National Cooking Day

Today is National Cooking Day.

Per Google it was started in 2016 by potsandpans.com

The day is celebrated to promote cooking a meal in your kitchen. As opposed to picking up takeout or ordering food to be delivered.

The Pots and Pans website sells kitchen supplies like frying pans and the like. Figures they’d have a link to cooking in our kitchens.

Will I be cooking a meal tonight? I don’t think heating up a boxed frozen dinner counts. Pasta will be more like it.

Turn on the flame and let the cooking begin!

One Week Meal Plan

This is a meal plan for one week:

Note I do not list snacks. There’s dueling takes on eating every 3 hours versus not eating between meals.

Dr. Georgia Ede, MD frowns on eating between meals. She thinks you need to reset your metabolism so shouldn’t eat between meals.

Decades ago it was thought that you should eat every 3 hours. On my own apart from any advice I had stopped doing this.

Breakfasts:

3 scrambled eggs with vanilla protein drink.

Yogurt banana peanut butter parfait

Cottage cheese with sliced almonds and cinnamon

Chocolate Protein Powder shake

Caprese salad

Plain Greek yogurt mixed with peanut butter.

Lunch:

Poke bowl 3x / per week

Twisted tuna sandwich (for at home)

Cheese board (used in a 5-section Bento box)

Two days “free” to eat as you please.

Dinner:

Tofu eggs

Poke bowl

Chicken with a heated-up frozen vegetable (okay 2x / per week)

Deli Counter Delights:

Salmon filet and Brussels sprouts or roasted vegetables (roasted veggies don’t require heating up)

Grilled chicken and roasted vegetable

One night “free” to eat as you please.

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Coming up the recipe for Twisted Tuna Sandwich.

Eating a Nice Steak !?!

In a recent issue of Women’s Health magazine the most decorated Olympic track-and-field athlete Allyson Felix was interviewed on the last page. She said that she enjoys having “A nice steak. It’s so satisfying.”

There you have it an Olympic athlete eats meat. Really I don’t eat meat and it’s because I don’t like how meat tastes. Also for my health. Though if Allyson Felix is any indication red meat fueled her health.

A person I knew became a vegan and I think it was for ethical reasons. They told me that doing that their mood worsened. After they returned to having red meat their happiness improved.

So the choice is yours and mine. Though I eat chicken and turkey I mostly have fish and seafood in my diet along with vegetables.

If you can find a good poke bowl take-out restaurant where you live I recommend this too should they offer salad with the toppings.

Coming up shortly a recipe for a tuna melt sandwich that’s perfect for lunch.

Finding Our Nutrition ID

Again out of nowhere an idea flashed into my head. About how to live life well and whole.

I think figuring out what kind of food to eat is an intuitive process. We need to trust ourselves to notice how we feel when eating different food.

I call this finding our Nutrition ID. It’s a simple process of asking ourselves how we feel after eating different types of food.

For example, I’m sensitive to the fat in food. And I don’t eat huge portions of any food as a rule. I prefer to have organic whole foods. Yet will eat produce that is not always organic.

This calls for adopting common sense. I knew a person who stopped eating red meat and they felt poorly. When they returned to having a nice, juicy steak their mood improved.

So a vegan diet is not the way to go for everyone.

How we will know what to eat and what not to eat calls for this experimentation with different foods.

This has been called a “flexitarian” diet when a person picks and chooses what they eat from a variety of options.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to write about my own new revamped breakfast routine.

Getting bored of eating the same food over and over is a real issue. So I’ll write about a health coach-vetted nutrition routine.

Square Fare

If you live in Brooklyn Long Island City or Manhattan (and Jersey City Hoboken Westchester or Long Island) you can order weekly healthy meals delivered with Square Fare. My health coach sent me a list of 5 links to meal delivery services. I chose Square Fare the first link because it was the most right-on company name.

As an author, I think what you name each character in a book should be chosen carefully. I clicked on the Square Fare link exactly because the founder came up with the right name for her company. Screwy yet true and there was no need to compare with the other links.

On the Square Fare homepage you take a health quiz. Then the woman in charge of the company emails you a list of optimal meal choices. I had specified that I want to get protein, build muscle, and counter fatigue.

