of a plate of veggies (large salad and a veggie).

2. Once you get grains under control, I would aim as close to 100% whole grains as you can.

3. Switch to smaller plates. You could use huge plates and eat this way and grain weight! If your plates do not fit in your dishwasher or cupboard, you might be in trouble.

4. Smaller plate sizes are the easiest way to keep portions under control. Simple. Your brain is satisfied and your tummy will be too.

5. Ditch all caloric drinks. The average person drinks 450 calories of liquid a day! Eating is way better!

6. Go with all organic products if possible! Fighting Obesity is more than just balancing calories in and calories used! Chemicals are messing with our hormonal systems!

This is a great start in the right direction but keep getting educated!!!!!!!

    

	Balancing Calories
	●	Enjoy your food, but eat less.
	●	Avoid oversized portions.
	Foods to Increase
	●	Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.
	●	Make at least half your grains whole grains.
	●	Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.
	Foods to Reduce
	●	Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals ― and choose the foods with lower numbers.
	●	Drink water instead of sugary drinks.                   PDF