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The Beauty of Relishes

Could relish-making be the key for busy people who want nutritious meals without spending a lot of time in the kitchen? Time to move it from quaint and old-fashioned and into the category of vital skills for healthy eaters.

Kitchen Essentials: The Humble Storage Container

Food storage containers don’t rank in the A-list of kitchen gadgets like sleek Kitchen Aid stand mixers and shiny All-Clad cookware. But hear this: If you are interested in meals with any of these attributes–healthy, efficient, affordable, stress-free and/or tasty–then you need decent storage containers. The yogurt cups and take out tubs can (mostly) be recycled so get a set of sturdy containers that will last for years. Read more on the benefit.

Best Practice Secrets of Good Every Day Cooks

For a recent magazine article, Martha Stewart was asked how often she orders take out. Her response was something like a couple times over the last 15 years.

Fact is, there are people “out there” who make healthy, good-tasting meals night after night like it’s no big deal. What do they know that most people don’t?

Brain Eating Stress and the Cooking Solution

Relaxation Photo
If relaxation time is hard to come by, consider that time making meals can double as stress-relief time

We all know stress isn’t a good thing.  But who knew that it literally eats holes in our brain tissue?  As explained by Houston neuroscientist and author David Eagleman, “Stress is underpinned by particular hormones that circulate through the body and the brain.”  Within the brain, “stress literally chews miniature holes” in the tissue.

That ought to send us racing for the relaxation room!  In planning a relaxation strategy, however, keep in mind the fundamental advice offered by Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University:  “You can’t save stress management for weekends or holidays.  It has to be done daily.”

Great, now there’s one more thing for the daily To-Do list!  Before that thought sends you into a bout of aggravated depression, consider this possibility:  Maybe you don’t need to try squeezing another half hour of relaxation time into an already over-scheduled day.  Instead, transform the time already spent making dinner into relaxed and creative time.

It may take a little imagination** to even envision dinner making as something that’s not one of the stressors chewing holes in your brain.  We’ve been carefully programmed to believe that cooking is so stressful and impossible that frozen pizza is the only option.  In truth, however, dinner making can be a great zone-out time, where you get lost in vegetable chopping, flavor combinations, the colors, the smells. . . . maybe the lovely glass of wine you sip while sautéing and stirring.

How does a person get to a place where cooking is a creative outlet instead of stressful drudgery?  It’s a simple learning process.  The more you know, the more uncertainty, fear and stress are replaced with confidence, comfort and calm.

Our meal making classes are all about sharing the skills that make cooking easeful and natural–and a time when you can unwind doing something that’s tactile and sensory.  Join us and save a few brain cells!

**We’ve got a couple good posts on how imagination is a key tool on the healthy eating journey:  http://bit.ly/MhGhpy   and http://bit.ly/Mx6yeY

Note:  Information and quotes from “The Consequences of Stress, A Shrinking Brain, Memory Loss Can Result,” Leslie Barker Garcia for The Dallas Morning News, from the Daily Camera, March 14, 2012, p. 3B

 

 

 

The Special Beauty of Old Things

Turning hard grain kernels into soft baking flour I have a fondness for things that have withstood the test of time–like Farmer John’s grain mill.  Manufactured in the 1940s and having traveled across three states before landing in Colorado, the mill is still in fine working order.  No planned obsolescence here! Grain poured in the top funnel … Read more

Cooking Disasters and Ugly Soup

What Not to Do When Cooking Opportunities for humility are never in short supply.  In a recent class, a participant brought up the perennial problem of cooking failures.  My response began with the reassurance that cooking disasters don’t really happen that often, so don’t let them scare you from the kitchen.   Of course the very … Read more