There’s tax and a $10 delivery fee. The trick is to know the right days to order the food on for the particular time slot you want the food to be delivered in. After I figured this out there were no screw-ups.

The food can be kept in the refrigerator for 4 days or stored in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Way better meals than using Chinese takeout or dining in a chain restaurant like Outback Steakhouse. And for those of us who don’t like to dine in restaurants all the time Square Fare is a tasty healthy option for lean cuisine right at home.

It cheers me that a woman founded Square Fare.

Everything is gluten-free too and the protein smoothies are sugar-free too.

The meals are not frozen when they arrive. You heat them for 10 minutes in the oven and then they’re ready to eat.

The cost of the service is well worth it if you live in Brooklyn Long Island City or Manhattan. Also Jersey City Hoboken and Westchester and Long Island.

Just the well-chosen name Square Fare gets it right to begin with.

The website is Square Fare

Feasting on the Personal Plate

Italians eat well to live well. Or as we say: mangia bene vivere bene.

One day as I was editing and revising the second recovery guidebook that I aim to publish the idea of filling and getting sustenance from what I call The Personal Plate hit me in an instant.

In my life I’ve found that choosing from the four “Food Groups” each day helps me live life well. Every day would ideally contain a “serving” of these foods on each of our plates.

The Food Groups are the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual balanced on each day’s Personal Plate to choose from. The mental is the helping of thoughts that you serve yourself so that you can attend to the task for that given day. The emotional part of the plate is checking in with yourself through the day to contact how you’re feeling.

The physical portion is comprised of the food and fitness you get in while going about the hours from morning to evening. The spiritual is taking time for gratitude and reflection on what’s sacred for you, I say engage in a spiritual micro-habit every day.

The four food groups would optimally work in harmony with each other. On the days when it’s hard to achieve balance it’s okay for one portion to get attention over the other.

Plating our lives with delicious and healthy meals this way can make all the difference in how we feel and think about ourselves.

Cooking is soul care. As an Italian woman, I’ve taken up using recipes that I find in cookbooks, magazines, and online blogs.

I’ll end here with a recipe that my health coach recommended that I call a Protein Shake It Up!

12-oz almond milk

1 Tbsp almond butter

1 scoop vanilla protein powder

Mix in blender until smooth and creamy.

Cooking as Therapy

The photo is an image of a recipe in Cooking as Therapy book.

This month I checked out of the library the new book published last month: Cooking as Therapy: how to improve mental health through cooking. Each chapter on how to heal what you feel features three recipes: a Fast Lane, Easy Rider, and Scenic Route that take 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and an hour respectively.

You’re supposed to wash your hands before you begin and I forgot this.

In Session Four: Surviving Sadness I used the Fast Lane: Top It All Off Treat. I chose this recipe first not because I was depressed. Anyone who’s feeling ordinary sadness or is grieving could follow this recipe.

The ice cream sundae in the photo above is what I created to Top It All Off as my Treat. Who could resist having ice cream as a form of therapy?

In each chapter the author who is an LCSW features recipes she’s preplanned for readers to use. At the end of the book she gives readers a list of food ingredients and methods for using the food on your own. To create unique recipes customized to what you’re going through.

I recommend installing Cooking as Therapy on a Kindle or iPad or checking it out of the library if you can’t afford to buy it.

A library is a free college of knowledge. And hey today if you return a book late as long as it’s checked back in a lot of libraries will remove the fine you incurred.

I’m going to Top It All Off again every so often. My first foray into doing this sparked an ingenious idea I had for a celebration to host at the beginning of the year like Kwanzaa only for individuals living in recovery.

Stay tuned for the details on this coming up.

Cheese–The New Superfood?!

According to the fall issue of Women’s Health magazine certain kinds of cheese–not the shelf-stable queso; industrial mozzarella; or powderized poof sprinkle–can be a boon to our health.

As in real cheese having “tons of protein, bone-strengthening calcium, gut-healthy probiotics, and stomach-satiating fats.”

Only 3 ounces is all you need to pack in 20 to 30 grams of protein.

I’m fond of burrata. Gruyere is great too.

Aged Manchego has 21 grams of protein. The Italian staple parmigiano-reggiano has 30 grams of protein in a hard 3 ounce block.

