Ready for a little piece of Food Wisdom and some more pictures this week? Here’s the wisdom: Real Food is so good, that you don’t even need recipes. You can just throw a bunch of your favorite foods together in a pan or a pot, and end up with something delicious. It’s honestly not hard.
I’ve said before that the Food Channel, the cooking shows, the food magazines, and the food blogs – as much as I love them – give the FALSE impression that making meals must be complicated; something to be undertaken only if you’ve got formal training or years of experience. Not True. Not True!
Think I’m wrong because you feel uncomfortable in the kitchen? That’s just mental. Your kids feel uncomfortable when they first start learning math, or how to read, but anything done daily becomes very normal. You should be cooking daily if you want to see improvements to your health, your weight, and your moods ( and your kids health, weight, and mood). Real Whole Food has the power to change you for the better; crappy processed food does not. Think you’re too busy to cook daily? Then plan your schedule (write it down) to accommodate a few hours of Power Cooking when you do have time. Let there be a flow to the process: slow cook a roast and a bunch of chicken over night on 200, or the crock pot, shred, mix with broth and vegetables, cool, then freeze it. Chop and roast a bunch of sweet or white potatoes, then freeze them. Make sure you have plenty of good frozen vegetables in your fridge, they’re often much more nutrient dense than fresh since they get flash frozen in the fields now. Make sure you always make extra so you have enough for lunches; baggie-up appropriately! Listen to a great podcast or bring a TV into the kitchen and watch a series. Over Christmas vacation we had some big, group Power Cooking sessions where we binge watched Walking Dead – it was Heaven!
Here’s a recent dinner: broth, sausage, brussels, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onion, bunch of spices and herbs.
And here’s what I did the next with it for lunch: added a hard boiled egg ( heavy lifting day plus I taught classes and worked out with a couple clients – I knew I’d be starving)
And last, that potato thing: I put a big glass pan in the hot oven with a few tablespoons of kerry gold butter (in it) for a few minutes til the butter melts. Then I chop a BUNCH of potatoes, put them in the butter, add salt and herbs (sometimes rosemary, sometimes italian), toss, and roast at 425 for 45 to an hour. I let them cool, then put them in a giant ziploc, and then freeze them as “flat” as possible. There’s a few servings in the bag and I want to be able to “crack” off a chunk, then I reheat them in the oven for a few minutes ( after they’ve thawed).
Honestly, you don’t have to serve pasta and bread every night to make your meals. There are other foods out there ( I often get asked, “what else do you feed your kids?”). Fats, like good butter, olive oil, and coconut oil, make food delicious. Salt, pepper, spices and herbs, make food delicious. Hard cheeses grated over vegetables, make food delicious. These things are loaded with nutrients that both add to and enhance the nutrients you’d already be serving when you serve Real Whole Food. Be determined to become a Real Whole Foodie!