The fall issue of Women’s Health gives three Pro Tips for how to make a high protein cheeseboard. Plus a cheese map to find your new favorite flavor.

Who knew that real cheese in moderation could be a superfood. I’m skeptical yet willing to try my hand at a cheese board.

Mangiare un poco formaggio that is “to eat a little cheese” as Italians would is okay if you ask me.

Snack on!

Choosing Sanity Over Vanity

In here I’ll detail in this post further thoughts on a sane approach to consuming food and drink. Choosing sanity over vanity is what matters. Instead of caring how we look to others it’s healthier to think about whether we can live with ourselves at the end of the day.

It was the singer P!nk in a magazine interview easily a decade ago who told the reporter that if you feel bad about what you’re eating then you’re swallowing guilt.

Indulging in food or drink that we label a “good” or “bad” item has the tendency to make us think that we’re good or bad people for eating or drinking it.

Let’s face things so often what we choose to do is because we care how we appear to others. Taking the pressure off happens when we decide that the only person we need to impress or to have approve of us is ourselves.

My days of eating bags of chips are over. I stopped doing this for me.

What I’m saying and I’ve said this repeatedly before in one of the other blogs too is that whittling yourself down to skin and bones to attract others is what’s not ideal.

Are we really counting calories for our health? Are we choosing and using what to eat because the food improves our mood or does it just conform to what we think is healthy?

There’s a ton of products that the editors of the Nutrition Action newsletter expose as not really health-boosting.

Far better to indulge in a real food treat like a pastry every so often. Not bolt for a drink that’s supposed to give us energy or nutrients.

My goal is to share stories and teach others to be well as I’ve written before. Wellness is not the absence of illness. It’s not unachievable to be well when you expand the limits to the definition of wellness.

The online dictionary defines wellness as: the quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal. Within the limits we have with our bodies and minds we can strive to be in good health.

This starts when you and I ask ourselves: “What does good health look like for me? How can I get there? What do I need to do to sustain this lifestyle?”

Having the radical grace to be flexible and adaptable and open to change when this routine no longer fits our life. Just going easier on ourselves when we slip up or fall down here and there. Understanding that most setbacks are only temporary. Picking ourselves up and recommitting to the path we chose.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to talk in more detail about the ethic of going in a steady rhythm.

Chemical Chow

How and what a person consumes in terms of food and drink is a personal choice. I’m not going to judge anyone else for chowing down on chemical cuisine. Nor am I going to glorify a person who is a total saint in their nutrition practice.

“Everything in moderation” is what I think is the best approach. Striving to have a healthy balance and not overdoing it with the extreme in either direction.

My aversion to using food and drink “products” containing natural flavor I found out is a real issue after eating two different bags of potato chips within four days of each other. I could taste the different taste between the Siete chips with three real food ingredients and the Deep River regular chips that use canola or safflower or cottonseed oil.

Though the Deep River didn’t use natural flavor I could taste that their chips tasted funny compared to the taste of the Siete chips.

There’s a chemical taste to food using natural flavor too. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) calls natural flavor a drug like crack because it’s an addictive food additive. The EWG goes so far as to say this.

I ordered the Nutrition Action booklet Chemical Cuisine that lists the chemicals in food products that cause ill health like common caramel flavor. The other chemicals in the guide are too numerous to list here.

It can appear that I’m nuts writing about this repeatedly. This shall be the last time I detail my thoughts on the topic of natural flavor. Though trust me real food tastes better.

I would like to say that it’s because I’m Italian American that using chemicals to cook food with leaves a distaste in my mouth. And of course, too I’m a fan of the Slow Food movement that started in Italy at the time of the rise in fast food restaurants there.

I don’t use a microwave either. It’s a matter of personal choice. In the coming blog entry I’ll talk about Choosing Sanity over Vanity in adopting a nutrition practice.

For one as a person who weighs 107 pounds I don’t like when other women tell me either that I’m too thin or else tell me “That’s good!” for fitting into a size 2P. My workout routines and weekly eating plan are not habits that I think 90 percent of Americans would want to adopt.

For the 212 loyal followers to this blog that I have after WordPress deleted the inactive accounts I think the readers who’ve stayed on this long might be the ones getting value from my approach.

Takes what works and leave the rest as the saying goes.

I eat well to feel good. That’s the story.